When banks, credit unions, and insurance providers go through mergers or acquisitions, the result can be operational alignment — but brand confusion. Multiple branches, legacy systems, outdated assets, conflicting messaging, and strict governance standards all create challenges.

Consistency isn’t just a marketing priority in finance – it’s a compliance necessity. This blog explores how to overcome that challenge with the right content governance tools. Discover how Digital Asset Management (DAM) and Templated Content Creation can help teams stay compliant, consistent, and in control at every branch, during every change.

How to maintain brand consistency during mergers in financial services

In the financial world, mergers and acquisitions are a given. Institutions consolidate to scale services, expand into new regions, or unify under a stronger umbrella brand. But without centralized governance, local branches often:

• Use outdated or incorrect logos, templates, or disclaimers
• Depend on head office or agencies for every content request
• Operate in silos, leading to conflicting messages and compliance risk

All of this puts the brand’s trust, credibility, and regulatory standing at risk.

Why brand compliance is critical for financial content creation

According to the Content Marketing Institute’s Financial Services Survey (2024), 63% of financial marketers cite regulatory compliance as their number one content creation challenge.

Trust is the currency of financial services. That trust starts with clarity and consistency — across brochures, branches, campaigns, and digital channels. But staying on-brand at scale is difficult when teams:

• Work across dozens or hundreds of branches
• Manage content in siloed systems
• Lack access to approved, compliant materials

When speed matters — reacting to market shifts or regulatory changes — long approval chains or outdated folders won’t cut it.

How a DAM creates brand integrity in every financial services branch

Forrester’s DAM Trends Report (2024) shows that more than 60% of financial services firms have adopted a Digital Asset Management solution in the past three years. [Source: Forrester, 2024].

Papirfly’s DAM and Templated Content Creation solutions are purpose-built to solve these challenges. Our suite creates a single hub for everything your teams need to stay on-brand and compliant — even during large-scale changes like mergers and acquisitions.

• Centralized brand hub – Distribute updated assets, disclaimers, and messaging in one secure, searchable brand portal
• Smart templates – Empower branches to localize content while protecting layout, logos, and legal copy
• Approval workflows – Streamline compliance reviews and guarantee brand alignment before go-live
• Audit-ready control – Maintain a full record of how assets are created, edited, and used

Regulated industries need marketing tools built for compliance

Papirfly already supports financial organizations worldwide — including Deutsche Bank, Citi, Goldman Sachs, and Rabobank — helping marketing teams scale output without risking compliance or brand dilution.

Our tools are built for highly regulated industries, balancing flexibility for local teams with control for brand and compliance leaders.

If your teams are:

• Going through a rebrand, merger, or acquisition
• Supporting dozens of branches with limited marketing resource
• Concerned about brand integrity or compliance exposure

…it’s time to explore a solution built for financial services.

FAQs

Over 200 marketing professionals gathered in Oslo for ANFO’s MarTech Dagen 2025. The event centered on the practical application of technology in marketing, showcasing how businesses leverage tools like real-time Customer Data Platforms, marketing automation, and personalized customer dialogues to create valuable customer experiences.

As a sponsor, Papirfly was keen to explore one of today’s biggest branding challenges—maintaining consistency across an ever-growing number of channels—and how the right marketing technologies can help solve it.

The challenge of new channels

The proliferation of marketing channels offers brands unprecedented opportunities to reach diverse audiences, using a multitude of formats. However, this expansion often leads to challenges in preserving a unified brand voice. At MarTech Dagen, speakers highlighted the risks of brand dilution when messaging becomes inconsistent across platforms. The consensus was clear: without a centralized approach to brand management, the essence of a brand can easily become fragmented.

Håvard Kvinnesland at BAS Kommunikasjon, explored the rising potential of RCS (Rich Communication Services)—the next evolution of SMS. With features like branded messaging, rich media, and interactivity, RCS offers a new way to connect with customers directly on their phones.

But as with any emerging channel, it introduces a new layer of complexity: How do you ensure consistent branding and tone of voice in a format that feels more like a conversation than a campaign?

Without clear guardrails and centralised assets, there’s a risk that RCS messages stray off-brand—especially when created quickly or by different teams. It’s another example of why structured content governance and easy access to approved brand materials are critical in today’s Martech ecosystem.

Scaling content without losing control

Key Insight: Increasing content production doesn’t have to lead to chaos. Martech tools, such as DAMs, are pivotal in streamlining content workflows.

As the demand for content grows, so does the potential for inefficiencies. Common pain points include workflow bottlenecks, approval delays, and the dissemination of off-brand assets. At the event, industry leaders emphasized the importance of structured content governance. Implementing Martech solutions like DAMs can bridge organizational silos, ensuring that all teams have access to the latest, approved brand assets, thus maintaining efficiency and control.

Brand Integrity: A recurring theme at MarTech Dagen

One concept that surfaced repeatedly throughout the day was brand integrity—and how difficult it is becoming to preserve in the face of increasingly complex marketing ecosystems.

With the rapid rise of new tools, platforms, and AI-powered solutions, marketers are under pressure to move faster and produce more content than ever before. But in this flurry of automation and innovation, maintaining a clear, cohesive brand identity is more challenging—and more critical—than ever.

Speakers at MarTech Dagen pointed to how quickly brand identity can erode when different teams, regions, or agency partners rely on disconnected systems or outdated assets. As AI tools begin generating content at scale, the risk of going off-brand grows exponentially unless the right governance structures are in place.

This is exactly where Papirfly steps in.

Papirfly supports brand integrity at scale by giving all stakeholders—from local marketers to external partners—access to one platform, one source of truth. With pre-approved assets, templates, and guardrails built in, every piece of content, no matter who creates it or which channel it appears on, stays true to the brand.

Conclusion: Time to take control of your brand presence

MarTech Dagen 2025 underscored that brand consistency is achievable, even at scale, with the right Martech foundation. Centralized systems are essential in streamlining brand management across teams and channels. As brands continue to navigate the complexities of a multi-channel world, embracing these technologies will be crucial in maintaining control, coherence, and—above all—brand integrity.

