The definition of work-life balance is quite different depending on who you work for. For some, it’s unlimited holiday, flexible working hours and perks-a-plenty. For others, the reality is much starker.

However your work-life balance scale is tipped, one thing’s for sure: If your time at work is full of stress, all the perks in the world won’t make a difference.

BAM by Papirfly™ was designed with one aim in mind: To give teams the freedom to fly. To free them from the fast-paced, ever-changing environment that demands high-level thinking, concentration, energy, multi-tasking and more.

Software isn’t going to save the world, but it can help to make work-life more enjoyable and fulfilling.

How BAM supports individual employees

Manageable hours and no longer working late

Whether resources are low or your team is stretched, there’s nothing worse than working through lunch or staying late just to meet deadlines. Rushing not only compromises the quality of output, but also leaves it more prone to errors. Working this way is unsustainable and unfulfilling. 

Working long hours is mentally draining and sees people missing out on important events with family and friends, as well as leaving them with less time for self-care and other activities that keep their mental and physical health in check.

BAM automates many time-consuming and manual processes, meaning that work gets done more quickly. There are predefined templates in place meaning that anyone in any team can create what they need when they need it. There’s no need to worry about things going wrong because the sign-off process is digitised and the creative is completed with guidelines enforced. 

In summary…

• No more long hours 
• Automate time-consuming tasks 
• Digitise sign-off 
• Prevents rushing 

Feeling less stressed

Many of BAM’s features are designed to make marketing as stress-free as possible. There’s less reliance on agencies or others around you, the responsibility of creation or editing can sit almost anywhere – with no design experience needed to create an infinite amount of assets, including print, digital, video, social, email and more.

These can all be made on-brand in a matter of minutes, so no panicking to push through any last-minute changes or amends. All the power is in your hands.

Able to meet deadlines and keep up with demand easily

When your marketing team is relied upon by all areas of the business, demand can quickly outweigh capacity. Often there’s not an option to say no and teams need to muddle through to achieve what they can, as quickly as they can.

With a dedicated campaign planner built-in to a DAM, everyone understands their deadlines. Marketing materials can be created quickly thanks to smart templates. Technically, anyone in the business can create the assets they need by themselves, as long as they have had the initial hour of training they are good to go.

This means no more over-committing, only seamless execution.

In summary…

• Shared responsibility and burden
• Deadlines met with ease
• Capacity is increased to cope with demand

Reduce the risk of anything going wrong

Anxiety and panic are significantly reduced when the scenarios that can cause them are eliminated. Having the assurance that stops things from going wrong is one of many ways to do this with BAM.

Predefined smart templates are built tailored to your brand. Locked down image libraries, colour combinations, layouts and more so that nothing can be created off-brand.

An optional digital sign-off process can also be embedded into any asset you create. This allows people to comment on particular elements of an asset, approve changes and give ultimate sign-off on the marketing’s release. A full audit trail is left which means you can see who did what and when. 

In summary…

• Full audit trail on assets
• Digitised approval process
• Pre-defined templates prevent anything being off-brand
  

More scope for remote working

When all or part of your team is working remotely, it’s important for them to be able to access what they need without always needing server access or software installed. Your brand’s dedicated brand portal is accessed via a URL and login on your normal browser, which means anyone can access and create what they need from anywhere in the world.

This pulls down huge barriers for teams who have been unable to embrace hybrid working. The power of BAM means they can always pick up where they left off, whether they’re at home, on-the-go or in the office.

Unmanageable workloads are a thing of the past

Taking on too much or feeling under too much pressure often only ends in one way – an unhappy person that looks elsewhere for a new role. Marketing is by its very nature a complex beast, but too much to deliver and too few resources is an unnecessary strain on teams.

Each of BAM’s four feature categories work to make workloads more manageable in the following ways:

Create – An infinite amount of print, digital, social and video assets. There’s no limit to the amount you can create so budgets can be stretched as far as you need them to go. Assets can be created in a matter of minutes, which means more time is freed up for individuals.

Educate – A central place for teams to access all brand guidelines and documentation, ensuring that everyone knows what they’re doing and when. The right teams in the right territories have access to the resources that are relevant for them, which helps to improve accuracy, eliminate mistakes and prevent duplication of effort.

Store & share – A built-in Digital Asset Management (DAM), where everything is centrally stored and accurately organised. Teams can access, edit and share any marketing materials that have been created without having to hunt for what they need. The latest versions and their history is all recorded, and prevents having to go back and redo assets.  

Manage – A central birdseye view of everything that’s going on, no need for back and forth on emails or endless Zoom calls. Create and access timelines, briefs, project information and files in one place. Manage sign-offs digitally and only release artwork for download once it’s signed off.

Ways BAM supports brands

Smart templates ensure everything’s on-brand

There’s total peace of mind that teams across the world are all on the same page and delivering to a high standard.

Teams are always informed and educated

A dedicated education section means that teams in every country have access to the information relevant to them and that brands are activated correctly.

Time is used more effectively

Reduction in time searching for files. Assets created in minutes. Less time liaising with agencies. Amends made in seconds. Time freed up for strategic thinking. There’s no end to the productivity gains made possible by BAM.

Transform the way you work forever

Learn more about the power of BAM for your corporate, employer brand or retail marketing team. Book your demo today. 

 

Brand managers have a big responsibility: to make sure the brand is aligned across every asset, every campaign, and every channel, all over the world. And without the right approval process in place, it’s easy for the content creation workflow to spiral into confusion, delays, inconsistencies.

It doesn’t have to be that way.

With the right structure and tools, approvals can run smoothly – and even help your team deliver better and faster.

Here’s how to simplify sign-off and keep every asset perfectly on-brand.

Five steps to streamline your sign‑off process

There are many ways to approach your marketing content approval workflow. The right approach will depend on the size and nature of your brand. That said, there are some key principles that always apply. The aim here is not to micromanage the content creation process – this is about ensuring clarity, consistency and control over all your brand campaigns.

Step 1: Map your approval process

Before you can streamline, you need clarity. Start by identifying all the people and processes involved in getting assets signed off. Your audit needs to include:

• What type of content and campaign material is being created
• The stages involved in the creation of each type
• Who is accountable at each stage
• Timelines for each stage
• Triggers for moving from each stage to the next
• How progress is communicated
• How campaigns are adapted for different markets
• Any alternative processes that exist for urgent or topical content

Does everyone know their role in this process? The advantage of using software like Papirfly is that the marketing content approval workflow is automated and visible to everyone, removing any confusion over who does what.

Step 2: Document everything

Ideally, you’re fully digital by now. If not, you may still be using physical forms, emails, a PDF annotator or project management tool to submit requests. Either way, it’s worth creating a standard template to keep everything consistent. This may be in the form of a checklist, comment boxes, or signature sections. Don’t just automatically go with what you’ve already got. You need to make sure you have documentation that addresses the following:

• How to submit change requests
• What happens after approval or refusal
• Who is accountable if something goes wrong
• What happens if the approval is unavailable
• How many revisions are allowed before escalation
• How are general review phases separated from approvals

A clear, shared approval guide is invaluable here. It helps new starters and existing employees get to grips with how things work – and gives you peace of mind that brand quality will be protected, even when you’re not there.

Step 3: Share brand guidelines

Without comprehensive brand guidelines, your approvals process could end up being unnecessarily long and complicated. Or worse, campaigns could go to market completely wrong. At the very minimum, brand guidelines should include:

• Logo use across different markets and applications
• Typeface and text sizing
• Supporting visual assets and icons
• Imagery guidance 
• Tone of voice rules

Step 4: Make feedback meaningful

Marketing content approval workflows work best when feedback is:

• Specific – you point to the exact issue and solution
• Actionable – you explain what happens next, and who takes ownership
• Aligned – you use brand guidelines to prevent subjective or inconsistent changes

Does everyone in your organization know this? To boost understanding, include examples of constructive feedback in your approval guide or as a separate piece of training. For example:

Step 5: Keep refining processes and fix recurring issues

Even the best processes hit bumps. Debrief after major projects to identify bottlenecks and fixes. Map imperfect journeys and rebuild your process if it’s not delivering. It’s also important to ensure all templates evolve with your brand.

