In today’s competitive automotive industry, standing out is more challenging than ever. The rise of cost-effective foreign manufacturers and global automotive giants puts European brands under pressure. For marketing directors and brand managers, adapting while maintaining brand consistency is crucial.

Staying recognizable in a shifting landscape

1. Rising competition from foreign brands

Asian manufacturers now account for 24% of new passenger car registrations in Europe, with 11% of these vehicles made in Asia. Their aggressive marketing saturates media, making it harder for local brands to compete. Without a centralized brand strategy, European brands risk being overshadowed in consumer perception.

Additionally, automotive brands in transformation to e-mobility face a market that isn’t fully keeping up, largely due to economic decline and shifting consumer preferences. The increased influence of U.S. and East Asian brands further challenges German automakers’ ability to maintain dominance in key global markets.

Foreign Brands Gain Ground in Europe

2. Budgetary pressures limiting marketing impact

Economic uncertainties have tightened marketing budgets across the DACH region. In Germany, advertising spending has fluctuated, reaching €2.32 billion in recent years. Additionally, only 12% of marketing leaders believe their teams are structured to meet revenue goals, and just 7% feel they have the right skills to execute effective campaigns. With fewer resources, maintaining a strong brand presence requires smarter, more efficient marketing solutions.

Moreover, as budgets tighten, brands struggle to allocate funds to localizing content while maintaining consistency, which can create inconsistencies in branding across dealership networks and sub-brands.

Marketing impact in tight times

3. Dominance of global conglomerates

Mergers and alliances allow major players to pool resources, making it difficult for smaller brands to compete. Furthermore, 85% of global purchase influencers have reported dissatisfaction with at least one aspect of a winning vendor’s experience, emphasizing the need for a clear and consistent brand identity that resonates with consumers and business buyers alike.

At the same time, automotive brands in the DACH region face the challenge of managing multiple sub-brands while ensuring unified brand representation. Without a structured system, regional inconsistencies arise, weakening consumer trust and recognition.

Amid these challenges, European brands must focus on speed, efficiency, and consistency to remain visible and strengthen consumer connections.

Consistency Builds Recognition

The role of local dealerships in brand success

One of the most critical elements of brand success in the automotive industry is the dealership network. While corporate teams establish brand identity and global messaging, dealerships are the frontline representatives of the brand. They interact directly with customers, respond to regional market demands, and drive local sales.

However, without a structured brand governance system, dealerships often face challenges such as:

• Inconsistent marketing execution – Local teams create off-brand content, leading to a diluted customer experience.
• Slow response to market trends – Relying on external agencies slows down content creation, delaying campaigns and promotions.
• Lack of visibility over brand compliance – Corporate teams struggle to ensure marketing materials adhere to brand guidelines.

To succeed, automotive brands must strike the right balance between centralized control and dealership-level flexibility.

Leveraging templated content creation

A structured and scalable content creation process offers a streamlined solution for automotive brands, ensuring consistency, efficiency, and adaptability across all marketing efforts.

1. Faster creation = faster recognition

Brand consistency builds trust and strengthens consumer bonds. With on-brand content creation, marketing teams can quickly produce and deploy content using pre‑approved templates, ensuring all marketing materials meet brand guidelines while reducing inefficiencies caused by disconnected regional strategies.

Dealerships can access corporate-approved templates that allow them to customize messaging, promotions, and campaigns while maintaining a strong, unified brand identity.

2. Increased output without extra costs

Scaling content creation without additional resources is crucial in a cost-conscious environment. Since only 7% of marketing leaders feel confident in their teams’ skills, an intuitive templated system enhances efficiency by enabling all stakeholders—from corporate marketing to regional dealerships—to contribute to brand communication without specialist design skills.

With built-in approval workflows, content can move seamlessly from production to publication, ensuring brand compliance at every step and reducing costly design bottlenecks.

Scalable Creativity Without the Extra Cost

3.  Localized content with regional consistency

The European market’s cultural diversity demands tailored content. A on-brand content creation solution allows local teams to adapt marketing assets while maintaining a globally aligned brand identity. This ensures:

• Faster adaptation of marketing materials to suit local market needs.
• Compliance with brand guidelines across all regional activations.
• A seamless blend of corporate control and dealer-level flexibility.

