Many companies allocate significant budget resources for brand building. Many industries assign nearly 24% of their budget to marketing. With billions of different files that is sent from a company each year, digital asset management should be on top of the list.
If market leaders desire brand consistency, they should consider tools to automate workflows, enabling employees to use, maintain and share a company’s brand identity with ease.
The risk of poor asset management
It’s quite common that employees look for quick and simple ways of creating marketing material. Nevertheless, a company’s brand identity requires rules and guidelines to ensure consistent brand building.
If there is no system, you may be in brand trouble. 35% of employees report weakness in brand asset control in their company, including issues with finding, sharing and approving marketing assets – which can lead to a productivity loss of 21%.
Poor asset control dilutes your brand. When employees are unable to use correct brand or marketing assets in documents, emails or presentations, the brand integrity suffers. Not only is lack of consistency confusing for customers, but the company run the risk of giving the impression of being disorderly and unprofessional.
In fact, as insignificant as an outdated email signature can seem for the company’s overall brand strategy, it has an effect on what impression recipients of the emails have of your company. So, what do you do. You need a brand identity system.
What is a brand identity system?
A brand identity system is in reality a system for structuring assets and connecting them to the brand guidelines, also known as a brand asset management solution. Simply put, this is the system that eliminated poor asset management and brand dilution. In a broader aspect, this is a resource often provided as part of a brand management platform. What system you choose depends on many factors and it is important that you get familiar with your options as well as your needs.
Also read: What is brand asset management?
Investing in a brand identity system
To handle unstructured asset management, your company should look for solutions that makes it easier to control the brand. Before you do, make sure you know what you need. A complete brand management platform provides a range of features to secure availability and guidelines for marketing material and brand assets, and you should look for a solution that completes your requirements.
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Flexible CMS technology: A proper brand identity system allow you to create digital brand identity guidelines perfectly aligned with your brand profile and also reflecting your branding processes for seamless workflows.
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Access and availability: There are many online options to store files and assets, however, not all of them are created to suit the needs of a marketer. Jumping back and forth between systems to get the job done is a common scenario. Download a file to your computer, open it in another program, make edits and then upload your changed file in another solution. With a brand management platform, everything is done within the same solution. With companies becoming increasingly digital, transparent access and availability is key to ensuring efficient working processes and brand consistency.
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Efficient use of resources: The BrandMaster platform not only contributes with structure and sharing of assets, you are also able to prepare design templates and guidelines for all your employees to see and use. Enabling seamless communication and efficient use of resources.
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Full control: Users in need of brand and marketing assets are often impatient. They want it yesterday. Consequently, they create something on their own without any brand identity considerations. With access to a brand management platform, everything is available and updated for everyone. You get full control of your brand.
Also read: Collaborating with your marketing team for seamless brand management
With proper automation, the marketing manager and the team has one place for maintenance of brand assets and marketing material. It is also possible to communicate changes or news with ease without worrying if the message is received and read. Brand changes happens all the time, proper automation ensure that your brand stays the same regardless of where, when or who.
The future is in the cloud
Brand management as a cloud solution means that all initiatives to secure the brand identity is available online. Easy to distribute, also for the smaller companies.