If the same problems keep appearing in approvals, your brief might be the culprit. By refining briefs, you reduce amends – which means quicker sign-off and fewer bottlenecks. Check: 

• Are briefs detailed enough?
• Do different roles need tailored briefing formats?
• Does everyone have easy access to brand guidelines and assets?

How Papirfly transforms your marketing content approval workflow

With Papirfly’s Digital Asset Management and Templated Content Creation suite, your approvals are fully digitized, tracked, and optimized.

Key features to support your marketing content approval workflow include:

• Chat function — all stakeholders discuss feedback in one place, avoiding conflicting instructions
• Document markup — pinpoint exactly where changes are needed
• Locked templates — empower employees to create their own materials with core brand elements locked in, reducing the number of review steps required
• Automated workflows — from submission to sign-off, every stage is visible, accountable, and recorded
• Re-approval safeguards — any post-sign-off change reopens the approval process, ensuring final assets are always correct

The result? Faster approvals, stronger consistency, and full confidence in every asset you release – from one central portal.

Bring your approval workflow under control

With Papirfly, you can protect your brand, empower your teams, and get campaigns to market without the chaos. Book your demo today.

FAQs

When it comes to building a strong, memorable brand, consistency is crucial.

Presenting your audiences with a dependable, distinguishable identity on all channels is the origin of them building trust with your brand. Without trust, there can be no brand loyalty, and you lose your opportunity at securing that sought-after return customer.

To preserve consistency at a time where the demands on content production are greater than ever, organisations are encouraged to create clear brand guidelines that underpin everything that is published. Much of these concern the visual aspects of the brand, ensuring these don’t deviate from their identity.

Why tone of voice is so important

Just as important is keeping tone of voice and language on-brand and markets specific. Yet, this is often overlooked when it comes to these guidelines, as it is viewed as difficult to enforce and manage in the way visual assets can be.

The end result? Copywriters that are unsure of how to evoke their brand’s personality across content. With incessant pressure to produce this content, they instead write in their own style to compensate.

These inconsistencies impact how audiences view your brands. If there is no binding thread between your various touchpoints, this will prevent potential customers from gaining a solid sense of what your brand represents, making you appear less trustworthy.

What is tone of voice?

Although tone of voice is a commonly held expression, it is important to recognise that tone and voice are two separate entities.

Your brand’s voice is the base of your verbal personality. It represents the core values, characteristics and features that make up your brand’s unique identity, and will be unwavering across every piece of marketing collateral.

Tone by contrast is much more malleable and flexible. Tone is the application of your brand’s voice to fit the context of where it is used. For instance, a social post on Twitter hopping on the back of a trending meme will probably have a notably different tone than a press release about your latest development.

The tone and style it is written can be markedly different, but they can still carry that overarching voice behind your brand. That is the secret to a tone of voice that maintains complete consistency, but perfectly adapts to the channel it’s placed on.

This is a difficult balancing act, and certainly one that some brands perform better than others. But at the heart of the most successful examples are tone of voice guidelines, that remove any room for interpretation and make it clear to everyone in your company how you should be projected verbally in all circumstances.

Building your brand’s tone of voice guidelines

Your tone of voice guidelines set the rules for every aspect of your written communications. It is the document that all writers, both internal and freelance, should refer to in order to ensure they are producing content in line with your personality.

This will also streamline the process of onboarding new copywriters in how they get to grips with communicating your brand, and used as a reference guide for when it comes to editing and proofing.

Below, we’ve outlined our 9 tips to making these guidelines as robust and useful as they need to be to guarantee consistency throughout your content.

9 steps to great tone of voice guidelines

1. Perform a language audit

First, it’s important to assess the content that your brand currently produces across its various channels to identify anything that you feel is inconsistent with how you wish your brand to be perceived.

What words stand out most frequently in your content? How long are your sentences? How often do you use colloquialisms or abbreviations? Do you employ emojis?

Ask these questions and more across a wide body of your existing content. This will give your team a base to determine the elements you like within your current copy, and what needs to be tightened up or addressed in order to consistently present your brand’s personality. Understanding these will be important to what you include within your final guidelines.

2. Identify your brand’s personality

When determining the right tone of voice for your brand, think of it as a person. Imagine meeting them at a dinner party:

• Would they be loud and confident?
• Would they be thoughtful and reserved?
• Would they be assertive and forthright?

What would they be wearing? What subjects would they talk about? Who would they be inspired by? When you start to think of your brand in this context, you can develop a more vivid understanding of what its voice is and how it would be used in a variety of contexts.

By developing this persona, one that incorporates all of the top values and aspects of your brand, it becomes clearer how it would interact with your audiences.

3. Assess your target audiences

Speaking of your audiences, it’s important to perform some critical analysis on who they are and what they would want to hear from your brand.

Is your primary audience niche or is it more mainstream? Do they prioritise particular social issues over others? Is there particular jargon that they use day-to-day?

Building this understanding will cement what your brand’s voice should be to best engage your customers and, importantly, help you recognise how its tone needs to shift to capture the imagination of different audiences across your various channels.

4. Construct a glossary

An essential component of your tone of voice guidelines should be a glossary, which outlines specific terminology and jargon that is unique to your brand or industry, and that needs to be incorporated into your copy.

This will include product names, brand language, warranty terms and department names, and will span across both content you produce for customers, and phrases you use internally. It will also be valuable in outlining how terms will differ when used in different contexts or in a variety of languages (more on that later). It should also address any words that should be avoided at all costs.

Also, it’s important that this glossary is not left static. As your brand evolves and expands into different locations and onto different platforms, it’s crucial that this list is kept up-to-date.

5. List clear grammatical dos and don’ts

Alongside the glossary, your tone of voice guide should also have a distinct list of grammatical rules for your writers to follow. This should be as comprehensive as possible, but listed in a digestible way so it is easier for writers to understand and apply to your brand.

• Do you want hyphens to be used in words like double-click?
• What perspective do you speak with? (i.e. first-person, second-person, third-person)
• What slang words or abbreviations are allowed and which are forbidden?
• Are writers encouraged to use idioms, cliches, metaphors and other literary devices?
• What are your rules relating to punctuation and formatting?
• How long should sentences and paragraphs be in general?

This sounds like nit-picking, but if you want to achieve complete consistency, it is best that nothing about your voice is left to chance.

6. Put copy into context

Remember what we said about voice and tone being separate? That’s because the overarching language and grammatical rules you outline in your tone of voice guidelines might shift slightly depending on the context of the writing.

For instance, on a press release or product description, your copy might be more formal and to-the-point, with little margin for humour or creative expression. At the same time, your social posts could be more colloquial and quirky. The nature of these different types of content necessitates a change in tone to not appear jarring to the audiences reading it.

So, make sure your guidelines address any difference in approach on specific content channels. This will allow for the writing to be rightly adjusted for these various audiences, but not stray too far away from your brand’s core identity.

7. Provide plenty of examples

To give your writers complete clarity over how they should produce content for your brand, it is vital that you give them clear examples of copy that ticks all the right boxes, and copy that is completely off-brand.

Providing several examples, across all of your brand channels, will make it apparent to new and existing writers what is expected of them in a way that simply explaining doesn’t always cover. When you’re learning grammar in school, you will be presented with good and bad examples to make that process easier – this works in exactly the same way here.

Consider the “Goldilocks” technique here: If you want your brand to be perceived as “approachable yet professional”, you might title your emails with “hello” rather than “dear” (too formal and familiar) or “hey” (too colloquial).

8. Don’t forget the details

While it is important not to overwhelm writers with detail to make it as straightforward as possible for them to absorb and apply your tone of voice requirements, not covering all your bases widens the risk of inconsistencies creeping in over time.

With this in mind, make sure you also incorporate sections dedicated to:

• The degree of formality of your content in various contexts
• Your stance on swearing and other potential sticking points
• How and when to reference news and pop culture

Continue to review and assess your copy over time to see if any off-brand tendencies start to emerge, and if they do, update your guidelines where necessary to reflect this.

