I love working with brand marketers and especially watching their physical reaction to blatant violation of guiding brand standards and principles. I recently sat in a meeting with a research analyst who owns responsibility for reporting data to stakeholders via highly customizable, web-based dashboards. Impressively, the company’s creative director sat emotionless as his structure and design senses were systematically assaulted with every click of the mouse. I nervously rapped my fingers on the arm of my chair during the entire conversation. It started me thinking.

Life is full of important lessons. Some we forget with the passage of time, while others stick with us throughout our existence. In childhood, our parents used consistency to ply our young brains into (hopefully) healthy thought patterns, which (hopefully) translated into healthy life patterns. As parents, we use that same strategy to improve our children’s odds of adding value to society. As brand marketers we utilize the same law in business to achieve positive brand perception.

Consistent application of brand identity buys much more than you think. And when I say “brand identity,” I’m not just referring to a logo. Brand identity is made up of attitude, voice, style, tone, color, image, presence, typography, emotion and even little things like signature style and the use of white space.

It’s all about recall, and to urge recollection from the over-packed memories of buyers, brand marketers employ the law of consistency across all possible recall-triggering elements. Failure to maintain consistency creates experiential gaps, forcing our synapses through mental gymnastics in a laborious effort to connect the faded dots. Sometimes it succeeds, sometimes it doesn’t.

Just remember the Rule of Five. On average, it takes five relevant touches to instill the ability to recall. When the five touches don’t naturally link, experiential gaps are created, rate of recall diminishes, critical messages are missed, business value is overlooked and consideration is lost.

Count on consistency to keep your brand recognized and relevant when buyers are looking for answers. And I guess the secret is now out. Marketers manipulate buyers in much the same way parents manipulate their children. Shhhhhh …