The work of a marketer is never done. Or at least it feels that way. Each brand faces unique challenges in its short and long-term strategies and these challenges have been somewhat heightened by the significant changes that have taken place in the world over the last few years.

Teams aren’t getting the materials they need, or quickly enough.
Too much already-limited budget is being spent with external agencies.
In-house teams are stressed, stretched and unable to keep up with demand.

If this sounds familiar, it might be time to transform how the world engages with your brand – the answer is BAM by Papirfly™. It puts a whole suite of centralised tools in place to easily and effectively communicate your brand identity to your audiences across the globe.

What is Brand Activation Management?

First, let’s explore what brand activation is. In essence, it’s providing a distinct brand experience for your audience and customers through the brand and marketing activities you undertake. It’s making your brand known and increasing awareness.

Your brand marketing encompasses the many ways you actively promote and communicate your brand across your various channels. Brand activation is about how this creates a deep, emotional link to your audience.

Pretend for a moment that your brand is a lump of coal – solid, but not at its full potential – brand activation is the lighter fluid and the spark that helps ignite your brand for everyone to see. This can be achieved by a number of brand activation strategies and techniques, such as:

• Experiential marketing
• Digital marketing
• Social media promotions and competitions 
• In-person events
• Promotional campaigns
• In-store marketing
• Sponsorships
• Sampling/taster events

Brand activation also plays a key role in improving your brand equity. Employing these techniques goes a long way to developing an attachment to your brand identity among your customers and the wider public, and this enhanced familiarity increases the value attached to your brand.

Brand Activation Management (BAM) is therefore how you organise and utilise all available assets you need to ensure the consistency, frequency and adaptability required to achieve the recognition and appreciation of consumers, as well as your employees, potential recruits and the public at large.

Brand presentation is often at risk of instability. People involved in your brand management might have their own interpretations of what your messages are meant to say. Imagery gets tweaked, the tone gradually alters… before you know it, your brand has morphed into something you definitely didn’t intend.

What can BAM software actually do?

Effective Brand Activation Management software, such as BAM by Papirfly™, is a single source for your teams across the globe to create, manage, store and share brand assets. 

• In-house teams can deliver an infinite amount of digital, video, social, email and print assets without needing any design skills
• All assets created are done so using pre-defined templates with built-in rules, so that every creation is 100% on-brand, all of the time
• Assets can be easily localised using region-specific imagery and text
• A dedicated ‘educate’ section contains all the brand tools and documents employees need to engage with it on a deeper level – this empowers employees to play a greater role in understanding how your brand is presented and projected to your audiences
• An integrated DAM system that allows for easy storage, organisation and access of all brand assets – teams can access the assets relevant to their team, country or sub-brand, as well as edit existing materials stored in the DAM
• Brand activation work is taken in-house, reducing the cost and lengthy turnaround times associated with using agencies or dedicated design departments

The key features of BAM by Papirfly™ can be broken down easily into four categories: 

A trusted brand management system is critical in presenting a unified message about your brand, ensuring all consumers are never confused as to what your missions, visions and characteristics are.

In this deeply competitive landscape, your brand is what sets you apart and drives customers to choose you over other brands. Brand Activation Management is the key to a stable, powerful brand across your entire company, anywhere in the world. 

What is brand asset management?

Brand asset management helps to preserve, manage and communicate your brand DNA to your various audiences by organising your available brand assets. Your primary audience is likely your customers, but may also include employees. 

Keeping all brand assets in a single space is vital to ensuring all marketing uniformly follows your unique attributes as a brand and company. This allows audiences to build familiarity with your brand and recall it effectively.

Inconsistencies lead to a confusing picture of who you are as a brand, making it less likely people will forge a lasting, meaningful connection with it. Above all else, an effective brand asset management system should go a long way to eliminating discrepancies in your brand identity.

It might take 5-7 impressions of a brand for customers to truly identify and recall it – your brand asset management software is vital to ensuring the same overarching messages and values are projected across all these encounters with your branding.

Where brand asset management differs from Brand Activation Management is based on scope. Brand asset management concentrates on the organisation and storage of your unique assets for your whole team to access.

Brand Activation Management incorporates this, but takes it further. Your teams are given a platform to rapidly create studio-standard marketing materials using your assets, ensuring everything you output is consistent with your values and the culture of the audience it is directed towards. 

Brand Activation Management vs. Digital Asset Management

Digital Asset Management, or a DAM as it’s commonly known, is a digital storage area for files, documents and marketing materials. It’s an easy and effective way of giving multiple people in an organisation access to everything they need.

Brand Activation Management has a built-in DAM that allows global teams to access the content that’s relevant to them. They can share directly with colleagues from within the DAM, approve or edit marketing materials, and do this from anywhere in the world. Beyond this, BAM is also a creation, management and education tool. We’ve listed some key comparisons below:

Is a DAM more powerful with BAM?

Absolutely. A DAM on its own is simply an online storage system for all your files, resources, marketing and downloads. BAM provides its own powerful DAM, along with all the tools your employees need to create their own content at speed and at scale. Teams can localise content, create new marketing materials, manage campaigns and approvals and so much more – all for a fixed annual licence fee. 

Why is Brand Activation Management critical for businesses?

With crowded brand, product and service landscapes, it’s increasingly harder for organisations to set themselves apart. Clearly defined, powerful and iconic brands are imperative in appealing to customers and informing them as to why they should choose you over everyone else.

The power of your brand in establishing a true, tangible connection with your audiences is increasingly valuable at a time when many businesses in your industry will provide the same core services and products as you – it’s how you distinguish yourself and create that indispensable emotional tie that keeps them coming back.

Brand Activation Management helps companies achieve this degree of brand recognition and familiarity in many ways.

Brand consistency

First and foremost, global brand governance is the core benefit of Brand Activation Management software. Inconsistency is one of the biggest blockers to building brand strength.

Especially for executives in large, global-reaching companies, there is so much opportunity for local outlets to deviate from the overall brand vision without Brand Activation Management, often completely unintentionally. Whether it’s a language barrier issue, an instruction that’s been misinterpreted or new branding guidelines not reaching all your teams, this can result in misaligned marketing collateral. Even worse, is the repercussions:

• Customers not knowing what your brand stands for, making it appear weak and not worth investing in
• A disjointed customer journey, with different steps along the way not correlating to the ones that came before it
• Your employees and partners not having a clear sense of brand objectives, reducing their engagement and capacity as brand advocates

Brand Activation Management, by keeping all the guidelines, strategic thinking and branded assets in one location, removes the risk of an inconsistent brand damaging your relationship with your audiences.

