Consistency: Today’s Brand Lifeline
Ralph Waldo Emerson, said,
“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” Poetic words but so wrong in today’s light speed standard of social media.
The iron rule to build a brand today: Consistency especially on-line is all.
Many companies, hire experts to build their brands. It’s up to these brilliant minds to create a campaign that works across all media. On-line is essential because we watch less TV and go online more. These highly paid experts create with what’s called a brand promise. This promise links a product, service, or a company to the consumer. That’s you, the people who spend hard earned money to buy what they’re selling.
A great example of a brand promise, right now, is Coca-Cola. Their promise, “Best Coke Ever”. Intriguing line, but what’s does it mean? Old Coke is gone and there is a new formula? Who knows?
But, it’s a simple promise that plants itself in your brain. The Coca-Cola company will now take that three word promise and put it on everything everywhere. This promise will be found on paid search, video, multiple social platforms, TV, radio, internet, influencers on-line, you name it, it’s there.
The key -consistency.
An older brand promise that stuck in people’s minds for four decades is from the U.S. Army:
“Be all you can be.” Started in 80’s by an agency that no longer exists, the Army has brought this old veteran out of retirement.
The consistency of this tagline “created a part of speech completely identified with the Army.”
CBS said. “The U.S. Army is rebooting its ’80s-era slogan “Be All You Can Be” in a new rebranding campaign, as part of an effort to turn around the service’s most dismal recruiting environment in decades.”
Today the Army finds its prospects online from an audience that probably loves gaming and social media. Tapping into decades of tagline consistency, reworked for online advertising, may just work and put new recruits into boots.