The bigger your company, the more this applies.

You have departments. Each with its own voice.
You have department heads. Each with her own goals.
You have various publics. Each seeing a different you.

Each department and each department head creates a different message in a different verbal and visual style. As does each ad agency, each freelancer, each design firm, each in-house desktop publisher or designer or proofreader or editor or copywriter.

You got you a mess.

There is only one — repeat: only one — way to solve this mess, and it's not top-down dictation. It's not a "corporate graphics manual" that can stifle innovation.

Every unit of visual communication that emerges from or that represents your company in print or tv or video or online or tradeshow communication has to be coordinated, in some way, with every other piece of visual communication that emerges from or that represents your company.

Here are four ways to fix this problem up
(hint: pick FixUp #4 and skip our preamble).

FixUp #1: Use one ad agency to handle everything. Everything means, not only national ads and television commercials, but also sales literature to the public and the trade. It includes your collateral, sales pro, mailings, posters, annual report, packaging, Web site, and employee communications.

However, it will be very difficult to locate an ad agency which will handle all these different elements and media. And if you find one, that agency may be so large that it too is departmentalized and the guy or gal or group handling your ad for Time Magazine may have no coordination with whoever is writing and designing your brochure for a trade show. So good luck. Might work. It's a crapshoot.

FixUp #2: Commission a corporate design firm to create a visual identity program (or they may call it a visual branding program). These programs put all your design elements into a comprehensive, powerful, rigid system that guarantees visual coordination. Big bucks.

However, Larry Miller, founder of Listen, Write, Design, a former big ad agency art director and longterm freelancer, knows that a logo positioning and color scheme that may work well on an annual report or on the side of an airplane, may simply weaken or dilute or misdirect a crucial ad. (Pet peeve: Logos at the top of a Web page.) Catch-22:

The more rigid the system, the better.
The more rigid the system, the worse.

Better because it guarantees visual continuity.
Worse because it hamstrings the creative freedom that print, tv, and online media demand to build timely messages.

That approach could be a good start, but is not an end solution.

FixUp #3: Hire an internal Design Director who is at the level of EVP (so he or she has power and muscle). Let it be known that this person has the support of your CEO. He or she will demand creative and disciplined visual freedom and will overpower un-disciplined visual freedom to create a corporate style that balances creativity with order.

However, people such as this design EVP, who are willing to work in a corporation, may prefer the higher salary scales of an ad agency, are likely to be more in the "art" and creative camp than in the executive-suite camp, may be too independent of mind and spirit and may thus eventually make too many waves, forcing them to swim or be paddled to another shore in another company. Leaving your company back where it started. Equal and opposite, this person may be too willing to please and make no waves, thus neutralizing his or her purpose.

If you think you and your company can finesse these problems, this can be an excellent way to go.
It is how CBS and Dorfsman did it.

FixUp #4: Hire a consulting design director.
Consider this trial prescription by Listen, Write, Design, .

Hire Larry Miller for your consulting design matador or demi-Dorfsman.
We call it Design Doctor.

Here are the benefits. We will work with you to develop a style, mood, flavor, aura, visual or brand identity, for your company and its products and services. Top management must be involved in our indoctrination and must stay involved. We need your muscular support or this will not work.

We'll develop a flexible visual guide for those elements that can be set in stone (but OK, we'll keep the mortar wet).

We'll work with your creative resources, whether in-house or outsourced, to develop an approach that has a consistent sensibility unique to your company, and right for your company.

We'll work with your various departments, their heads and, more important, with the people in those departments who carry out these ideas, to ensure a healthy spirit of cooperation.

You have to approve the process and let the staff know you support it.

The ultimate benefit: your company will have a more consistent, powerful and persuasive visual brand identity to reach staff, stockholders, customers, prospects, the trade. Consistent. Not rigid.

Here are the pitfalls.
It ain't cheap.
It ain't easy.

Ain't cheap because you have to pay us, which costs more than having no one doing the coordinating. After the first few weeks, you'll probably need us only one, maybe two days a week.

Ain't easy because we are outsiders and some noses may be a little out of joint. Because every company has a corporate culture and this may feel invasive. But we know, you do not set policy by fiat. You have lunch and schmooze with anyone and everyone sooner or later who you can help and who can hinder the process. You involve them and incorporate their ideas.

And when the finished pieces are available, which go into their portfolio or resumé, they will rhapsodize / kvell, and claim the consulting design doctor was their idea.

Let Listen, Write, Design, customize a program for you.
Please call Larry Miller, 704.542.3375.