Chief Consistency Officer?

I was intrigued by this Forbe’s post Chief Consistency Officer: How Today’s CCO Unites A Company’s Stakeholders and it got me thinking…

Much of a communicator’s role is to maintain the consistency of their brand across all audiences. This could include internal staff, board of directors, members, customers, vendors, lawmakers or media.

We ensure all our communication has the same message using our brand’s tone and voice. We manage and protect the visual representation of our organization through colors, typefaces/fonts, graphics and photos. Brand consistency leads to brand recognition, which is a major goal of any marketing department.

While this is a big part of our job and can be one of the hardest to manage, it’s often overlooked (and under appreciated) when compared to more exciting tasks like shooting videos, creating cool websites and managing social platforms.

Instead of chief marketing officer or chief communications officer, let’s create a chief consistency officer. This person would be a vital member of the C-Suite or leadership team and in charge of marketing AND communications/pr (if those are separate, which I don’t think they should be…)

With so many ways we distribute communication, this is a “must have” in your organization. Think about mega brands like Target, Starbucks or McDonalds. You know exactly what you are going to get in their retail stores, You can see an ad or commercial and pretty much guess right away who the advertiser is.

That’s consistency, which leads to brand recognition, which is a major goal of any organization or business.