9. Make it easily accessible

Finally, you can have the most complete, comprehensible tone of voice guide imaginable – but if nobody can access it or knows where it is, it will have no effect. So, it is vital that the location of the guide is known company-wide, and that your teams globally can access it at all times to inform their writing.

This is where a platform like Papirfly’s all-in-one brand management solution can be a powerful complement to your tone of voice guidelines. By providing a single, central destination for all your brand guidelines, this keeps your teams worldwide aware of your brand’s unique identity and how they should maintain this both verbally and visually.

A single source of truth for your brand voice that your entire team can engage with.

4 brands that know their tone of voice

Coca-Cola

A brand that is already benefiting from the Papirfly Platform, Coca-Cola’s tone of voice has been clear and consistent across its 130-year history – it is all about bringing happiness to people.

Coca-Cola maintains a positive, friendly and down-to-earth tone across all its primary communications, built around their core personality trait of helping people live happy lives. Through the language they use, no one is left in any doubt what their brand stands for, and that’s helped it become one of the world’s most celebrated brands.

Examples

“Open happiness”

“Together tastes better”

“Refresh on the Coca-Cola side of life”

Starbucks

Starbucks’ voice guidelines plainly outline their tone of voice in a way anyone can understand, including several examples.

By employing a blend of functional and expressive language, Starbucks sets out their brand identity as one that wants to be clear, helpful and digestible for their customers, but to unlock their passion for what they drink and to indulge in what they love.

Examples

“That first sip feeling”

“It’s not just coffee. It’s Starbucks”

“Our mission: to inspire and nurture the human spirit – one person, one cup and one neighbourhood at a time”

Dove

As a company built around beauty and self-care, it is important that Dove’s messages of empowerment and body positivity are projected throughout its communications.

Dove keeps this consistent in their various marketing and social media campaigns, through to their website, where their vision aligns them as an organisation that wants to make beauty a source of confidence, rather than anxiety.

Examples

“Making a genuine difference”

“Welcome to Dove…the home of real beauty”

“We believe that real beauty comes from confidence, and confidence comes from embracing who you are”

Old Spice

Following their rebrand in 2010, Old Spice unshackled themselves from their former tone of voice, which was associating them with a mature audience, and revitalised it to attract a broader, younger demographic.

By focusing on wit, humour and a new perspective on masculinity, Old Spice used its new voice to regain its foothold as a global leader in men’s deodorant.

Examples

“The man your man could smell like”

“How to keep excessive sweat from stopping your swagger”

“Get more awesomeness, good smellingness, and Old Spice exclusiveness than ever before”

Lock down your tone of voice

We hope this has helped you recognise the absolute importance of being clear and consistent with your brand’s tone of voice and language, and how you can guarantee this in your own marketing.

Consistency is the cornerstone of customers trusting your brand – and this needs to be maintained every time you engage with them. Your tone of voice and the language you use is just one component of this, but it is one that demands your attention to prevent your voice from becoming confused or inaccurate.

Our all-in-one brand management platform is designed to help your brand lockdown consistency across all areas of your marketing, both verbally and visually. 

• Harness bespoke, intelligent templates to produce assets faster and more cost-effectively, with no chance of going off-brand
• Make all guidelines, training videos and assets available company-wide
• Set permissions for different team members to ensure they can only access features and assets relevant to them and their market

Start empowering your brand with a brand management platform – get in touch with our team today.

A brand portal’s power can’t be understated. It’s a game-changer for not only your brand, but for you and your teams – but that’s only when you fully understand what you’re signing up for.

It won’t transport you to another galaxy, but this kind of portal will take your brand to places it has never been before. 

There are hundreds, possibly thousands of brand portals available. It’s a saturated market and the term ‘brand portal’ alone is interpreted in many different ways, delivering many contrasting solutions.

The problem is that they’ve been developed by teams from all different backgrounds, solving different pain points and problems – which leaves you with an overwhelming amount of choice but not a lot of context or clarity. 

In this article, we aim to help you understand the core features of every solid brand portal, what it should help you achieve day-to-day and how it can propel your brand long term. Lastly, we’ll help you navigate and narrow down your choices.

What is a brand portal and what does it do?

At its most basic level, a brand portal is a digital home for your brand. Many give you access to brand assets, videos, guidelines and campaign materials. It allows employees, agencies, suppliers and whoever else needs access to log in and get what they need, when they need it, without having to interrupt anyone else.

This is still an accurate description of many brand portals that exist. But there are many vendors taking this to a new level, and redefining what a brand portal is and should be.

The trouble with the traditional definition is that it only solves one of many brand problems. A comprehensive brand portal should give teams the ability to create and edit assets, as well as access them.

Otherwise, there’s still a great disconnect between what’s being produced and what’s available. There’s no true oversight or assurance of brand consistency, and mistakes can only be noticed once the files are uploaded. 

What features should a brand portal have?

A brand portal solution like Papirflys are being continually updated and invested in, so it can be hard to know what you should be looking for in terms of features. We’re proud to say our core product allows for the vast majority of features to be accessed, with very few module upgrades available. 

Here’s the list of features you should be looking for in your next brand portal: 

An easy-to-use, customisable dashboard or ‘homepage’

Tailored login credentials, so that certain individuals or companies only have access to what they need

A built-in, intuitive Digital Asset Management (DAM) system to organise and locate files and assets easily – with tagging functionality, as well as the ability to download in different file formats

Dedicated education section for brand assets, guidelines, usage and more to educate teams on the wider brand consistency mission and reduce internal requests

Intelligent design studio integrated into the portal, with guaranteed on-brand digital, print, social, video and email templates that can be created from scratch, edited or translated and adapted for other sub-brands, languages and regions

Campaign planning tools and timelines where campaign materials can also be easily accessed – with the option to discontinue asset availability once campaigns have finished

How will a brand portal make your life easier?

Aside from giving you a centralised place for your content production and brand management, it will also give teams a direct way to get the assets they need. They can create and edit anything themselves, while you are assured your brand guidelines are always adhered to.

This means no waiting around for agencies or third-party suppliers; teams can go to market quickly and you’re not bombarded with requests.

Wider than this, everything your brand produces will be on-brand and consistent, helping to create a more unified approach to marketing and communications. A brand that’s presented consistently tends to generate 23% more revenue.

Budget will be saved by reducing agency spending. Time will be saved by having a single place to go to for files and creation of assets. Teams will be more productive and deliver more in less time. 

There are very few (if any) downsides to implementing a brand portal. The benefits extend far beyond just being able to deliver more day-to-day – it has an incredible positive impact on the wider brand and business. 

Making an informed choice

We’ve compiled a list of key questions to help you select the brand portal that’s right for you. 

• Are big, reputable brands using the portal?
• How many active users do they have globally?
• Can the company demonstrate reviews and detailed case studies (preferably video)?
• How many years has the company been established?
• How many employees does the company have? (this will help you to establish the level of customer service you can expect)
• Are the pricing and package levels transparent?
• Was the demo useful and informative?
• Are the sales and customer service representatives knowledgeable? 
• Is there a set roadmap for updates over the next year?

Could a brand management platform by Papirfly be your next brand portal?

We’re proud of the brand portal we created back in 2000. We’ve had a vision for over 21 years to become the best brand portal available and help global companies reach their full potential. And we’re doing it.

If you would like to learn more about Papirfly book your demo today. 

Keeping on top of marketing campaign assets can be a mighty task at the best of times, but managing them across global teams is an even greater challenge. As the capacity for organisations to reach consumers across the globe expands ever further, and the number of channels available to engage them continues to grow, the problem of effectively managing digital assets has become more prevalent than ever before.

Consider the following statistics:

• It is believed around 90% of companies meet bottlenecks when handling digital content
• 41% of companies have over 1,000 folders of sensitive assets accessible to anyone
• Up to 19% of an employee’s time is spent searching for files
• 15% of companies’ documents are misplaced, while a further 7.5% are kept despite being obsolete

These figures and more illustrate the overriding issues that many companies are having when trying to stay in control of their assets.

From the effort wasted on reproducing or duplicating content due to misplaced or lost files, to the time it takes to produce and supply tailored assets for specific markets, the inability to track and manage assets can be a significant drain on any organisation’s resources.