By leveraging a Digital Asset Management (DAM) system, automotive brands can:

• Centralize all marketing assets, ensuring easy access to up-to-date, approved content.
• Implement user permissions that tailor access for dealerships, distributors, and corporate teams.
• Maintain a consistent brand identity even as sub-brands and markets evolve.

Building brand trust through digital transformation

A strong and adaptable branding strategy is crucial for automotive brands to remain competitive in an evolving market. To successfully balance global brand consistency with local market demands, companies must implement structured digital asset management and on-brand content creation solutions. Here’s how:

1. Adapting to shifting consumer demands As consumer preferences evolve and economic conditions fluctuate, brands need to respond quickly. A structured content system allows local teams to launch localized promotions and seasonal campaigns instantly, ensuring they remain relevant and responsive without waiting for lengthy approvals from corporate headquarters.
2. Enhancing dealer engagement Local dealerships are the face of the brand, and they need tools to execute marketing effectively. Providing an on-brand content creation system empowers dealers to customize materials while maintaining corporate‑defined standards. This creates a sense of ownership and ensures that local marketing efforts align with the broader brand strategy.
3. Ensuring effortless brand compliance Without proper oversight, brand inconsistencies can arise across different regions and dealership networks. A centralized digital asset management (DAM) system enables corporate teams to control branding elements, ensuring only approved, up-to-date content is used. Automated compliance checks and streamlined approval processes prevent off‑brand messaging and safeguard brand integrity.

A competitive edge for the automotive industry

With Papirfly’s integrated suite, brands can transform their marketing operations to compete more effectively:

• On-brand content creation at scale – Ensuring speed and efficiency in marketing asset production across all markets.
• Eliminating marketing inefficiencies – Reducing time spent searching for assets and recreating content that already exists.
• Strengthening brand consistency – Unifying brand representation across all sub‑brands and dealership networks.

Drive your brand forward with Papirfly

In a dynamic market, speed and consistency are essential. Papirfly’s On-brand Content Creation solution helps brands adapt, strengthen their presence, and engage audiences effectively.

Rebranding is a process every business must go through to stay relevant in an ever-evolving landscape.

As customer attitudes change and your own visions and values naturally shift, occasional refreshes are crucial to your company’s long-term development. While there’s no hard and fast rule about exactly when to rebrand, the vast majority of S&P 100 companies revitalized their identity in their first seven years of existence.

While these activities are a strategic necessity, change is often hard. Any rebrand, regardless of its size or scale, requires a significant investment of time, resources and creative energy:

With so much at stake, maintaining a consistent brand image in the months and years following the initial rebrand rollout is an essential part of making it stick.

Before a company’s refreshed brand can truly take off, realizing this new direction calls for close collaboration between a company’s in-house marketing leaders and the outside design agency they’ve chosen to lead the way.

Without consistent, coherent communication between a company and their third-party creatives at every stage, these big projects can take longer to complete, send costs soaring, and lead to a disjointed identity post-rebrand.

Whether you’re an organization eyeing a new identity, or a third-party agency being brought on to develop a refreshed look and feel, in this article we outline 3 ways to achieve better collaboration between marketing leaders and design agencies – advice you can use to complete these projects efficiently, so you can build a platform for long-term brand consistency across channels.

Marketing leaders and design agencies: Combining strengths for a successful rebrand

The best, most sustainable rebrands are formed through the combined efforts of a company’s internal marketing teams and a supporting design or marketing agency. While it may be tempting for in-house marketing leaders to “go it alone”, both sides bring much-needed strengths to the rebranding process:

In-house marketing leaders: The grounding force

The in-house marketing team champions the existing brand and drives the rebranding strategy forward. They live and breathe their company’s values, vision and visual identity, enabling them to identify where changes must be made based on their market position, business goals and how customers are evolving.

Beyond this, they will also be key to setting the objectives and parameters of the rebrand project, coordinating all internal stakeholders each step of the way. And, perhaps most importantly, they will be responsible for ensuring the new brand identity is consistently applied long after the rebrand rollout.

