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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In-house marketing leaders: The grounding force

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

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

External design agencies: The creative spark

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

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

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

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

Common rebrand mistakes

3 techniques and tools for exceptional collaboration during the rebrand process

1. A united approach to brand auditing and strategic planning

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

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

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

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

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

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

2. An interactive way to present a new visual identity

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

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

When brand presentations fail to educate and enthuse clients

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

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

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

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

Using a brand portal for a design presentation

3. Bring all rebranded assets together in one place

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

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

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

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

Create a shared checklist of all required brand assets

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Working together toward a rewarding rebrand

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

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

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

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

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

The high cost of slow campaign deployment

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

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

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

The Agency Connection: Supporting dealer marketing partners

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

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

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

Transforming dealer network marketing

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

Key Elements of Success

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

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

Real Results from Leading Automotive Brands

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

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

The Path Forward: Building an Effective Dealer Marketing Ecosystem

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

Step 1: Assess Your Current Dealer Process

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

Step 2: Build the Right Foundation

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

Step 3: Empower Your Dealer Network

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

The Future of Automotive Marketing

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

Accelerate Your Dealer Network Marketing Today

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

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

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

The Nordic energy sector has become a global leader in sustainability and innovation, setting benchmarks in renewable energy adoption and environmental responsibility. With sustainability embedded into corporate strategies, organizations in this sector face unique challenges in communicating their vision and values effectively.

As businesses in this region adopt forward-thinking practices such as circular economy initiatives, maintaining a consistent and compelling corporate brand becomes increasingly vital. Audiences—whether customers, investors, or regulators—demand authenticity and transparency, making on-brand content creation a cornerstone of successful corporate branding.

At Papirfly, we understand the pivotal role branding plays in the energy sector’s transformation. By harnessing the power of our Digital Asset Management (DAM) and content creation tools, organizations can ensure every piece of content reflects their sustainability goals while reinforcing their brand identity.

Circular economy goals drive sustainability messaging

The adoption of circular economy principles is more than a trend—it’s a paradigm shift. Forrester predicts that by 2025, over a third of Fortune 100 companies will commit to circular economy goals, driven by new ISO standards, regulatory requirements, and rising customer expectations. In the Nordics, where sustainability is deeply ingrained, these goals are particularly relevant.

The Nordic countries have set ambitious targets for renewable energy and carbon neutrality. For instance, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden have all met their 2020 targets set in the EU Renewable Energy Directive ahead of schedule, demonstrating a strong commitment to sustainability.

Organizations in the energy sector are reducing waste and extending the lifecycle of resources to meet these commitments. However, articulating these efforts to diverse stakeholders requires a unified and impactful approach.

Papirfly provides a solution by centralizing all sustainability-related assets within a DAM. Teams can seamlessly access approved materials like infographics, reports, and social media templates, ensuring every piece of communication aligns with the brand’s sustainability narrative.

Personalization amid brand loyalty declines

Brand loyalty in the Nordic energy sector is declining due to market liberalization, which has increased competition and made switching providers easier, heightened price sensitivity amidst economic pressures, and greater consumer empowerment through digital platforms and comparison tools. These dynamics have shifted consumer priorities toward pricing and convenience, diminishing traditional brand allegiance​.

Forrester’s 2025 Predictions reveal a projected 25% decline in brand loyalty, attributed primarily to price sensitivity and shifting consumer priorities. In the Nordic energy sector, where competition is fierce, personalization is key to maintaining meaningful connections with stakeholders.

Rather than relying on one-size-fits-all messaging, companies must craft tailored campaigns that resonate with their audiences. Whether communicating with customers about renewable energy solutions or addressing regulatory bodies on sustainability efforts, the need for precision is clear.

Papirfly enables energy brands to personalize their messaging without compromising consistency. Through its on-brand content creation tools, teams can quickly adapt core assets to suit specific audiences, geographies, or platforms. The result is a unified brand presence that adapts to local needs while preserving global alignment.

Corporate Branding as a strategic asset

The Nordic Region aims to be the most sustainable and integrated region in the world by 2030, with a strong focus on activities that support the green transition and the shift towards an economy based on sustainability and climate-neutral energy.

As Forrester highlights, corporate branding in 2025 will demand a balance of innovation and consistency. For energy companies in the Nordics, corporate branding isn’t just about marketing—it’s about showcasing leadership in sustainability and reinforcing credibility in a rapidly evolving sector.

Papirfly’s tools empower organizations to manage their brand assets with precision. By centralizing branding materials and simplifying content creation, Papirfly ensures every piece of content—from investor presentations to customer-facing campaigns—adheres to the brand’s identity and message.

In an industry driven by trust, this consistency is crucial. With Papirfly, marketers can ensure their sustainability story is conveyed authentically, building a strong foundation for long-term engagement with stakeholders.

