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Keeping your brand’s evolution under your control is easier than you think, but most marketing and creative departments let work get in the way of documenting it.
Every customer touchpoint and asset presents an opportunity to make small changes that compound over time. If you manage these changes intentionally, you keep the brand narrative aligned with your core message.
Brands that fail to document their own evolution will lose control. Documentation seems like the last thing you need to do when you’re busy running campaigns. But when we intentionally slow down to examine our choices, we can make better decisions in the future. Brands do not document their evolution because:
- They assume everyone understands how and why the brand evolved.
- They are too busy to document.
- They don’t know it has to be done.
- They are afraid to look at the “mistakes” of the past.
As Bob Ross says, there are no mistakes, only happy accidents. By recounting and analyzing past decisions, we better understand what works for the brand and how to replicate them.
The tactics and systems that follow move teams from reacting to the needs of each campaign to thinking critically about how each campaign represents the brand message and story. This helps team members adhere to brand guidelines independently and take them into account when creating work rather than afterward.
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3 Ways to Document the Evolution of Your Brand
These tactics can be used independently or integrated into regular team processes. Managing brand evolution is a long-term investment, so find the tactics that work best for the team and build the processes that reinforce critical thinking.
1. Host a retro get-together
As you begin to document the evolution of your brand, look back over months or years of touchpoints. This introduces your team to the idea of brand documentation and gathering information to define the brand as it currently is.
One way to organize this meeting is to gather brand artifacts, arrange them on a table (or in a single shared folder), and ask everyone on the team to comment on how each asset adheres to or deviates from the established brand guide.
Identify trends and group trends that inform the current state of the brand. Fill in the blanks about how the brand evolved, whether intentionally or by accident.
2. Write historical documentation about the brand
Once the team understands the brand’s evolution, whether through the retro meeting or another method, add notes to your brand guide that explain the choices made in previous touchpoints, why those choices were made, and how they affect the brand as a whole.
This file becomes the training documentation for future team members. They will not need to carry out a complete retrospective of the evolution of the brand. They can review documentation to see where audiences, tone, color schemes, design frameworks, and other details have changed in the past, and why.
Historical documentation of the brand should include changes large and small, including:
- Brand changes.
- Mergers and acquisitions.
- Seasonal campaigns.
- Changes to audience targeting in campaigns.
- Co-branding or sponsorship offers.
- Website design changes.
- Tone and targeting of the newsletter.
The goal is to have a reference document that explains why the team chose rounded corners on website boxes in 2014 and why the newsletter font changed in 2023. Explanations can range from wanting to modernize the look or make better use of negative space to documenting how the release of a new product line opened up a whole new target market.
3. Create sections to document and reinforce ideal brand requirements
Use your ideal brand requirements to create rubrics to assess how well each asset or campaign represents the brand. The section should be divided into several sections, each reinforcing a major pillar of your brand. Content and design should create individualized sections that reflect the group’s priorities.
Use the rubric to document comments before discussing them. Note specific examples of tone, audience, and formatting that are executed well and those that could be improved. Use these examples in your feedback discussions to shift the focus away from the person and onto the text itself.
A rubric is not a tool for rating individual contributors on their work. Everything can be updated, so if a campaign or element misses the mark, go back and improve it. Then keep a copy of the rubric to document the discussion and any decisions made.
Documentation cycles create continuity
After documenting your brand’s evolution, reinforce these habits. As a department or within small role-aligned teams, establish feedback rhythms to regularly review campaign assets and evaluate them against your sections. Update brand materials quarterly and annually to reflect business changes.
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