Over The Bull®
Tired of marketing fluff, shady sales tactics, and overpriced agencies that sell fear instead of results? Over the Bull is a no-nonsense podcast where we share real stories from inside the agency world—the wins, the failures, and the clients we had to cut loose.
Join me each week as we break down the reality of running a business, expose the marketing BS that’s holding companies back, and talk about what actually works. No generic reports. No empty promises. Just real strategy from the trenches.
Over The Bull®
#9 - The Wild Wild West of Branding (Micro-Podcast)
In this episode, we venture into the chaotic frontier of modern branding—where Canva templates, color mismatches, and inconsistent visuals run rampant. It’s the wild wild west out there, and without a clear brand standard, your message can get lost in the dust.
Ken breaks down why consistency matters more than ever, how quick-reference style guides can save a project from creative drift, and why working with a professional isn’t just about polish—it’s about control.
You’ll also hear a colorful analogy: sure, a great artist can make magic with an 8-pack of crayons—but why limit yourself when professional tools and a cohesive vision can elevate your brand far beyond the basics?
Branding isn’t just about logos. It’s about delivering a consistent, recognizable experience—everywhere your audience meets you.
Over The Bull is brought to you by IntegrisDesign.com. All rights reserved.
You're listening to Over the Bull, where we cut through marketing noise. Here's your host, Ken Carroll.
SPEAKER_01:Welcome to the Wild Wild West on this episode of Over the Bull. My goodness, the games are being played in the world of marketing and design today. And the last episode, I shared with you an example of an agency that's claiming to do a lot of work. And in reality, they're just reselling a product and marking it up. I don't know if I shared this with you, but that particular company, they don't even work on Fridays because they claim that they're working on the mental health of their staff. I'm all about mental health, and our company is very concentrated on our clients too, but we do real work, and we work long hours to provide a quality service for our customers to give them the best possible opportunity. Now, one thing I want to talk to you about today is branding consistency. Brand inconsistency is incredibly important because every time that your image, your brand, comes in contact with someone else, if it changes, you break that chain of command. Now, it doesn't matter if you're doing a flyer or a website or business cards or whatever. If you break your brand, you're breaking that train of thought. Think about if you were to drive down the road to that famous fast food restaurant and you see green arches and not golden arches. You're going to wonder what's different about that. St. Patrick's Day, what's going on? But if it were to change at every stop you go to at every location, you would begin to wonder about the consistency. Now, it doesn't matter if you're a company of one or a company of one million. Branding consistency is extremely important, and that's one thing that has been focused on basically since the beginnings of marketing. You could go back to the, obviously, probably well before the early 1900s. So branding consistency, let's talk about that for a second. It's not just your logo. It's not just generally picking the right colors. It's not picking a pretty template from a do-it-yourself program and throwing your logo on it. That's not what branding consistency is. Branding consistency, of course, it's your logo. Of course, it's consistent colors. Of course, it's consistent fonts. But it's also about a consistent look. You don't want to go from rounded images in one location to square images in another and completely break the brand trend. You want to make sure that you're using consistent methodologies throughout. And when you do these things, the sad truth and the hard truth, sad, but the hard truth is. You need a professional that understands it, that can stand back and look at your brand and then say, okay, this is what your brand should look like. And no, don't use this particular flower layout. It doesn't matter. And make sure your fonts are consistent and do those things. In ways, we're kind of like gatekeepers of your branding when you work with agencies. Now, the problem is the do-it-yourself stuff's attractive, right? Because you want to take those do-it-yourself programs and save money, and you think, well, it's just for this one little project, or it's just for this. Well, in reality, it is a big deal, and you are breaking those particular trends. So keeping it consistent is important. Working with someone that understands branding and how to keep it consistent and where those parameters are is just as important. Also, just general layout and practices and everything are critical as well, but I won't go there. But the other thing that's really important when it comes to your branding and your layout is to understand that there are a lot of people out there in the world. Just like in the last episode, there's a lot of people out there who are claiming that they have a skill set, who claim they're doing things, and in reality they're not. What they're doing is they're using tools, they're using clip art, they're using do-it-yourself builders. They're doing things that are making their life easier, but making your brand insufficient. And so it's important to not only make sure that you're following those brand standards, but you're working with someone who understands that. So you want to make sure you qualify your designer. I can't tell you how many times I work with people and I've seen the products that were produced and they were straight out of a do-it-yourselfer. You want to be careful. Yes, it's attractive. Yes, it sounds good. Yes to all those things. Now, a real good artist can work with an eight-pack box of crayons and make it look good. But the question is, is... Why would an artist use an eight-pack box of crayons when he has much more elaborate tools to use, such as Adobe Creative Suite? And so one of the flags that you can look for are people that are using these do-it-yourself programs, especially for like these little one-off deals and things like that. Make sure that that is not the case and make sure that your brand is consistent. Stand back. Look at your product. Close your eyes. Look at the shape. Look at the sizes. Look at how images are being used. Look at the fonts. Look at everything. Fonts, by the way, is just the shape of the characters of text. Make sure that all that stuff is consistent. And if it's not, if it doesn't look like the same thing on each one of those pieces, then you broke your brand consistency. And it's important not to do that. I had a One guy I worked with years ago, he got bored with his brand and just wanted to change it randomly. Not the colors, but the layouts. And, you know, we would always kind of like say, well, hold on a minute. You know, you may be tired of your brand. However, the people that are using your brand are not tired of it. And you want to be consistent. So you just wanted to do something just to do something.
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So the take home for today's podcast is your branding is extremely important. It goes well beyond just sticking your logo on a product. It's making sure your fonts, your layouts, and all those things do mesh in order to create a consistent presentation that resonates with your clients. And the more it resonates, the more they see you, the more they're going to trust you. So don't break those branding standards and make sure you have somebody that you know is doing a good job for you. Thanks again for listening to Over the Bull.
SPEAKER_00:Thanks for tuning in to Over the Bull, brought to you by Integris Design, a full-service design and marketing agency out of Asheville, North Carolina. Until next time.