Case study: “How SSE’s brand consistency powers a sustainable, circular future”

SSE, one of the UK’s largest energy companies, has embraced a dynamic brand management approach to ensure consistency and impact across its communications. By implementing a centralized platform for brand governance, SSE has enhanced its ability to tell a cohesive sustainability story, reinforcing its commitment to a circular economy. By maintaining brand integrity while promoting sustainability initiatives, SSE effectively communicates its role in shaping a greener future.

Papirfly helped SSE deliver:

• Centralized brand governance to ensure consistency across all marketing channels
• Increased efficiency in content creation, reducing time spent on asset production
• Empowered teams with self-serve access to on-brand materials, improving agility
• Enhanced storytelling around sustainability and circular economy initiatives
• Strengthened brand trust through clear, unified messaging
• Reduced unnecessary duplication of brand assets for a resource-efficient approach

Strengthening Corporate Branding in the Energy Sector

The energy sector faces unique corporate branding challenges, especially in the sustainability-driven Nordics. Companies must balance innovation, regulation, and public trust while maintaining a strong and consistent brand presence.

Papirfly provides a centralized and scalable solution to help energy organizations streamline their branding efforts and deliver impactful, sustainability-focused content:

For energy companies navigating an evolving market, a dynamic and well-managed brand is key to attracting talent, investors, and public support—while reinforcing sustainability leadership.

Conclusion

As the Nordic energy sector leads the way in sustainability and innovation, the importance of consistent, on-brand communication has never been greater. From embracing circular economy goals to maintaining personalization in an increasingly competitive market, the challenges ahead require precision, agility, and authenticity.

Papirfly provides the tools needed to meet these demands head-on. By centralizing asset management and empowering teams to create on-brand content, we help organizations convey their sustainability commitments effectively while building trust with their audiences.

The energy sector’s transformation is an opportunity to redefine corporate branding, and Papirfly is here to support Nordic businesses every step of the way!

An expansive approach to content marketing is more important than ever in your automotive marketing strategy.

With the average car buyer spending close to 15 hours researching potential vehicles across multiple channels (2022 Car Buyer Journey Study by Cox Automotive) and the competition for their attention incredibly fierce, a diverse content portfolio across each customer journey stage is key to driving traffic through your doors.

Beyond guiding prospective customers on the path to securing car sales, the strength of your content is equally essential to:

• Stand out in the crowd: Cut through the noise and position your dealership as the go-to destination in your market
• Lead the conversation: Showcase your expertise in electric vehicles, autonomous driving, and sustainable mobility to become the trusted voice customers turn to
• Build lasting relationships: Create meaningful connections that keep customers coming back for their second, third, and fourth vehicles

While the demand for content continues to surge, keeping your marketing ROI healthy is crucial. With automotive leads now costing an average of $250 each (Liontreegroup, 2022) – a number that’s climbing – marketing teams face mounting pressure to optimize their spending while meeting consumers’ growing appetite for information.

Here’s your challenge: Manual content creation eats into your profits. Beyond the obvious costs of time, software, and labor, hidden expenses lurk beneath the surface. Brand inconsistencies, varying content quality, and campaign delays all chip away at your marketing returns, creating a costly cycle that’s hard to break.

Below, we break down 5 ways that persisting manual content production is hurting your ROI – from the obvious to the more subtle – and explore how on-brand content creation software can revolutionize the cost efficiency of your marketing operations.

1. Content production becomes time-consuming and resource-heavy

Above all else, relying heavily on manual content creation methods means you spend more on your marketing operations:

• Hours producing individual assets from scratch
• Money hiring specialist in-house creatives or outsourcing work to an external agency
• Licenses for design software, video editing tools and other content creation platforms

When you consider the significant volume of content you must generate to nurture discerning car buyers at each stage of the customer journey, these costs can very quickly pile up. 

This puts more pressure on your marketing campaigns to drive leads and car sales to make up for the substantial investment you and your team have made preparing them.

2. The scalability and diversity of your content is limited

The immediate costs of manual content production may be the clearest impact on your marketing ROI, but it also has wider ramifications on the volume and reach of your content.

Research shows that today’s car buyers devote more time and use more channels in their search for their ideal vehicle than ever before:

The days of buyers simply browsing car dealerships are long gone. To grab your audience’s attention and cut through the noise, providing a truly multichannel marketing experience is crucial, across both online and offline channels.

Relying on manual content creation limits your ability to meet this demand. With only so many hours in the day and resources available, this approach forces you to be more selective over what channels you focus on – meaning you miss opportunities to engage potential customers.

Meanwhile, your competitors with more automated content production are better placed to dominate search results, social media feeds, advertising space and beyond. This can cause your market share to plummet, hurting the power and performance of your marketing efforts. 

