Remote teams and branding: this is how you keep a grip on your brand identity

Remote teams and branding: this is how you keep a grip on your brand identity

Remote working is now the norm for many organizations. Employees are spread across locations or work from home. This ensures efficiency, but also involves risks — for example when it comes to brand consistency. Because how do you ensure that all expressions — from quotes to social media — are still in line with your brand identity, if everyone works independently from different locations?

What can go wrong without a clear structure

In practice, we see that when people see each other less, there is less structure and clear agreements. This is reflected, for example, in the following examples.

• Employees work with various older and new presentation templates
• Employees each have their own favorite colors and fonts
• Everyone makes their own choices for photography and tone-of-voice
• Because people work in different locations, they have brand assets on PCs, emails and chat messages.

The result is inconsistent communication, market confusion, and declining trust in your brand. This risk is particularly high in hybrid and remote teams, where daily coordination is lacking.

Why remote working requires brand structure

When employees are physically in the office together, coordination is easy. In remote situations, that natural control falls away. At the same time, the dependence on tools, templates and individual interpretation is growing. Without a central structure and guidelines, sprawl will unintentionally occur.

Consistent brand expressions therefore require not only clear guidelines, but also accessible tools and training.

Five structural measures to keep a grip on your brand

1. Set up one central location for all brand guidelines

Provide your organization with an up-to-date, centrally accessible brand book. Here you collect logos, use of color, typography, tone of voice, templates and examples of good application. Employees then no longer have to gamble or search. This may be a PDF that you make available via, for example, your website via a hidden, non-indexable link, but better is a digital version of your corporate identity manual, a digital brand book. See how we approach this with our digital brand book

2. Make it easy to do well

Brand rules are only applied when they are easy to use. Therefore, provide standardized templates for PowerPoint, e-mail, social media and reports. Where possible, integrate your corporate identity into common tools such as Word, Teams or Canva (with management). Fewer choices mean fewer deviations.

3. Explain the “why” to the team

Employees do not follow guidelines because they have to, but because they understand their importance. Explain that brand consistency contributes to professionalism, familiarity and trust. And show them that if they use existing templates and guidelines, it saves them time. After all, they no longer have to experiment with design themselves. Use practical examples to make this concrete. This is how you create ownership instead of resistance.

4. Appoint brand managers per team

Within each team, location, or department, appoint a person responsible for branding. This person oversees brand usage, answers questions, and ensures team members have access to the right resources. This way, you can keep the lines short without having to control everything centrally.

5. Provide training and internal brand awareness

Setting up guidelines is step one. Ensuring that they are known and supported is just as important. Training plays a crucial role in this.

Practical options:

• ‍Internal brand sessions or lunch & learn
  Organize short sessions where teams can ask questions and discuss case studies. This increases engagement and awareness. Repeat these regularly

• Onboarding
  ‍Incorporate branding into the onboarding of new employees so they're familiar with it from day 1

• ‍‍Video
  ‍Develop a video showing you where to find what, why, and how it works.

• E-learning modules
  Develop a short e-learning that introduces employees to brand identity, guidelines, and common mistakes. Ideal for onboarding new colleagues and as a periodic refresher.

• ‍Cheat sheet or quick guide
  Create a concise visual summary of key brand rules and common uses (such as logo spacing, color use, typography, and templates). It can be printed out or shared as a PDF.

Conclusion: consistency requires structure and behavior

Remote working is not a temporary trend, but a new reality. If you want to maintain brand consistency, you need to ensure more than just design guidelines. The key lies in clear documentation, smart tools and targeted training. One digital brandbook is the basis for this, but success ultimately lies in how your team works with it. So provide awareness, support and a practical translation into daily work.

Do you want to discover how to keep your brand consistent and professional even among remote teams?
Watch us digital brandbook or take contact us for a consultation.

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