When the branding gets tough, the tough …
I just read a an article on UX magazine that talks about the challenges in maintaining brand guidelines online, when at times these guidelines were created without online, let alone interactive, applications in mind. A situation like this can put designers in between a rock and a hard place. It’s our responsibility to respect and preserve the brand– to represent it well. However, when branding guidelines box us in to the point that we feel it is hampering user experience is when it gets tough.
It takes discernment to know when to embrace the rules and when to stand up and say that the rules need some improvement (which is a tough sell when these guidelines were set up specifically to preserve the brand). And, to me, that’s where the heart of this conundrum lies: your brand is upheld by all interactions with your audience. So maintaining your logo standards is one piece of it but by no means is it a silver bullet because overall user-experience can make or break the brand.
When making decisions about you online presence, some things to consider are usability, tone, clarity, reliability, and the list goes on. 
People want the pigment power. It is a primal instinct exposed through the child development years, this need to choose the crayon of one’s choice to color. I cannot remember hearing an adult chastise me for coloring a tree purple with crayons but I can trace my early works of art from purple trees to green trees. It happened to us all, this sad day when authority took away our color freedom. THE TREE MUST BE GREEN they scolded! Forget the fact that trees are orange or yellow in the autumn. Forget that your classmate Lulu ate your green crayon. Forget it all. You must adhere to society’s coloring guidelines - adhere they tell you! Make sure your pillow sheets match the comforter they tell you. Those pants don’t match those shoes they tell you.