Furthermore, with your time and resources tied up in creating your routine assets, this could be preventing your brand from harnessing more innovative types of automotive marketing, such as:

• Augmented reality (AR) test drives
• Virtual reality (VR) showrooms
• AI-powered car configurators
• Interactive video content

By automating the production of your day-to-day, standard content, you free up the capacity and funds to jump on these powerful trends.

3. Personalizing and localizing collateral becomes more complicated

As well as customers requiring a wider range of content to guide their choice of vehicle, they are also far more expectant of personalized customer experiences:

Car buyers also prioritize different qualities when researching vehicles. For example, according to research from Kantar, US and European consumers focus on cost and reliability, while in China, they rate driving performance and fuel efficiency higher.

The more your marketing campaigns are tailored to the specific needs and nuances of your dealerships’ local markets, the more likely they are to resonate with your target audiences, encourage more clicks, and drive dealership visits.

However, manual content creation makes this extremely challenging to fulfill. Depending on how many demographics your models appeal to and the scale of your dealership network, this can make it impossible to properly adapt assets on time and on budget.

The result? More generic, one-size-fits-all campaigns that fail to connect with customers, leading to low engagement and conversion rates.

4. The time-to-market for your campaigns and promotions significantly slows

Next, the time-consuming nature of manual content creation does not only elevate production costs – it also creates delays for your campaign execution.

Whether you’re developing promotional materials for a new vehicle launch or a time-sensitive campaign in one of your regional dealerships, creating this content from scratch can significantly slow down the process, as well as require more thorough proofing and amends.

With so many options available for modern car buyers, any slip in the efficiency of your marketing can mean a missed sales opportunity. Buyers who may have been interested in your new model may have moved onto your competitors by the time your campaigns are underway.

By moving away from manual production and embracing automotive processes, this can empower your in-house creatives and agency partners to create and deliver content faster to your global dealers, who can then localize it for their specific audiences.

5. Inconsistencies creep into your branding and content

Finally, in addition to increasing times-to-market, an overly manual approach to content creation raises the risk of inconsistencies in your branding and content quality. 

If your content creators don’t have a firm grasp of your brand guidelines, or simply make a basic mistake, your materials may fall short of your brand’s identity and quality standards. 

Consumers should feel confident before committing to such a substantial purchase as a car. Any break in brand consistency can derail your attempts to foster this trust. If your branding deviates from location to location or channel to channel, it projects a disorganized image to your prospects – which could be the difference when choosing between you and your competitors.

If this persists over time, it can dilute the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns and lower conversion rates.

Plus, the threat of human error means your marketing leaders must devote more time to review assets before they are published. This additional time and energy also eats away at your marketing ROI, and can further delay your campaigns.

On-brand content creation software: The key to maximizing your automotive marketing ROI

Now you understand how persisting with manual content creation waters down your marketing ROI, it is apparent that a more automatic approach is required to improve the efficiency of your operations, maintain a presence on all relevant marketing channels, and localize collateral for your diverse dealer markets.

That’s where on-brand content creation software can make a massive difference. By placing innovative, accessible design templates at the heart of your content production processes, you can transform your marketing output’s speed, scale and consistency.

Streamlined content creation through intelligent templates

When creating assets from scratch, ensuring that core brand elements, such as logos, icons and color schemes, are correct adds a lot of time to the creative process. Good-quality design templates provide a clear framework that cuts asset creation time from hours to minutes. 

This enables you to scale up your content production at no additional cost. As a result, your brand can be present at every touchpoint for today’s buyers, building your familiarity and market share in a customer base spoiled for choice.

With the ability to develop infinite templates across all formats – from online video content and social media posts to brochures, posters and billboards – this technology can significantly slash the costs attached to your content production, boosting the returns generated by your campaigns.

Empowering dealerships to produce their own campaign materials

The accessibility of effective on-brand content creation software means that anyone can use this technology to create high-quality, branded assets, regardless of their design skills.

This reduces your reliance on in-house creatives or external agencies to produce the bulk of your content. Once your templates are set up, front-line employees in your dealerships can use these to quickly generate the required content, rather than waiting to hear back from HQ.

With the routine content of your dealerships taken care of through these templates, this frees up time for your specialist creatives and agency partners to push forward with more complex content, be it AR content, VR experiences, or gamified driving simulators.

Locking down consistency across all assets

Utilizing templates molded to your brand guidelines ensures every asset you produce across all channels aligns with your overarching corporate identity.

The result? Customers can enjoy a more consistent, coherent experience wherever they engage with your brand, establishing the trust needed to ultimately sell cars.