Brand relevance

When 80% of consumers are more likely to do business with a brand that provides a personalised, localised experience, being able to keep your branding and marketing collateral relevant and up-to-date is vital.

Brand Activation Management allows everyone in your organisation to work from a single source of brand assets, and produce high-quality marketing materials to jump on topical events, with no design expertise required.

Brand efficiency

Far too often there appears a need for each local outlet in your organisation to ‘reinvent the wheel’ with their own marketing campaigns, which is far from efficient. Some locations might be producing absolutely everything from scratch with little reference to what’s happening elsewhere in the organisation. This increases the risk of brand inconsistency and reduces your ability to churn out materials for your worldwide audience. 

BAM prevents duplication of effort so that everyone has access to the same materials and templates. So if one team’s budget is significantly higher than another’s, BAM can still create a level playing field. Infinite asset creation is made available to everyone. 

Brand Activation Management systems make it easier for your organisation’s teams to produce work efficiently. Every image, logo, product description, video, animation or price list can be centrally stored and simply retrieved, to be reutilised or adapted for future use.

This supports your capacity to engage and build a connection with your customers, as well as present better working conditions for your team with straightforward BAM tools.

With the need to preserve and propel your brand greater than ever to a worldwide audience spoilt for choices, Brand Activation Management works to maximise your presence and constantly reinforce your identity.

Brand automation

Keeping on top of every element of your brand can be all-consuming, particularly when a company spans the globe. Consistency is often attempted by multiple agencies and in-house teams in each country and realistically, it’s nearly impossible to stay aligned if you don’t have a shared tool and process for producing assets.

Brand automation has many benefits and is achieved by centralising where you store, create and share marketing materials. Using smart templates, such as those built by Papirfly, you can edit predefined templates with translations, culturally appropriate imagery, colours, branding and more.

BAM and the importance of brand consistency

When you’re at the helm of a global organisation with outlets based in numerous countries, brand consistency can be a challenge for several reasons:

• Language barriers
• Complying with cultural standards
• The vast array of channels you market through
• Bad interpretations of brand guidelines (by local teams or agencies)
• Lack of clearly defined guidelines
• Human error

Consistent branding results in 23% more annual revenue for organisations than those that are inconsistent, making brand consistency key in keeping audiences familiar, engaged and forming emotional ties to your brand. 

A consistent brand is a strong brand supported by comprehensive guidelines – one that understands who they are, what they stand for and where they are going. That is the type of brand that customers identify with if they share similar values and the type of brand that fosters repeat business. Unless you have a consistent approach, messages can quickly become diluted, key information can get lost, and customers can get confused.

Brand consistency doesn’t just apply to your customers, but plays a key role in your employer branding as well. If there is a disconnection between your employees’ view and your external communication with potential new hires about what your brand is, you are sending out confusing messages and will likely fail to effectively engage both external and internal personnel, leading to dips in productivity and motivation.

How does Brand Activation Management help you achieve brand consistency?

Achieving this all-important brand consistency isn’t straightforward, but it is essential. The following three tips should go some way to realising the right balance:

1. Set parameters for your employees

Limit the potential for human error or brand inconsistency by setting clear boundaries as to who has access to what resources.

BAM by Papirfly™ gives you the power to adjust permission levels for employees, on an individual and team level. They only see the templates and files relevant to them and their projects. They get access to smart templates that provide creative flexibility within a set framework, meaning they can keep up with content creation demand but can’t move away from your brand guidelines.

2. Assess your existing channels in line with your brand identity

While most brands will want to spread their message to as wide an audience as possible, determining the best channels for your brand is crucial. If the tone of your brand is especially corporate and straight-laced, your marketing materials might not be fit for Instagram, in the same way that an energetic, kid-friendly company could steer clear of LinkedIn.

There are no clearly defined rules for this, but if your brand voice and the channels you work on clash too notably, team members could resort to twisting your message to try and fit the audience. With BAM, your templates can be resized based on specific channel requirements. If different teams require different social outputs, the template can be programmed to accommodate this.

3. Embrace the power of repetition

Brand templates and guidelines found within your Brand Activation Management software ensure that when adjustments are made to your assets, they do not steer away from your overarching brand and key messaging. 

These brand management tools and templates help achieve consistency across your global marketing, optimise the production process and empower your entire organisation to be more reactive to the ever-evolving needs of your audiences worldwide.

What benefits does BAM software offer businesses?

Brand Activation Management software presents several valuable advantages for organisations looking to maximise their budgets, produce marketing materials at scale and make life easier for their employees. 

Outside of what we’ve already discussed in this article, here are more ways that BAM can transform the way teams work forever:

Localising your content

For brand’s with a global reach, speaking to audiences overseas requires a full cultural understanding of their local nuances, imagery and language.

Did you know that 71% of marketers feel less than half of their content is being consumed effectively because it doesn’t take into account their local and mobile audiences? Now more than ever, it is imperative that global brands speak to audiences on a local, personal level in order to build strong relationships.

Let’s take one example of how BAM can support this localisation process…

You’re a global retailer with headquarters based in the U.S. and your team in Austria spotted an opportunity to promote a product based on weather conditions. The request would be sent across, then on to the agency to complete. This process could take several days or even weeks, and result in the opportunity being missed. Or the materials could reach the Austrian team with mistakes or creative elements that won’t fit the audience.

If the Austrian team had access to BAM by Papirfly™ they could quickly and easily seize this opportunity by creating their own on-brand materials in-house, delivering what they need in a matter of minutes. And, if head office required, they could request digital approval in seconds for the asset they created from the U.S. team.

Enhanced efficiency across the board

As well as improving an organisation’s ability to turn around tailored content for their local audiences, Brand Activation Management goes even further in optimising the way companies market themselves across the globe.

Nintex reports that one of the most broken processes employees face is locating documents, with 49% of those surveyed stating this takes too much time in their organisation. When your company is spread across multiple locations, and your key brand assets aren’t stored in one central, easy-to-access space, it can lead to combined hours lost trying to find the assets required to create fresh marketing materials. And you can never get this time back.

BAM software, with its Digital Asset Management functionality, removes this waste of time and helps marketers and companies in general operate in a more streamlined, efficient manner. These systems help you organise, label and store assets in one fundamental location, where anyone can quickly filter through, locate and utilise for the asset they intend to create.