A DAM system can go a long way in helping organisations avoid and overcome these issues and become far more efficient and effective at managing their ever-growing collection of digital assets. Moreover, a DAM that’s integrated into a BAM portal becomes an even more powerful tool.

What is DAM?

DAM (Digital Asset Management) is software designed to centralise all of an organisation’s digital assets into one straightforward, spacious location. Be it documents, images, videos, photos, audio or any other digital medium, these assets are held in one place to remove the risks of content going missing or being unnecessarily duplicated.

Fundamentally, implementing a DAM solution is done with the goal of optimising the production, management and mobility of a company’s digital assets. Using one should help employees locate the media they need for upcoming campaigns without any hassle, eliminate doubts about lost content and preserve brand consistency across all locations.

In fact, it is estimated that the average DAM system can save a company over £150,000 in as little as five years, while well-managed, consistent brands are worth up to 20 times as much as those that do not invest in controlling their digital library.

This is why DAM makes up a key component of our BAM by Papirfly™. In order to help our clients harness the full potential of their brand, it is critical that they can maintain, access and share their assets in one place, ensuring there is little-to-no room for inconsistencies to creep in or wasted resources spent on unnecessary content.

Nevertheless, while a DAM solution is ideal in principle, it is vital that you select one that meets your specific needs. While these will vary from company to company, below we’ve identified three critical considerations that you should keep in mind when looking to introduce this powerful software into your organisation.

3 important considerations for your DAM solution

1. Make navigation and user experience a priority

First, it is vital that your DAM solution presents an excellent user experience for your employees and any other users. Because, as we’ve identified earlier, the primary goal of any DAM is to make it easier for your team to find and use the resources they need to support the creation of marketing collateral. If the UX makes this challenging, the DAM is not working as it should.

In addition, a poor user experience will make it more likely that your employees avoid using the DAM, instead relying on less effective but user-friendly means of storing assets, such as Dropbox or Google Drive.

A good user experience will start with how people navigate the system:

• How intuitive is the structure, hierarchy and navigation of the software?
• Does the system allow you to tag and categorise assets using terminology you and your team are familiar with?
• Can you quickly filter resources by a particular tag or category to help you find the asset you’re looking for faster?
• Is the display and user interface straightforward and intuitive to users?
• Is it easy to share assets with your teams in a variety of locations?
• Can the system be translated into multiple languages to support its use by your teams across the globe?
• Does it offer any indication if an asset has already been uploaded to the system to remove the risk of duplication?
• Is it easy to operate across multiple devices, including mobile and tablets?
• Can you export digital assets into a variety of file formats?

These are just some of the questions you should ask about any prospective DAM solution to ensure it provides you and your team with an effective user experience. Without this, it will inevitably be ignored and underutilised, meaning you miss out on the ROI that other organisations gain from this kind of software.

Think of it as a library – if its filing system is too complicated or difficult to digest, it’s unlikely you’re going to visit it again.

However, the user experience also depends a great deal on how you as an organisation manage your assets when the system you’ve selected is implemented. While it can do a lot, it requires those responsible for the solution to manage it professionally and prudently. 

This includes ensuring that all labelling is applied consistently and in terminology that your global teams can recognise, that any resources specific to a particular location or outlet are clearly marked, and that assets that are grouped together are done so for a specific reason.

When the user interface offered by a high-quality DAM aligns with the effective organisation of the team operating it, then the management of your digital assets can reach a whole new level.

2. Work on a global and local level

Secondly, there is a need to differentiate between digital assets that are globally available, and resources that specifically cater to a particular market or location. A problem that our clients identify before working with Papirfly is that the time and resources required to produce dedicated campaigns for a particular location mean these often aren’t worthwhile.

Yet, as we’ve explored in other articles, localised marketing is essential to effectively engage your audience at a deeper, personalised level. Giving this attention can help you build stronger bonds with the various communities your brand interacts with and foster customer loyalty. Remember: 71% of consumers prefer advertising tailored to their situation.

How can a DAM solution help you achieve this? By establishing a central hub for all on-brand digital assets and making this accessible via the cloud to employees based around the world, you can provide them with the resources they need to create and share assets for localised campaigns, rather than conserving time and resources by sticking to a global, universal focus.

Through your DAM system, employees should be in a position to access content that is translatable to the required language and contains imagery that is culturally appropriate, which means you can create hyper-targeted local campaigns quickly to work alongside your global branding – all while ensuring your overarching brand messaging is never compromised.

Of course, BAM by Papirfly™ takes this a step further in providing teams, regardless of their design experience or expertise, with an intuitive creation suite and intelligent templates. This means that, once they have access to the assets available on the DAM, they can then immediately use these to edit or create new, tailored assets for an upcoming campaign, without the financial or time burden of bringing in a specialist.

3. Don’t give everyone access to everything

Thirdly, let’s discuss accessibility. While one of the key benefits that a DAM solution offers is sharing assets to employees worldwide, this doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll want every asset to be available to every person at all times.

This can lead to human error and inconsistencies creeping into your process. For instance, say someone mistakenly selects an asset designated for the incorrect country or campaign for a separate project; this would at a minimum be time wasted on developing an unusable asset, or at worst be shared to your audience and potentially hurting your brand’s reputation.

To prevent this from happening, it’s vital that any DAM software you implement has measures in place to assign administrators and lockdown certain assets for particular employees or locations. By adding this extra level of security, it gives you greater assurance that your assets are governed and nothing off-brand will be broadcast across any of your platforms.

In addition, setting these administration levels will make it possible that not everyone can upload or delete files, or can only do so when permission is granted. This helps add another layer of protection from duplicated or low-quality content reaching being stored within the library, which again goes further to protect your brand’s reputation.

Our BAM portal expands on this with an “add to basket” feature. This allows the user to select multiple files from different sources within the DAM and download these at one time, speeding up the process for people to access the resources they need.

Finally, check with your DAM provider if the system offers a way to monitor who is adding, sharing and editing assets. This ensures you have a record of any changes that have been made to your library of assets at any given time, so nothing ever has to slip under the radar. Plus, if it carries stats about how often particular assets are used, this can help marketing teams determine the ROI of these materials.

Take control of your digital library

We hope this will help you in your efforts to properly manage the vast array of digital assets that any organisation needs to have to hand nowadays. With the potential for assets to be mislaid or misused a high as ever due to the assortment of channels that organisations need to have a presence on, having a DAM solution that meets these considerations in particular is more crucial than ever before.

With that in mind, our BAM solution is geared with a dedicated, intelligent DAM, making it easy for you to store and locate an unlimited number of assets, categorise these appropriately and present them in the right format and optimal resolution.

However, BAM is much more than digital asset management, empowering users to also:

• Create high-quality, on-brand assets through an intuitive, powerful creation suite
• Educate your employees worldwide on the values and guidelines behind your brand
• Manage campaigns with a birds-eye view of all materials used at a given time

If you’d like to know more about how you can activate your global brand, request a demo or speak to our team today.

‘Humanising’ may sound like another buzzword, but it’s actually something that the world’s leading brands have been doing for decades. It’s a large part of what makes them so relatable to consumers across the globe. In this article, we emphasise the importance of humanising your brand to build stronger emotional connections with your audience.

What does humanising your brand mean?

In essence, it’s a way to shed the image of a soulless corporation and show the ‘human’ side of a business. It helps your customers put a face, or at least a personality, to the brand they are engaging with.

But, this is about more than projecting values and purpose. When you’re marketing to an audience who not only dislike most advertising, but will often go out of their way to avoid it, people aren’t just going to take your word for the great things your brand says about itself. What really matters is clear evidence of how your brand embodies the claims it makes in its marketing.

To humanise your brand you need to present it as an approachable entity with something relevant to offer.

Why do brands need to be human?

Nobody responds well to robotic advertising tactics. Yet so many brands come across in the same sales-heavy way. If they are able to become more human, brands can communicate with nuance, and provide a more authentic demonstration of value to develop stronger bonds with their audience.

Transparency and authenticity have become decisive purchasing factors for an increasing number of consumers. This makes it more important than ever to bestow your brand with the emotional intelligence to talk about any subject in a way that feels natural.