As a business operating in multiple countries, you must do everything possible to tailor brand content to individual global audiences.

Why? Adapting content around the cultural nuances of different regions does more than help customers understand who you are and what you offer; it builds trust—an increasingly precious commodity in a world where misinformation runs rife.

Yet, despite the immense value localised collateral can provide, actually creating it can make maintaining brand consistency a headache. 

Whether that’s because new colour palettes are needed to respect the traditions of a specific country, or fresh straplines are required to suit different languages – brand localisation can quickly deviate from your pre-established guidelines.
If you want to reap the benefits of localised content while upholding worldwide consistency, this article will help you reshape your global brand strategy. Discover valuable strategies, and learn how Rabobank – a multinational cooperative based in the Netherlands – achieves unity in over 35 countries.

3 tips for achieving global consistency in localised content

When international customers are easier to reach than ever, and expectations for personalised content are on the rise, adapting your content to local cultures is a must. To execute this strategy while staying on-brand, the right approach is essential.

1. Build flexibility into your brand guidelines

When you first laid out the brand guidelines that govern how your brand presents itself, chances are you nailed everything down, from the colours you use to the position of your logo. 

Detailed style guides are a huge help for people in and outside your company, giving them the direction they need to stay on message. However, they can also become an obstacle to consistency when adapting your brand content to new markets.

That’s because stringent guidelines may offer little freedom over how you uphold your brand image. When new messaging, colourways, layouts and more are needed to resonate with specific communities, this can become a problem, forcing team members to think on their feet, which can then undermine your identity.

How do you maintain brand consistency while still honouring your target audience’s traditions? It all starts by introducing a layer of flexibility into your brand guidelines. Exactly how you do this will depend on the specifics of your brand, but as a general rule of thumb, consider:

• Building in variable elements to your documents, such as unique colour palettes and straplines for different scenarios
• Developing guidance on how regional teams can adapt brand content to individual regions and communities
• Including checklists that local departments can follow to avoid causing upset or offence in certain countries 

These steps can give your teams either working in or responsible for certain regions complete clarity over how your brand should be showcased there. This in turn empowers them to create and adapt your messages with confidence that they aren’t overstepping your overall identity.

Furthermore, if you use an online brand hub to house your brand guidelines and other hallmarks of your identity, you could establish different versions for your international teams, written in their own language. Again, this extra layer gives your local teams the confidence to produce in line with their altered guidelines.

2. Empower local marketing teams to create

Another way to deliver content that aligns with cultural expectations – as well as your overarching brand identity – is to empower your regional marketing departments to get creative.

Your local team members play a crucial role in adapting your brand’s messaging to fit the needs of specific markets. Without the right tools to develop, translate and localise your marketing materials, your people might have to create new versions of this media from scratch.

This does more than simply slow their output. It can make it hard for regional teams to deliver personalised content to the quality and scale needed, limiting the efficiency and feasibility of your global brand strategy, and creating inconsistencies that deviate from your overall brand image.

This equips your digital marketers with smart templates they can use to hit the ground running with on-brand asset creation. With the right tool, you can tailor these templates to suit location-specific imagery, colour schemes, languages and more, ensuring regional team members can generate content in line with your agreed-upon identity. In practice, that means great content can be produced quickly, with no margin for inconsistency.

As well as this, an attached DAM system houses all of your latest local and global assets in one place. From here, you can tag or categorise assets in accordance with their relevant location for fast, easy identification, or even manage visibility so people in a particular region can only see the items they need. Again, this means the right, on-brand content is only shared with the right audience.

Some brand management toolkits even incorporate approval workflows, so your central teams (or other leaders) can have final sign-off on any adapted assets before they go to market – a powerful way of unleashing your digital marketers’ creativity while retaining that all-important brand unity.

3. Establish clear avenues for internal communication

Finally, coordinating campaigns across multiple continents is tricky business. With so much scope for consistency-breaking mistakes and cultural oversights to rear their head, strong internal communication is a necessity for several reasons:

• It gets everyone on the same page before committing time and resources to local content creation
• It helps ensure content is released on the right channels at the right time for the right audience
• It keeps the flow of assets from team to team seamless and straightforward

Fundamentally, good internal communication maximises the efficiency of your global marketing operations and prevents major brand discrepancies from country to country.

Having a clear line of communication from central headquarters to every regional office also ensures that changes, like new brand positioning and marketing messaging, are reflected as soon as they come into effect.

It also lays the foundation for collaboration between central and local marketers. This can raise creativity and confirm that every localised campaign meets the expectations of regional audiences, as well as your brand’s overarching goals.

All this is to say internal communication is at the heart of any globally consistent, locally relevant brand. To make it stick:

Again, a dedicated brand portal and DAM solution can unlock stronger communication between your worldwide teams. As a “single source of truth” for everything – both locally and globally – it can act as a key point of collaboration and education for every content creator.

For more on internal communication and tips to improve yours, check out our practical guide.

The advantages of globally consistent, locally-tuned content

Establishes deeper levels of trust

If you operate in multiple territories, taking a one-size-fits-all approach and publishing the same off-brand collateral in each region drastically limits the ability of your marketing materials to resonate.

Different countries and cultures have different beliefs, speak different languages, and value different things. By reflecting these nuances in a way that respects their traditions, while also preserving your core identity, you can lay a strong foundation to build that all-important trust with your audiences.

Improves global brand recognition

Creating content attuned to the communities you’re targeting is vital. But if every piece you publish varies in style from post to post, prospects may not realise they’re engaging with the same brand.

By taking an approach that balances local demands with your overarching brand image, you can ensure the key elements that define your business appear on every social post, banner ad, brochure and beyond in every location. A clear through-line that honours your individual audiences, yet makes it obvious who they’re interacting with.

Not only does this global recognition help you stand out among a sea of competition – it inspires confidence in your products and services.

