People at workshop applying Post It notes on a glass wall

How to get your team on the same brand page

Whether you’re knocking together a pitch to attract investor funding, or running a training session within your organisation, it’s important to get everyone using the same brand elements across all forms of communication. But how do you ensure this happens without: a) getting a reputation for being the branding police or b) spending copious amounts of time being said branding police, which let’s face it, isn’t much fun (unless that’s your jam).  

We’ve rounded up a few ideas to support you while you get your team on the same branding page. These approaches can be applied to any sized organisation, simply scale as required. 

  • Develop a brand guideline 
  • Clear communication 
  • Training 
  • Keep the door open 
  • Supply pre-designed templates

Develop brand guidelines 

If you don’t already have brand guidelines, it’s a great idea to create them to use within your organisation, but also to share with anyone you might be working with outside, so they use your branding consistently. 

Your brand guidelines need to cover detailed information on your brand’s visual identity, messaging and presentation standards across online and print.  

At Persuaders, we love developing brands and strategic narratives – so don’t hesitate to get in touch, particularly if you need help applying your brand where the rubber hits the road – in your sales or investor pitch story.

Clear communication 

It’s vital to share the brand’s vision, mission, values and tone of voice across the entire organisation. Ensure that these details live somewhere easily accessible to all, such as the team intranet. You can empower, without patronising, by sharing examples of ‘branding done right’ where teams have implemented brand across different mediums successfully. Perhaps to keep things light you could find examples of ‘branding gone wrong’ with other well-known brands being misused and as a gentle reminder to the importance of brand consistency (then linking back to brand guidelines online).  

Training 

An effective way to get your team singing from the same song sheet when it comes to all things brand is to run a training session, or mini sessions regularly to keep details front of mind. The more engaging and hands-on the sessions, the higher the likelihood of retention.  

A lunch-and-learn workshop for teams that don’t regularly use brand materials can be another way to get the message across and remind people of who to contact if they need support.  

Having a video training session, ideally with a time-coded content list upfront is another time saver and great way to refer people to specific aspects of branding use as needed. For example, your video could cover sections on consistent branding application across emails, presentations and any other marketing channels or materials where branding can be applied.  

Keep the door open 

Making team members from across your organisation feel that they can easily ask questions and seek clarification as needed is important. If there’s a perception of the process being intimidating (‘I’m not a designer, I don’t know how to change this, I’ll just come up with something similar so I don’t have to go searching for someone to help me out, plus I haven’t got time – this presentation is needed by tomorrow’ – sound familiar?) people are more likely to cut and paste and go off brand.  

Enable and empower people by clearly communicating where they can find brand guidelines, video training and individuals who can assist. 

Supply pre-designed templates 

As part of your brand toolkit, you could supply designed templates where your company branding is ‘locked in’, leaving people to complete the content sections. This is incredibly helpful for any sales and marketing material, especially presentation templates. If your teams know where to locate and how to use a designed PowerPoint template, they will be able to create professional presentations quickly and consistently, while adhering to all style guidelines. A professional presentation is more likely to get your message across and result in the desired outcome.  

Like an experienced helping hand? 

While PowerPoint contains many handy tools and tricks to generate a template, you can take it up a notch by having a professionally designed template, which will seamlessly integrate your branding elements. At Persuaders, we have had the pleasure of crafting thousands of templates in our time, for industries ranging from non-profit and start-ups to large scale manufacturing and government agencies. Get in touch to discuss your branding requirements and how a professionally designed template can save your organisation time and money and get you to a faster yes. 

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