Humanising your brand allows you to produce content that uses emotional archetypes to tap into universal feelings that resonate with everyone. This means you can begin to create a personal relationship between brand and consumer and open doors to new ways to instill more trust in your brand.

Personalisation is an especially important consideration for digital marketing strategies — it’s an important way to gain trust, increase relevance and promote engagement. However, without the in-store experience offered by good sales agents, it’s all too easy to sound like a robot. It’s the simple things like a warm welcome, remembering a customer’s name and engaging in natural, unscripted conversation that make customers feel valued as individuals.

Humanising your brand is a way to win back these lost interactions. But to get it right, you need to go beyond faceless transactions and towards building a memorable relationship between brand and customer.

How to make your brand more human

As we mentioned before, your brand needs to sound human across every touchpoint. If you roll out a beautifully crafted email campaign that really connects with your audience, only to link them through to a sales-y, robotic-sounding landing page, the whole experience can be undone; the ‘human’ element disappears. With these steps, you can make sure that every aspect of your brand embodies the same personality traits and feels like a human:

#1 Tell your brand’s story

For your humanised brand to come through naturally, you need to tell stories, not just sell products. The stories you tell should make your audience see your business as a likeable, relatable person that represents your brand.

Telling stories is a fine art and there are endless ways to communicate them. You could weave them into your email loyalty campaigns, share them as articles on your blog or bring them to life through video. The important thing is that they all feel consistent and that they are told with authenticity.

A brand that got it right:

Airbnb does an excellent job of bringing the human element to their content by focussing on their hosts (the people that rent out their homes through the site) and the experiences of the travellers who have rented properties from them.

It’s a great example of how to make your audiences feel like an integral part of your brand by celebrating the ways in which they use a product or service.

#2 Celebrate your staff

Employee advocacy gives people a unique insight into what your business is really like on the inside. The ‘human nature’ of a brand inherently spreads from company culture — ultimately, it’s your employees that make your brand what it is.

Giving staff a platform to create and share their own content adds an extra layer of trust and authenticity to your brand. To give this some context, 76% of individuals surveyed in a recent study said that they’re more likely to trust content shared by “normal” people than by brands.

A brand that got it right: 

Starbucks created social media accounts for all of their employees, who they refer to as ‘partners’. This not only gives their employees a sense of belonging and responsibility, but also a dedicated platform to share the things they love about their day-to-day. 

Starbucks has also made their comprehensive social media guidelines available to all partners so that it’s easy for them to post relevant, engaging content while maintaining consistency with the brand.

#3 Empathise with your audience

Get to know who your audience really are. Find out what they care about, understand their pain points and find ways for your brand to become the solution.

Just like any positive human relationship, empathy needs to start with a two-way conversation. Don’t be afraid of customer feedback, even if it’s negative — every interaction with your audience will help you learn more about them and build (or re-build) their trust.

A brand that got it right: 

Elon Musk’s public-facing approach to entrepreneurship has made him synonymous with his brand. So any negative feedback from Tesla customers is negative feedback towards him personally. When Tesla driver, Paul Franks, Tweeted about making an improvement to his car, Elon Musk replied within 30 minutes promising to solve it in the next software update.

Being able to put an instantly recognisable face to your brand is a failsafe way to humanise any company. But what makes this example so impressive, is translating this quality into open communication between founder and customer — making them feel listened to, even if it’s just via a tweet.

#4 Educate, don’t sell 

For your marketing to feel human, it needs to show that your brand understands what your audience wants and needs.

Instead of pushing features, talk about solutions. Tell your audience what it is about your product or service that will make their lives better and how.

A brand that got it right: 

Amazon-owned shoe retailer, Zappos, knows that their audience has come to expect a simple returns process and fast, low-cost shipping when shopping online. Their advertising not only acknowledges this, but suggests that it’s every customer’s ‘right’ to have them.

It’s a genius way for Zappos to talk about their renowned customer-friendly policies while making their audience feel front-and-centre of their messaging.

#5 It’s not just what you say, but how you say it

Tone of voice is one of the first giveaways of your brand’s personality. Contrary to popular belief, it doesn’t just mean being quirky. There is a balance between conversational and professional, but using overly formal language or filling your copy with jargon doesn’t impress anyone — normally it just leaves them bored and confused. Anyone who’s a real expert in a subject can distil concepts and information, and present them in a way that everyone can understand.

Setting clear tone of voice guidelines is vital for achieving this balance and making sure that your brand sounds like one entity across any touchpoint. For more on this, be sure to read, Why tone of voice and language are critical to a consistent brand.

A brand that got it right: 

Throughout their fierce rivalry with McDonald’s, Burger King has become known for their quick, light-hearted sense of humour, never missing an opportunity to poke fun at the competition. However, the true test of any tone of voice is its ability to flip (pun intended) when it needs to, without losing a long-established brand personality.

When COVID-19 hit the hospitality sector especially hard during lockdown, Burger King found a way to use their witty writing style to create heartfelt solidarity with their rivals at a time when every restaurant chain was feeling the effects of the pandemic.

#6 Practice what you preach

Today’s consumer can spot a disingenuous marketing tactic a mile off. To an extent, this has probably always been the case, but the difference now is that audiences have social media platforms to call brands out for saying they’re one thing and acting like another.

Jumping on band-wagons or trying to capitalise on important causes is never a good look. The best way to avoid these marketing faux-pas is to humanise your brand from the inside out. Take your brand personality from what your business values and the way it already behaves.

A brand that got it right:

Patagonia is a brand that is synonymous with their commitment to sustainability and the environment, and has been since day one. Their values have become something that countless brands try to replicate but which very few are able to back up when pushed.

Even now that they have become renowned as being one of the most ethical brands out there, Patagonia still makes sure that they embody every claim they make about their products. Whether that’s pioneering the use of organic cotton in the early 90s, or recently announcing that corporate logos will no longer be added to its clothing in a bid to reduce landfill.

#7 Challenging perceptions

The best way to win over negative feedback is to own it. By trying to ignore an issue raised by a disgruntled few or sweep bad press under the carpet you will only add fuel to the fire.
Instead of shying away from confrontation, show the human side of your brand by opening up an honest, transparent, two-way conversation. When you talk about both the negatives and the positives with your audience, your brand shows that it has nothing to hide.

A brand that got it right:

When misleading information on Reddit and Twitter began to cause confusion around their payment service, Swedish FinTech company, Klarna, found a creative way to ‘set the record straight’.

Working with contemporary artist Ignasi Monreal, they commissioned mythical-inspired artwork based on the top myths being spread about the company. They also created the Mythbuster Challenge as part of the campaign which incentivised users to discover the truth about Klarna for the chance to win prizes.

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Bring out your brand’s human side with BAM by Papirfly™

It takes time to give any business an honest, believable personality, and a lot of work and dedication to maintain it. With BAM by Papirfly™, you can create consistent marketing assets and implement failsafe processes to humanise your brand. Here’s how:

Make your brand guidelines impossible to ignore

• BAM gives you one place to store and share relevant assets, documentation and guidelines. It means you can easily educate your teams to produce content that’s firmly attached to your brand purpose

Create consistent on-brand assets

• To keep your brand looking, feeling and sounding like its true self, consistency is key. BAM allows you to set predefined templates that give teams the freedom to be creative, without veering off-brand.

Empower your staff

• With BAM’s easy-to-use creation suite, your teams will have everything they need to create studio-quality assets with no outside help needed. Working within set parameters, they can tell your brand’s story through digital, print, social media and video.

Stay on top of your marketing output

• Through BAM’s innovative portal, you can have a clear overview of your campaigns and control who has access to prevent any misuse of materials.

Want to learn more about capturing your audience’s imagination with BAM? The best place to start is with a live demo of all of its innovative features. You can book yours here.

Rebranding is undertaken for many different reasons; when a company is going through a big period of change, is coming out the other side of a scandal, or taking the advice of their marketing agency. Whatever the reasons, it’s a bold move for any team to take on.

