The A to Z of Brand Legacy
Every brand dreams of leaving behind a lasting legacy, but few actually achieve it. With the saturated market, shorter attention spans, and overwhelming options available to the average consumer, it may seem nearly impossible to establish your brand’s identity and enduring legacy in the space. But we’re here to tell you that by following a few simple guidelines and strategies, you can position your brand to get – and stay – on the map. However, growing your brand’s legacy is not quick, easy work. It takes time and, most importantly, endurance.
Legacies are born from the backbone of brand strategy, whether you realize it or not. When you see a checkmark or hear “swoosh,” one brand pops into everyone’s head: Nike. This doesn’t happen randomly. Nike has spent decades crafting a brand legacy through each of its channels of communication to reach a point where consumers know its name, font, logo, and ethos. More specifically, it can convey this brand personality through its copywriting and design of ads, products, and campaigns.
But if you’re a brand just getting started, this can seem like an overwhelming hurdle to cross and an impossible destination to get to— so, how does one begin to build a legacy?
While there are different methods and components of crafting a lasting legacy, they stand on three key pillars of execution: consistency, standardization, and time. Let’s go over each one and how you can increase your brand’s visibility, starting with a consistent style guide.
1. Style Guides
A core component of crafting a strong brand legacy is maintaining consistent stylistic choices across your brand with a style guide. While artists need free rein for the best work (and we’d be kidding ourselves if we didn’t think of writers, designers, and marketers as artists), brands also need to stay consistent within style to build a strong identity.
A style guide is basically a rough rule book that alerts writers on how to communicate on behalf of a brand. It explains the brand personality, provides abundant examples, and helps writers balance their style and what the brand has previously produced. As such, it is an essential tool to reach consistency.
But there’s a catch. For example, if you’re onboarding a writer, you may see merit and style in their writing that you find valuable. The point of a writing guide isn’t to quash this originality through the strict bars of a “brand voice,” but rather to reach the perfect balance where the writer can bring their A-game to further—not replicate—the brand’s objectives.
One way to look at this empirically is to see how brands have changed their tonality across generations of advertising. While the brand voice would sound very different fifty years ago, there is a smoothness of transition across the years. In other words, it’s like a generational family passing down important things, not a periodic, clunky handover.
2. Brand Personality
Besides adhering to a brand style guide, a large part of achieving a lasting brand legacy is to hone in on your brand’s personality. If you’re wondering what we mean by “brand personality,” hold on! We’re diving deep into it for complete clarity.
One way to think of brand personality is as the heartbeat of your company. It’s not just the icing on the cake; it’s the recipe itself. For example, Warby Parker’s head copywriter mentioned the brand’s personality to be someone everyone loves at a dinner party. They have a variety of hobbies, are charming, bring a fresh summer salad to the table, and help clean up the dishes once everyone else has left. This kind of specificity in crafting a personality can help you build a legacy.
People may or may not remember how fantastic your services and products were, but they will remember how you made them feel. A well-honed brand personality tugs at the emotional chords of your audience and shines through in brand communication, building trust and fostering loyalty that lasts decades.
3. Evolves & Grows With Customers
While nostalgia is great for languid afternoons and vintage photo filters, it can get boring after a while. After all, who wants to live in the past constantly?
Growing your brand’s identity and legacy means evolving with your customers by keeping up with the times. But relax – this doesn’t mean you must participate in every new trending Reel audio. Instead, it means understanding the zeitgeist and molding your writing accordingly. For example, for the last few years, social media has been flooded with more “real” content, like unedited photographs, honest behind-the-scenes, and day-in-the-life videos. So if this is the current cultural landscape we’re dealing with and your brand is talking like perfectly polished Blair Waldorf, there might be an audience disconnect.
Growing with your customers is also a great way to avoid irrelevancy and brand stagnation. After all, Champion was a brand targeted to middle-aged dads until Emma Chamberlain made it a staple for teenage girls!
4. Has A Palpable History
If we’re being completely honest, no matter how incredible your brand is, you can’t build a legacy over a few years. The term “legacy” demands decades of attention and care, but you have to start now to reap the rewards later.
For example, Telfar was only established in 2005 and is still a tween by brand age standards. But in just a few years, it has already made an indelible mark on the fashion world and has been a status symbol for many Americans—heralded by Beyonce, Oprah, and Megan Thee Stallion. Even if it doesn’t have an “old” history, it has an incredibly significant cultural one. Through the life of the eponymous designer, Telfar Clemens, it expresses the American dream of immigrant parents avoiding the Liberian war and indicates the importance of black culture—and black luxury culture.
Achieving a lasting legacy for your brand may seem like an impossible task, but with unwavering persistence, a well-defined brand personality, and a compelling point of view, your brand has the potential to evolve into a timeless and enduring entity. Whether this means achieving the status of a household name or becoming the quintessential symbol of success that many business owners aspire to, the journey towards establishing a brand legacy is sort of like climbing a ladder. You can only move one rung at a time, and it might take a while to reach the top—but the view is definitely worth it.
Always in your corner,
The Content Queens
