Your Brand Manual Is Killing Your Brand
Brand manuals are meant to guide, not strangle. Here’s why rigid rules make brands robotic, and how flexibility preserves authenticity without losing identity. Every brand has a manual. Fonts, colours, tone of voice, logo spacing down to the millimeter. And yes, guidelines are important. They keep your brand consistent. But here’s the problem: when the manual becomes the Bible, your brand stops breathing. We’ve seen it too many times. Teams cling to rigid rules until every piece of communication sounds sterile, robotic, and ironically, interchangeable with everyone else. Consistency vs. Conformity Consistency means your brand feels familiar, recognisable, trustworthy. Conformity means your brand feels predictable, rigid, lifeless. The difference? Room to be human. If your people are terrified of “breaking the brand manual,” you’re not running a brand. You’re running a museum exhibit. Why Rigid Rules Backfire They kill authenticity. Real conversations don’t follow scrip...