Journal/Brand Alignment
Your brand looks different everywhere. Here's how that happened.
Nobody decided to let the brand drift. It happened one reasonable decision at a time, made by people who weren't responsible for the brand and had other jobs to do.
Published 11 Sep 2026·5 minutes
Month one: the signwriter
The signage company asks for the logo. Nobody can find the vector, so someone sends the PNG from the website. The signwriter, who is good at their job, redraws it so it will cut cleanly in vinyl. The proportions shift by a few percent. Nobody notices, because nobody puts the sign next to the website.
Month three: the developer
The web developer needs the brand blue. The guidelines say #0F4C81. The developer's colour picker, sampling from a JPEG, says #1A5FA0. Close enough. Every button on the site is now a slightly different blue from every printed thing.
Month five: nine email signatures
A new starter asks what the email signature should look like. Nobody knows. They copy a colleague's and adjust it. Three fonts, two logos and four phone-number formats later, the company has nine signatures and none of them are the official one, because there isn't one.
Month eight: the second location
The new location opens. Someone creates a Google Business Profile for it, with their personal Gmail. They spell the business name slightly differently from the first location, because they're typing from memory. Google now has two businesses with two names.
Month eleven: the booking platforms
Booking.com, Agoda and TripAdvisor were each set up by whoever was handling them that month. The property name is spelled three ways. The transfer time is different on each. Guests notice, and say so in reviews.
Month fourteen: the invoice
Finance updates the invoice template — new bank details, new tax line. They rebuild it in Word. The logo is stretched slightly, the font is Calibri, and this is the document every client sees most often.
Month eighteen: the drive past
The owner drives past the building and something feels wrong. The sign, the website, the invoice, the Instagram bio and the Google listing are five slightly different brands. Nobody decided this. Nobody was responsible for preventing it.
The self-check
Put these ten side by side, on one screen or one table:
- Your main signage (a photo is fine)
- Your website homepage
- Your Google Business Profile
- Your Instagram bio
- A current invoice
- Three staff email signatures
- Your most-used booking or directory listing
- A business card
- A vehicle or uniform
- The last presentation someone gave
Now: is the logo the same mark, at the same proportions, in the same colour, on all ten? Is the business name spelled the same way? Do they all give the same phone number and hours? Does the tagline match?
Most businesses that have been trading more than a few years fail at least four. That's not a criticism. It's what happens when a brand is delivered and nobody is responsible for it afterwards.
What stops it
Not policing. Templates that are easier to use than starting from scratch. A named person whose job includes the brand. A simple way to ask when something new is needed. And a periodic check — every place the brand appears, against the standard — so drift is caught in month three rather than month eighteen.
That's what brand management is. It's the second half of the job, and it's the half most agencies skip.