04 Jan A Dozen Surefire Tips to Create a Brilliant Brand Style Guide

You’re launching a new product or service. Over the past months, you and your healthcare marketing team have been engaged in the arduous task of creating a compelling brand.

You’ve done the market research, created the value proposition and positioning, developed customer personas and their journeys, and crafted key messages for each of your target audiences.

Then you and your team worked together to produce the brand concept featuring the distinctive visual and verbal identity that will help make your product or service stand out against your competition.

Whew—that’s a huge accomplishment! Congratulations!

But how do you ensure your branding is used consistently across all media?

You need to create a brand style!

What is a brand style guide?

As healthcare marketing professionals, we all know the importance of consistency in achieving brand success and supremacy.

A brand style guide—aka brand book, brand guidelines, brand toolkit, brand bible—is a comprehensive guide that helps ensure that all your brand hallmarks (logo, colors, typography, white space, photography, illustration, messaging, tone of voice) are used consistently and cohesively in all your marketing tactics in all media: digital, video, print, OOH, and more.

The result: a memorable brand that will make a lasting, positive impression on your audience.

The advantages of creating a brand style guide

In addition to ensuring that your marketing materials have the same look and feel to improve brand recognition, a brand style guide offers other important advantages:

•  Defines your brand identity and personality, including your values and mission, to help build a powerful emotional connection with your target audience

•  Gives all members of your team—from the corner office to the front desk—a better understanding of your brand so they can deliver a unified message to your audiences, which builds customer trust and loyalty

•  Increases efficiency by providing specific guidelines, which is especially important for your internal team but also for ad agencies and other external vendors you may collaborate with

The key elements of a brand style guide

Every brand style guide is different. Some are very short and just deal with such elements as color and typography.

Others are comprehensive and cover just about everything.

Our recommendation is to lean toward the latter––be comprehensive. But each situation is different––use what is best for you.

1. Introduce your personality and values

It’s important that the entire team have a deep understanding of your company and brand’s values. So begin your brand style guide by defining your mission, brand promise, personality, and goals for the future. It’s a great way to create a distinct brand personality that your team can more readily communicate to your target audience.

2. Define your audience

To make sure your team and partners understand the people you’re targeting with your communications, include the following in your brand style guide:

•  The demographics of your target audience

•  Their psychographics

•  Their personas

•  Maps of customer journeys from their introduction to your brand through their advocacy of it

3. Specify the language unique to your brand

Your brand style guide should clearly articulate your:

•  Value proposition

•  Key messages tailored to each audience

•  Tagline

•  Headlines conveying your differentiation and personality

4. Establish a distinct tone of voice

When crafting copy, what tone should you use? Clinical? Empathetic? Folksy? Authoritative? Choose the tone of voice that matches your brand’s personality and best communicates with your audience. Use that tone when writing your brand style guide.

5. Include do’s and don’ts

Beyond educating your team on how to properly use the key visual elements of your brand, your brand guide should include things that your team shouldn’t do—the “don’ts” —to ensure brand consistency.

6. Specify proper logo use

One of the most important and visible representations of your brand is your logo. Your logo is one of your most valuable assets and requires careful management. To help build brand equity and ensure a distinct brand presence, it’s critical to apply your logo consistently across all audience touchpoints.

Demonstrate all the ways your logo should appear in different media environments—its placement, sizes, and colors (including black and white versions).

Just as important, detail all the ways your logo shouldn’t appear!

7. Concentrate on colors

Color can be one of the most powerful components in your brand design toolbox. Specify your primary and secondary colors (and tertiary, if you have them) and the monochrome version. You may also want to define Pantone names and numbers,  RGB values, color hexadecimals, and CMYK color codes. Provide examples to ensure all designers are staying true to your color palette.

8. Spell out typography

As with colors, specify your primary and secondary typefaces as well as any complementary typefaces. Demonstrate where and how the typefaces are used (for instance, in headlines, subheads, and body copy), sizes, and the use of color.

9. Illustrate  your visual style

What style of photography are you using? Black and white? Color? Slice of life? Portrait? Be sure to define and provide examples.

Are you using illustrations? Color? Black and white? Realistic? Surreal? Again, choose the style that best resonates with your audience and use it consistently.

Be sure to apply your visual style consistently in all media, including video projects and TV ads.

10. Create templates

To bring your brand to life—and give your team a greater understanding of how it works together—create templates of a variety of marketing tactics. For instance:

•  Sales aid cover, inside pages, and back page

•  Postcards

•  Posters

•  One- and two-page print ads

•  Digital ads in various configurations (square, vertical, horizontal)

•  Website homepage, secondary page, tertiary page, plus examples of CTA (call to action)

•  Email

•  Social media posts

•  Apps

•  Video and animation

•  PowerPoint presentations

•  Tradeshow graphics

11. Be open to updates

Change is inevitable as your brand and company evolve. So update and refresh your brand style guide to accommodate changes.

12. Appoint brand ambassadors

Identify a group of people in your organization who oversees all aspects of your branding. They can review all pieces to ensure that your branding is consistent and answer any questions your team may have.

Need help with your brand style guide?

Book Bryant Brown Healthcare. We have extensive experience crafting powerful healthcare brands and supporting them with comprehensive, user-friendly brand style guides. Bryant Brown Healthcare are medical marketing specialists with more than 25 years of branding experience everywhere in healthcare: pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, medical device manufacturers, health information technology leaders, hospitals and health systems, and patient and professional advocacy organizations.

Want to know more? Let’s talk!