Furthermore, in-built approval workflows directly inform whoever is responsible for signing off marketing materials as soon as they’re ready to review. This streamlined process means campaigns are launched faster, allowing you to better capitalize on market opportunities.

Enabling fast, cost-effective localization and personalization

As noted earlier, modern car buyers place a high value on personalized, localized content. On-brand content creation software allows users to instantly adapt assets to meet this expectation.

• Languages can be translated instantly for international dealerships and customers
• Templates can be set up with personalization elements – such as spaces for customer names – that can be applied many times over
• Localized imagery and designs can be locked down so only relevant examples are available to each region

These dynamic elements mean that content can be adapted for specific audiences in a couple of clicks, rather than paying fortunes on local designers for your individual dealerships.

Consequently, content across your dealer network will speak to people’s precise needs rather than take a one-size-fits-all stance. This helps raise the relevance of your campaigns, increasing the likelihood they drive traffic to your websites, landing pages, and dealerships.

Amplify your ROI with on-brand content creation

With a broad content marketing portfolio essential to stand out in a crowded market and engage customers on their long journey to purchasing a car, taking steps to streamline content production is vital to maintain a healthy marketing ROI.

The power of on-brand content creation in action: BMW

For an example of how on-brand content creation software can revolutionize your marketing ROI, look no further than what it has achieved for BMW. 

With an expansive network of automotive dealerships covering countless languages, locations and audiences, the BMW team found that creating content at the required scale was a costly, inefficient process. They struggled to retain their brand identity at every touchpoint, while slow administration left campaigns on hold.

By introducing on-brand design templates, paired with a centralized Digital Asset Management (DAM) library, their frontline workers were empowered to produce localized content without fear of compromising brand guidelines or needing to learn complex design software.

The outcome? BMW’s identity is upheld in all locations. Time to market has decreased. Brand management and sales workflows run smoothly. And, most importantly, their marketing ROI has accelerated to previously unattainable levels.

At Papirfly, our solutions empower automotive brands in the U.S. and beyond to create content at an unprecedented scale, all with consistency at their core.
 
From on-brand template technology that streamlines content production across all channels to DAM solutions that establish a single source of truth for your brand.

From establishing the reasons for a refresh and conducting competitor research, to securing stakeholder buy-in and internally communicating changes – the challenges involved in launching any rebrand are significant.

In fact, so much energy goes into developing these new identities that by the time they are unveiled, companies often find they lack the infrastructure and energy to fully support and manage their brand as it enters the real world. 

History is littered with examples of rebrands that never captured the imagination of customers or pushed their companies forward – and a substantial number of these might have stood a better shot had their post-launch process been properly planned out.

So, how do you ensure your new brand identity sticks the landing? Preparing just as thoroughly for the weeks and months after a rebrand as you did for its development can make the difference between a rebrand that stands the test of time and one that falls flat on arrival.

Below, we break down the challenges your identity has to face post-launch, and share our top tips to overcome these pitfalls and empower your new look to thrive.

3 challenges your rebrand rollout has to overcome

The brand rollout checklist is complete: your style guides are built, your team members are on board and your new identity is off the ground.

To keep it there, it’s really important you’re taking the time to properly nurture and support your new look. Doing that effectively requires a considered approach – one cognisant of the challenges ahead.

Challenge #1 – Addressing customer resistance

Perhaps one of the biggest hurdles your rebrand will face is pushback from customers.

It’s not just because humans are creatures of habit. In a world where social media and personalisation are at the tip of every campaign, chances are that many of your customers have formed strong emotional connections with your brand and what it represents. 

Tampering with that balance by introducing a new name, image or identity to the mix risks causing upset among your customers and damaging that all-important metric: trust.

Although the route to rebuilding trust and customer loyalty can be a long and involved process, letting negative sentiment run wild in the weeks, months and years after launch can have severe repercussions for your rebrand.

You only have to look back at American retailer GAP to see what’s at stake when you get it wrong.

After investing months of time and an estimated $100 million into a new, more high-brow identity, customers struggled to relate. This gave way to a wave of negativity they never planned for, causing the brand to revert to its original branding just six days after launch.

Challenge #2 – Upholding a consistent brand

With the introduction of new visual elements, colour palettes, names and branding guidelines across your company, it’s imperative your teams do all they can to present a consistent image across every brand touchpoint.

The last thing you want when investing significant amounts of time, effort and money into new marketing materials is to water down your newly built brand identity with a disjointed appearance. 

It doesn’t matter if a single old asset slips through the cracks, or an office in another region is slow to catch up. In today’s hyper-connected world, incoherence like this breeds confusion, distrust and chaos.

To present a strong brand identity to consumers new and old, you need every employee to understand your new identity – as well as how to activate and apply it – regardless of the office they work in or their role in your business.