A Brand Activation Management system’s comprehensive templating tools can have your people, regardless of design expertise, producing on-brand and perfectly formatted marketing content from this location. With all brand assets in place, this reduces the chance for materials that go against your brand guidelines and subsequently slashing the time-consuming revision process.

The type of errors that require proofing and correction often come about because creatives do not have the information at hand to help them get it right the first time. Brand Activation Management reduces the chance of errors cropping up immediately, and helps save teams countless hours of time in the process.

Reduce reliance on agencies

Agencies are often critical to a brand’s strategy and creative communications. But if your team is totally reliant upon them for marketing materials, your budget is going to disappear quickly.

By bringing a large volume of everyday designs, edits and tweaks in-house, your team doesn’t have to wait around for what they need, and you can focus your agency budget on harnessing the skills of theirs you really need. 

Supporting the 4-day working week

The 4-day working week is not yet a reality for most organisations, but it could well be the future. Many brands have their toes firmly dipped in the hybrid working pool, but for many, reducing hours by one whole working day is too big of a leap to take.

This is understandable, especially if teams are stretched already. But the 4-day work week for in-house teams could be possible with the help of BAM. Teams are creating more than they’ve ever thought possible, hitting deadlines way in advance and are freed up for more high-level thinking within their role. 

While BAM can’t solve every challenge in relation to the 4-day work week, should brands need to head down this road in future in order to secure talent, BAM is a strong supportive step in the right direction. 

Empowering your employees

Much of this article has concentrated on the benefits Brand Activation Management brings to your organisation’s ability to communicate your messages, visions and objectives to your customers. What shouldn’t go unappreciated is the advantages BAM software offers to your employees, enhancing how they work and appreciate your brand.

Getting as much of your team as possible involved in marketing content creation makes sense on every level:

• More work is completed in-house
• Marketing reaches audiences quicker
• Employees feel encouraged to unlock creativity 
• Staff can work smarter, not harder
• Deadlines are met, budgets maximised and stress levels are reduced
• Your whole team develops a deeper connection with your brand

Brand Activation Management works to make life easier for your employees and place them at the forefront of your marketing efforts. With all brand assets accessible through a central portal, employees need just a short amount of time to create studio-quality materials that maintain complete compliance with your branding.

The true benefit offered by a BAM system here is its ease of use for people regardless of their design skills. Providing intuitive creative suites for the creation of digital, video, social, email, print and much more with clear branding parameters, employees are actively encouraged to embrace new ways to market to their audience.

Investing in a brand portal is a transformative move for your organisation, so it’s important you invest in the right one.

Optimising content creation

One of the trickiest parts of any marketing strategy is producing content at-scale and to meet short deadlines. Campaigns must be both planned and reactive, with the latter often posing challenges with a team’s ability to move things through to the approved stage quickly. It can involve any number of people, agencies and third-party suppliers to bring it all together, and can become a costly process.

If you’re finding that content production is burning through your budget, download our whitepaper to more consistent and efficient content production.

Is BAM software a better option than outsourcing?

Agencies provide valuable partnerships for strategic and creative work. But for everyday creations, amends and variations, budget can be quickly eaten up. Agencies are full of specialists who provide real insight, knowledge and skill for your marketing strategies. By taking some of the simpler creation tasks, edits and localisations in-house, budget is freed up to invest in more high-level agency input, as opposed to repetitive tasks that can be completed by your own teams.

BAM provides peace of mind that your teams can create exactly what they need – digital, social, video, print, email and more – in a matter of minutes. No need for design skills or engaging a professional, BAM templates are pre-programmed to meet strict brand guidelines, while giving teams the freedom to create. 

Turnaround times become much less lengthy, with approvals and amends taking place internally. It also avoids having to use many local agencies across the world to work on translation and localisation materials, as these can all be handled via the BAM platform. This gives your one centralised agency total ownership over your creative and your business total control of its brand.

Do you really need BAM in your budget?

You might have missed the boat for this year’s budget, but it’s never too early to start laying the groundwork for next year. Help determine whether BAM is a must for your marketing budget.

BAM customer brand stories

Over 500,000 users are embracing BAM worldwide, and some of the world’s best-loved brands have never looked back since incorporating our software into their marketing team’s arsenal of tools. We’d like to share some first-hand brand stories on how BAM has changed their world for the better.

> Watch Vodafone’s story

> Watch Thon Hotels’ story 

> Watch Unilever’s story

> Watch DSV’s story

Brand Activation Management is redefining the way brands approach marketing

BAM by Papirfly™ supports global teams on their mission to achieve brand consistency. 

Our team has spent decades developing our tools so your markets stay firmly educated on your brand’s purpose, guidelines and evolution, with no agency support or design expertise required.

• Create infinite marketing assets in intuitive creation suites
• Store and share brand assets from one location, accessible to teams worldwide
• Educate your employees on the purpose, visions and missions of your brand
• Manage, plan and organise campaigns with global governance tools

Get acquainted with our intelligent Brand Activation Management software or book your demo today.

Creatives conceptualise your campaigns.

Strategy keeps your marketing aligned.

Project managers ensure everything is delivered on time and on budget.

Whose job is it to make sure your brand is aligned globally, across all campaigns?

For a brand manager, that’s a mighty role to take on. Without the right approval processes in place and technology to support them, it’s a tangled mess of complexity.

In this article, we’ll share how you and your teams can enjoy an approval process that’s free from stress and chaos.

How to streamline your sign-off process 

There are many steps to successful approval approaches, and these will vary depending on the size and nature of your brand. This isn’t about micromanaging – this is about ensuring clarity, consistency and control over your brand’s campaign and outputs. Here are some fundamentals to consider:

Identification and audit

If you don’t have your sign off process mapped out, this is your first step. There’s a great tool called Diagrams that can help you plot everything in a logical, easy-to-understand way. Identify all the people and processes that are required in order for something to be signed off. This may be organised by sub-brand, particular formats, divisions or countries. 

Here are 8 things you will need to include:

• The types of content and campaign material teams create
• Which stages are involved in the creation of each type
• Who is accountable for each of these stages?
• How long should each of these stages last?
• What is the key action for each stage that triggers the next one?
• Once each part is completed, how is this communicated?
• How do these campaigns then get reviewed and amended for different markets? 
• Is there a separate flow for ad-hoc/urgent jobs? If there is a time-sensitive topical piece, for example, how does this differ and can this be an abridged process?

