Coming up with fresh ideas, keeping track of your assets and trying to ensure the whole organisation’s singing from the same hymn sheet.
Staying “on brand” takes a lot.
But there are plenty of MarTech options out there, all designed to make the life of the modern marketer a little easier. One of which is a digital asset management system; tailor-made to keep your business consistent, in control and firing on all creative cylinders. Here’s how...
#1. Consistency
Our research of 200 UK marketing professionals found that despite 91% of marketing decision-makers agreeing that having up-to-date brand guidelines is important, 43% haven’t reviewed them in the last 12 months.
Unfortunately, when there’s so much going on, this sort of task often sits at the bottom of the priority pile. We get it.
But if there are inconsistencies in a story that someone’s telling, we naturally become suspicious, right?
Things don’t add up.
In a similar vein, when a brand’s assets feel misaligned it can make audiences quickly disengage and look elsewhere. Because if a picture’s worth a thousand words, the narrative we tell through our imagery’s got to be a compelling one.
Digital asset management systems can help make sure that the story your brand is telling is both coherent and consistent. Our own solutions Asset Bank & Dash do a lot of the heavy lifting for you, optimising digital assets so that they’re ready to go - whatever the channel. Getting your digital ducks in a row with Asset Bank or Dash is dead easy, all you need to do is:
- Upload your brand assets into the system
- Set your formats and pre-set sizes - ready for any channel
- Share the correct assets with your teams
Santander UK is using Asset Bank to help keep its brand image consistent on a massive scale. Looking after their artwork, logos, brand photography and more, there are now over 86,000 assets in the system that almost 900 users can access with ease.
Essentially, DAMs are gatekeepers for keeping things perfectly aligned. Leaving you with more time for the creative stuff.
#2. Creativity
From our research, 58% of marketers said that brand awareness was their priority this year. But cutting through the noise these days takes more than a little creativity - it takes time.
But to get there quickly, you have to be in the right mindset. And opening and closing various design and editing platforms - whilst simultaneously trawling through files for images - can definitely snap you out of the zone.
That’s why we’ve integrated Dash with Adobe Creative Suite and Microsoft Office. This can save designers lots of admin time by allowing them to:
- browse documents and images on Dash from within Adobe/Microsoft applications
- drag-and-drop images straight into documents
- upload edited document backs into Dash
- link images from Dash to InDesign files
It gives creative teams more time to collaborate and “cross the streams”; allowing designers to craft some copy and vice versa - which we reckon’s pretty important in marketing these days.
So although a digital asset management system can’t come up with ideas for you, it can definitely give you a little more headspace to get to that lightbulb moment.
And when it does come? Well, you can feel safe in the knowledge that no creative goes live without the OK from your brand guardian.
#3. Control
When Bright worked with ITVCreative to launch a hub for all of ITV’s new assets, it included an approval process for any creative that used brand multimedia.
So, for example, if a designer used a logo in their artwork, they’d upload the finished article for approval and an ITVCreative brand guardian would then give the OK for it to go live. Alternatively, they could reject it and add some comments for the designer to follow when amending. Handily, the approved file remains archived on the site too - complete with a log of who gave the OK. So, whatever happens, you’ll always have a “paper” trail for future reference - keeping you and your team in complete control.
But brand control doesn’t just mean giving the OK for creative to go live; a DAM can empower your staff, enabling them to feel like masters of their domains - and their workloads.
We mentioned before the worrying statistic from a 2018 survey of 1,000 full-time employees by Nintex that revealed 49% had trouble locating documents and struggled with version control in their organisations.
A digital asset management solution can help clear up some of the confusion, putting your team back in the driving seat. It does so by:
- getting assets out of locally stored files and off of desktops
- allowing instant access to files, putting an end to lengthy zips in the run-up to deadlines
- stopping internal bottlenecks and that one member of staff being questioned 24/7 for the correct version
So whether it’s creativity, control or consistency that your brand’s battling with, a DAM might just give you the support you need to take things to the next level.
Wondering whether a digital asset management system is the solution for you? Get in touch to give it a try (it’s completely free).
