Are you responsible for your company’s brand and digital assets? Do you have a proper system for this, or is it a bit messy and unclear where all files are stored?
These are matters that may steal a lot of your time. Lets take a closer look at time thieves in regards to brand management and how you can arrest these thieves.
Your company assets are not stored in one place
Regardless of the size of your company, it is likely that your brand has a comprehensive range of digital assets. Your marketing and design department has most likely spent hours creating these. That time isn’t a time thief alone. However, when the magnitude of files are sizeable and the storage is unstructured and all over the place, the clock starts ticking.
Files become unavailable and it is time consuming for your colleagues to send emails requesting assets each time. Not to mention when the person responsible for the assets are unavailable or even left the company. In a survey, marketers report that locating company assets is one of the biggest challenges.
All of this is preventable if your company establishes a storage system where all digital assets are collected. The system should be intuitive and accessible for everyone.
You do not use a system for online storage
This is related to the topic above. It is great if you have a storage system, but it needs to be online. If you rely on collecting assets in an intranet solution, it prevents you to have access outside the office. Flexible and effective operations become difficult.
A study shows that 80% of companies share assets by email systems. Again, this increases the amount of file requests and the effectiveness of sharing them. First of all, this is time consuming. Secondly, it leads to files being all over the place and it becomes difficult to control your brand.
The benefits of an online storage system, rather than an intranet, is that these solutions are better prepared for content presentation, search, categorization as well as having an updated solution at all times.
With an online storage system, everyone has immediate access regardless of location. This saves time and frustration.
Poor folder structure and illogical tags
A system, locally or in the cloud, is of no good if your digital assets are not structured smart. Hundreds of files named “hundredandfifthynumberswithsmallandcapitalletters.JPG” stored in one folder, is also time consuming. Poor structure not only steals time, it offers disadvantages for your brand.
Make sure your system is intuitive, not only easy to understand but user friendly. It should be possible to save assets structured and categorized. Additionally, you need to be able to tag your assets and make them searchable.
Also read: This is how you structure your brand and marketing assets
Poor overview of what is new and old
When you are building a brand, it is important that your brand guidelines are followed at all times. If it is unclear what the approved and newest assets are – it will be challenging.
Use of old and outdated assets not only harms your brand, but it will also be a waste of time and money. Imagine that someone has spent numerous hours on a campaign or marketing activity that must be withdrawn because wrong assets are used.
To avoid unnecessary lost time, ensure that you have a system that is always updated with the latest assets. That way you make sure your brand is moving forward instead of backwards. It can also pay off to look for a system that enables the planning of everything from events to campaigns.
Zero backup
We have all been there – hours are spent creating something to end up deleting it or your computer decides to retire earlier than expected. Worst case scenario you say? But this is quickly done and can happen to the best of us regardless of how careful you are, files can simply disappear.
With appropriate backup solutions, you avoid losing important assets.