External design agencies: The creative spark

If internal marketing leaders are the grounding force of any rebrand, design and marketing agencies act as the creative spark that bring the specific goals and visions of a rebrand to life:

• They provide a fresh, outside perspective, not blinkered by company culture or past decisions, enabling them to innovate their clients’ visual identity and brand messaging
• They offer specialist expertise in creative concepts and design, bringing industry knowledge, trends, insights and strategic thinking that can elevate a brand’s in-house resources
• They often have a broader skill set, with experts in graphic design, UX and digital marketing to help internal teams deliver all aspects of the rebranding process to a high standard
• They can fully devote their time and resources to driving the rebrand forward, giving internal marketers the capacity they need to manage the day-to-day demands of brand management

All this is to say that, when it comes to delivering a fruitful rebrand, two heads are better than one. Not only does success require the base knowledge and structure of a company’s marketing leaders, it also demands the ingenuity and expertise of an agency partner to bring the right ideas to life.

However, without solid communication between both sides at every stage, it can be easy for these projects to quickly succumb to common rebrand mistakes. To stop this from happening next time you’re given the greenlight , finding effective ways to collaborate should be one of your top priorities.

Common rebrand mistakes

3 techniques and tools for exceptional collaboration during the rebrand process

1. A united approach to brand auditing and strategic planning

First, it’s important that every individual involved in the rebrand process begins on the same page. A ‘staggered start’ to a project of this scale can quickly snowball into further delays, while any last-minute second-guessing can lead to costly changes that should have been agreed earlier.

So, how do you avoid these monumental projects faltering at the first hurdle? In our view, it’s important to get both sides of the rebrand team actively involved in the initial steps of a rebrand:

• Auditing a brand’s perception and presence
• Setting out the long-term marketing strategy
• Agreeing the overarching objectives

While it may seem obvious that the in-house marketing leaders handle the brand audit alone due to their close proximity to what goes on, it can be beneficial for a design agency to conduct their own separate audit. Their impartial perspective may highlight issues and opportunities that internal teams overlook.

From here, both sides can then compare and contrast their findings, bringing all viewpoints to the table to establish a shared starting point. With everyone on the same page about the problems and possibilities, you can take a holistic approach to how the vision, values and visual identity of the brand should evolve.

Settling this from the outset should mean the rebrand process runs smoothly from start to finish, with expectations established on all sides.

2. An interactive way to present a new visual identity

Creating the concepts for a refreshed visual identity is a back-and-forth process where clarity is key. It’s vital that a design agency can clearly pitch their rationale behind new logos, color palettes, typography and wider design files to the internal marketing team.

Any breakdown in communication here can set the rebrand process back significantly. Misinterpretations might result in the creation of multiple iterations that cost both agencies and their clients precious time and money, all while generating tension between all stakeholders.

When brand presentations fail to educate and enthuse clients

While slideshows and mood boards can certainly help agencies visualize their concepts, the best approach to rebrand presentations involves using a brand portal.

A brand portal is an online hub designed to house everything that makes up a brand’s identity. From examples of visual elements to dedicated brand guidelines and style guides, these portals can act as a vivid representation of how a brand looks and feels.

Building a brand portal in the style of the new rebrand allows a design agency to showcase their concepts in a more dynamic, interactive way. Then, the in-house marketing teams can engage with it in their own time, fully immersing themselves in this refreshed identity now and in the future.

By providing this all-round, hands-on picture of a renewed identity, all sides stay on the same wavelength and can reach faster decisions on any desired changes. Plus, it can greatly reduce the risk of misunderstandings, so there’s no delay in reaching the final, agreed-upon concept.

Using a brand portal for a design presentation

3. Bring all rebranded assets together in one place

When the core concepts for a new brand are signed off and settled, then comes the hard task of replacing old branded content with new, refreshed assets.

From website graphics, digital advertising assets and social media profiles, to signage, packaging and physical collateral – every customer-facing material must consistently reflect this new brand identity.

Managing these digital assets is one of the biggest challenges of any rebrand, especially when it comes to multichannel marketing. Without effective communication between internal marketing teams and external design agencies, it’s all too easy for required assets to be missed, or for newly created materials to be lost in email chains or disorganized servers.

