I started thinking to myself, why do I care about good design and branding on elearning? And why would anybody care? It began with one question, and it leads me to uncover what other experts and writers before me say about brand or branding on learning solutions.

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What is Brand, and what is Branding? 

According to Martie Neumeier, brand is a gut feeling people have about your business, product or service. There may be multiple brands for one business because everyone may have a different feeling about a service or product.

Branding is the tool to achieve that feeling. It can be visual, verbal or set of actions. A logo is a symbol or an attribute and part of the visual cue of branding.

With this understanding, why should we care about our brand on the company’s learning solutions?

1. Building a brand is similar is unifying a team. Your brand learning content can make or break the team trust for your brand as a thought leader. When people feel connected, they feel more motivated to work cohesively towards a common goal.
2. Consistent brand and recognition create credibility and reputation. Familiarity is comforting; it develops trust in your brand. Your brand provides the same product and service quality as before.
3. Believe it or not, it enhances the learner experience.
4. In this noisy online world, you want to make sure that your people hear your brand. Your brand can stand out in the crowd.
   

Branded learning happens when you implement branding throughout the learning culture. That can happen when:

1. The learning culture is tone at the top. Learning leader invest time, effort and money to create a sustainable learning culture.
2. Communication and collaboration between company leader or stakeholders and learning designers are aiming for the same business goal.
3. Recognising your people like your brand ambassadors. Acknowledging their contribution by giving praises in a consistent basis or reward their achievement.
4. Provide opportunities for your people to share their experience, learning and knowledge with their peers. Support your people to share their expertise.
5. Foster the culture of self-directed learning. Allow people to feel motivated to grow and develop themselves. When your people nurture themselves to be better, they will also boost the business.
6. Provides your people with relevant training, necessary tools and growth opportunity to and interact with existing and potential customers.
7. Celebrate failure and recognise that it’s a part of a successful journey.

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If branding can be cultivated through the learning culture, why bother branding your elearning?

1. eLearning can be part of your learning strategy to strengthen your branding identity.
2. Suppose you are a large organisation or franchise businesses and your one-true source for your branch manager or franchisee. Elearning can be your branding or marketing tool to connect with your people.
3. Branding can fuse a personal journey for your people. People feel more open and ready to welcome other ideas or information in a relevant and personalised experience compare to generic learning content. 

How to implement branding in elearning?

1. Consistent language and writing style with the company culture
2. Develop a learning program with the appropriate format. For example, you are implementing microlearning because your company has a fast-paced workflow. Or, you are implementing gamification because the company value plays a part in creativity and innovation. 
3. Develop relevant context and realistic scenarios for your people.
4. Use design elements from the company brand identity.
5. Implement social learning in the learning strategy. Allow your people to share their learning.

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