Create Your Visual Brand Story with Customized Presentations
Everybody has a story to tell and everybody loves to listen to a compelling story. When it comes to businesses, that means your brand, your logo, your website and your social media channels. Your brand story is the most powerful asset that gives your company gravitas. It is the core of how you want people to perceive and understand you, so it needs to be a clear, cohesive picture that resonates with your target audience.
When it comes to presenting your company's unique story, don't settle for cookie-cutter clutter—customize every part. Employing visual storytelling techniques will enable you to create a customized presentation that serves as a powerful branding tool that tells your company's story with clarity and consistency.
Visual storytelling is the process of using graphics, pictures, colors and other visual elements to engage audiences and motivate intercommunication. It is what allows brands to tap the right audience and retain their attention. Cognitive psychologist Jerome Bruner contends that we are 22 times more likely to remember facts when wrapped in a story because stories have such powerful emotional and engaging qualities that they allow us to connect and grasp the gist of an idea quickly.
This article will break down the storytelling elements you need to consider as you start your brand story. We will also help you figure out how you can keep these elements consistent by using a powerful presentation tool like Ingage alongside graphic design platforms that you may already be using.
Brand identity takes time to build. You must be consistent and definitive in your visual storytelling techniques for this to be effective. To start, develop a style guide that specifies the different elements that best represent your brand. This standardizes the aesthetic and overall voice of your company, regardless of whether you outsource your marketing efforts or handle it in-house.
Create a Color Scheme
Colors are powerful branding tools. It influences moods, affecting a consumer’s feelings, emotions and perception of your brand. In fact, around 62% to 90% of a consumer’s product assessment is based solely on colors. Most brands choose four or fewer main colors that stray too far from the shades of their logo.
The right color combination can also help you build brand recall. Take Tiffany & Co.’s iconic robin’s-egg blue hue for example. It has become so deeply associated with the brand that the color #0ABAB5 is widely regarded as “Tiffany blue.” For those who have encountered the brand previously, it can be difficult not to think of the luxury brand whenever they see this color.
You might consider taking extra time to define your brand’s color scheme, making sure to:
- Understand how certain colors or color combinations can affect your customers’ perception of your company.
- Picking a core color and a few secondary colors that add depth to your brand’s color palette.
- Testing your color scheme on different touchpoints to see how flexible it is.
- Checking out your competitors’ color palettes to determine whether your color scheme will stand out.
In addition to choosing your color scheme, you must be able to reproduce this color combination accurately and consistently. So, specify in your style guide the colors’ Pantone name and number, the values in CMYK for print, as well as its RGB and Hex codes for digital material.
Specify Your Logo Guidelines
Your logo must be responsive and dynamic in reflecting the essence of your brand. It should have the ability to adapt to different scenarios and uses. However, you must have clear guidelines that ensure your logo is being used as intended. It's important to have a style guide that includes information on color schemes and how its used in varying contexts.
Setting parameters further prevents any unintended, and often unsightly, alterations such as stretching and realignments. Alongside these specifications, attach examples of your logo in your style guide and how it should be used in different contexts.
State Your Typography and Font Standards
A person’s handwriting says a lot about their unique personality. Similarly, your choice of font and typography sets the tone for your brand. It is among the critical visual storytelling elements that reinforce your brand’s messaging and ties your visual brand story together. When deciding on what standards to use, carefully consider the following:
- Typeface Family. Ensure it matches your brand’s voice.
- Font Combination. Determine what combination of fonts matches the visual aesthetic of your brand.
- Tracking and Kerning. Specify your tracking and kerning ratios.
Choose an Image Style
Whether you are using stock images or hiring a professional photographer to take photos for you, you need conventions to ensure consistency. Factors to consider include image composition, level of exposure, color prominence and depth of field.
Sportswear manufacturer Nike, for example, prefers highlighting real athletes on their photos on Instagram. They also prefer a composition that maximizes each frame and showcases a lot of movement. If you take a look at TOMS’ social media accounts, their preferred imagery tends to be brighter and more colorful, putting more focus on the products than the models.
In your style guide, include examples of images that you have previously used or even examples of pictures that you want to serve as inspiration. You can even create a mood board that lets you show what feeling you want to convey. Taking these steps can help you steer your photographers and creatives in the right direction.
Build Your Brand Story Using Visual Storytelling Techniques
A compelling brand narrative allied to a memorable visual story will humanize your brand that will truly resonate with your target audience. This can lead to brand enhanced awareness, revenue growth and also encourage customer loyalty. Leveraging the following visual storytelling techniques will help you build an audience that is truly invested in your brand.
- Show don’t tell. Words can get your message across but not as powerfully as pictures do. So, when planning visuals, try to play with body language and movement to tell a story instead of simply providing captions for your audience to read.
- Feature real people. The majority of consumers (64%) expect brands to connect with their customers. They want to enter into a dialogue with their favorite brands and what better way to do it than featuring them in your visual storytelling process? In fact, among the most popular marketing strategies today is the use of user-generated content on social media.
- Make it relatable. Common experiences are what bring people together. It’s hardly surprising then that visual stories that draw on nostalgia and everyday scenarios are more effective in attracting and retaining the attention of consumers.
Of course, you need not be limited to the storytelling methods mentioned here. There are many others that you can use depending on the message you are trying to convey and the audience you are trying to appeal to. Keep in mind, though, that as you experiment with different techniques, be sure to remain consistent with your brand’s core identity.
Using dynamic presentation software that is flexible to meet your specifications will help you achieve this standard. You can set up multiple templates based on different deployment contexts, enabling your team to combine different visual and storytelling elements without compromising your brand’s identity. You can store your digital assets so that they are easily but securely accessible when you need them.
Integrate Your Visual Brand Story in Your Customized Presentations
Ever since the beginning of time, people have been telling and sharing stories. Stories help us to participate in conversations, build connections and understand our world. Psychologists have also found that when people listen to someone telling a story, their sensory cortex in the brain lights up. Businesses can tap into this by telling their own story which should be reflected in every aspect of their business.
Your brand story starts the second someone hears your brand name or sees your logo for the first time. Branding not only shapes how customers perceive you but also seeks to leave a good impression on potential stakeholders and other businesses. Brand identity also shapes company culture. It’s thus good practice (and common sense) to integrate your visual brand story with corporate documents such as contracts, meeting slideshows and training material.
Using Ingage’s cloud-based presentation systems, you can quickly and easily prepare brand material for a range of purposes. You can create branded templates by modifying existing ones or creating one from scratch. All you have to do is design the presentation according to your brand style guide and convert it into a template that you can use and reuse as needed.
With Ingage, you can even set custom themes based on your official color palette and typography. This way, if you have existing presentations that do not adhere to your style guide, you can automatically change their look by applying the theme. Pre-set themes are also useful when you need to quickly create a report for a last-minute meeting, for example.
Simplify Brand Storytelling
Authenticity and consistency, understanding your audience, communicating your solutions to problems and connecting with your community, with Ingage’s presentation software, you no longer need to spend hours navigating complicated graphic design tools to visualize your brand aesthetic.
In a matter of minutes, Ingage enables you to create compelling on-brand presentations which you can instantly share to any device and easily measure the impact on your business through rich analytics.
Schedule a demo now and let our team help you tell your visual brand story through our unique software and storytelling presentation platform and enable you to close more deals.