Enhances customer loyalty

Going all-in on either brand consistency or localisation when reaching a global audience can spell disaster for customer loyalty.

Establishing a healthy balance of both – and delivering on-brand, localised marketing campaigns in the territories you operate in – shows potential customers you care about their experience as much as the sanctity of your branding. 

This is acknowledged by the right consumers, helping you convert them into loyal patrons.

Boosts conversion rates

Few things dampen the effectiveness of your campaigns like marketing materials that fall short of local expectations, content that strays from your localised guidelines, or assets that fail on both counts.

When you implement the strategies we’ve outlined above and craft content that balances the parameters of your brand and the demands of regional communities, your campaigns are in the best place to convert prospects.

Whether it’s translated landing pages for a product or job listings that reflect the country you’re recruiting in, treating different localities as any other marketing segment can be the foundation for superior marketing performance and increased sales.

How Rabobank adapts content consistently to international markets

To illustrate the real-world value of balancing global brand consistency and localisation, let’s round off by taking a look at Rabobank – a multinational cooperative bank based in the Netherlands, who transformed how they adapt content to local markets to achieve a new standard of consistency.

Rabobank was originally established by Dutch farmers in the late 19th century as a small cooperative. Today, the corporation is home to more than 40,000 employees, who operate in more than 35 different countries.

Serving a broad range of different customers, from civilians in the Netherlands to large wholesale clients in Australia, the company was finding it difficult to manage their brand consistently. With dozens of disparate sub-brands and products under their belt, they knew they needed to make a change.

This non-hierarchical structure was core to Rabobank’s cooperative nature and was what drew customers to their company. However, it was also clear this was their greatest problem, confusing other patrons and eroding trust in their global identity.

Rabobank needed a flexible framework to develop culturally relevant content for their international customers, all while retaining a thread of consistency throughout. An approach that used a brand hub as a one-stop shop for everything involving their brand.

From immersing staff in guidelines and streamlining Digital Asset Management, to empowering local teams to create and approve content. With the right solution in place, Rabobank transformed how it maintained cultural relevance in marketing, all while bringing its identity in line across every region.

By securing the buy-in of stakeholders from across the organisation, and listening to their thoughts and feedback, Rabobank continues to evolve with this technology at their core.

In doing so, it has seen widespread adoption internally and improved the unity of their global image. It also resulted in the production of over 23,000 assets in 2023 alone, a figure which has helped them improve brand reach and resonate with regional communities, all while avoiding costs.

Elevate your global marketing strategy to new heights

To unleash the full potential of your promotional material in target markets around the globe, you need to deliver collateral that acknowledges the local nuances of every region.

Whether that means updating messaging to work in new languages or swapping out imagery for something that reflects the communities you’re targeting, adapting to the expectations of different countries can make it hard to maintain the global consistency you need to succeed.

We hope the tips, tricks and technology we’ve introduced in this article – and the real-world case study of Rabobank – give you what you need to strike the perfect balance between regional flexibility and global brand consistency. A balance that enables you to speak to your local audiences directly and personally, while maintaining a rock-solid reputation at a worldwide level.

Apple. Google. Starbucks. The world’s most famous brands don’t achieve this status by accident – they are masters of brand consistency.

Brand consistency is the foundation from which customers recognise, understand and trust your brand. From your visual identity and colour palette, to your tone of voice – keeping every aspect of your identity unified is critical for long-term success.

As developers of solutions that empower hundreds of global organisations to stay consistent, we’re experts in true brand consistency and how to achieve it.

In this ultimate guide, you’ll discover exactly why consistency is so important, and what you can do to maintain it across every marketing touchpoint:

• See statistics that demonstrate the value of consistency
• Learn what tools and techniques are crucial to brand consistency
• Discover brands that have their identities locked down
• Find out how to overcome common brand consistency challenges

Want to build a brand that resonates with customers wherever they see it? Then let’s get started…

What is brand consistency?

Brand consistency is when you present a unified, harmonious brand voice across all marketing materials. Websites, emails, social media platforms, brochures, posters – everything your potential customers see carries your unique identity.

Think of it as the glue that holds your brand messaging together, from a huge billboard in a busy city, all the way down to a single TikTok. Maintaining a consistent style across all your marketing campaigns and channels helps familiarise your target audience with who you are, what you stand for, and how you can help them.

4 essential elements of brand consistency

The most successful brands ensure that every strand of their marketing is woven with their distinct personality. That means every key element must be aligned…

Visual identity

McDonalds’ golden arches. The Starbucks Siren. The four fundamental colours on every Google product. Consistent visual elements are crucial if you want people to recognise your brand, as it’s often the first thing prospective customers will connect with.

From your logo and colour scheme, to the brand images, typography and design elements you utilise. These all communicate your brand’s identity, and should never deviate across any of your assets.

Tone of voice

How you communicate with your potential customers plays a huge role in how they perceive your organisation. Do you keep things simple and jargon-free like Apple? Are you motivational and aspirational like Nike?

No matter how you talk to your target audience, your distinct tone of voice and language must be reflected in every message, from a simple Instagram caption to a multi-page brochure.

Brand messaging

The core values at the heart of your organisation should influence every brand element you create. Your brand’s promise, vision and goals transform occasional customers into full-blown advocates, so these messages must be reflected in your marketing materials.

Social media

A go-to destination for billions, brand consistency on social media is essential to establish your identity to a worldwide audience.

Over 75% of consumers use social media to decide what brands to engage with, so you want to ensure everything you share on these platforms reflects your personality – from a YouTube video to a pithy Facebook post.

Remaining consistent across these elements gradually propels brands into people’s hearts and minds – ensuring that everyone understands who your company is, wherever they encounter your messaging.

Why is brand consistency so important?

Brand consistency is a long-game strategy, and vital to ongoing success in any market. 

You want customers to think of you first and foremost for whatever product you sell, service you offer, or cause you represent. And in our experience, consistency in your messaging is the path to fulfilling that ambition. 

