Coherence vs. consistency in branding
It is the consistency of the information that matters for a good story, not its completeness. Indeed, you will often find that knowing little makes it easier to fit everything you know into a coherent pattern. - D.K.
Have you ever seen a successful brand having templatized social media accounts or promotional materials, or using redundant messages throughout years? Probably not. Their marketing teams are focused on how to stay current and evolve, rather than on dogmatically maintaining “templatized consistency”.
Generally speaking, inconsistency brings uncertainty, and results in confusion and mistrust. Often, when we talk about brand consistency, we refer to brand guidelines. Their purpose is to lay a foundation and serve as a go-to guide for marketers and designers, which facilitates achieving consistency. However, the guidelines don’t contain all the answers and they’re usually being updated during rebranding efforts.
Respect of design principles and brand guidelines is crucial; however, focusing solely on consistency may make communication feel redundant and stale. Brands solely focusing on consistency leave no room for innovation or authenticity, and often disregard client behaviour by mistaking consistency for rigidity.
On the other hand, focus on coherence requires brand knowledge, associative thinking, context and core strategy considerations, taking risks, as well as a continuous debate.
There is a reason why they say “focusing on consistency is an easy way out.” Exploring new executions of the brand guidelines is way more challenging, but it’s also an important part of brand marketing.
In writing: “Coherence refers to the smooth and logical flow of your writing. Consistency refers to the uniformity of your style and content. Both coherence and consistency will help you to create a good piece of writing.”
In design: “Consistency's sole purpose is to make the elements of a system uniform. It is about how similar the parts look and feel throughout the entire system. On the other hand, coherence aims for clarity. It is about how well something is understood and if it makes sense.”
In practice: You can put together a document that is in accordance with brand guidelines, but makes no sense to clients or in other words, lacks coherence.
Think of your favorite luxury brand, and you’ll probably agree that your expectations and their brand promises match every time you visit their website, go to their store, buy their products or interact with their customer service. They deliver on overall brand experience, product and service quality - you simply know what to expect. These brands strive for excellence, they’re consistent in delivering their brand promises, and their approach to branding is coherent, therefore setting industry standards for their competitors.
So how do we incorporate both coherence and consistency in branding?
By creating custom solutions, while taking into consideration context, client behaviour and staying true to core brand values and strategy. The key is understanding that consistency and coherence, rather than being treated as competing efforts, must instead be combined in a way that will result in synergy.