Logos are iconic for many reasons, including that they become synonymous with products, feelings and, in some cases, an entire generation. Though a logo only forms a small part of a brand, when changed without warning, or without the right communication strategy, it can dramatically impact the perception of a consumer and, if not well-received, takes a considerable amount of time to get used to. 

In this article we take a quick look at 4 iconic logo changes that dared to be different and are still doing the business for their global brands many years after the big switch.

Zara

You may remember this one from 2019. Perhaps only the die-hard Zara fans were as devastated as the designers who took to social media to heavily criticize the new direction. 

Traditionally, having letters overlap would be considered a huge design faux pas, but as French agency Baron & Baron have shown us, not playing by the rules makes quite the statement. The agency is the creative brain behind Dior and Maison Margiela – both known as high-end, luxury fashion designers. 

Zara is very much becoming the fashion house of the high street, and no matter what your opinion on the logo change, it may just have helped them to solidify this position further. 

Instagram

Another social media rebrand that sent shockwaves through the digital world was the rebirth of Instagram in 2016. Users could not believe their eyes when they opted to replace their retro polaroid camera logo with a flat, neon-colored, gradient icon. 

At the time, Instagram faced widespread criticism that it was so simplistic that many from outside of the design world claimed they “could have produced something similar”.

The change was drastic, but absolutely the right move for them at the time. The irony is, after such a critical reception, many other brands have followed suit with stripped back, flatter logos in the last couple of years. Instagram took a risk as a trailblazer, and their gamble certainly paid off. 

Mastercard

Something must have been in the air in 2016 was certainly the year of the rebrand, with Mastercard getting its first new logo and branding refresh in 20 years. The design keeps the iconic overlapping circles, but is completely modernized with the removal of the dated stripes. 

MasterCard’s team had foreseen the major transition into the digital age and created a new logo that would stand the test of time…That is, until January 2019. Just when the world thought MasterCard couldn’t get any bolder, they went against every branding rule in the book and removed their brand name from the logo, leaving behind only the red and yellow circles. 

MasterCard opted for minimal in every sense of the word, and reconfirmed what we already knew – their identity is iconic enough that it needs no introduction. 

Premier League

Consumers will always be your biggest critics when you make a big brand move, but having a global fan base of loyal football supporters opens you up to a whole new level of scrutiny. A(nother!) rebrand that took place in 2016 saw DesignStudio responsible for the clean, minimal Premier League logo fans have now become firmly accustomed to. 

The initial controversy surrounded a miscommunication whereby it was rumoured that ‘Cecil the Lion’ would be removed in the new logo. The hearsay spiralled without being addressed properly and, when the rebrand did finally launch, there was Cecil front and centre.

Perhaps by keeping the rumours swirling, the agency helped to keep the new rebrand the hot topic of conversation. Free PR aside, if anything drastic is to change within your logo, you could consider a full communications strategy to make sure there are no surprises that could affect your reputation in the long term. 

Conversely, if you have total confidence in your new direction (as Instagram did), a sudden launch could be just what you need to raise your profile in the media and cause a stir online. The dust will always eventually settle as today’s big rebrand becomes tomorrow’s chip paper.

Why are rebrands such a big deal?

These rebrands are thriving a few years on. Yet it’s not always the case that bold changes guarantee success.

It’s worth considering that a huge portion of global marketing budgets is spent on brand recognition campaigns. In doing so, brands build a rapport with consumers over the years that forms ongoing loyalty and relationships. If a change happens too suddenly, it can feel as though they haven’t been considered in the process. It can come as a shock and suddenly the brand they’ve known and loved throughout their lives is unrecognizable. Of course, most of the time it’s only a new visual direction, but psychologically consumers may feel uneasy about what to expect in the future. 

The decision to rebrand is never taken lightly, particularly for global companies. A new logo requires a new set of brand guidelines, tone of voice guidance, color palettes, fonts and more. Having these assets created is the starting point – the rollout across the globe is where the real work begins. Every piece of internal communication, be it email signatures, letterheads, business cards and more, needs to be overhauled. External marketing, websites, employer brand documents, interiors, signage and every piece of collateral needs to be replaced over a period of time.

On the face of it, it sounds like a costly task many would want to avoid. That’s why it’s essential that companies decide carefully whether rebranding is right for them.

If you’ve decided rebranding is the way to go, then making sure you have the technology to roll it out is essential.

However, maybe your teams haven’t had the tools to make your current brand a success, in which case it’s a great time to review your Digital Asset Management and Content Creation solutions.

Whatever stage you’re at in considering your brand’s next steps, check out the insights from our rebranding experts.

You don’t have to look very far on the Internet to find templates for any number of marketing mediums. Website layouts. Email designs. Business cards. Social media. You name it, you can find a template for it.

The reasons why they are so widespread are fairly obvious:

• They can be massive time and effort savers for design teams
• They help preserve brand consistency by locking down critical elements
• They can be moulded to the ideal dimensions for digital and print materials, from social assets to billboard posters
• They make creating perfectly branded designs accessible to anyone, regardless of design skills

Sounds fantastic so far. But, these advantages are frequently contested with this counter-argument:

“By placing firm boundaries on designers and promoting the duplication of the same layouts, templates greatly restrict creativity.”

While this assumption that templates restrict creativity is understandable, when they are used correctly, this is far from accurate. In fact, they can give designers the opportunity to work more creatively and feel more empowered in their role.

Why do many designers despise templates?

As highlighted above, a core issue that designers have with templates is how they limit the possibilities to produce unique, bespoke graphics.

Quite understandably, this “conveyor-belt” style approach to asset creation goes against their passion for producing innovative, one-of-a-kind pieces.

A quick counter to this argument is that competent companies already place these boundaries through their clearly defined brand guidelines. This is critical to maintaining consistency across all communications, a powerful marker of brand quality and essential for building trust among audiences.

With strict guidelines in place in place, designers can only push the boundaries so far in order to preserve their brand’s identity – any further and you can quickly lose recognition and trust among consumers. Good templates should manifest these guidelines, ensuring that anybody using them can’t stray away from the core foundations of your branding.

But, alongside these limitations on creative thinking, designers have further concerns about relying on templates, such as fears that templates will diminish the importance of their roles, making them dispensable if less-skilled workers can create graphics.

Again, this is an understandable concern. However, we would never advocate that templates exist to replace designers. A designer’s discipline extends far beyond just choosing from a predefined list of colours and patterns.

Without the unique insight and understanding that only a skilled designer can provide into any form of visual content, templates can result in a constant flow of bland, uninspiring and cookie-cutter assets.

We recognise that the core role of designers is being the overarching creative forces behind the brand. Rather than be caught up in the minutiae of producing repeat assets and making an endless stream of subtle tweaks, using templates ensures that designers can shift their focus to bespoke projects and creative thinking, while other, less-skilled employees can confidently work on day-to-day asset production.

Do templates actually benefit creativity?

Rather than cut off designers’ flow, there are many reasons why templates go a long way to freeing up designers’ time and preserving their creative energy, while empowering others to play an active role in asset creation.

No more mundane tasks

The use of templates means that those with minimal design skills can take responsibility for the more straightforward, mundane asset creations and tweaks. This removes the burden on your more qualified designers, who could be at risk of burning out or becoming disillusioned by making repeated adjustments or copies of old assets time and again.

More time for creative thinking

By freeing up your designers’ schedules, they will have more time to drive new ideas, research the latest trends and think conceptually, helping you stand out in today’s crowded market.

Not everything you push through your marketing channels necessarily needs to come from a template. While these can notably scale up the amount of content you produce for less time and money, for campaigns that need that extra creative spark or bespoke touch, you need your best designers on the case.

While your wider team uses templates to keep your content ticking over smoothly, you’ll have total confidence that all other collateral is going out perfectly on-brand.

Furthermore, this creative thinking time is likely to also form the basis for future templates, or helpful adjustments to your existing ones, which will improve the quality and attractiveness of your assets for your global audiences.

Conserving energy

It may sound frivolous, but even the prospect of your designers being able to go home on time and maintain more beneficial work-life balances, because templates have freed up their schedule, can greatly enhance their capacity to create and find inspiration for future works.

