Elevating brand reputation globally while empowering local markets

Rabobank maintained local market presence while growing at scale, protecting their global brand equity.

Rabobank’s teams create more in-house while spending less:

212%

minimum overall ROI

20x

cost avoidance vs platform investment

23,000+

assets created across one year

Uniting Rabobank’s global workforce

Rabobank is a multinational cooperative bank headquartered in the Netherlands, serving both retail and corporate clients. With a global focus on the food and agriculture sectors, for 125 years Rabobank has been committed to creating a future-proof society and tackling major societal challenges.

Furthering its mission ‘to grow a better world together’, Rabobank’s teams faced the challenge to unite 43,000 worldwide employees in maintaining its core brand identity, while growing at scale.

Prioritising brand reputation

With a central marketing team including 14 marketing divisions in the Netherlands as well as localised marketing teams in each operating country, a lack of global brand governance was threatening to dilute the equity of such a well-established, historic brand. The variation in services available within different regions also added a level of complexity to their brand management. 

“A clear, consistent brand is pivotal for our marketing success. The Papirfly Platform helps us to protect and strengthen our brand identity. The all-in-one brand management solution is a portal for everyone – consistency is guaranteed and users can effortlessly craft polished brand collateral, to progress Rabobank’s mission and growth goals in an efficient way.”

Roel Smit
Product Owner of Brand Portal
Rabobank

A platform to support brand growth at scale

In order to protect brand reputation and long-term loyalty, the team at Rabobank prioritised finding a brand management solution that could match their growing global market presence  and long-term ambitions without outsourcing management of the brand to external agencies.

This meant finding a solution that could:

  • Organise brand guidelines, both on a visual and strategic level
  • Store and share assets with Digital Asset Management (DAM) that had room to develop alongside AI capabilities
  • Streamline asset production to create consistently on-brand content with simple collaborative workflow and approval processes

It was vital software capabilities instilled a deep confidence that continued growth at scale would be more manageable. Papirfly Platform is now empowering Rabobank’s people in this way, having been integrated into teams’ day-to-day operations.

“Working with Papirfly feels like a partnership. Having a great number of brand users and stakeholders, it’s only natural to have a lot of ideas and suggestions for specific needs, and great conversations have led to a constructive and meaningful relationship between us as partners. We always feel heard and many requests and ideas have been implemented.”

Roel Smit
Product Owner of Brand Portal
Rabobank

Going beyond DAM in a brand management platform

The shift of innovation in adopting brand management technology that moved beyond the constraints of traditional DAMs marked a significant milestone in Rabobank’s journey. The company embraced a holistic approach to brand governance – empowering teams to engage with the brand dynamically, fostering creativity, while also embedded brand consciousness throughout the organisation, utilising core elements of the Papirfly Platform.

Centralising assets for Rabobank’s global and local teams

Creating a foundation for the Rabobank identity to thrive began with building a home for the brand. Customising the platform to accommodate their global team structure, it was possible to organise their brand guidelines both on a visual and strategic level.


The foundational rules in place, with a Digital Asset Management solution, assets could be easily stored, categorised and accessed across the global business – pre-approved brand elements, images, documents, and other assets were made easily accessible from one central source, with user permissions applied by the central team, according to an employee’s position, region or country for campaigns and activities relevant to that individual or team.

Working smarter to protect brand reputation

Using the Papirfly templating solution, Rabobank streamlined on-brand asset production for their global teams, empowering the creation of unlimited studio-quality marketing assets without the need to hire designers or external agencies. This includes internal communications and non-digital brand assets that bring the Rabobank brand to life across the globe. 


Campaign execution was simplified with collaborative workflow and approval processes embedded within the Rabobank team structure that accelerated time to market and improved internal efficiencies. The agile solution empowered local teams to quickly respond to industry trends and world events that could build a deeper sense of trust and loyalty whilst ensuring the brand’s reputation was protected.

“Our users swiftly adapted to the software with excellent support during some early workshops with the team at Papirfly. Users grew confident with the UI very quickly, and after they saw how simple and fast it was to use it became very difficult to imagine people wanting to use any other brand management platform.”

Roel Smit
Product Owner of Brand Portal
Rabobank

Monitoring brand metrics that matter

In today’s climate, cost avoidance and proving ROI is crucial for Roel Smith, owner of the Papirfly Platform for Rabobank. Portal users produce an average of 2,500 on-brand assets globally per month, which each need to go through an approval process before being activated. 

By leveraging the Papirfly Platform, Rabobank has seen savings of at least 212% in asset production, equivalent to over $5m annually, without compromising on time to market. By evaluating the cost avoidance achieved by implementing a brand management platform, Roel can ensure that the annual savings are at least 20 times the cost of the platform.

Empowering teams to build an on-brand culture

Rabobank’s platform is continuing to unite teams everywhere on what it means to represent and be a part of the Rabobank brand. Over 22,000 users access the portal every year (with that number growing). With 2,500 regular users activating the Rabobank brand – not to mention the 500 external users that can perfectly maintain the Rabobank brand in their specific professional relationship – Rabobank have future-proofed their brand reputation to ensure 100% consistency is maintained as business continues to thrive.

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