So, to fulfill this task in the most seamless, efficient way possible, we suggest two important steps:

Create a shared checklist of all required brand assets

First, it’s crucial to set up a complete list of every place your brand assets are currently used. Both digital and physical channels, internally and externally.

Using an online spreadsheet or similar collaborative tracking tool, assign team members to investigate the entire marketing ecosystem, logging everything you find in this single shared list.

Once this is complete, it can then be shared with the people responsible for creating the rebranded assets – be that the design agency or in-house professionals using on-brand content creation tools. This will ensure that no stone is left unturned, so there isn’t any remnant of your old branding present when you hit the big red launch button.

Use Digital Asset Management (DAM) software to centralize all materials

With the new brand shaped and the full remit of refreshed content created, setting up an enterprise Digital Asset Management (DAM) system for your marketing teams helps them bring all up-to-date marketing materials into one centralized, orderly digital asset library.

Why is Digital Asset Management important for structuring your rebrand? DAM tools act as a “single source of truth” for a brand, bringing all content together in a comprehensive repository that teams can access worldwide, whenever they want.

As you can imagine, during a rebrand, this structured approach to media asset management is vital. The right DAM software ensures the new wave of collateral isn’t scattered around in email threads or on disparate servers.

On top of that, because a DAM is a cloud-based solution, all stakeholders can access it in real-time. That means if you’ve split the roles and responsibilities of creating marketing materials between the internal teams and the design agency, both sides can log their content in the system immediately.

Efficient Digital Asset Management workflows allow for seamless collaboration during this often arduous content creation stage. With everyone involved bringing their work together into one shared space, the rollout of your various types of brand assets can be handled smoothly, keeping projects on schedule and consistency at the core of every channel.

The benefits of Digital Asset Management don’t stop with the rollout. A high-quality DAM system will then be a vital ally in reinforcing the rebrand over the weeks, months and years ahead, which is key to keeping your new identity at the forefront of customers’ minds.

By empowering your users to organize, locate and distribute assets using intuitive tags and categories, choosing a DAM solution for your branding team helps you make sure future content is created and published the way it’s intended, with zero risk of compromising your core identity.

Working together toward a rewarding rebrand

A rebrand by its very nature can be a risky proposition. Get it wrong and it can seriously damage your reputation in the eyes of customers – as organizations such as Tropicana, GAP and Pizza Hut have learned the hard way.

But, rebranding is an integral part of a brand’s survival. By fostering strong communication and collaboration between your in-house marketing teams and your chosen design agency, you put yourself on the surest footing to achieve a rebrand that resonates with audiences, covers all bases and drives business growth.

We hope that the suggested techniques and tools outlined in this article make your next rebrand as seamless as possible, and puts the foundation in place for long-term brand uniformity under your new identity.

In today’s fast-paced automotive industry, speed is crucial. With new models being released more frequently and consumer expectations changing rapidly, automotive brands face mounting pressure to launch campaigns quickly and consistently across their nationwide dealer networks.

Yet, many brands find themselves stuck in neutral when it comes to dealer network campaign deployment. Coordinating marketing efforts across hundreds of independent dealers while maintaining brand consistency and meeting tight launch timelines is no small feat.

The high cost of slow campaign deployment

For automotive brands, traditional dealer network rollout strategies present significant challenges that can hinder launch success and impact brand reputation:

• Marketing teams spend excessive time on manual asset creation for multiple dealers
• Lengthy approval processes delay crucial campaign components across the network
• Brand messaging varies between independent dealers, leading to market inconsistency
• Dealership marketing teams wait on corporate for localized materials
• Delayed dealer campaign launches result in missed market opportunities

These delays don’t just inconvenience dealer networks; they seriously affect the bottom line. In an industry where a single day’s delay could mean millions in missed opportunities and lost revenue, accelerating dealer campaign deployment isn’t just an operational goal—it’s essential for success.

The Agency Connection: Supporting dealer marketing partners

A critical aspect of automotive marketing is creative agencies’ role in dealer campaign deployment. Many independent dealers work with trusted agency partners to create local campaigns and engaging content, where success lies in balancing dealer creativity with brand consistency. Modern dealer network platforms enhance these agency relationships by transforming how teams work together.