But the benefits don’t stop there……

Brand consistency differentiates your company

Your brand is your most valuable asset in setting yourself apart from your competitors. By consistently presenting this across your marketing channels, you help people understand what makes you different and why they should choose you over anyone else.

In an increasingly competitive landscape, a clear, consistent brand presence can ensure your target market sees your unique proposition no matter what platform they engage with.

Brand consistency helps audiences recognise you

Did you know that it takes up to 7 interactions with a brand for the average customer to remember it? That’s a lot of touchpoints! So, if every one of these interactions is inconsistent, your audience might not attribute that credibility to your company.

Maintaining brand consistency across all channels ensures that, as your prospects take the gradual journey of ‘learning’ your brand, they get the same impression each time. This familiarity leads to recognition, boosting your odds of repeat business.

Brand consistency builds trust with your customers

As well as recognition, brand consistency is a hallmark of trust. Modern customers expect a seamless, coherent experience with the brands they engage with. This is the crux of a strong, lasting relationship – if each customer interaction with your brand is slightly different, it makes it much harder for them to understand what you stand for.

Consistent brands create loyal customers, where both sides always know where they stand. By staying aligned on all media channels, you help your audience truly understand you.

Brand consistency supports your bottom line

Loyal customers lead to repeat purchases, which in turn raises your profitability. Research suggests that consistent brands enjoy over 20% more revenue growth when compared to brands that don’t take this as seriously.

Need more convincing? Brands that consistently tell their story also often see their brand value grow up to 20% as well. Plus, inspiring loyal, repeat customers is a more fruitful source of revenue than having to constantly reach out to new audiences.

With today’s consumers expecting quality and stability from companies, consistency is essential to a successful ROI.

Brand consistency grows your authority and equity

Beyond your ROI, strong branding also breeds authority, which in turn builds brand equity. Excellent brand equity is the objective for any commercial organisation and is a good indicator of how much your target audience loves, trusts and acknowledges your brand. 

This is only achievable through sustained interactions and customer experiences, and a key step on the path to brand salience. In fact, becoming a thought leader is how brands like Google, Hoover, Velcro and more entered our everyday vocabulary.

Brand consistency brings your employees together

Brand consistency benefits more than your customer experiences – it also means a lot for your employer brand. In the competition to secure the best candidates, it’s a huge advantage that potential recruits are clear about who your company is and what sets you apart from others in your industry.

Staying consistent across all your employer branding – from your online recruitment page to your onboarding materials – reassures recruits and helps build a united identity among your existing team members.

What happens if a brand lacks consistency?

Inconsistency is a silent brand killer. If you fail to maintain a uniform presence across your various channels, it can:

• Erode the trust between your brand and your audience
• Limit your ability to turn occasional consumers into loyal customers
• Negatively impact the stature and perception of your brand
• Confuse and irritate buyers, leading to poor customer experiences
• Reduce your long-term profitability
• Affect your ability to consistently recruit top prospects

We’ve seen first-hand how inconsistency can severely hurt people’s marketing efforts, making it much harder to grow a core of repeat customers. Learn from mistakes like Coca-Cola’s “New Coke” campaign – make sure your brand message stays aligned.

Is brand consistency only important for large corporations?

Absolutely not. While many of the world’s most renowned brands have achieved this through unwavering consistency, they all started somewhere. 

No matter the size or scale of your business, or whether you appeal to a local or global audience, consistent branding helps customers understand, recognise and trust you. It’s critical to building a loyal customer base – something every startup or small business should aspire to in a world of constant change.

Creating and maintaining brand consistency

Now you understand how valuable brand consistency is to the present and future of your organisation, how do you create and maintain it? Let’s break it down piece by piece…

Brand strategy

It all starts with your brand and marketing strategy. This establishes the identity, mission and personality you will project across all your marketing channels, so it must be carefully considered. So from the outset, ask yourself:

• Who are our target audiences? What are their motivations and values?
• What values do we stand for?
• What colour schemes, language and more will resonate with our audiences?
• What marketing channels and types of content will we utilise?

As well as these fundamental questions, your strategy can establish if your company’s branding adapts to different areas of your business. Consider Tesco – it’s a well-known multinational retailer, but also branches out into banking, mobile phones, photo printing and more.

Therefore, Tesco slightly adapts its brand messaging to suit each particular audience, while retaining enough of its core identity to flow its equity across all areas. If your company has distinct services for different audiences – say a service aimed at consumers and another at businesses – you may consider a similar approach.

Brand guidelines

If strategy is the base of brand consistency, brand guidelines are the blueprint to maintain that consistency. This is crucial for ensuring consistency across all brand elements, setting the rules for how your brand must be presented.

What colour palette do we base our designs on? What is our tone of voice? Where do we place our logo on social assets? The answers to these questions and many, many more should be found in your brand guidelines.

So, what should you include in this essential user manual?

• Brand identity
  • Logo, including variations, spacing and sizes
  • Colour palette, with specific hex codes or Pantone values
  • Typography, with font styles, sizes and weights
• Visual identity
  • Imagery, listing approved photos, illustrations, icons, etc.
  • Graphic elements, including specific patterns, textures and design elements
  • Layouts, breaking down parameters for different content styles
• Tone of voice
  • Brand language, describing what terminology your brand employs
  • Messaging, covering communications for different channels and audiences
• Brand usage
  • Applications, explaining variations of your brand identity on different channels or materials
  • Misuses, clearly showing what not to do with your brand elements

But, it isn’t enough to have brand guidelines – you need to know people are following them. Over 85% of companies have brand guidelines; only around 30% actually use them.

So, it’s important that you make your brand guidelines accessible to anyone who produces branded assets, and train your team in how to use them, whether this is part of your induction process or ongoing rediscovery sessions.

Looking to create the best brand guidelines for your organisation? Read our must-have guide for global brand managers.

Brand hub

Evolving beyond guidelines, truly consistent brands create dedicated brand hubs that contain every aspect of their unique identity into one centralised, digital resource.

