Ten Top Tips To Help Brands Maintain Image Consistency

Image is everything in retail. It encapsulates a brand’s message, ethos, vision and goal, all captured in barely a fraction of a second. 

Achieving that peak marketing moment requires lots of hard work and creative thinking from a variety of people. 

Systems that ensure it is a calm and not a chaotic process are crucial to maintaining brand image consistency.  

In this blog, we’ll share our 10 top tips for brand managers and heads of creative studios who are working with a photography studio that will ensure their images are always consistent, no matter how tight the schedule or budget. 

Streamline the photography process

Planning ahead is the best way to ensure your photography is always on-brand and your images are consistent. 

Prepare the shot list well in advance and be sure to highlight any specific features clearly so time isn’t wasted.

Ensure you have the samples required for the shoot and everything is clearly labelled to eliminate time searching for products and product codes on shoot. 

The same goes for the call sheet. It should include details of the schedule, location and crew, so everyone knows exactly who should be where and when.  

Talk to your photographer 

Every marketing campaign has a brief, whether it’s boosting a brand identity or capitalising on market trends. It is essential that this is clearly communicated to the photographer. 

Make sure they know exactly what the brand manager and marketing teams expect from the shoot: from branded colour palettes and lighting, right down to angles and pairings.   

Consider creating a style guide to clearly outline your requirements, including example images for the styling and mood of the imagery you wish to create. This can easily be referred to on the shoot and will ensure your photographer is clear on your expectations.

It’s worth taking the time to do this, because if the images are inconsistent, the campaign could miss the target audience and your brand’s reputation may suffer. 

Photography and model rights 

Outsourcing a brand’s photography to a third party photography studio opens up lots of legal hurdles that have to be overcome. 

It is essential to agree a licensing deal with your chosen photographer that clearly outlines distribution rights. Similarly, if your images feature a model, then image usage rights will also need to be organised and agreed.

It can be costly to retrospectively add or change usage rights, so ensure you’re clear on your requirements right from the start.

Centralise your brand assets 

When the shoot is over, what happens to the images? Do they end up scattered across several desktops and folders in a free-for-all? 

Centralising your brand assets means they can be found quickly and easily, reducing stress when deadlines are looming. It also minimises the risk of images going missing or kept by a team member who is then out of the office for a week. 

Optimise image access 

With that last point very much in mind, it’s not enough to know where all your images can be found. The right people need to be able to access them quickly and easily for any post-shoot processes. 

Many brand managers understand that not everyone needs access to their images. Identify those creatives and/or stakeholders who do, then you can optimise the workflow accordingly and minimise bottlenecks.  

Enhance this further by incorporating approval workflows to ensure approved assets are accessible and those that aren't don't fall into the wrong hands and are used accidentally.

Update that data 

Brands operating across multiple platforms understand their online images must be supported with vast amounts of rich, accurate data. 

From product descriptions, pricing and sizing to SKUs, it is essential that the information for each and every brand image is not only up to date. 

However, if changes are made, they should be instantly reflected at every touch point to maintain brand positioning. This issue dovetails neatly with tailored, permissioned access: the fewer people who can alter the image data the less likely human error will affect consistency. 

Centralising this data not only gives you optimised product control, but enhances searching for assets within a storage solution.

Colour matching and retouching

Creating brand images can be an art, but even the most talented photographer needs a helping hand from time to time. 

Colour matching will guarantee consistency: multiple images of a product online can be matched, whilst images in a printed magazine or catalogue look exactly the same as their online counterparts, ensuring customer loyalty via every touchpoint. 

Retouching can create a sunny day from an overcast background, eliminate unwanted glare or even remove discontinued products from a range, saving brand managers time and money on reshoots. 

Tracking assets and samples 

A successful brand management strategy ensures that all samples and assets can be accounted for at any given point in the content creation process. 

Efficient tracking and managing of samples allows every beat of a marketing campaign schedule to be hit, with no mix-ups or double-bookings. 

Automate tasks 

Many hands may make light work but are there too many people involved in the content creation process? 

Incorporating more automation into your brand’s workflow doesn’t just ensure image consistency, it can also free up staff to focus on much more creative, fulfilling roles. 

Use Renaissance 

Everyone involved in a marketing campaign works hard to give their best and ensure image consistency. After all, a brand’s reputation relies on it. 

But they don’t have to do it alone. 

Our Renaissance platform can streamline workflows, make light work of managing image usage rights, automate repetitive tasks, track samples with QR coding functionality and control access to assets, so only approved assets are accessible for use. 

All of these functions streamline your photographic processes, ensure brand image consistency and increase your time to market. 

This comprehensive system, developed by the experts at ec2i, is ideal for brand managers working with a photography studio who want to minimise reshoots, enhance their data integrity and boost customer loyalty.  

Book a demo

To find out what Renaissance can do for your brand management strategy and image consistency, drop us a line. 

Email us at info@ec2i.biz, call 44 (0) 1702 541311, or fill in this contact form to organise your demo.