Once you have this down, it’s important that refresher training is put into practice so that teams know who is responsible for what. If you have BAM by Papirfly™, you can completely automate this process, as well as create all your digital and print assets from within the dedicated portal.  

Documenting

You’ve got the bigger picture mapped out, but now you need to talk about documenting the process in further detail and working out your audit trail. If you are yet to go fully digital, you might use a PDF annotation tool to submit requests, do it via email, use a project management tool or fill out a physical form. 

It’s worth creating a base template as a starting point. This may be in the form of a checklist, comment boxes or signature sections. So even if you fill out the PDF, you can keep an audit trail within this template and ensure you’ve checked everything you need to. 

Don’t just stick with what you have because it’s working right now – consider whether this will work in the longer term and ask yourself if you have documentation for the following scenarios:

• How do you submit change requests? 
• What are the steps after approval or refusal? 
• Who is accountable if something goes wrong? 
• What happens if the person who needs to give approval is off sick? 
• How many revisions are allowed before the issue is escalated higher? 
• How will the general review phase be separated from approvals?

There’s a lot to consider. But having these details in an approval guide or spreadsheet can help existing employees and new starters get to grips with how things work. It will also give you complete peace of mind that nothing will go wrong in your absence.

5 tips to get the most out of approvals

#1 Timing is everything

There’s no point in sign off taking place too early or too late in the process. Involving stakeholders at the wrong time may have big implications on deadlines.

#2 Give prompts to avoid vagueness

In your approval guide or as a separate piece of training, give examples of what’s considered constructive feedback and what isn’t. It might look something like this:

❌ Vague

• “That logo doesn’t look quite right.”
• “The information looks too much.”
• “I don’t really like the image for UAE. Replace it with something else.”

✅ Useful

• “That logo looks skewed. Revert to brand guidelines to ensure it’s correct.”
• “Volume of information makes it hard to read. Remove section B. (marked up).”
• “This image is culturally inappropriate. Please see UAE-specific imagery folder and replace.”

#3 Ensure next steps are clear

When giving feedback make sure the recipient knows what to do after they’ve implemented it. Be very clear in the next steps. If you’re not, and a deadline is missed, it could come back to haunt you. Be as specific as possible in how the process moves on.

This doesn’t work…
“Please make these amends and send them back to me so we can hit the deadline.”

This does work…
“Please make these amends and send them back to me so we can hit the deadline. Also include Becky in case I’m in a meeting. She can give you final approval before this goes off to print.” 

This doesn’t work…
“I’m happy with this now. Send it across to David and see what he thinks.”

This does work…
“I’m happy with this now. You will need David’s final approval before posting. Please make sure he does this today and confirm with me when it’s done.”

#4 Give teams 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. Brand guidelines should include (at the very minimum):

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

#5 Revisit briefing documents

If the same things are consistently being picked up on, it could be that the briefs aren’t comprehensive or clear enough. When checking work for the first time, make sure you have the brief to hand. If something significant has been missed, and it’s not on the brief, you know you need to give two sets of feedback. 

What could go wrong?

❌ Too many people involved in the process
❌ Lack of automation
❌ Unclear deadlines and sense of urgency lost
❌ Unrealistic time frames to turn around amends
❌ Poor communication

✅ Limited brand guardians for specific regions/sub-brands
✅ Digitise approvals process through BAM by Papirfly™
✅ No task can proceed without assigning a deadline
✅ Approval deadline set to feedback by
✅ One method of feedback is established

How to learn from mistakes

No matter how stringent your approvals process, things can and will go wrong occasionally along the line. What’s important is that teams can learn from these shortcomings, get better and move on.

Debriefing sessions

At the end of a big project, review bottlenecks and audit trails to identify any common themes of mistakes. Hold a quick session to talk about what went wrong and what can be implemented to prevent this happening again in the future.  

Mapping out imperfect journeys and realigning

Taking a step back when things really fall short may mean knocking down your approvals process and starting again. This can seem daunting, but the time you invest now to get it right will save you a lot more in the future. 

Reviewing briefs 

While the fundamentals of a brief should be consistent, it could be that different levels of employees need different levels of information in order to make sure their work is the best it could possibly be. In addition to tailoring briefs where feasible, include a link to useful resources such as brand guidelines, so that everyone’s knowledge is consistently refreshed. 

Essential approval features from BAM

Whether it’s a full campaign or an individual asset, the approvals process is what keeps production moving smoothly and on the right track. While teams across the world are using BAM by Papirfly™ to create all their digital and print assets, on brand and on time, they are also benefiting from a range of features that makes sign off seamless. 

Chat function gives multiple stakeholders a way of chatting about a particular asset together, before committing to the feedback. This prevents conflicting direction and makes sure everyone is aligned. 

Document markup provides physical points for the creator to review comments left, so that they can see exactly what needs to be updated and where. 

Locking down elements 

The creation tool features templates that are created in-line with your brand guidelines and places restrictions on how much can be changed. Stakeholders also have the power to lock down particular elements so they can’t be touched. This removes the need for feedback on basic brand etiquette as everything is pre-programmed. The creator still has flexibility, but within a predefined framework. 

Approval workflows

All workflows are documented, digitised and automated within the portal. Teams can access the assets, leave comments and receive feedback all in a single place. The entire version history and audit trail are recorded, and marketing materials can only be released and shared once final approval has been given. 

Re-approval of edited creatives 

If an additional amend is made to a campaign asset post-sign off, the approval process is reopened and the stakeholders will be notified. This gives an additional layer of assurance that nothing can be messed with or go out incorrectly. 

There are so many features that make BAM by Papirfly™ the perfect tool for marketing teams. Bring production in-house. Keep your brand consistent. Take global campaigns to market with complete confidence. From one centralised portal. 

Book your demo today.

When you consider the vast amount of digital content today’s leading brands distribute on a daily basis, across multiple channels and formats, it is evident why the traditional approaches for storing these assets are no longer fit for purpose.

Files saved on standard servers with long-winded file paths gradually become massive productivity vacuums, as your teams waste valuable time digging through folders to find the asset. Some will even end up lost forever:

• 49% of employees say they struggle to find documents on a consistent basis
• 90% of consumer brands meet bottlenecks in their handling of digital content
• The average UK employee wastes 1.5 hours a week looking for documents misplaced at work

Introducing DAM

The rise of Digital Asset Management (DAM) solutions has gone a long way to correcting these problems that plagued businesses and marketing teams worldwide. By introducing a single, manageable and intuitive space for people to locate the assets they need faster, DAMs enhance productivity and protect against files falling through the cracks.

