Consistency in branding

Pretty much since I started this blog, I have been talking about consistency in branding. This can be as overt as having a collection of Facebook or Twitter cover photos with party branding on it, for use by both candidates and supporters. A great example of this comes form Jack Yan’s campaign for the Wellington Mayoralty, who had a series of images available on his website for supporters to download and use on their Facebook profile.

wilsonstreet-coverphoto

 

However, consistent branding should be extended down to the level of email addresses. If a party is going to make email addresses for candidates available, they should firstly all be party email accounts and they should all fit a pattern. For example, john.smith@patryx.co.nz. This is partly for brand consistency and also to make it easier for people to contact candidates.

 

This seems to not be the case with the Labour Party. They currently have a list of all their selected candidates on their website, which is a good thing. However, the first thing I noticed is the lack of consistency in addresses. There is no consistent format to them, nor are they even @labour.org.nz addresses. Even if the addresses simply forward on the emails they get to the address the person normally uses, the point of an email address is to help people contact you. If you are a candidate or a party, then you should be doing all you can to make this easier.

 

labour emails Labour emails 2 labour emails 3 labour emails 4 labour emails 5 labour emails 6 labour emails 7

matthew