Rachel’s Monday message: the people working on your brand shouldn’t have to guess, and you shouldn’t either. Here’s what to take from this one:
- Know your hex codes by heart. In a pinch, ColorZilla, a free Chrome eyedropper extension, grabs any color on your screen and copies it for you. A sticky note on your monitor still counts as a system.
- Stop working in silos. Shared Adobe Libraries put logos, colors, and icons in one place your whole team can pull from. Canva’s brand repository does the same job, with room for context and explanations.
- Put it in a doc your team can find. Managing people and still no shared style guide? Build that next. Your team gets the answers before they ask, and your edits shrink.
- Yes, even Rachel is behind on her own. Her brand guide is still stuck in her head, and marketing yourself feels like walking through quicksand. You’re not alone.
- Oxford comma for life. Rachel’s verdict is that it’s always correct. AP style, she can’t with you.
Rachel goes deep on brand style guides this week, the “bible” every marketer needs and so few actually build. She talks through why you should know your brand’s hex codes by heart (sticky note method fully endorsed), plus a shoutout to ColorZilla for eyedropper-grabbing colors and Adobe Libraries for teams who insist on working in silos when they don’t have to. She also makes the case for documenting your brand style, logo usage, tone, the works, so your team (or your assistant) isn’t guessing, and admits that marketing herself is the one place she still struggles to take her own advice.
[00:00:00] Welcome Back Monday
[00:00:13] Brand Guide Basics
[00:00:22] Memorize Brand Colors
[00:01:16] ColorZilla Eyedropper Tip
[00:01:42] Adobe Libraries Collaboration
[00:02:46] Sticky Note Workflow
[00:03:02] Canva Brand Kit Setup
[00:03:46] Documenting For Your Team
[00:04:34] Why Self-Marketing Is Hard
[00:05:27] Oxford Comma Debate
[00:06:03] Content Marketing World Series
[00:06:55] Join The Community
[00:07:04] Wrap Up And Goodbye
Chapter 1: Welcome Back Monday
[00:00:00] It’s Monday and you know what that means everyone. It’s time for another Marketer’s Barely Managing with your host, Rachel Moore. Barely managing, but I am managing, and so are you. Let’s talk about brand style guides.
Chapter 2: Brand Guide Basics
[00:00:13] Brand styles the Bible for marketers. I would love to take a poll.
Chapter 3: Memorize Brand Colors
[00:00:22] Maybe I’ll throw this up in Spotify or wherever I can do polls. But how many of you know by heart the hexadecimal values of your brand’s colors? Whether it’s your own brand or your company’s brand. I bet most of you know it. At least one of them by heart. I managed her on my team. She’s an amazing social media creator. But we always would joke about how, when we worked at a company, we both knew the hexadecimal color by heart for the brand that we worked for. Like we just didn’t even need to because you know we were always in like you know mostly was Adobe like Photoshop and whatnot and of course Canva came along but you can use those in Canva too and you should but we knew it by heart.
[00:01:07] It’s a good thing to know by heart rather than just be like I’m just going to guess and listen, listen, listen, y’all don’t just use the eyedropper; if you don’t know about it, there’s a Chrome extension that is an eyedropper
Chapter 4: ColorZilla Eyedropper Tip
[00:01:16] It’s a colorzilla. It’s a free Chrome extension. It’s probably an extension on other browsers too, but you can put it on there, and you can click on it, and you can pluck the color value; it’ll automatically copy it from anywhere on your screen that you want to precisely do the eyedropper on. And yes, you can do that. But you should always know the color value by heart that you need to be using.
Chapter 5: Adobe Libraries Collaboration
[00:01:42] This is why, uh, y’all people who don’t take advantage of like Adobe libraries. Why? Oh my gosh. I have worked for so many teams where multiple people are using Adobe Creative Cloud and the fact that they don’t know how oh where’s the library? We can all be pulling from the same library that has the logos and has the color values. It even has icons in there; you can keep in there. Things that are, you are routinely using for that brand can all be in the library. You can just literally click on it or just drag and drop it onto your Adobe canvas or your whiteboard or whatever and now you’ve got it and that can be shared.