But, with the demands on digital content continuing to grow in parallel with organisations’ attempts to streamline processes as much as possible, is a single-purpose DAM system enough for modern marketers?

In this article, we interview Phil Owers, CEO at Papirfly, on how investing in a standalone DAM system can only take you so far in your efforts to control your content marketing, and why BAM (Brand Activation Management) represents a more complete solution for the future.

What is a DAM?

Digital Asset Management (DAM) is about organising your assets, images, documents and more in one location, making it easier for users to locate, implement and share these files than a traditional folder-based approach.

While this technology has been in development for several decades, it’s only in the last decade or so that they expanded to incorporate visuals, graphics and further imagery. This evolution no doubt made DAM systems more beneficial for the marketing industry, providing a useful repository for their branded content, raw files, stock imagery, etc.

As well as providing a centralised home for all a brand’s content, a DAM can also offer facilities for the management, manipulation, protection and movement of media files and their associated metadata.

The Global Digital Asset Management Market is set to grow from £904m (2018) to £5bn by 2024 (Research And Markets)

Why might someone choose to invest in a DAM system?

There is no question that DAM systems carry several strong benefits to businesses, particularly those who have identified their struggles with managing and distributing their assets:

• Large files can be shared much more easily across teams, rather than having to devote time to compressing assets and sending them through email or via a dedicated file transfer service like WeTransfer
• By centralising and organising files through unique, recognisable metadata, it becomes significantly faster for people to find the assets they need
• A DAM system gives brands greater control over different versions of the same assets, so that there is no risk of incorrect assets being used over their latest counterparts
• Outdated assets can be archived to prevent their general use, but kept secure in case you wish to revisit and update them at a later date
• The costs of time, effort and resources to replace misplaced work is dramatically reduced or eliminated altogether, as all content is stored in one place
• Brand consistency is better maintained as your employees can scan and identify if any content uploaded to the DAM does not follow your unique identity

How much DAM storage do you need?

There is no hard and fast answer to this question, as it will depend on your company’s specific circumstances. 

How many in your team will need to use it? What types and sizes of files will you be sharing? How often do you produce content? The answers to these questions and more will factor into how much storage your DAM system has to deliver.

With that in mind, consider the following when determining if a DAM solution is suited for your needs:

• Audit your current amount of files you have across your servers and other devices (USBs, hard drives, etc.), being careful to eliminate any duplicate content, and then add to this an estimation of how much content you will be producing in the coming months/years
• Consider your network speeds, and how that will impact the time it will take to upload assets to the DAM system
• Ensure that the solutions you look into are scalable, and the costs that will be involved in upgrading the level of storage – you don’t want to be held to ransom
• Set systems in motion so that when assets fall into disuse or become outdated, they can be archived on your own server to free up space on the DAM

Is digital asset creation a bigger issue than digital asset management?

The scale of your digital asset creation and the severity of the problems you face will depend on both your marketing team’s setup and the needs of your organisation. But, there is no doubting that the challenges surrounding content production continue to grow.

More and more teams are feeling the strain of budget cuts, staffing shortages, or reduced access to freelance support, while the demands on content escalate, with an increasing number of channels and mediums for brands to connect with their audiences.

• Large brands should be aiming to produce 4-5 blog posts every week for optimal brand awareness
• 47% of businesses spend £7.25K+ on their annual content marketing output compared to 38% in 2019
• 75% of marketers intend to increase investment in branded content creation in 2021

A platform like BAM by Papirfly™ is enabling marketing teams to create an infinite amount of assets with one single, annual license fee. This means they can do a lot more for less – keeping up with the pressures on brands to be ever-present without any further strain on their budgets.

What is BAM?

Brand Activation Management (BAM) expands on the capabilities of a standalone DAM system. BAM software includes an effective DAM solution within it, just as astute at containing an enormous number of digital assets in one place, and making it easy for users to seek out what they need and share it with their colleagues globally.

The difference with BAM though, is that this isn’t where the benefits stop. On top of the same functions as a DAM system, BAM:

• Enables anyone with access to create and edit brand consistent print and digital marketing materials, without the need for specialist design skills
• Becomes a single source of truth for the entire brand, housing all guidelines and standards in one place to be accessed by team members
• Allows users to oversee and manage delivery of assets across their campaigns, and track what assets are being utilised most frequently

Is a DAM more powerful with BAM?

There is no denying the powerful benefits an effective DAM solution offers to marketing teams worldwide, including:

• Improved efficiency, with a DAM capable of helping employees find resources they need up to 5 times faster
• A dedicated space for company-wide collaboration, with a cloud-based DAM accessible to teams across the globe
• Reduced costs on time wasted seeking out digital assets on a daily basis
• Faster times to market due to the speed at which people can locate the assets they require

With the support of a BAM platform alongside this, you gain access to a more comprehensive, intuitive and diverse system for the reasons I noted earlier. 

This both saves money and makes life more straightforward for your team. Instead of needing to invest in numerous technologies that do one job really well, be it a content creation suite, a dedicated “brand knowledge” portal or, in DAM’s case, a smart storage solution for your digital portfolio, BAM incorporates all of this into one system.

Can BAM help teams save even more time than they do with a DAM?

DAM’s main time-saving benefit is reducing the time it takes for people to locate assets they need, which as noted is not an insignificant amount of time. 

However, it typically pales in comparison to the time and resources devoted to the creation of these assets, which could involve the efforts of specialist designers and repeated proofreading sessions, extending turnaround times for content dramatically.

With BAM offering a remedy to those problems as well as being fully capable of fulfilling the issues resolved by a DAM, these platforms unquestionably offer more time and cost-saving potential than even the most sophisticated DAM system can on its own.

What would you say to someone considering investing in a DAM system?

A DAM is great in isolation, and the best examples of these systems available do their job remarkably well. If your organisation or marketing teams aren’t using a DAM, there is no doubt in my mind that it would save you a great deal of time, money and effort.

But, before you consider investing in a DAM system, it is vital to recognise that they only serve one purpose – efficient, effective management of your digital assets. This is an important consideration for content marketers, but it is just one of many. It is always essential to look at the bigger picture, and if a DAM is the only solution your team could benefit from right now.

