Finding balance: How digital harmonization powers brand resilience

Harmony can help deliver powerful brands that sing. When all aspects of branding work together as one, a new, distinct identity can be created.

Digital harmonization – a vitally important part of a brand project – refers to how complementary digital assets, visual and textual features come together as one, to create a consistent and distinct new brand identity across a number of platforms. And in our experience, a pivotal business moment like a brand change provides the energy and momentum that powers the complex orchestration of digital harmonization.

The pivotal business moment

Let’s take an example. ‘The Power of Certainty’ was the idea that drove the transformation, a new name, and a new brand identity for Clario, a leading clinical services contract research company, following a major merger.

Having set out the internal launch strategy, built a new website and visual identity, and planned a major external launch, we had to convey the brand-defining event that was The Power of Certainty across a broad range of digital touchpoints in Clario’s internal and external output.

This involved defining that brand harmony through guidelines, touching on website, intranet, the launch platforms, its brand management, and across the systems of product development. Delivering this in unified fashion meant internal teams and customers were introduced to the brand through a clear – hence the name, Clario – coherent and powerfully certain experience.

So, what are the digital strategies that need to be considered to gain advantage and harmonization?

Coherent user experiences drive brand loyalty

Modern businesses are often complex networks. As businesses scale these systems – which can touch everyone from internal teams, to customers, to the wider public – they inevitably become disparate and siloed. Digital harmonization recentralises and unifies these networks while communicating brand across them coherently. It enhances user experience – through your website and other digital assets – promoting consistency, accessibility, better performance, personalisation and better security at every touchpoint.

And it’s not just systems that have to come together. Effective digital harmonization requires carefully synched collaboration between designers, developers, content creators and other teams.

By aligning these systems, the business delivers a seamless and engaging experience for its users that intuitively meets their needs. It powers operational efficiency and brand loyalty, driving revenue and improving margins – "The Impact of Brand Consistency” by Lucidpress shows consistent brand presentation across all platforms increases revenue by up to 23%.

How to synchronise and align:

— Visual and brand consistency – This typically involves standardising visual elements such as logos, colour schemes, and typography across digital assets. On a brand level, this is achieved through standardised, comprehensive guidelines. These can then be carried through into digital user interface (UI) design systems, that influence the articulation of the visual identity in across all digital experiences.

— Content alignment - Harmonising one’s content across various different platforms and channels means ensuring there is a uniform messaging and tone, that drives a singular brand narrative. For lead marketing-focused businesses, SEO alignment plays a key role here, ensuring the brand is optimised in search engine results for brand and non-brand keywords.

— Tooling – It’s crucial to introduce necessary technologies into your system that provide efficient, effective management of your brand and related elements, to drive consistency.

— Platform synchronisation – This involves ensuring that all digital platforms and applications are updated concurrently to avoid discrepancies. It includes the integration of any central harmonization systems such as digital asset or content management platforms.

— Accessibility and compliance – In a modern, diverse working world, it’s vital to align on unified, progressive standards around accessibility and compliance, All brand changes, assets and materials should comply with these common standards.

The systems that are impacted by digital harmonization can range widely, depending on the business’s size and type, but tend to include:

— Websites

— Digital communications (email, etc.)

— Intranet and extranets

— Product development / software

— Sales communication tools

— APIs

The tools of brand harmony

Introducing a select number of tools into a business are key to facilitating brand consistency and helping drive digital harmonization. The critical items are:

— Brand management platform – Centralising brand assets, guidelines, and updates to ensure consistency across all digital and physical touchpoints. These systems have been shown 20-30% increase in brand compliance and consistency (Brandworkz).

— Digital asset management system - Store, organise, and manage digital assets such as images, videos, and documents. Provide a single source of truth for all brand assets, enabling easy access and consistent usage across the organisation. Introduction of these tools has shown to increase “productivity by 25% by streamlining the management and retrieval of digital assets” (Gartner).

— Unified design system – Creating a central, unified UI design system for the communication of your brand within digital experiences. Studies have shown companies with a unified design system report a 50% faster time to market and a 35% reduction in design-related production costs. Allowing greater mobility and higher efficiency in the long run (InVision).

Building resilience

The typical challenges of digital harmonization are:

— Technical complexity - Integrating and synchronising various digital systems requires managing compatibility and data consistency, demanding significant expertise and meticulous planning.

— Long-term commitment - Digital harmonization commonly requires a significant commitment to a long programme of work. With continuous updates and maintenance, requiring a sustained effort and long-term dedication from the organisation.

— Resource intensive - The process demands substantial time, financial investment, and human capital, which can strain existing resources and budgets.

— Stakeholder buy-in - Achieving harmonization requires convincing all stakeholders of its value, necessitating effective communication and demonstrating clear benefits.

However, successful digital harmonization means building resilience, implementing strategies and practices that enables the website to adapt, recover and thrive in the face of challenges and disruptions, such as:

— Redundancy in infrastructure

— Scalability

— Back up and disaster recovery

— Security

— Compliance and governance

This involves meticulous planning of monitoring and alerting systems, incident response planning, providing resources for user education and awareness, and the implementation of systems for continuous improvement. One might also adopt a collaborative approach, leveraging partnerships with services providers and industry peers to offer additional expertise, resources and best practice processes.

Brand, digital harmonization, and opportunity

The value of successful harmonization can be enormous, especially if leveraged through the power of a pivotal business moment:

— Enhanced User Experience – Consistent branding across all digital touchpoints improves navigation and builds user trust, leading to better overall user satisfaction. By fostering trust and loyalty amongst users you prevent brand dilution, reinforcing values and messaging throughout the customer journey, and enhancing engagement with elements such as:

• Streamlined navigation and responsive design.
• Optimised performance that reduce wait times and minimise frustration
• Accessibility compliance – WCAG – designed for all users including those with disabilities.
• Tailored content recommendations.
• Personalised product suggestions.
• Customised user interfaces and seamless integration with third party tools (e.g. payment gateways, social media, customer support).

— Operational Efficiency – Streamlining processes and unifying platforms reduces redundancies and errors, making operations more efficient and cost-effective.

— Increased Brand Loyalty – A cohesive brand experience strengthens brand recognition and loyalty, fostering deeper connections with customers, deepened by trust-building elements such as enhanced regulatory compliance and security measures.

— Market Expansion – Accessibility and inclusive design open up digital platforms to a wider audience, expanding market reach and potential customer base.

Approaching a digital harmonization project to drive one’s branding project requires a holistic approach to technical development, one that considers design, usability, security, and compliance, while balancing the needs of users and wider business objectives. Done right, digital harmonization creates a foundation of branding consistency, ensuring everyone and everything is singing from the same hymn sheet, and your brand projects itself in one voice.