Designers can find inspiration practically everywhere, from films, television and books, to walking in the countryside. However, they are less likely to find new ideas when sitting behind the same desk, making miniscule amends to previous assets.

Let your templates do their job, so your designers can do theirs better, both inside and outside the workplace.

How to make the most of your templates

With all of these benefits for using templates in mind, it is possible to have too much of a good thing.

Using templates to replace the role of your designers is a recipe for disaster. This approach will inevitably hamper the uniqueness of your content, as only the insight of an effective designer can craft visuals that really capture people’s attention and illustrate your distinct brand identity the right way.

The solution is to have your design team play an active role in the creation of your templates, so that these receive their seal of approval, before they can be harnessed by other, less-skilled members of your organisation to apply as required.

That’s why a solution like BAM by Papirfly™ offers you more than cookie-cutter templates that can be downloaded or bought online. As well as providing an array of pre-built templates, our powerful platform enables you to structure your own smart templates across all forms of collateral, which can then be harnessed by your wider team to produce high-quality, on-brand results every time.

Create templates for every channel; social media posts, video, posters, brochures, banners, signage. All this and more can be housed within your platform, equipping your teams to produce an infinite amount of perfectly branded assets.

This means total consistency and content production that’s faster and more cost-effective than ever before. The ability to quickly amend or adjust collateral for your global markets and sub-brands, all while your designers have more capacity and less pressure, allowing them to work at their most creative, without burning out.

Empower your team’s creativity with smart templates

When used effectively and with the direct input of your insightful designers, templates can result in massive improvements to the productivity, consistency and ROI of your marketing output.

While your designers might immediately be hesitant about the idea due to the fears that we’ve pinpointed in this article, after using BAM by Papirfly™ these concerns will be replaced with celebrations for greatly reducing their share of mundane, repetitive tasks, and giving them the freedom to do what they do best: conceptualise and create great content.

• Easy-to-use software and intelligent templates make creating exceptional assets simple
• Provide your input on a wide range of fully bespoke templates
• Reduce your dependence on external agencies to produce content that you could be creating in-house
• Locked-down elements give you complete confidence that all content produced is consistent with your brand’s identity

Accelerated content creation is just one way that BAM can revolutionise your approach to marketing. Discover the full scope of our platform’s potential – get in touch with our team or arrange your free demo today.

Ever wondered why certain brands spring to mind at the thought of particular words, places, times of the year, or even people? It may seem natural, but in most cases, it’s something that they have spent years establishing through daily interactions and significant moments in our lives.

Brand associations are what create the link between a brand and thoughts or concepts.

They influence our buying habits and help us decide what makes one brand different from another — even when the products and services they offer are largely the same.

What’s the science behind it?

How brand associations affect the inner-workings of our minds goes deep into psychology. 

The most widely recognised scientific explanation is found in the Hebbian Theory, developed by ‘the father of neuropsychology’, Donald Hebb. In The Organisation of Behavior (published in 1949), Hebb outlines his work in trying to explain how learning is accomplished within the brain.

Part of his theory is that neural pathways are developed based on experiences and that, when certain connections are created more frequently, they become faster and stronger. Hebb also theorised that one thought would be more likely to cause another if they have been recalled at the same time on multiple occasions in the past.

Brands can build these connections through:

Attributes

The distinguishing features of a brand’s products or services could include physical appearance, feel and quality, as well as packaging and presentation. 

For instance, a brand looking to promote that they are “eco-friendly” could build this association by ensuring their products are recyclable, or designing their packaging with colours and themes that represent nature.

Attitudes

The attitudes we have towards brands can be a direct link or very abstract. They can create feelings and emotions, such as happiness or nostalgia, or be linked to specific lifestyles, like athletics or luxury.

Sticking with the theme of nostalgia, adverts like this one from Microsoft from 2013 illustrates how brands can evoke the past through experiences, trends and objects, and then tie this back to their own company’s story. Finding ways to link familiar, recognisable elements for your customers to your brand values is an effective way to drive connections.

Benefits

The benefits that you associate with a brand could be linked to the reasons you buy their products or services, or the experiences you have while using them.

They might also align with your personal values by contributing to social causes. Examples like Warby Parker’s pledge to donate a pair of glasses to children and those in need for every pair purchased are illustrations of how choosing their brand helps you make the world a better place.

Celebrities

Brands have been using famous ambassadors to endorse their products for years. It’s also becoming more common to see company founders gaining publicity and having a major influence on brand association (think Steve Jobs, Richard Branson and Elon Musk).

This works most effectively when brands pinpoint a celebrity that embodies the values of your brand, for example, Ed Sheeran’s collaboration with Heinz was all the more effective because of Sheeran’s love of their ketchup, even having a tattoo of a bottle on his arm!

How the world’s leading brands stay front-and-centre

For the global brands battling it out to become the leading name in their market, establishing and maintaining positive brand associations is crucial. It’s the reason that:

Whether it’s bringing in the holiday season or evoking nostalgia with its iconic glass bottles, Coca-Cola is a brand that feels timeless. Positive brand associations make Coca-Cola seem as if it has been sharing happiness since forever.

There’s a reason you’ll find bright red Coca-Cola branding at holiday resorts, sports events, and tied to beloved characters like Santa Claus. By ingraining itself in these overwhelmingly positive experiences, the brand will have consumers reaching for its product in the good times and the bad to rekindle fond memories.

Apple hasn’t just gained customers, it’s garnered a following. We recognise their products as revolutionary, and this was only amplified by the success of their branding:

• The sleek design of their products and the packaging they are presented in makes their range feel cutting-edge and premium
• Apple product launches are special events that the brand has always done a standout job building anticipation for, making every new development feel like a true game-changer
• Their ties to iconic innovators like Aardman Animations in their “Behind The Mac” series tie their brand and products to people who transformed their industry

The Nike swoosh has long been associated with the world’s best performing and most famous athletes. The brand’s past and present ambassadors have similar personality traits that align with its marketing — ambition, dedication and an unstoppable drive to be the best. 

As well as tapping into athletes’ aspirations, Nike has aligned itself with the emotions that first draw people into sport, such as competitiveness, teamwork, self-improvement and determination. Not only are consumers seeing Nike and thinking of sport, they are seeing sport and thinking of Nike.

When you think of Starbucks, as well as the expansive range of coffees available and that iconic mermaid on their logo, something that springs to mind is the writing of customers’ names on their cups.

While that may not feel like a big deal on the surface, this encouraged people to share their personally branded cup of coffee on their social channels. This little touch of customer engagement quickly made Starbucks a standout influencer brand on platforms like Instagram, and they continue to connect with millions across the globe this way.

After a run of negative publicity surrounding childhood obesity, McDonald’s’ long-running mascot, Ronald McDonald, was the first to disappear from their advertising. But rethinking their marketing strategy was just the beginning. They:

• Revamped their menus to incorporate healthier options, with the nutritional information of meals included on these
• Drastically altered their brand colours to green and introduced recyclable packaging to project a strong eco-friendly message
• Reused their own cooking oils to fuel their bio-diesel range of trucks
• Overhauled the design and feel of their interiors to encourage more people to eat in the restaurant rather than stick to takeaways

3 ways to start building stronger associations 

If building positive brand associations isn’t already part of your ongoing strategy, then these key takeouts will help get you back on track.

#1 Association mapping

A brand association map like the example below will help you analyse the positive and negative associations that consumers currently have of your brand. It will show you where you stand out from your competitors and what makes your customers choose your products or services.

You can use this information to focus on areas where you can infuse new meaning, generate engagement and create connections. The areas you choose to establish will then feed into how you shape your marketing strategy for the future, and how your content is distributed within this.

#2 Analysing search terms 

When people search for something on Google, they will often try a combination of terms or phrases. This ‘co-search’ data can be analysed to find out the mental connections people are making based on topics, products, solutions and more.

As well as revealing whether your brand positioning lines up with what people are really searching for, co-search analysis can also highlight opportunities to build new associations based on your results.

In addition, investing in social listening tools takes the same principles of co-search data, only in real-time. By keeping your finger on the pulse of what’s generating buzz on social media platforms, you can build a strong sense of what people are linking your brand to and hot topics that you can harness for upcoming content.