So, before making this purchase, take time to find out if there is something out there that offers the same advantages of a DAM, but builds on this with even more capabilities. For that, BAM by Papirfly™ represents an ideal evolution.

For teams looking to take control of content production like never before, and reduce their reliance on costly freelancers or agencies to create assets you could produce in-house with the right tool, BAM goes a lot further in resolving all of the issues that teams face day-to-day:

• Content creation is faster and more consistent than ever before
• Brand guidelines are kept at the forefront of teams’ minds
• All assets are securely stored and shared across your global workforce
• Key metrics related to your assets’ usage are tracked and stored

Brand activation management

Three words that mean a great deal for the quality, consistency and performance of your brand in an increasingly crowded environment.

Your brand is what sets you apart. It’s your unique calling card to your audiences, be they your customers, employees or the wider public, showing them what you are all about and why they should care about you. In a landscape that is only becoming more and more competitive, having this identity is more critical than ever.

• 81% of global consumers need to be able to trust the brands they buy from
• It takes 5-7 interactions for someone to recall your brand
• Presenting a consistent brand across all platforms can increase revenue by up to 23%

With the status and protection of your brand a critical foundation for success, becoming acquainted with activation management should be a matter of when, not if. Discover how this software empowers your company, and why our all-in-one brand management platform is the standout choice for marketing teams worldwide.

What is brand activation management?

Brand activation management is about gaining control of everything that depicts your brand, not to be confused with brand activation in experiential marketing.

It’s a way to centralise everything that represents your company (including your online videos, printed materials, brochures, social media and employer brand assets) and fitting them seamlessly into your overall brand machine.

Essentially, it’s having the power to transform how the world engages with your brand.

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Why is brand activation important?

For global brands producing hundreds of thousands of assets, it can be easy for guidelines to be misinterpreted, messaging to veer off purpose, colours to be used incorrectly and content to become skewed. 

All these inconsistencies will be hurting the brand perception you have worked so hard to build.

Brand consistently presented to consumers are 4 times more likely to experience brand visibility (Lucidpress)

Brand activation management software keeps your assets in order and creates a safe, controlled environment where you can be totally confident that all content stays on-brand.

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The power Papirfly’s all-in-one platform

Papirfly’s platform is your single online destination for everything that contributes to the strength and quality of your global brand, helping your teams:

Manage:

Through the platform’s digital timeline tool, you can stay informed when content is being published, where it is being shared and how often it is being used

• Set permissions and lock down specific parts of your templates
• Introduce approval workflows for an extra layer of quality control
• Calculate the ROI of your platform by analysing how often assets are created and used

Store & Share:

Use a dedicated DAM to house and organise all your approved content, marketing materials, files and more

• Adjust permission levels to establish who can access each area of your DAM
• Easily filter through logos, fonts, imagery, videos and more
• Consistently build your asset collection, and be alerted if any errors occur

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How does Papirfly stack-up against other software?

Over the last two decades, Papirfly has gained more than 600,000 users across enteprises. But during that time, other companies have emerged offering similar solutions. 

Trying to differentiate one from another by reading through feature lists can get confusing. So, to help you make a more informed decision on the best solution for your company, we’ve carried out some competitor analysis to share what Papirfly has that other software doesn’t.

At its core a DAM solutions provider, Bynder has extended their offering over the years to incorporate creative templates, brand guidelines and analytics.

What we like about it
Like Papirfly, our platform provides a central cloud-based portal for all branded company materials and messaging. The software also allows teams real-time collaborative edits, on-brand approvals and includes auto-formatting for channels and file types – two features our customers find incredibly useful in our solution.

Why we’d choose Papirfly instead
While Bynder’s Template feature has some similarities to Papirfly’s, its capabilities are limited – you get the same basic functionality, but it doesn’t give you the same flexibility and reassurance. 

In this respect, Papirfly is far more dynamic in that it allows you to set strict templates and approve content to be associated with them. This leaves no room for the kind of errors that can still happen using Bynder, especially when localising assets for distinct markets.

Final say 
For smaller organisations who are less impacted by lack of consistency, Bynder has pretty much everything you need to store and share your marketing materials. But if you’re dreaming of global brand consistency, Papirfly’s Template and Localisation features can’t be outdone.

Canva is an online design and publishing tool that helps people around the world design for a wide range of materials and publish them anywhere.

What we like about it
Canva’s online design and publishing tools are simple and easy to pick up with limited design experience – even with its long list of editing features. They also do a good job of encouraging teams to create more with them by including helpful video tutorials on their website.

Why we’d choose Papirfly instead
This is another instance where Papirfly’s Templates feature really stands out. Canva showcases a huge variety of its own templates for different print and digital formats, but relies on the teams using them to ensure that they are bespoke to your brand.

With BAM, all templates can be predefined before anything is created to guarantee absolute alignment with your guidelines.

Final say 
Again, this is a question of consistency – if you want full control over your templates while empowering your teams to produce assets quickly and on-brand, BAM is still your best bet.

Frontify is a brand management solution that leads with brand guideline creation. However it also incorporates DAM, creative collaboration spaces and templates for both digital and print. 

What we like about it
Similar to Papirfly’s Point feature, Frontify makes relevant brand guidelines easy to store, find and share with specific teams. And for faster campaign asset approvals, it also features a real-time collaboration feature and the ability to allocate relevant materials to specific teams.

Why we’d choose Papirfly instead
Although Frontify has lots of helpful integrations, such as Sketch and InDesign, it relies on teams having a good knowledge of these complex tools in order to create and set templates in the first place. 

With Papirfly, you have this capability built into an intuitive interface that doesn’t rely on prior knowledge of design software.

Final say
If you’re looking to free-up design resources and reduce your dependency on external agencies, then Papirfly’s easy-to-use creation suite can help you bring more in-house and create bespoke templates in minutes.

Built primarily with retail brands in mind, Colateral promises to help users plan, implement and analyse their campaigns.

What we like about it
Colateral has been available for about the same time as Papirfly. And like BAM, its software focuses on the pain points of its customers and incorporates genuinely useful tools for solving their most pressing challenges.

Why we’d choose Papirfly instead
It’s clear that Colateral has some great features to make the lives of retail marketers easier, but it leaves other areas of the business unaccounted for. With Papirfly you have tools to enhance your employer branding, external marketing and comms all in the same solution. 

Final say
While we can’t deny Colateral’s scope for the fast, wide-scale rollout of retail assets, Papirfly’s focus lies in empowering your teams to produce work of a higher quality. However, scale of production is something that we’re developing in a new feature that will be able to convert huge qualities of content into specific formats, sizes and languages.