[00:02:20] You also can do shared projects. Ah, mind-numbing why so many Adobe users work in silos. And I got to say, marketers who are, you know, the managers, the creative directors, whatever, y’all, it’s on you. Tell your team about it. Collaborate, use it. Everybody should know that stuff. Like, and back in the day, I would actually write the hex values on a sticky note and just pop it somewhere on my screen.
Chapter 6: Sticky Note Workflow
[00:02:46] So, I always had it. Do that. There’s nothing wrong with that. I and sometimes that tactile writing of stuff can help get things in your head anyway. But yeah, it’s important. And the brand style guide, and I say this as somebody who I, and I use Canva.
Chapter 7: Canva Brand Kit Setup
[00:03:02] I tend to use Canva more nowadays just because I don’t have as many complex needs for the design tools of Adobe. I prefer Adobe most of the time, especially if I want to get really into like doing some complexity. It does have more capability, but Canva works just fine. And Canva actually has a really solid and they they’ve improved on it over years a brand repository where you can build your brand style in there and including you can add context you know and explanations and things like that. This is something I need to get out of my brain and into that. I have an assistant that works with me and I was trying to tell her the other day about like here’s kind of like my graphic style for my brand to correct in a case study.
Chapter 8: Documenting For Your Team
[00:03:46] I’m like this needs to be something I put in doc in a document and document it so that she doesn’t have to wonder. So if you are a marketing manager, people leader, people manager, whatever you are managing more than just yourself and you don’t yet have your brand style guide established somewhere that can be shared and saved and updated and people can refer to it, do that next.
[00:04:12] Do that. That would be a good thing for you to do because then you are giving the actual guide, the Bible of your brand to the people that have to work in it all the time and you’re going to find that you don’t have to correct them as much. It’s great. Your edits will become less because they already know what they need to know.
Chapter 9: Why Self-Marketing Is Hard
[00:04:34] It’s awesome. And it’s super tedious to put together. And I this is where I get the hang-up too because I’m talking about my own brand and marketing myself and it just I don’t know why it is and I have another episode about this like why are we so bad at marketing ourselves. I don’t know why it feels like I’m trying to walk through quicksand when I try to I have to do things for my own marketing. It really feels that way. It’s got to be some kind of psychological thing. But apparently I’m not alone. But I need to get this thing done, and it will help a whole hell of a lot of things if I do once I do. But yeah, everybody’s got in their professions the things that they’re like, I know the tools that I need to use on repeat.
[00:05:14] And for marketers, it happens to be brand colors, brand logo colors. So, we all remember them. We all know them. I think part of the fun of doing brand style guides, too, is like just establishing stuff and putting down rules.
Chapter 10: Oxford Comma Debate
[00:05:27] Oxford, for life, by the way, over here. Probably need to do a whole separate episode about that. Why? Because the Oxford comma is always correct. You’re not wrong if you use an Oxford comma. You just aren’t. Could you vary into comma splice territory? Sure. But if you’re doing a list and use Oxford comma, you’re not wrong. So, of course, you should use it anyway. And I know that runs very contrary to anybody, I think, who is writes AP style because Oxford comma is not used in AP style, which is why I can’t with AP style.
[00:05:56] Anyway, that’s pretty much it. Oh, I do have a quick announcement. I will be doing a special series of marketers barely managing during Content Marketing World, October 5th through 7th.
Chapter 11: Content Marketing World Series
[00:06:03] I’ll be interviewing people at my booth on the trade show floor. It’s Content Marketing World and TMRE and Lions. And so I will be doing some interviews there and we’ll be publishing those on the feed so you can hear vents from marketers from Content Marketing World. That’s what we’re going to talk about. Just something that they have a vent about and maybe even some I always try to offer things that are also helpful like the colors of lifting but I I’m always going to say hey vent to me but then tell me the solve for that like how do we avoid needing to vent about that ex thing that you told me about so that’ll be coming soon as well and please I encourage you as well I think fan mail is turned on also comment on any of the episodes wherever you’re listening to the podcast or watching it and ours community is ready and waiting for you.
Chapter 12: Join The Community
[00:06:55] So, if you’re like, “Take this to the next level and I need to take my vents to actually typing them out or even recording voice notes. I love voice notes.” Please do so.
Chapter 13: Wrap Up And Goodbye
[00:07:04] Would love to hear from you. All right, that’s it for this episode. I will see you on the coming Monday for another Marketers Barely Managing. Bye.
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