Consistency is the most powerful tool in branding. There, I gave it away. The end. Not convinced?

Here are three things that many people think are powerful tools, but these aren’t it.

Not style.
Not medium.
Not even pop culture relevance.

There is something that could give it a run for its money, but that’s for another time.

In order to better understand the feeling behind this, I want to tell you how the same idea applies to a different field: Music.

What Marketing can learn from Music

The man Adam Neely (music YouTuber) has often said, “Repetition legitimizes”. Take it from someone who has dedicated his life to understanding and teaching others to appreciate a style of music that had its day in the sun a century ago.

If you hear an off-sounding string of notes, your instinct might be to think, “that sounds terrible”.

But if you repeat that riff in a rhythm, it begins to take on another property: meaning. It becomes a sonic identity that represents a feeling, idea, or character that won’t be sufficiently understood without more context. This repetition cements it in your mind, and it becomes a core part of the identity of the song.

Repeating an idea works the same. We are wired to accept what we often experience as normal. I will leave it to the psychologists to sufficient explain why that is, but this is the core theory to why consistency is the most powerful tool in branding.

Telling someone the same story repeatedly means your story becomes an integral part of their world.

What story are you telling? How consistently are you telling it?

Need help figuring out what story your brand should tell? We can help.