Altru is an employee advocacy platform that makes it easy for staff to create, store and share videos.

What we like about it 
Altru is great for producing professional-looking videos fast. It’s incredibly simple to use and even incorporates an app to promote employee advocacy to get staff engaged with your brand.

Why we’d choose Papirfly instead
Employer advocacy is an excellent way to make your brand resonate with both potential candidates and consumers. But it’s only one part that makes up the overall success of your employer brand. 

With Papirfly, you have easy-to-use tools to help your employees create authentic employee advocacy videos, social media posts, print assets and more. Plus you get a built-in DAM to store and share them, as well as a single location to store brand guidelines for total consistency.

Final say
As well as having the extra features and capabilities mentioned above, Papirfly origins are in employer branding. It’s this expertise that made us stand out from the very beginning and has made us a top choice for leading brands across the globe ever since.

Lumen5 is a video creation and editing tool that makes it easier for teams to produce impactful, engaging videos from existing content. It claims to cut video creation time to an average of six minutes.

What we like about it
As well as providing templates for specific types of video, Lumen5’s AI-powered technology helps you storyboard your ideas, fit your content to a layout, and find music and visuals that enhance your message.

Why we’d choose Papirfly instead
It’s brilliant to have simple software for bringing video creation in house. But the difference with Papirfly is that you can guarantee they’ll be consistent, keep track of how they are being used and make them easily accessible, company-wide.

Final say 
Contrary to the old saying, many tools don’t make light work. If all you need is the ability to create social media videos quickly, Altru can do it, but if you want to make them feel part of your overall brand, you’ll need to invest in more tools, or have them all-in-one with Papirfly.

Perhaps the most notable difference that Papirfly delivers over the solutions above is over 20 years’ experience dedicated to developing our platform. We’ve spent time making it as comprehensive and robust as possible in meeting the needs of brands in any industry across the globe.

Our commitment is to simplify the everyday for marketing teams worldwide. We are proud to have made that possible for over 200 brands globally, and would be happy to discuss how we can achieve the same for your company.

Get in touch with our team today to learn more about the benefits of our all-in-one brand management platform, or experience the platform for yourself by arranging your free demo.

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.

You’re ready to put your big idea forward and start making a real change for your brand and marketing team. But you need to get through senior management first.

• How do you prove the effectiveness of software they haven’t seen yet?
• How do you demonstrate return on investment?
• How do you prove this isn’t another fad, but a significantly better way of working?
• How do you justify the cost to people outside of the marketing team that may not be able to visualise the bigger picture? People that may be in the process of making cuts?

We understand your time is already stretched, and putting together a business case is the very last thing you need. That’s why we’ve put together a download containing everything you need to get the ball rolling. 

We’ve also put together a dedicated slide that will help retail marketers and employer brand teams make their presentations more industry relevant.

The ‘why’?

The fact you’ve made it to this point demonstrates you understand the value of BAM by Papirfly™. You see that it’s a long-term, valuable investment into the future of your brand. You are pioneering for positive company-wide change. But why should any of your bosses sit up and take notice?

When talking through the pitch, ensure you remain confident and professional, but not sales-y. This isn’t a typical piece of software – this is positively changing the way you approach marketing production forever. It’s a big deal, and your opening statement needs to demand attention.

At the very beginning of your pitch deck, we’ve given you a powerful positioning piece that addresses the problem you’re trying to solve, without being too negative. It’s a call for change, and to embrace innovation for the greater good of the brand and company.

The solution

You may be tempted to go into lots of detail about BAM by Papirfly™. But try not to do this unless prompted. The reality is that the people you are pitching to only need to understand the topline information surrounding what it is; the main focuses should be on how it will benefit the organisation, the problems it will solve, and that it won’t cost them any more than they are already spending. 

That’s why we’ve given you some top-line benefits and name-dropped some of our world-renowned customers so that your senior management team can see just why they should take your pitch seriously.

The financials

If you can prove that BAM by Papirfly™ will not only save money, but make teams more productive, without having to invest heavily, you’ll immediately break down the biggest barrier in the minds of key stakeholders such as CMOs, CFOs and CEOs. 

While BAM by Papirfly™ will be able to help you deliver more output than you’ve been able to afford in the past, it’s important to back up any claims with evidence. We’ve included real-world examples within the PDF, but feel free to create your own versions using your existing rates.

The time-saving

We’ve included a dedicated section on how BAM by Papirfly™ helps teams go to market quicker. Though this is a huge benefit for the marketing department, from an SMT perspective, it helps to reduce dead time and lengthy turnaround times – a major source of bottlenecking on projects and a costly expense. 

We’ve included the below infographic to illustrate just how much time can be saved. This is a great tool to help senior management understand just how many moving parts there are to a single campaign. 

The bigger picture

Ensure the recipient of your presentation understands that this solution isn’t just going to benefit the marketing department, but also the wider organisation. Branded documents of any kind can be easily created, edited and shared. 

So while this solution is primarily a marketing and brand solution, it is also a comprehensive business tool in that it can support multiple departments with content creation. These departments can have access to their own templates and use them as they see fit.

The independence

Management teams will have more time for strategic thinking and guidance as other members of the marketing team will be able to easily create and get campaigns to a much more progressed stage than they usually would. 

There will be less hand-holding and micromanagement, meaning senior employees would be able to concentrate more on higher-level tasks. Having a lot of the menial tasks taken from them will also help to create a more positive working environment and contribute to employee retention.

The future-proofing

The details covered in the pitch will all help to build confidence in what you are proposing, but you will need to work on how you make it fit into your company’s long-term strategic vision. 

Making reference to terms and goals you’ve been told about will help stakeholders resonate more with the language you’re using, and help them visualise how this proposal fits in with and supports their plans. 

Dealing with objections 

You should expect to meet some level of resistance, and provide all responses in a calm and considered manner. Be confident in your convictions and reasoning, but by preparing for questions and a level of criticism you can prepare for all eventualities. 

Try to be objective when preparing your presentation, and put yourself in the shoes of the people hearing your pitch. We’ve ordered the pitch to break down any barriers they throw at you.

Good luck and get ready to embrace BAM by Papirfly™!

You should now have all the tools and information you need to put up an indisputable pitch. 