Agencies gain immediate access to approved dealer marketing assets and streamlined approval processes, while collaboration between corporate teams, dealerships, and their agencies becomes seamless. This unified approach ensures brand compliance while supporting dealer marketing creativity and significantly reduces time spent on repetitive asset creation.

When teams adapt their collaborative processes and digital solutions, automotive brands can unlock new levels of efficiency and creativity across their dealer networks — laying the foundation for transformative improvements in dealer network marketing.

Transforming dealer network marketing

Forward-thinking automotive brands are adopting modern dealer network marketing strategies to reshape their campaign deployment. This new model empowers independent dealers while maintaining corporate oversight, striking the perfect balance between speed and consistency.

Key Elements of Success

Centralized Asset Creation with Dealer Flexibility: At the heart of modern dealer marketing lies a flexible yet controlled system of asset creation, where dealers can customize master templates while staying within brand guidelines. The system automatically adjusts content sizes across marketing channels, while built-in compliance controls maintain brand standards throughout the network, creating an efficient balance between dealer autonomy and brand integrity.

Streamlined Processes and Technology: Speed and efficiency are achieved through automated approval workflows and template-based production methods that accelerate asset creation and deployment. With real-time collaboration between corporate and dealership teams, plus instant reformatting capabilities for various marketing channels, dealers stay equipped with current materials while maintaining clear visibility into campaign status across the network.

Real Results from Leading Automotive Brands

Major automotive manufacturers like BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and Volkswagen embracing modern dealer network marketing are experiencing transformative improvements across their operations. These leading brands have dramatically reduced their campaign deployment times while significantly cutting creative production costs.

As seen in BMW’s recent network transformation, local marketing has become more efficient through streamlined customization processes, all while maintaining stronger brand consistency across their global networks. From Audi to Toyota, new model launches reach the market faster, and dealer marketing resources are utilized more effectively than ever before. Premium brands using this approach have revolutionized their deployment process—BMW, for example, transformed what was once a weeks-long dealer network rollout into a smooth operation that rapidly reaches their entire dealer base in just days.

The Path Forward: Building an Effective Dealer Marketing Ecosystem

Automotive brands looking to accelerate their dealer network campaigns should consider these steps:

Step 1: Assess Your Current Dealer Process

• Evaluate existing dealer campaign deployment workflows
• Identify bottlenecks in dealer network marketing
• Calculate the cost of delayed dealer launches

Step 2: Build the Right Foundation

• Implement a centralized dealer marketing platform
• Establish comprehensive dealer asset management
• Create automated workflows for dealer compliance
• Enable self-service capabilities for dealership teams
• Integrate with existing dealer marketing systems

Step 3: Empower Your Dealer Network

• Provide user-friendly tools for dealers and their agencies
• Establish clear communication across the network
• Foster collaboration between corporate and dealer marketing teams
• Support dealer creativity while maintaining brand control
• Offer comprehensive training for all dealer users

The Future of Automotive Marketing

As the industry evolves—with electric vehicles, direct-to-consumer sales, and digital showrooms becoming the norm—swift and consistent dealer network execution becomes increasingly vital. The automotive landscape demands brands that can execute with precision and speed. Success will belong to those organizations that launch dealer campaigns at market speed while maintaining perfect brand consistency across their network. This means empowering independent dealers with the tools they need while protecting brand integrity, and scaling marketing operations efficiently to meet ever-growing market demands. The automotive brands that master this balance of speed, consistency, and scalability will be best positioned to thrive in this rapidly evolving industry.

Accelerate Your Dealer Network Marketing Today

The technology exists today to transform your dealer network campaign deployment from a months-long marathon into a sprint. Modern dealer marketing platforms enable automotive brands to accelerate their go-to-market speed dramatically while maintaining brand consistency and compliance across their dealer network.

The question isn’t whether to modernize your dealer marketing approach—it’s how quickly you can shift. In today’s competitive automotive market, the brands that can launch fastest across their dealer networks will ultimately win the race for consumer attention and sales.

Ready to accelerate your dealer network marketing? Learn how BMW and other leading automotive brands are transforming their campaign deployment speed while maintaining perfect brand consistency across their dealer networks. Read the full story of BMW’s dealer network transformation.