Challenge #3 – Managing the ongoing logistics of your identity

Another major challenge your new brand identity faces in the journey to long-term recognition is logistics.

From being able to deliver on-brand content creation at the required scale to express your new identity, to ensuring individuals from across your business are kept on the same page at all times, the details involved in nurturing your ongoing rebrand can be enough to make even the most experienced brand manager dizzy.

And as the library of new assets grows from the hundreds into the thousands, maintaining control over your company’s new image only becomes harder without the right content creation and Digital Asset Management tools.

Combined with the addition of new hires to your teams and the small adjustments you may make as your identity matures – you can start to see the immense hurdle that logistics presents to a long-lasting rebrand.

5 tips for long-term rebrand success

There are many hurdles involved in executing a successful rebrand launch. But by overcoming them, you position your new brand on the path of long-term success. 

To help you get there, these are our top 5 tips to give your new brand identity that all-important staying power.

1. Refine your communication strategy

Communication is one of the most important aspects to ensure your updated brand becomes a permanent fixture.

Whether that’s with employees throughout your business or customers across your markets, you need to ensure that anyone, at any stage in your journey, knows exactly what has changed, how it affects them, and why you decided to make this transition.

How you do this will depend on the specifics of your brand, but as a general rule of thumb, when you’re tired of repeating it, your target audiences are only just starting to get the message – so keep up the conversation as often as you can.

2. Invest in employee training and engagement

Over time, as your identity matures, your goals change, and perceptions shift, you’ll naturally start to make subtle changes to your tone, logo and more.

To make sure everyone throughout your company can remain both agile and on-brand from tweak to tweak, few things are as important to the ongoing success of your rebrand as employee training and engagement. 

Your colleagues are the true activators of your brand from the moment it’s launched – any deviation from your old branding will reflect badly on you and your company overall. So the fundamentals of your updated brand must be drilled into your personnel long after the rebrand is rolled out.

Tools like centralised brand hubs can be a real asset in this regard. Containing everything from style guides to brand strategies, these tools can make immersing your colleagues in your living, breathing identity a seamless formality.

3. Gather feedback from your audiences

Feedback is the cornerstone of any successful rebrand rollout plan. It’s how you align your image with customer expectations, and deliver an identity that sticks in their minds for years to come.

So, after you’ve revealed your new look to the world, make sure you listen to what your audiences have to say.

People will probably have an opinion on your new look, be it positive, negative or somewhere in between. By capturing this insight, spotting patterns and addressing common criticisms, you can put your rebrand on the best footing for success, and garner some much-needed goodwill along the way.

4. Track data and make refinements

When you initially embarked on the rebrand process, you will have had clear goals in mind with what you wanted to achieve, be it reaching new audiences, raising revenue or boosting your brand equity.

So, to determine whether your rebrand is delivering against the KPIs you set out from the outset, it’s crucial that you continue to track relevant data in the period past your launch date.

While the specific metrics you need to track will be individual to you, some of the most common figures to keep an eye on in the weeks and months after the big reveal may include:

• Net Promoter Score (NPS) – a measurement of customer loyalty, often gauged through the provision of a single-question survey
• Social media engagement – a way of assessing how well consumers are responding to your new look and feel
• Customer retention rate – a figure that demonstrates how well you are retaining patrons post-launch
• Revenue growth – a way of determining the return the launch of your new brand has gained for your business

With this data in hand, you can gain the insight you need to make meaningful adjustments to your rebrand after launch and improve its long-term impact.

5. Utilise brand management software

Maintaining brand consistency. Educating global teams. Keeping on top of asset production. It’s no secret that managing the long-term deployment of your brand is a herculean effort – one you can’t afford to take your attention away from.

With so much on the line, you need to nail every campaign, keep teams on-brand, and manage your ever-growing library of brand assets. But that’s a huge ask for any brand manager or marketing team.

That’s why more and more organisations today are investing in broader, end-to-end brand management suites to ease the burden from their shoulders.

From enabling your entire team to organise, share and control your marketing assets in a Digital Asset Management (DAM) system, to empowering everyone to produce professional, on-brand assets at scale – these broad platforms are enabling modern businesses to create and manage their content with unparalleled efficiency and consistency.

Create a brighter future for your new brand to thrive

Revitalising your brand is a complex, costly and lengthy undertaking – one that can require the combined effort of your entire marketing department, a six-figure investment, and months of hard work.

But simply forming this identity is not enough. To succeed in the same way Old Spice and Lego have, it’s up to you to carry that image into the minds of new and existing customers, day in, day out.

Even the smallest inconsistencies in appearance or oversights in logistics can send your freshly launched brand crashing down. But with the right approach after this moment, you can build trust back among your audiences, inspire new customers into your ranks, and secure the future of your fresh new identity.

