Why Brand Consistency Matters

If you’ve worked in branding and marketing long enough, you learn that successful brands build on a foundation of consistency. This quality manifests in four separate yet interwoven principles: brand trust, dependability, scalability, and marketing.

The brands that implement these strategies and do so consistently, year after year, find longevity in the market that few can rival. Here’s a look at three well-known brands that embody consistency and why it makes them massively successful.

They Are Supremely Dependable

Apple is an excellent example of this. The brand itself stands for both excellence and fun. The sleek designs impress people: They know they’re buying quality. Consumers can depend on the brand.

For Apple, this level of dependability ultimately affects the profitability of its brand. Pleased consumers freely share their positive experiences with the brand on their social media pages and in-person testimonials to family and friends.

Nielsen reports that 70% of customers trust a brand based on user testimonials. In comparison, 92% of people have purchased something because a friend or family member couldn’t get enough of a company’s product or service.

For Apple, being consistently dependable equals long-term, consistent profits.

Their Brand Model Provides Scalability

A business is scalable if it handles growth without cutting back on efficiency or resources. In today’s world, the brands that pack a punch with the public embrace scalability through customer involvement.

This makes marketing more accessible and more scalable for these brands because the company doesn't do much of the brand marketing.

As an article on NeilPatel.com points out, these days, the brands that have customers that can only be called “raving fans” have to do very little product promotion. A big brand with millions of fans has many brand ambassadors out on the streets promoting the brand every day.

This practice makes a brand scalable because the brands that do this successfully aren’t spending much money, time, or financial resources on promoting the brand. Of course, this is relative, but we think you get the idea: If your customers promote your business, you spend less on marketing and promoting your business.

Again, Apple comes to mind. You see here that Apple’s dependability works in tandem with its scalability.

Their Brand Builds Trust

With its black and white checkerboard floor and decadent chocolates enveloped in gold foil, See’s Candies counts among the brands that the public trusts.

And it isn’t just the general public who trusts the brand. Warren Buffett does, so much so that he bought the company nearly 50 years ago. The company has earned the public’s and Buffett’s trust as a quality brand of chocolate by always being a brand that people could count on to produce a quality product.

During the Great Depression, when it would have been easy to cut costs by cutting the quality ingredients that See’s had always used, the company bosses decided to go the opposite direction. It only used high-quality chocolate then. It only uses quality ingredients now.

Because of this, the brand remains both steady and profitable to the tune of $430 million a year. It also remains one of Buffett’s favorite businesses. He has gone as far as calling it the “prototype of a dream business.”

Their Brand Consistency Makes Marketing Easy and Effective

Look at the Costco brand if you want to see this principle in action. According to a CNN Business report, Costco’s Kirkland brand didn’t use to be the only brand you’d find at Costco. About 30 years ago, a stroll down the aisle at Costco was marked by sightings of Nutra Nuggets dog food. Consumers found Simply Soda and Ballantrae Wine there, too, and a dizzying array of other brands.

This array of brand labels made marketing problematic, particularly on an international scale. Part of the issue with this has to do with the legal permissions that Costco would have had to obtain to carry different brands in its international stores.

Putting all of Costco’s brands under the name Kirkland made it easier for the brand to market and scale its wares all over the world. Less time spent getting legal permissions equaled more resources for other goods and tasks.

It was a more straightforward way to go all around. But more than that, the single Costco brand, Kirkland, offers consumers consistency by being the only brand that customers ever see in the stores.