Build a Brand Bible That Sounds as Good as it Looks

Brand marketing used to be a niche phrase exclusive to advertisers and marketers. Now, every content creator, influencer, or anyone with a smartphone knows about brand identity. 

In a crowded consumer landscape, studies show that audiences are more attracted and loyal to companies that consistently display a cohesive, unified, and trustworthy brand experience.

When it comes to building a powerful branding bible, immersive and engaging copy serves as the foundation of your company’s story. Excellent writing sets the stage for everything else, from internal assets to customer-facing marketing campaigns. This copy should be paired with compelling visuals.

That said, if your company branding bible leans too heavily on the visuals, fails to consider the broader context, and can’t easily be applied to all communications, it can’t truly establish or flesh out the company’s identity. The result? It’ll be a challenge to draw and maintain customers.

This blog will show you how to build an effective and powerful branding bible.

Brand bible—Why you need a blueprint

A branding bible is an official rulebook or comprehensive style guide that consists of messaging and visual elements, clearly explaining every aspect of the brand to your company, customers, and partners. It ensures that everyone from internal teams to external collaborators presents your brand experience in a cohesive, professional, and recognizable way. 

There are hundreds of helpful articles on building the ultimate branding bible. Unfortunately, most branding book guides have a 75% design to 25% copy ratio—with the copy direction relegated to the back.

As we already mentioned, we believe that the text and visuals hold equal weight, and when you successfully tie them together, you’ll have a more impactful and memorable branding book. 

Another benefit of a well-balanced brand bible is that it helps companies maintain consistency across various messaging touchpoints, including social media, print ads, and even customer support. Properly executed, your brand bible can also offer a solid messaging track record that will reach and attract potential prospects.  

Creating content—To AI or not AI

Before we dive in, let’s touch on when Artificial Intelligence can be helpful in creating a brand bible—and when it isn’t. Using AI to generate content is as divisive a subject as bringing up politics during family get-togethers, and while using AI to assist with content creation is becoming increasingly popular, there are pros and cons. We’ve identified some of them: 

AI Pros

• AI can jumpstart the creative muse by delivering brand-inspired ideas and valuable source material. 
• AI can support brand alignment by identifying tone inconsistencies in your content.
• With the right prompts, AI can quickly draft multiple tone variations (such as trustworthy, bold, or humorous).

AI Cons

• AI often misreads nuanced tones like sarcasm, subtle humor, or irreverence.
• AI is inconsistent when defining a brand’s distinct personality or cultural essence.
• AI falls short when originality, critical thinking, and human judgment are called for. 

Quick take: AI tools are great for brainstorming and research, but struggle with human insight and emotional depth, which are critical for creating impactful and persuasive copywriting.

Design or copy—Who’s driving the brand?

You’ll want to start by laying down a strong writing foundation, such as sharing your company story, mission, and vision. This will make creating or selecting the visuals easier. We’ll get into this more below.

This seems contradictory, since design usually serves as your brand’s introduction to audiences. But while your visuals may have captured their attention, it’s essential to have a compelling brand identity that entices your prospects enough to want to learn more about you. In other words, great design is the icebreaker that grabs your audience’s attention, but compelling writing keeps them engaged. 

Text—What’s your story?

To start, here’s a possible framework for building brand messaging:

• What’s your company’s mission?
• What’s your company story?
• What’s your brand voice?
• Who’s your target audience?
• What are your buyer personas?

Step One: Your Mission

What’s your brand’s overall mission? Sounds overwhelming, but actually, all you need to do is start with one sentence and build on it. For example:

“Our mission is to educate, inspire, and empower underrepresented wine artisans and enthusiasts—connecting them with larger and more established companies to grow, refine their craft, and amplify their voices.”

Step Two: Your Story

What’s your story? Who are you? Build on your mission and share your humble beginnings with your audience, where you are now, and your future goals. For instance: 

“Twenty years ago, two long-lost half-sisters reunited and then bonded over their shared love of making wine in their basements. Today, this passion project has blossomed into a global community of over 300 wine enthusiasts. Our mission is to educate, inspire, and promote underrepresented enthusiasts and artisans, pairing them with larger and more established companies. We believe the future of great wine starts with a deep passion for the craft and a willingness to share it.”

Step Three: Your Brand Voice

Now that you know what your mission and story are, what’s your brand voice? Is it cheeky? Savvy? Irreverent? Authoritative? What words do you use or omit? Do you incorporate humor? And if so, what type? Are you sarcastic, dry, or quirky? 

