Branding. It happens.

Forrest Gump once told us, “Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.”

That might be great life advice and perhaps also a great premise for a movie. However, it isn’t great advice for your social media branding. Your audience needs to know what they’re going to get. 

Does this mean every post needs a logo slammed on it? Far from it. Instead your job is to weave consistency into your content, all pointing to you or your brand. Ask yourself, is the look of your content consistent? The language? How about the tone or subject matter? Is there a thread the audience can recognise and associate to you?

Think of any big brands or famous celebrities. They all have their tell-tail feature. The Rock has his muscles. The Queen has poshness. Tom Cruise, he has crazy. Kanye, he has… well… he also has crazy. You get the point.

Here’s the real insight

Stripped right back, branding is essentially a set of elements the audience grows familiar with. This consistency acts like a mental sign-post. Connecting all communication and linking them back to an identity, whether it be a person or a brand. 

The mix between something familiar and something new is an allure our minds find endlessly engaging. Our brains love finding patterns, recognising them and filing them to identities. We enjoy working out the rules to an identity. Like recognising someone we know in a crowd. A great example of this is Absolute Vodka. An unbelievably creative brand locked into surprisingly strict brand guidelines.

“Creativity is that simple surprise and delight of seeing familiar things in a new way”

Absolut brand statement

Their solution might not be yours, but the principle should be. It’s even the reason why I started this article with Forrest Gump. Using something everyone is familiar with to introduce a new thought. Get the balance right and people will engage. Get it wrong and you might find your content just floating around all accidental-like on your social feeds. 

Be sure to check out more from Cameron – Let’s Talk About UX Baby