This is effective as it offers an interactive, comprehensive breakdown of the components, templates and more that will keep your brand aligned on every platform. With FAQs for your users and examples of pre-approved assets, brand hubs are becoming increasingly vital for end-to-end consistency.

Brand templates

Smart design templates take the essence of your guidelines and put them into action in an automatic, second-nature way. 

Harnessing templates removes the pressure on designers and marketers to constantly interpret or recall your guidelines. Instead, these fixed components, colour schemes and more are laid out as required, without any risk of deviation.

This unlocks numerous benefits beyond just a more consistent brand presentation…

• Brand templates make producing assets quicker and more efficient
• Brand templates allow designers to be creative and consistent
• Brand templates reduce decision-making time and streamline workflows
• Brand templates minimise the time spent proofing and amending assets before they are published
• Brand templates help create a more professional, quality brand image
• Brand templates help local outlets adapt company assets for their specific audiences

Simply put, digital design templates are a must-have for unwavering consistency and agile communications – two things modern customers expect.

Recycling assets

A great tip for maintaining brand consistency and streamlining production costs is recycling assets. This is not simply posting the same asset over and over again – it means taking an asset and repurposing it for another audience, channel or time of year.

For example, say you’ve produced a two-minute explainer video on a product for your YouTube channel. How many 10-second TikToks or Reels can you make from that video? Could you take visuals and parts of the script to create pamphlets or digestible social assets?

By regularly recycling brand assets, you stretch the value of each resource and help ensure a consistent, unbroken presentation across your platforms.

Digital Asset Management

A high-quality Digital Asset Management (DAM) system is another vital tool in your bid to stay consistent. At its core, a DAM is a central repository of all approved, compliant assets, providing a single source of truth in your organisation.

How does this support brand consistency?

• It gives your marketers a clear guide of what brand images and assets are suitable for use
• It lets you see the latest versions of assets, so any old or outdated branding is never shared
• It allows you to tag assets for specific locations, channels and applications, so these are reserved for specific uses
• It lets you review and see all assets in one place, and identify any issues before they are presented to the public

A solid DAM system is a powerful ally in the battle for better brand consistency. It’s why we dedicate significant time and energy to making our Place product one of the leading DAMs globally, as detailed in the latest Forrester Wave™ Report.

How do you measure brand consistency?

While there is no set metric you can use to measure brand consistency, there are some steps you can take to track this:

• Run a brand audit, reviewing the assets you created across your channels in a set timeframe. This will highlight any brand assets that have deviated from your guidelines, so you can identify what went wrong and introduce measures to fix this.
• Track the usage of your approved assets and templates, as this will illustrate how regularly your marketers are using your brand consistency software and services 
• Monitor the views of your brand hub, which again offers a window into how often your team is reflecting on the guidelines at the heart of your branding

6 brilliant brand consistency examples to learn from

So, you now know the value of brand consistency and what can help you maintain it. Now it’s time to learn from organisations that make consistency a cornerstone of their approach…

1. Google’s clever colour palette

Today, whenever we see the careful combination of red, blue, yellow and green together, our minds immediately go to Google. This ingenious colour scheme has spread from the heading of their search engine into their wide variety of apps to bring them all under one umbrella.

This consistent branding immediately adds authority to any new product Google brings out, and remains at the heart of their near-universal recognition.

2. Nike’s seamless simplicity

Just do it. Swoosh. Four simple words, all instantly attributable to Nike. One of the world’s premier clothing and footwear companies, Nike’s consistent application of their iconic logo on their products, brand materials, packaging and more was vital to achieving this status.

This is coupled with a familiar flow of language and imagery centred on achievement, motivation and empowerment – messages that permeate every piece of content they produce.

3. Starbucks’s standout identity

Starbucks’s globally recognisable brand centres on its consistent use of its iconic Siren logo, personalised customer experiences and cosy ambience. This stability has made Starbucks the go-to name in the highly competitive coffee industry.

This is the power of consistent branding. In terms of products, Starbucks isn’t much different from any other coffee cafe. However, their immediately identifiable visuals – and the meaning they hold to customers worldwide –  place them head and shoulders above the competition.

4. Apple’s universal presentation

It’s arguable Apple is the standard bearer for the benefits of brand consistency. From its sleek product design to its minimalist advertising campaigns, every aspect of Apple’s brand communications promotes simplicity, innovation and premium quality.

This universal application extends from its websites and stores through to its social media platforms and, coupled with the intuitiveness of Apple’s products, has helped the company develop its cult-like following.

5. Patagonia’s powerful messaging (H3)

The best brands are founded on beliefs and values that connect with customers on a deep, emotional level. That is the secret to Patagonia’s growth over the decades, continuously pushing its commitment to the environment and ethical behaviours.

Placing this at the core of their brand guidelines, marketing campaigns and initiatives has enabled Patagonia to build a devoted fan base and a strong reputation.

6. BMW’s roadworthy branding (H3)

As the maker of “Ultimate Driving Machines”, BMW has long held a powerful, reliable reputation for quality, dependable vehicles. This is echoed in their brand identity and visuals, blending their superior engineering with their motto of delivering sheer driving pleasure.

But, with hundreds of dealerships scattered over Europe and beyond, BMW know the need to maintain consistency from location to location. Through Papirfly’s brand management platform, BMW NE has closed the distance between HQ and their individual dealerships, keeping communications coordinated and on-brand at all times.

3 common brand consistency challenges… and how to overcome them

Total brand consistency should be the aim of any organisation. But achieving it is easier said than done. Here are three of the biggest pain points to reaching this goal, and our specialist advice on navigating them.

1. Maintaining brand consistency across different marketing channels

Social media. Emails. Digital ads. Posters. Billboards. The nuances of each marketing channel can make it easy for inconsistencies to creep into your branding.

We know from experience that establishing design templates for every channel your organisation appears on is critical to fixing this problem. Rather than put all the responsibility on your team members, this approach ensures that certain brand elements, from your logo positioning to colour choices, are as they should be – from your display ads to in-store banners.