All it takes is a considered approach and the right rebranding tools – topics we hope this article has given you the advice and confidence to progress towards. 

Most modern-day brand managers will tell you their job has become infinitely more complex in the last few decades. 

As organisations look to reach an increasingly global audience, navigate more marketing channels than ever, and work to stay consistent amid growing consumer expectations, controlling brand identity has become an ongoing battle.

In this battle, technology is your great equaliser. That’s why more and more brand marketing teams have enlisted the help of a DAM (Digital Asset Management) system to bring their sprawling collection of digital assets under one roof.

The right DAM solution ensures marketing teams know exactly where approved brand assets are, and can locate relevant content in seconds. Combined with the right user permissions, tagging systems and approval workflows, your DAM becomes a single source of truth for your organisation.

Sounds like the perfect solution, right? Well, not quite.

Don’t get us wrong, we know how valuable a great DAM system is – our own DAM is ranked one of the best worldwide according to Forrester. But this also means we understand its limitations and that, alone, it can’t deliver the end-to-end brand governance today’s marketers need.

DAM gives you control over your marketing collateral; a brand portal offers you control over your brand identity.

What is a brand portal?

A brand portal, also often referred to as a brand hub, is a dedicated cloud-based platform that brings together everything that defines your brand culture. A true “home” for your brand.

In its optimal form, this central hub provides a one-stop shop for anyone – from your executive marketing team to your ground-level employees – to understand your branding style and what your organisation represents. This includes:

• Clearly defined brand guidelines and style guides
• Your company vision and mission statements
• Actionable on-brand templates for all types of marketing materials
• Tutorials, handbooks and FAQs on brand application
• Resources for employees to use your branding for their teams’ purposes

Essentially, a quality brand portal ensures brand consistency, educates users and empowers your marketing teams. It showcases the blueprint of your brand in a presentable, digestible way, so you can keep your identity locked down on every channel.

3 limitations of a standalone DAM that a brand portal fixes

You may be wondering: “Can’t DAM software offer this same level of brand management?”

DAM systems are great at what they do, which is manage your digital assets. But their potential as an end-to-end brand management suite falls short in several key areas:

1. Supports user adoption

Firstly, a DAM system is only valuable if people use it. Many DAM implementations never deliver a return on investment because employees don’t universally adopt it, meaning parts of their workforce retain the same cumbersome, inefficient approach to digital asset management.

There are many potential reasons for this lack of adoption: minimal training and onboarding, failure to inform employees, a set-and-forget mentality, etc. But in our experience, one of the major roadblocks is education. Put simply, users don’t know how to access the DAM system itself, let alone the brand assets within it.

A brand portal addresses this issue. Establishing an assigned “home” for your brand that your people know about and is immediately accessible on any work device can act as the gateway for your DAM system.

This helps your team understand that your DAM solution is part of your overall brand management ecosystem, enabling them to recognise its purpose and improve its adoption rate.

2. Educate, not dictate

Next, while a standalone DAM system brings together all approved brand assets – something that can effectively illustrate how future assets should look – it is not the same as someone truly understanding your brand.

This approach leaves room for misinterpretation and inconsistency. A user may create a brand asset based on one they saw on your DAM, only for it to be ill-fitting for that particular marketing channel, target audience or application.

A DAM is not brand management in the same way a centralised brand portal can be. By ensuring this incorporates guidelines, handbooks, tutorials and more alongside exemplary brand assets, you can properly educate your users on how to apply your brand correctly on every channel towards every audience.

3. Communicates evolution

Finally, a standalone DAM system is a snapshot of the current stage of your brand’s journey. If you undergo a rebrand or a brand refresh, how can your DAM communicate this to your users instead of them gradually seeing old assets being replaced by new ones?

A brand portal can represent your brand’s evolution deliberately and transparently to your global workforce. Designing and moulding this central hub around your brand’s visual identity allows you to instantly communicate your updated identity after a rebrand or refresh.

No mixed messages. No opportunities for old assets to resurface. Immediately people know your new identity and have this reinforced with up-to-date guidelines and examples, making a brand portal a valuable ally as your company develops and scales over time.

Plus, for design agencies guiding a company through a rebrand, a brand portal is a perfect tool to visualise this change both succinctly and distinctly.

Remember – a brand portal complements a DAM

We are not advocating for a brand portal to replace a DAM system. Instead, a good brand portal acts as its perfect partner, encouraging company-wide adoption and providing much-needed context to the brand assets within your DAM.

Want to know more about making the most of your DAM solution? Check out our 7 steps to Digital Asset Management success.

