by Ms. Grammar

Do you help your company maintain its corporate and brand identity? Despite the economy and company events that may have left you with a bitter taste in your mouth, if you appreciate your job, you need to do what you can to help your company succeed.  Brand identity equals consumer recognition and helps your company differentiate itself from competitors.

Company guidelines

If your company has brand identity guidelines, make sure you follow them. Are certain placements required for the company logo? Is there an informal name for your company or a product that should not be used in formal publications? Make sure you follow these rules. And if your company does not have identity guidelines, you might offer to write them!

Trademarks

Use trademarks properly:

1. Give notice that a mark is registered. The frontmatter of technical documents often includes notices, including trademark statements such as “Doc-o-Mat is a trademark (or registered trademark) of the Dynamo Corporation.”  In addition, the first appearance of a trademarked term in the body of the document should include the TM or ® symbol.
2. A trademarked term should never be used as a noun. It should be an adjective preceding a generic product noun. For example, the “Doc-Mat document generator.”  That being said, one large corporation’s legal department approved the use of the trademarked term as a noun in user documentation as long as the trademark statement appeared at the front of the document and the correct presentation was used in the introduction.
3. Use the mark distinctively. Initial capital letters, all capital letters, italics, boldface, are all ways of distinguishing the mark from surrounding text.

Do the little things

For example:

»  Include the company name in the first paragraph of the introduction of your document or training materials, not just the product name. 

»  If you create online Help, include the company name in the Help title – so that it appears in the Help title bar. For example, “Dynamo Doc-o-Mat Help.”

If your product developers are not following branding standards in the product, encourage them to follow suit. For example:

»  The product’s title bar should include the company name along with the product name. 
»  Start menu items should begin with the company name.
»  The splash screen and Help > About dialog box should include the company and product name, as well as version, copyright and trademark information.
»  And certainly the correct product terms (typically determined by Marketing) should be used within the product. Developers are not always careful.

You can gain an ally in Marketing and expand your role in the development team by watching for these brand identity issues in the product.