#3 Avoiding the negatives 

Even with the best intentions, it’s all too easy to cause or strengthen negative associations with your brand. Some of the most common mistakes are:

• Inconsistencies – Whether it’s the quality products, customer service or brand assets, staying consistent is vital for keeping on top of customer expectations. When trust in brands is at a low, negative memories are more likely to come out as the stronger association.
• Going against your own brand values – In Nike’s own brand association map, their use of sweatshop labour has a stronger association than their sponsorship of school sports teams. This is a lesson in ensuring that the values you promote to consumers align with your ethical practices as a company.
• Forcing connections that just don’t fit – It’s important for brands to react to what’s going on in the world. However, attempting to raise brand awareness via trending topics without being part of a solution or taking a stance that feels genuine puts your brand at risk of being ‘called-out’ by consumers on social media.

Strengthen your brand, connection by connection 

Building positive associations that reach the hearts and minds of your audience is an ongoing process, and one of the most powerful marketing techniques at your disposal.

With a solid understanding of what consumers already associate with your brand and a clear focus on where you need to stand out from your competitors, you can tap into human nature, influence behaviour and build a brand identity that stays front-and-centre for years to come.

However, sustaining the connection between your brand and consumers relies on content that is both consistent and ongoing. Falling short on either of these key traits can gradually undo the hard work you’ve invested in forging those bonds to your customers.

BAM by Papirfly™ is helping brands across the globe steer clear of this scenario. By enabling marketing teams to generate more content in-house faster and more cost-effectively – with no sacrifice of quality or brand consistency – brands can build and maintain the connections they establish with their audience better than ever before.

Empower your team. Enhance your branding. Get in touch and discover BAM today.

Scratch beneath the surface of any global brand, and you will find that the logo really is only the tip of a vast, ever-deepening iceberg.

When a brand’s elements span online, offline and they have been around for several years, it can be difficult to get on top of all the assets and marketing collateral that has been created globally. Whether it’s Janet in accounts sending invoices on outdated letterheads, or a branch across the pond sending out marketing emails without the latest footer revision, there are many overlooked elements of brand consistency that can start to compromise your wider brand image when they’re not nipped in the bud sooner rather than later.

It can be overwhelming to think of the sheer volume of assets being created every day, particularly if you are a Brand Manager. 

We’ve put together a comprehensive checklist that will give your team a base to take stock of what they have, what’s missing and identify any assistance they may need to be brought in line with your brand. 

There is a lot to cover, but every brand needs to start somewhere. 

It doesn’t matter whether you tackle the necessities straight away or look at a staggered plan of attack. Keep your focus on those that are critical to the brand and the business.

Get each team to evaluate the pros and cons of all applications and align yourselves on what the priorities are. 

Let’s start right at the beginning… 

Strategy fundamentals 

Make strategy insights available globally

Does each of your teams have access to the marketing insight relevant to their locations and verticals? Workshop write-ups and reports, audits, audience segmentation and other areas of insight could prove invaluable to teams.

And though many of them are likely to have it somewhere, is it documented in a unified way? And is it easily accessible to be updated on an ongoing basis?

Ensure communication strategies are documented

This extends beyond just core marketing activity. Every layer of interaction with your brand will have some sort of strategy in place, whether or not it’s documented consistently will be another story altogether. There’s internal communications, employer brand marketing, customer engagement and sales strategies, content marketing, brand ambassadors and more. Even down to your sustainability and purpose strategies which may run alongside other core campaigns.

All these strategies need to be documented in an accessible folder for everyone to view, edit and read. Without this, employees will lose sight of your employer brand, internal communications, sales strategies and more. 

Building a bigger brand picture  

Do employees and customers understand your brand hierarchy? While internally this is of more importance, if you are part of a wider umbrella brand, it’s important this is recognised within your external branding (where required). Each team should understand the structure of the business and how the brand they represent and associated product sub-brands fit in.

This will give them greater clarity on the position of the brand globally and help them speak confidently should a client question it in the future. 

Know who you are as a brand 

If you asked an employee from each office to explain your brand’s mission statement, would they all be aligned? Likewise, ensuring your brand positioning (including competitor differentiation), values, and vision is consistently communicated to your target audience can’t be understated.

This is the very crux of building brand equity – the success of your brand in direct relation to the attitudes of your customers towards it. If this isn’t embedded into your teams, it’s highly unlikely the marketing that’s being produced is in line with what you want to communicate. 

Understand your brand voice 

It’s not just what you communicate, it’s how you communicate. While cultural nuance will dictate differences in key messaging and products/services, the top-line tone and voice style should mostly be reflective of the type of brand you are. Quirky, corporate, technical, friendly – languages are no barrier to helping this shine through. 

Visual identity fundamentals 

Back to basics 

Your visual language isn’t just the way you present your brand, products and service from a design point of view, but also the words and formatting you use to do so. If your offerings are supposed to be distinct then you may have wildly different product names, sub-brands, URLs and social handles, but if they all fit under one category or are part of the same product or service family, then having some kind of unification will help strengthen your brand further. 

Think about the formatting, but also the way these are presented visually through logos and icons. Is there any opportunity to make things more integrated? 

Creating extensive guidelines 

From photography, video, logos and iconography through to colour palettes, fonts and their usage, having strict guidelines in place for each marketing team across the globe should help restrict brand inconsistencies and errors. Ideally, you would have a centrally managed digital space for this (like with Papirfly’s ‘educate’ section of the portal), so teams always have access to the latest information, a single source of truth for their particular country or region.  

Likewise, the way that teams give briefs, deliver print or digital work, use certain elements in certain applications should all be part of a uniform set of processes. 

Brand experience fundamentals  

Every touchpoint a user or customer has with your brand will influence their perception and serve to either strengthen or shatter. Consider the header on their LinkedIn profile or the email footers they use at the end of a communication. A small, seemingly insignificant nod to your brand on the surface, but incredibly important for a positive, joined-up brand experience.

Are the letterheads that clients receive invoices on correct? Are all pitches and reports produced using the same templates? There’s a plethora of documentation to consider, and once you have the basic templates and elements down, it will be much easier to execute everything else.  

Digital and print application

Brands need a common thread between their digital and marketing assets, and ensuring visuals are well-thought-out and planned respective of their applications is paramount. The website is the cornerstone piece of collateral and both this and your brand guidelines should dictate the way your email templates, social media posts, videos and more should look. Likewise, translating digital-first design into a way that works for print is also vital. 

Wider employee brand adoption 

Outside of your marketing, there will be many other strands of the business that interact with and act as advocates for the brand. Whether this is an end-of-year report produced by the CFO, the scripts used by the sales team on email, social media and over the phone, right through to internal newsletters. There are many people that will have some sort of brand influence with both internal and external stakeholders. Ensure the message gets carried across correctly and in line with both your TOV and visual style guidelines.  

Company-wide environments 

Even if your office is one that clients and customers never visit, if you want your employees to buy into your brand you should make sure signage and interior design is reflective of the values you are trying to instil. From the imagery you use on your windows to the wrapping of company vehicles – if it’s part of your business, it needs to look the part. 

Digital Asset Management fundamentals 

Having a central repository of imagery, assets guidelines and more will enable your teams to keep up-to-date with the latest marketing materials and rules. Having a Digital Asset Management (DAM) system will keep all of your brand guidelines, campaign assets and more categorised and prioritised for each region. You can also specify who can make edits to what. They can then edit on-brand templates to create new digital and print assets without any design skills needed.    

Likewise, all photography, illustrations, brand guides and dedicated templates will only be visible to the teams they are relevant to.

Where to go next with your brand audit

Depending on your brand’s industry, budgets and demand for marketing materials, will ultimately depend on which areas of the above list you tackle first. To make the brand audit count, success with your target audience in any changes you make will be defined by how you showcase and educate your teams on your brand.

Embracing a brand portal will not only give teams the freedom to know what content to use or create based on your new, refreshed or rearticulated brand identity. As part of a Digital Asset Management solution, you will also gain essential brand governance to ensure brand consistency is guaranteed  – with many other key features to look out for, depending on your goals.