4 more ways brand portals deliver true brand management

So, we’ve identified 3 examples of how a brand portal builds upon a DAM in the brand management landscape. But the benefits of a high-quality brand hub extend even further:

1. Absolute brand consistency

Fundamentally, your brand portal is the key to a consistent presence on all marketing platforms. By bringing everything that underpins your branding in one place, you can ensure a harmonious message to your potential customers, which goes a long way to building trust, raising awareness and improving user experiences.

2. Increased marketing efficiency

If your people are only a click away from the guidelines that steer your content creation, they can produce collateral faster. 

Combined with intelligent custom templates, this can mean less strain on your marketing team and graphic designers to produce around the clock. In turn, local teams are empowered to create for their own campaign needs, leading to a more efficient process.

3. Security over your brand culture

Allowing the right people access to your brand guidelines, style guides and wider resources preserves your brand’s equity. This can alleviate the burden on you and your brand management team, reducing your need to review and approve every asset created, so you can concentrate on more pressing matters.

4. Company-wide collaboration

Finally, having a cloud-based portal at the heart of your brand, shared across your entire workforce, can serve as a means for stronger collaboration workflows. Especially for teams with users spread worldwide, this single point of reference can help you keep everyone on the same page at all times.

What features should I look for in a quality brand portal?

Now you understand how a quality brand portal opens the door for comprehensive brand management, what does a good brand portal look like? 

Here are 6 of the key features you should prioritise in your hunt for the optimal brand portal:

1. Customisable layouts: It’s crucial your brand portal feels like your own, so the layout and its components should be completely customisable using your visual elements
2. Multiple languages and translations: Your brand portal should allow you to create dedicated versions for users who operate in different territories, written in their language and outlining any unique nuances to your brand in these locations
3. Drag-and-drop functionality: You should be able to reposition content on your brand hub in a couple of clicks for absolute ease of use
4. Simple section builders: Your brand portal should give you the flexibility to design page layouts and grids that maximise the impact of your content
5. WYSIWYG software: A WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) format allows you to update and refine your brand portal without any coding expertise
6. Easy integration: Your brand portal should be an extension of your existing marketing technology and be simple to integrate within your existing ecosystem

As well as these key features, the ideal brand portal must also be backed by a reputable, reliable provider. With this in mind, we encourage you to research available options and ask the right questions to locate your perfect match:

Better brand management starts with your brand portal

To stay in control of an overwhelming wave of digital brand assets, a DAM system is your best bet.

From providing the consistency your brand and customers demand, to unlocking efficiencies within your marketing operations, we hope this article has helped you understand exactly why a solid brand portal is so important, and the ways a DAM system falls short on its own.

Similar to how you work alongside your marketing teams, agency partners and wider colleagues to push your brand to new heights, brand management technology is also a team effort.

Pairing up your DAM solution with a compatible brand portal allows you to control, share, and activate your brand as it is meant to be.

Whether your agency is in charge of crafting a complete rebrand for a client’s business, or putting together the design elements for a multichannel marketing campaign, creating content for your partners is a substantial undertaking. One that can occupy your focus for days, weeks or even months. 

With so much time and effort invested into these endeavours, the last thing you want is for clients to misunderstand your vision. Being forced into a complete rethink at this stage could mean lengthy delays, soaring client costs and damage to your agency-client relationship.

To ensure your projects succeed with minimal setbacks, it isn’t just important to deliver high-quality graphic design. Your agency needs to master the art of brand presentation.

Making a deliberate effort to immerse your clients in your ideas is essential if you want your clients to walk away fully comprehending exactly what your proposal entails.

It also gives you a valuable opportunity to fully showcase the design elements you’ve created, explain the rationale behind your creative process, and outline the guidelines your clients can use to successfully roll out their rebrand, brand refresh or new campaign.

But how do you make an illuminating first impression? In this helpful guide, we outline the techniques you can use to inform and excite stakeholders during your brand presentation, and explain how brand portals can help at this important stage.

5 techniques to elevate your brand presentation

Between miscommunication, confusion and a lack of clarity, securing client buy-in for your design project can be an uphill battle. Thankfully, with the right strategies and techniques, ensuring you and your partners are on the same wavelength doesn’t have to be a source of stress. 

1. Establish a mood board

Getting your clients in the right mindset early on in your brand presentation can immediately dictate how likely they are to understand and embrace your new vision, concept or marketing collateral.

To set the scene, mood boards are a useful tool you can use to showcase the influences that contributed to your design project, from images and themes, to colours, tones of voice and other pieces of content.

2. Showcase prototypes

Another way to get your agency’s vision across at this pivotal early stage is by mocking up or prototyping your concepts.

This could mean producing prototype packaging for your client’s final products, or building a set of social media posts to showcase a new logo design in use.

However you choose to approach this, developing these examples gives your clients something tangible to base their opinions on, which can be effective in helping them visualise your branding.