Step Four: Your Audience

It’s time to identify your audience. It’s tempting to think that your brand appeals to everyone, but it’s more important to focus and start breaking things down. Here are some quick identifiers:

• Age
• Gender
• Income
• Location

Other factors to consider include client pain points, challenges, opportunities, unmet needs, and wants. What type of language would they respond to? Do some research and assemble words and phrases you think they’d like to hear. This is also where a defined brand voice will assist you. 

Step Five: Buyer Personas

Creating buyer personas is an efficient way to tailor the right message to the customer segment you want to reach and the desired action you’d like them to take. For instance, reaching out and appealing to personas like “researcher,” “trendsetter,” or “early adopter” is different than creating messaging for the “decision-making executive” or even the “loyalist” who already purchases your products and services. 

Branding Book Tip

 If building a brand messaging framework still feels like a daunting task, consider working with your team and asking some strategic questions, such as: 

“How would you describe our company mission?”

“If you had to tell our brand story, how would you do it?”

“How would you describe our company’s brand voice?”

“Who are our customers?”

Visuals—Catch their eye

Now that we’ve settled on how your brand sounds, you’re ready to find the visuals that help communicate its look. Here are a few key considerations that brand designers should keep in mind and incorporate as they develop a compatible visual framework. 

• Logo
• Color
• Typography
• Photography

Design Element One: The Logo

The unsung hero of the branding world. The logo is a quick and concise visual identifier that your audience instantly recognizes and associates with your brand. How vital is logo creation? There are numerous examples of audience praise or backlash when an iconic brand changes its time-honored visual symbol, such as Pepsi, The Gap, and Instagram.  

Design Element Two: Color

It’s worth considering incorporating a bit of “color psychology” when you’re choosing and creating a color scheme for your brand. The right tint or shade can evoke a particular reaction or feeling in your audience and prompt them to take action. Think of the subtle impact of Coca-Cola red, Starbucks green, or Walmart blue. 

Design Element Three: Typography

Typography terms like font, hierarchy, and typefaces may be lost on you unless you’re a graphic designer. Still, like logo and color schemes, whatever you and your team choose can influence how your audience interacts with your brand. Yes, just as there’s color psychology, there are also typographic systems that audiences respond to. 

Design Element Four: Photography

The right image can leave an audience wanting to know more (or less) about your brand. Bad stock photography tells as much of a story as a compelling image does. You can go cheap, but the images you choose convey a message, just like the other graphic design elements we’ve touched on. 

Walking their talk—Brands that own their identity

Here are some companies with compelling branding identities, where visuals and copy seamlessly align.   

THE BRAND: Oatly

Their copy: Humorous, unconventional, informal, and self-aware

Their visuals: Bold typography, minimal illustrations, and a monochromatic color scheme

The result: The combination of clever, direct text and clean, hand-drawn visuals not only revolutionized the traditional dairy industry but also prompted the public to reconsider alternative milks. 

THE BRAND: Mailchimp email marketing

Their copy: Conversational, relatable, and inspirational

Their visuals: Striking typography, clean layouts, and creative illustrations

The result: The partnership of casual yet inspiring copy with dynamic and eye-catching visuals enhances Mailchimp’s email marketing services, making it more appealing and approachable to small businesses. 

And lastly, an oldie but a goodie.

THE BRAND: T-Mobile’s Un-Carrier voice and visuals

Their copy: The “Un-Carrier voice,” customer-first, transparent, daring language

Their visuals: B&W photos, mixed with magenta typography

The result: The seamless fusion of in-your-face, unconventional messaging, combined with striking high-impact visuals, disrupted the industry by breaking away from traditional telecom branding. 

Visuals and voice find their vibe—Now what?

Once you’ve successfully tied the text and visuals together, it’s a good idea to share an early version of your brand bible with your team to make sure they’re on board with your overall strategy and vision.

Team insights and input can be highly valuable as you create your branding bible. You’ll need advocates to sell your brand story both internally and externally, and they should be included in the process. 

Outro—Final thoughts

A common question is, “When is an organization finally done evaluating and adjusting its branding bible?”

The answer is, “Never. It’s an ongoing process.” It means staying informed about emerging trends and technologies, then testing, reevaluating, and revising your approach to stay relevant to your audience. 

When your branding bible skillfully aligns your brand identity with the right words and images, you not only have clear guidelines for your team, but you can also establish and present a unified, impactful, and memorable brand experience for your current audience and future customers.