The power of BAM speaks for itself, but sometimes those at board-level need a bit of extra convincing. If you have anything in mind you think will help you with your pitch, get in touch with our team and we’ll do our best to help.

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. 

The demands of content production get tougher with each passing year. Today’s brands are expected to maintain a consistent flow of on-brand content, across a growing number of channels, to diverse, global audiences.

The pressure is on for modern marketing teams. But, budgets are limited. Hours are finite. Workforces are already stretched. Trying to meet the need for continuous content in a purely manual way is now utterly impractical.

Creators will be overworked. Errors will be made. Costs will run high. To keep audiences with ever-decreasing attention spans engaged with your brand, marketers need solutions that will enable them to ramp up production without compromising on quality.

That’s why the term “creative automation” has rapidly risen in popularity in recent years. It embodies the aim of many marketers to produce the substantial amount of content today’s audiences demand, without needing to massively expand their teams or work around the clock.

What is creative automation? 

Creative automation is harnessing technology to allow marketers to scale their production significantly while maintaining a quality output. This is achieved by removing many of the simple, yet time-costly, administrative processes that go into creating assets for a wide range of campaigns and formats.

For instance, say you want to launch a digital campaign promoting a new product. This will involve:

• Multiple different asset formats – social media posts, videos, infographics, banner ads, digital signage, etc.
• Content dedicated to specific channels, from social media platforms to email campaigns
• Numerous audiences across the globe

All of your assets will have consistent branding and a unified theme. But, because of the different requirements for each channel – sizing, formats, languages, imagery – these small changes will take a lot of time and effort to produce.

Creative automation seeks to make these minor yet vital changes much faster to implement. Rather than designers and editors needing to hand-craft these across all formats, painstakingly making every subtle alteration for what is essentially the same asset, they would be able to do this in a matter of clicks.

Using intelligent, pre-approved templates, marketers could seamlessly adjust one base into multiple formats, sizes and localisations, all in one place. In a matter of minutes, one asset can become dozens, even hundreds, all perfectly on-brand and error-free.

This reduces the administrative overhead that these once manual, time-consuming tasks required. 

It sounds too good to be true, right? Creative automation promises to be everything that marketing teams need to streamline their operations and free-up their creatives’ time for more suitable matters.

But, there are reasons why BAM by Papirfly™, in spite of delivering the same speed, cost-saving and consistency advantages outlined above, is not referred to as a creative automation tool…

Why BAM is not a creative automation solution

At Papirfly, we are averse to the term “creative automation” for several reasons. First, the phrasing of creative automation itself is problematic, as it indicates that the creative process behind the design and development of assets is automated.

This is far from helpful when one of the biggest barriers to this helpful technology being adopted is the fear among designers that these solutions are brought in to replace them, rather than support them. 

With increasing doubts across all industries over the effects of automation and “the robots taking over”, referring to a tool as creative automation is unlikely to alleviate any concerns your design team may have about their status.

We firmly believe that the creative process behind any assets or campaign must remain manual and person-driven, and not confined by any kind of automation. BAM as a solution is there to accelerate the rate of content production once the creative behind an asset is confirmed, and that is why we avoid the confusion that “creative automation” can inspire.

Furthermore, the scope of creative automation solutions can vary significantly depending on the tool used. It has become something of a catch-all term for any technology that can aid the speed of content production, even if that is simply the ability to resize imagery for different social media channels.

With BAM, the scope of our intelligent templates is as comprehensive as possible. From social assets, videos and emails, to brochures, posters and presentations – all marketing materials can be adapted to these formats in-house with this all-in-one solution.

Plus, rather than simply take an existing asset and adjust it, BAM’s templates allow all users – even those with no design expertise – to create new, on-brand assets in a short span of time. These can then be adjusted to all relevant formats, increasing the reach of that asset across all of a brand’s audiences.

Take social media assets as an example. This is one of the most demanding areas of content production that marketers must contend with, competing with other brands for their customers’ attention. Through BAM, users can:

• Customise organic and paid assets in just a click, ensuring they’re perfectly sized for all channels
• Produce static, carousel, video assets and more from pre-programmed templates
• Maintain identity across your social channels with subtly different, yet significant, designs
• Create multi-image layouts, promotions and more
• Quickly adapt language and cultural imagery that appeals to your audiences worldwide

How BAM goes further than creative automation

In addition, BAM does not label itself a creative automation tool because its offering to users is so much more than just a means to create and adapt assets. While that is a major feature, BAM goes even further to be everything marketers need to activate their brand globally.

Digitised approval workflows

To further streamline the content production and ensure everyone who needs it has eyes on assets before they’re published, BAM’s approval workflows guarantees that the right people are notified when an asset is ready to be checked. This means that sign-off is fast-tracked and there is no risk of errors entering the public eye.

• Digital trail of sign-offs
• Make comments directly onto assets
• Complete edits inside BAM

Clear campaign planning

CMOs, marketing managers and more can have complete oversight of what assets are required at each stage of a campaign through BAM’s helpful campaign planner. This visual overview keeps everything neat and tidy, and everyone on schedule, with the ability to make certain briefs, templates and imagery only available to the relevant users and teams.

• A central, visual campaign planner
• Reduces wasted time locating files
• Pull stats to see how often assets are being used

Dedicated educate section 

Give your entire team, from experienced veterans to new recruits, direct access to the guidelines that inform the identities of your brand and sub-brands. Users will be able to find colour palettes, typefaces, icons and more in one central location, with a clear idea of how each should be applied.

• A central place for all guidelines, documents and brand materials
• Specialised views for different teams
• Help teams understand why your brand is executed in a certain way 

Fully configurable DAM

Maintain a unified database of all assets created by your teams globally with a comprehensive Digital Asset Management (DAM) tool. Through this, BAM users can easily save, search, edit and send assets to anyone with the right permissions. It’s a single source of truth for your entire marketing team, making sure there is no risk of duplicating efforts ever again.

• Store and categorise assets by team, sub-brand, campaign or country
• Download, save, share and edit from within the portal
• Keep on top of what’s being used and how frequently

Discover the full reach of BAM

By going beyond the boundaries of creative automation, BAM by Papirfly™ equips marketing teams to enhance the speed, quality and cost-effectiveness of their content output. Over 500,000 users across the globe, including names like Coca-Cola HB, IBM, Unilever and Vodafone, are transforming their approach to marketing through this powerful solution.

If you would like to learn more about the far-reaching capabilities of BAM, arrange a free, personalised demo, or get in touch with our team.