Using intelligent, high-quality templates, you can achieve a consistent presentation at every touchpoint – and make producing these assets significantly faster and cost-effective!

2. Remaining consistent on a local and global level

For organisations that operate in multiple regions worldwide, one of their greatest brand challenges is maintaining consistency on a global scale. It’s understandable – HQ can’t be everywhere at once, so what prevents individual stores and offices from going off-piste to appeal to their audiences?

The key is to find the right balance – a foundation of brand compliance, with room to personalise assets for specific target markets. Global branding with a local touch. Brand templates can play a crucial role here, setting parameters your local teams cannot stray too far from.

A centralised DAM system is also useful. This allows you to tag images and assets for particular audiences, so they can only be employed where relevant. Consequently, you maintain a consistent presence in each location AND achieve the personal touch today’s customers demand.

3. Rebranding your organisation

After a rebrand or a significant update of your branding, there’s always a risk that old brand elements are accidentally published at a later date, confusing customers who are adjusting to the switch-up.

To prevent this, your first step is to ensure your brand guidelines and/or brand hub reflect this new identity. As the home of your branding, this must immediately be aligned with the rebrand to keep your marketers on message.

Then, harness your DAM solution to file away any assets that no longer have the correct branding, or update these under your new guidelines. This will ensure your central repository is free of any old designs, so your teams can pick from these with complete confidence.

Want to know more about rebranding? Download our essential guide to a successful rebrand.

The role of AI in building brand consistency

As AI continues to evolve, its benefits to the marketing industry aren’t going unnoticed. One area it can definitely play a part is nailing down consistency – making this a more effortless, intuitive process for marketers worldwide.

Here are some of the ways it can achieve this:

Chatbots that speak your language

As chatbots and AI prompts become more sophisticated, companies will eventually be able to program these to understand and mimic their brand’s language and tone of voice when responding to customers. Eventually, this will mean users receive personalised responses, which still align with your overall brand messaging.

Faster, more accurate asset location

In your DAM systems, AI allows for faster and more accurate tagging of assets, so you can identify the right one to use in any campaign or location. Plus, as contextual searches become stronger, users can find on-brand, relevant assets for their specific needs in seconds, streamlining your production processes.

AI-generated brand assets

Taking templates to the next level, AI technology is gradually gaining the ability to produce high-quality images, videos, designs and more, while working within set brand guidelines. With this greater degree of accuracy, marketers will one day have the tools to create branded assets with total confidence and outstanding efficiency.

At Papirfly, we’re constantly experimenting with the potential of AI to improve all areas of brand management. If you want to learn more about the latest developments to our platform, check out our regularly updated release notes.

Papirfly: A platform made for consistent brands

We hope our ultimate guide to brand consistency has helped you understand its value and showed you how it can be achieved. 

At Papirfly, brand consistency is one of the fundamental driving forces behind our end-to-end brand management platform. Our solutions are helping over 600 brands worldwide stay on top of their assets, so they never stray from the guidelines at the heart of their brand identity…

• POINT: Empowering every person who uses your brand with one online brand portal
• PLACE: Establishing a single source of truth for your on-brand assets with our globally renowned DAM
• PRODUCE: Intelligent templates that allow you to create an infinite number of assets quickly and consistently

Discover how our brand consistency software and services can help you stay on message at every touchpoint with unrivalled ease.

Papirfly’s Brand Management Specialist Justin Diver was recently joined by Roel Smit Rabobank’s ‘Product Owner of Brand Portal’ for an insightful webinar “Elevating brand reputation globally while empowering local markets’.

During the discussion Rabobank shared effective strategies and experiences, offering invaluable insights for brands looking to balance global consistency with local relevance.

Webinar highlights and key insights

1. Strategic brand management across borders

Rabobank has successfully managed to maintain its brand identity across a global workforce of 43,000 by integrating strategic brand management tools that accommodate both global oversight and local flexibility. The discussion highlighted how technology can facilitate the decentralised execution of brand strategies, ensuring that local teams have the tools and autonomy needed to adapt brand messages to their specific markets.

2. Efficient asset production and campaign execution

The webinar delved into how streamlined processes for asset production and campaign execution can significantly enhance operational efficiency. By adopting a centralised platform for brand management, Rabobank has managed to reduce time-to-market for campaigns while ensuring that all marketing efforts are consistent with the brand’s core values.

3. Measuring success through brand metrics and ROI

Tracking brand metrics and understanding the return on investment (ROI) from brand management activities are critical for justifying marketing spend and guiding strategy adjustments. Rabobank’s approach to quantifying the effectiveness of their brand management strategies offers a blueprint for other organisations aiming to measure and enhance the impact of their branding efforts.

4. Navigating challenges in brand consistency

Maintaining a unified brand identity across diverse markets presents significant challenges. Rabobank explained how they address these issues and highlighted the importance of having robust systems in place that support both global brand consistency and local market adaptation.

Linking brand management to brand equity

For organisations aiming to mirror Rabobank’s success, understanding foundational steps to building brand equity is pivotal.

To discover more about how Rabobank utilised Papirfly’s brand management platform to achieve global consistency and local relevance in brand management, watch the webinar in full below.

In today’s highly competitive landscape, it’s never been more important to maintain brand consistency. In order to stand apart from competitors, clear, distinct and steady branding is vital in building that strong emotional connection with your target audience. 

Your brand is your organisation’s identity. It’s the personality that potential customers see and identify with. This means that any semblance of brand confusion – be it an inconsistent brand presentation across your marketing channels or an ill-thought-out campaign jumping on a recent trend – can cause customers to lose trust in your company.

The consequence of poor brand messaging with your target audience has a knock-on effect on your ROI. Whether it’s loss of revenue from customers disillusioned by your unsuccessful branding, or investment wasted on campaigns that aren’t aligned with your unique brand identity, the impact of inconsistent branding can be far-reaching. 

So what are the effects of inconsistent branding? What pitfalls should marketers avoid? And what action can you teams take on marketing campaigns to build trust, prevent poor branding, and create a positive customer experience and improve ROI in the long term?

