Brand guidelines for Paragon Skills

AJA Design has just completed the brand guidelines for Paragon Skills, one of the UK’s largest independent training and skills provider. The challenge with Paragon Skills is with its diverse audience of young persons striving to kick-start their career via an apprenticeship and employers searching for young motivated staff.

Our recommendations, via the brand guidelines for Paragon Skills, were to employ a suite of colours and icons to represent each vocation, a suite to represent Paragon Skills as a whole, and marketing material that speaks to both young person and employer.

Branding is at the core of every business, with the ability to make or break even the most highly regarded companies. A brand builds a unique personality for a company, a fundamental tool to creating and retaining a relationship between the brand and the customer. Brand Guidelines are a vital part of branding.

 Guidelines give consistency, without which, customers begin to lose trust in the brand. Brand consistency requires both focus and commitment, but is essential for success.

Another benefit of using Brand Guidelines is to stop customer confusion. A clear message is essential to establish and maintain a relationship with the customer, the goal of any business.

Using Brand Guidelines means delivering on expectations right down to the smallest detail. Having trust in a brand and knowing what to expect means customers are willing to pay more for services, increasing sales and margins.

Increased sales and margins is not the only financial benefit of using Guidelines, marketing becomes more effective meaning that budgets are more efficient. High quality and effective marketing mean that all money spent on marketing is money well spent. The marketing materials are all uniform and work together to give marketing campaigns maximum effect and value for money.

Uniformed branding is essential to create a ‘charismatic brand’, a brand for which there is no substitute. Having acharismatic brand means that there is no room for competitors to step in and take its place, effectively taking control of a particular market.

Finally, Branding Guidelines facilitate extending into new opportunities, making it easy to use the existing templates to branch out into new sectors. When expanding a business, it is essential to make sure the new venture is recognisably linked to the original company, meaning that the existing relationship with consumers is not lost. Securing on going success is key for any business, and being able to easily expand while maintaining a strong and recognisable template is the way to do this.

The brand guidelines for Paragon Skills will benefit the business in many ways, which makes it surprising that so many companies neglect to use them. So, if your brand is feeling a little neglected and requires some TLC please call and ask to speak to Lisa Rossiter, she is not only our managing director but the creative director and specialises in the development of brand guidelines and style guides.

Still looking for inspiration? We’ve just completed a direct mail campaign for Baker Goodchild. Please take a look. Why not let us know what you think!