In all honesty, does everyone in your organization know where they can find marketing collateral? Do they understand the look and feel of your brand and adhere to brand guidelines?
The answer is more often than not, no. It’s also one of the most common causes of unnecessary strain on the marketing department. Improper brand usage and endless questions about finding certain marketing assets or sending this or that file is a cause for marketing inefficiency and brand inconsistency.
But there is hope…
The benefits of a brand portal
Requests and confusion about file storage result in a lot of wasted time. Marketing departments spend hours preparing collateral and assets of different kinds – brochures, leaflets, ads, product images och videos needed in different departments and for different uses. They might be used as sales material or on the web, but most assets are put to use more than once. Another common denominator is that the assets in some way all support the organisations business or branding.
The challenge with a huge number of assets is to make sure that all stakeholders find what they need, and use the proper collateral in the correct format and version.
Also read: Why digital assets and your brand steal time
It’s common that different solutions are used for different kinds of collateral. Images and icons for the web are put on a Dropbox or Google Drive that only the marketing department can access, sales have multiple versions of each of the sales presentations saved locally on their computers while old brochures and employee photos are stored somewhere on a file server handled by the IT department.
This array of assets and spread in storage locations is a real obstacle for effective workflows and usually results in additional work of creating new versions of the existing material that can’t be located. Furthermore, not all colleagues know where to look for assets, which server, system, or person they need to ask. Some common scenarios are:
- Images stored in a media bank – “Wait what was the URL to that again?
- Product information flyers stored on a company server – “Which server? How do I find a particular item in this structure? Which version is correct?”
- A creative agency delivering creative content for an upcoming campaign – “How do we receive the files? How are we going to keep track of versions?”
- Company presentations – “Do we have a template we need to use? Which version is correct?”
- Brand identity – “Wait, what was our colour scheme again? Where can I find the logo in black?”
Collect your brand in one single place
The solution to these issues may sound simple but is a bit of a leap for most organizations. You collect and organize all company assets, brand and marketing material in the same location – In a brand portal. That way, you can showcase material more easily, make it searchable and allow for the filter of assets for easier browsing. Only the latest versions are displayed and you can upload in several different file formats.
At the basis of a brand portal is the media archive, or Digital Asset Management system, where all files, documents and assets are stored. Powerful systems let you set up user access levels and filtering of materials so groups of employees only have access to the right materials. There’s no risk of unauthorized uploads or files being deleted by mistake.
Also read: This is how you organize your digital assets
If a colleague, collaborating agency or media source needs some assets you can easily share a download link with them instead of sending emails with heavy file attachments. With everything stored in the same location, it’s much easier for everyone in your organisation to know where to go.
This is what a brand portal can do for you?
A brand portal does more than structure digital assets. A true portal will automate your working day and transform how you work.
A brand portal provides seamless brand management and secures efficient marketing. With powerful tools such as digital brand guidelines, a media archive, digital design templates and many more, how you manage your brand and marketing will never be the same.
- Secure brand consistency: With digital brand guidelines, keeping your brand alive and available for everyone in your company is easy. Your brand is always updated and relevant and you never have to worry about an old brand in circulation again.
- Protect your valuables: Your assets are company valuables. By standardizing where assets are stored, your assets are safe. Everyone will know where to find and what to find. And lost assets will be yesterdays problem.
- Increase efficiency: When everything is collected in one single place. Time spent on looking for marketing collateral is reduced to a minimum. Assets and collateral is always available, even adjustable. Anyone can create their own assets without involving designers or marketing team.