Where brand consistency falls down

First, let’s explore some of the most frequent factors behind inconsistent branding, and how this manifests itself.

Poorly implemented brand guidelines

Your brand guidelines should be at the heart of all past, present and future campaigns. They should highlight to your team members the core of what makes your branding efforts unique – whether they’re established veterans or freshly recruited, and wherever they’re based across the globe.

These range from details like approved colour schemes, brand styles and brand voice, right through to overarching explanations of your company’s values and ambitions. If these are strictly followed and communicated, there should be no threat to brand consistency.

However, would it surprise you to read that Marq (formerly LucidPress) has reported that while 95% of organisations have brand guidelines set up, only a quarter of these are actually observed?

Without a clear understanding of the fundamental aspects of your brand, it’s impossible for teams to deliver brand assets consistently. There is too much room for interpretation and guesswork – both of which are big contributors to brand confusion.

This is why any brand management solution should include a dedicated portal to support  educating teams on their brand. It provides a distinct area users can visit to explore their brand guidelines and everything else necessary to deliver successful branding.

You’ve lost sight of your brand vision

Times change, and brands have to adapt with these in order to survive and thrive. However, meeting new trends and keeping up-to-date doesn’t mean losing your brand identity or your brand vision.

Your brand vision is a core component in what drives your company forward and why you approach your work in the way that you do. It informs your branding strategies, making clear what your company stands for and what makes it unique. 

Losing sight of this in an effort to stay on top of the latest trends might seem like a way to capture audiences with positive emotions in the short term. Without oversight and vision, however, it quickly undermines your original brand identity and any positive traction you’ve made on building brand equity.

Not keeping in touch with your target audience

Similar to the above, the impact of not having consistent branding can come as a result of not understanding the needs of your target audience, nor the activities that build trust in your brand in the first place.

The “New Coke” campaign is a clear example of this. While Coca-Cola flourishes as one of the world’s premier brands with a consistently maintained image, the company’s reaction to a decade of popularity for “The Pepsi Challenge” launched in 1975, saw the creation of New Coke – which proved to be a disastrous break away from what their audience wanted or expected.

Audiences want to know that the brands they’re loyal to understand them in a way their competitors don’t. If you don’t stay engaged with your audience’s interests, and adapt your messaging as this evolves over time, your branding efforts will eventually become inconsistent with what they associate with your organisation.

However, the best brands learn lessons and make those slip ups work in their favour. In 2019 the company signed an agreement with the Netflix show, Stranger Things, to feature the failed New Coke product in episodes. With the third season of the hit show set in 1985, Coca-Cola was able to bring a narrative of 80s nostalgia while showing its ability to make fun of itself as a brand – a charming and creative way to enhance its resonance with customers.

Miscommunication between global teams

When it comes to defining inconsistencies and where they come from, a common source is miscommunication. This is particularly a problem for businesses that have teams scattered across the globe, or those who work with external agencies to produce and distribute some of their brand assets.

While this can work in theory, it leaves a lot of room for mistakes. If parties miscommunicate, or instructions are misinterpreted by those responsible for creating the asset, then branding efforts can quickly be undermined.

This can result in poor branding, which either needs to be reviewed, briefed again, redone, reviewed again, and so forth, wasting time and resources. It could also be released to your audience, undermining efforts to build trust and damaging your brand identity.

Understanding the impact of inconsistent branding

So, now we’ve presented a few examples of the sources of brand confusion, how does this undermine your efforts to build a strong brand? You need to consider:

• The time and resources you are investing into correcting poor branding
• The time and resources it will take to gradually build the trust and loyalty of customers who have been disillusioned due to any negative branding
• The damage that is being left to your overall reputation as a result of brand confusion

How to avoid brand confusion

If your brand’s messages, visuals and campaigns across your channels are misaligned, you are sending out confusing signals to your audience. Over time this can significantly undermine your customer experience and brand reputation. 

If you are concerned that your efforts are not ensuring brand consistency, consider the following steps:

Make your brand guidelines visible and accessible

Your brand guidelines are your strongest line of defence against brand inconsistency. Make sure they are stored in an accessible location for those responsible for your marketing channels worldwide, and provide prompt guidance if these are updated at any point.

Bring your team on board

As well as placing a more prominent focus on your brand guidelines, it’s important to ensure your team understands it. Ideally this should be done directly, either in the form of a branding masterclass meeting or group workshop, ensuring that everyone involved in executing brand strategies does so consistently.

Establish powerful approval workflows

To reduce any wasted resources on proofing, revising and reviewing assets, set approval workflows to lockdown on any inconsistencies immediately. These parameters keep your marketers and graphic designers in check, reducing the risk of anything being released that doesn’t accurately reflect your brand identity.

Build trust by asking customers for feedback

If you are worried that your brand message might be diverging with the interests and values of your customers, ask them for their feedback via email marketing, social media or other channels. This will help shape your understanding of what customers want from your brand and if you are delivering on these expectations.

The importance of brand consistency

Always remember that brand consistency is a mark of quality. It emphasises to your customers that you are a professional organisation that offers them stability, reliability and attention to detail. 

Any deviation from this can hurt the trust you’ve spent a long time building up among your various target audiences. This will leave an unflattering mark on your budget, and the return on investment you can expect from your campaigns.

Take marketing in-house

At Papirfly, we are leading the way on brand consistency. Through our dedicated software, our clients are ensuring seamless integration across their marketing channels. This empowers their teams worldwide with the tools to develop their own brand assets – all while observing brand guidelines and being monitored by key personnel.

Our brand management platform unlocks the potential to bring your branding in-house like never before. By providing your global teams with a platform to create studio-standard brand assets for your campaigns, you can reduce your reliance on external agencies and minimise the inconsistencies this can cause for your marketing. Mastering brand consistency is possible, with the right strategy and the most innovative brand management software.

