How to create brand consistency in your videos

In order to achieve a consistent look and feel for all your brand videos you need video brand guidelines. This is especially important if multiple different people create videos on behalf of your business. Having an agreed set of guidelines also makes creating videos a much quicker process for everyone. No more agonizing decisions about whether to put the logo in the top or bottom corner.

We know that it can take an average of seven different touch points before a consumer converts for your brand. You want them to instantly recognize each of those touch points as you. Don’t worry though, this doesn’t mean all your videos need to look exactly the same. You’ll just have a standardized set of brand elements that can be incorporated.

Below we outline which brand elements you need to agree on. Let’s dive in...

Fonts

Your existing brand typefaces may work beautifully on screen, or sometimes new ones need to be added for videos. It’s helpful to provide a range of fonts and some guidance about when to use each. Contrast is key when selecting the perfect fonts for your videos.

Color

Your video color palette will likely be the same as your existing brand palette, but make it easy for your creators and spell it out. You should think about your color palette when setting the video background, choosing imagery, overlays, intros and outros.

Use of your logo

Think about when and where you would like your logo to appear. As a consistent watermark? Or as an intro or outro perhaps? Should it be animated? Should the tagline be included? Here again it would be beneficial to offer a range of options especially for different types of videos. A short social media clip might have more stripped back branding than an explainer video for instance.

Graphic style

What visual style best suits your brand? For example, whiteboard animation or 2D illustration styles? Give your creators guidance on the types of graphics and imagery they should choose. Here is also a good place to remind your creators to be inclusive when selecting faces to showcase in your videos.

Tone & language

Is humor acceptable? Or would you prefer to be serious or uplifting? Will your videos be in the first person or third person, are there preferred spellings and naming conventions to be used?

Voice-overs & music

Do you require a diverse set of voices for your videos? Make sure to highlight this to your creators. Is there a recurring jingle you would like used, or a particular genre of music you prefer? What kind of sound effects feel appropriate for your brand? Give this careful consideration as music and voice-overs have a huge impact on a video.

Calls to action

At what point of the video should a call to action be shown? Does it just appear on screen or should it be included in the voice over too? Calls to action in videos are vital to move your viewers along the customer journey.

Captions

In the world of social media, video captions are essential. Decide on a consistent style for your captions.

Once you’ve answered these questions and are happy with your video brand guidelines. It could be useful to create a set of video templates for the various types of videos your business creates. For example, templates for explainer videos, interviews, listicles, announcements and more. To speed this process up you could just adapt the templates we’ve already created for you in VideoScribe. You can switch out the logos, change the colors and fonts to match your guidelines. Learn more about VideoScribe templates here. And checkout an example below...