Why do some brands immediately come to mind when we think of a season, a person, or even a mood? It might feel instinctive, but in most cases, these associations are carefully built over time — through everyday interactions and standout brand marketing moments.

Brand associations are the mental connections people make between your brand identity and specific thoughts, feelings or ideas. These associations are central to building brand equity. They shape buying behavior and help your brand achieve differentiation, even in a market filled with similar products or services.

The psychology behind strong brand associations

The psychology behind brand association goes deep, with one of the most widely accepted explanations rooted in the Hebbian Theory of Donald Hebb, considered the father of neuropsychology. In his 1949 book The Organization of Behavior, Hebb proposed that our brains form stronger and quicker neural pathways the more frequently two concepts are experienced together.

That same principle applies to branding – through repeated interactions and brand messaging, your brand becomes mentally linked to specific ideas.

5 ways brands create an emotional connection:

Attributes

These are the recognizable features of a product or service, including how it looks, feels, and performs. For example, a brand promoting itself as eco-conscious might use recyclable materials and nature-inspired designs to reinforce that perception.

Attitudes

The emotional associations a brand cultivates are also tools for connection. These include feelings associated with joy, nostalgia, luxury, or athleticism. Take this Apple ad from 2024. It’s a great example of how brands find ways to connect with familiar, recognizable elements from their customers’ lives before tying those experiences back to their own company’s story.

Benefits

Many people buy products or services based on the benefits associated with the brand. But these benefits do not always have to be purely experienced by the consumer – they can also be about helping to make the world a better place. A great example is Warby Parker’s pledge to donate a pair of glasses to children and those in need for every pair purchased.

Celebrities

Endorsements from public figures remain a tried-and-tested way to build brand recognition. This works most effectively when the celebrity naturally aligns with the brand identity – like when famous ketchup lover Ed Sheeran collaborated with Heinz.

How do leading brands build brand equity?

For global brands, building and reinforcing positive associations is essential to staying ahead. Here’s how some of the most iconic brands keep themselves top of mind:

There’s a reason you’ll find bright red Coca-Cola branding at holiday resorts and sports events, and tied to beloved characters like Santa Claus. By connecting with these overwhelmingly positive experiences, the brand becomes inextricably linked with people’s happy memories – and has consumers reaching for Coca-Cola products in good times and bad.

Apple hasn’t just gained customers — it’s garnered a following. Their sleek product design, elevated packaging, and hyped launch events all reinforce their premium, innovative brand identity. Collaborations with creative powerhouses like Aardman Animations further connect Apple to groundbreaking talent.

The Nike swoosh has long been associated with the world’s most famous athletes. As well as tapping into people’s athletic aspirations, Nike is connecting itself with the emotions that first draw people into sport, such as competitiveness, teamwork, self-improvement and determination. It’s why everyone these days thinks sport whenever they see Nike (and thinks Nike whenever they see sport).

Besides the iconic mermaid and expansive range of coffees, what’s the one thing everybody associates with Starbucks? That’s right – writing customers’ names on their cups. It doesn’t feel like a big deal on the surface, but this small personal touch helped make Starbucks a standout influencer brand on Instagram, and they continue to connect with millions across the globe this way.

After a run of negative publicity surrounding childhood obesity, McDonald’s made some major changes to their brand marketing strategy. This included:

• Revamping menus to include healthier options and provide customers with nutritional information
• Projecting a strong eco-friendly message by introducing recyclable packaging and drastically altering their brand colors to green
• Reusing their own cooking oils to fuel their bio-diesel range of trucks
• Overhauling the design and feel of their restaurants to encourage more people to eat in

3 ways to start building stronger brand associations

If associations aren’t yet part of your brand marketing strategy, here are three steps to build connections that last.

#1 Association mapping

A brand association map like the example below will help you analyse the positive and negative associations that consumers currently have of your brand. It will show you where you stand out from your competitors and what makes your customers choose your products or services.

These insights will help you choose which areas to focus on when it comes to creating connections, generating engagement, and helping teams to shape future content.

#2 Analyzing how people search and ask

The way people discover and connect with brands is no longer just about what they type into Google. The direct questions your audience asks in AI tools, such as ChatGPT or Perplexity, reveal customer behaviour: a need, a question, a curiosity.

By analyzing behaviors in both search engine keywords and LLM prompt phrasing, you have an advantage. You uncover the mental connections people are making between ideas, categories, and brands. This isn’t just about SEO keyword rankings anymore. It’s about visibility in the answers people trust.

Search trends still show which topics matter. But increasingly, language models are shaping brand perception by surfacing examples and recommending solutions. If your brand isn’t showing up in search results, or in the answers given by AI, that’s a gap in your brand association strategy.

Combining traditional keyword analysis with LLM-based prompt intelligence can help you understand:

• What ideas your brand is associated with (or not)
• Where new associations could be built
• How to align content with how people actually think and search today

Social listening remains a powerful companion to this. It gives you real-time insight into the conversations happening around your brand, letting you see what themes are emerging — and how to harness them in content that feels relevant, timely, and resonant.

#3 Avoiding the negatives 

Poor brand associations are easy to create — and difficult to undo. Common pitfalls include:

• Inconsistency – Gaps in service, product quality or brand messaging can break trust and strengthen negative perceptions.
• Contradictions – Brand values must match business practices. If a brand promotes fairness but uses unethical labor, consumers will notice.
• Forced connections – It’s not enough simply to raise awareness via a trend. Your brand needs to be part of the solution as well. Any response that feels half-hearted or inauthentic is likely to be called out.

How DAM software helps you build brand association

Building positive associations that reach the hearts and minds of your audience is one of the most powerful marketing techniques at your disposal. But associations don’t form overnight. They take consistent, ongoing content that reinforces what your brand stands for. Without that, the connections you’ve worked hard to build can fade.

Papirfly’s Digital Asset Management and templated content creation suite is designed to help marketing teams generate in-house content faster and more cost-effectively – without ever straying off-brand. It makes building and maintaining connections with an audience easier and more reliable than ever before.

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