3. Create a style guide

It’s one thing to share your vision for a client’s new brand identity or marketing campaign. But taking the time to define their brand and showcase exactly how it will be applied is often a fast track to superior understanding and trust.

Acting as a playbook for every conceivable visual element, style guides set specific parameters for your clients’ visual identity, so they can see how your content works and what they need to do to present a consistent brand across every touchpoint.

These not only add another layer of explanation for how your brand concept looks and feels – they also reassure your clients that it will be ready to deploy as soon as they give the green light.

4. Weave a compelling story

Strong storytelling has been at the heart of successful branding for decades, with 55% of consumers saying they are more likely to buy from a brand if they love their story.

So, naturally, it can also be a powerful way of presenting your work to clients and winning over their hearts and minds.

Adding context to design choices made throughout the course of your project by laying out a narrative is a great way to convey meaning and get your partners invested from beginning to end. 

To do this, make sure your brand presentation story:

• Aligns with your clients’ core values
• Is clear and concise
• Uses language your clients understand
• Remains genuine and authentic

5. Leverage VR and AR

Finally, to fully immerse your partners in their new brand assets, virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) are emerging technologies that can place your clients at the heart of your experience.

From showcasing the look of a rebranded store to enabling clients to see how their new marketing materials look up close, taking a more direct approach through technology can bring your ideas to life and inspire an emotional connection towards your client presentation.

The value of a brand portal

As important as the right techniques are, few things trump the importance of medium when it comes to building compelling brand presentations.

What do we mean by medium? Simply put, it’s the method by which you present your ideas to your clients, educate them, and secure their buy-in.

Many design agencies turn to the dependable slideshow to present their brand concepts. And while sometimes you can’t beat a classic, the restrictive, static and non-immersive nature of this medium can be a hurdle to client understanding.

In its place, numerous forward-thinking agencies are turning to smarter technology to better showcase their marketing materials, manage their partners’ brands and secure client buy-in. And among these, brand portals stand out as an ingenious way to help people visualise your ideas.

Demonstrate the full scope of your vision

Digital brand hubs, alongside Digital Asset Management (DAM) systems, are used to store and share on-brand content internally within a company. Being interactive, this technology enables you to store every visual element you have created in a single place.

As well as allowing decision-makers to explore your materials at their own pace, having everything laid out in this dynamic format makes it possible for your clients to see how individual components work together, putting your proposal on the best footing for success.

Completely immerse clients in your work

With the added ability to create and tailor these online brand portals to your clients’ new identity or campaign style, partners can easily immerse themselves in your designs as they explore the compelling marketing materials and strong brand identity you have created.

Compared to the limited interactivity and visual branding of traditional presentation software, these platforms can effortlessly convey what your newly crafted collateral will look and feel like in real life.

Facilitate long-term collaboration

Iteration is an important part of any design process. Not even the world’s best marketing agencies get it all right the first time, so it’s only natural to have some back and forth with your clients on your journey to make the best materials possible.

To ensure you’re getting the highest quality feedback, brand portals give your partners the freedom to examine your brand assets up close.

From how their new brand guidelines are laid out, to the specific design templates they will use, placing your content in your clients’ hands through a brand portal allows for productive input that makes managing their brand more collaborative and less reflexive. 

Streamline content sharing

Lastly, if you’re an agency that relies on emails and content-sharing websites, you know that sending over files can be a time-consuming and cumbersome process. 

Hosting these materials in a single centralised hub means your design teams no longer have to spend hours setting up file transfers or clarifying which brand asset is the latest through lengthy email chains. This paves the way to better productivity and cost efficiency during the design process.

How brand portals empower your clients beyond delivery

As you know, for any rebrand or campaign to truly succeed, you need buy-in from everyone across your client’s organisation, not just top decision-makers.

However, educating all staff within even a small business can be a daunting prospect for your agency. You don’t have time to brief dozens of stakeholders, and sharing your initial presentation company-wide risks watering down the work your team just spent so long crafting.

That’s why a brand portal is valuable not just during the initial brand presentation, but as a tool that your clients can carry over into the day-to-day delivery of their marketing.

When incorporated within or alongside a wider Digital Asset Management and content creation suite, this gives you the capacity to not only help your clients truly understand your vision, but also efficiently execute and manage the assets and campaigns that will bring this project to fruition.

Enter a new era of agency success

For an agency, few things are as important as brand presentations. They’re how you educate your clients, deliver top-notch content creation, and establish a strong working relationship with your partners.

But getting every client on board with your vision takes more than a simple run-through of your concept, project and ideas.

To help you elevate your brand presentation, we hope this article has given you insight into the techniques and technology you need to cement your clients’ understanding, so you can focus on realising concepts that contribute to their long-term success.

The retail ecosystem never stops changing. In the last decade rapid evolutions in technology, shifts in consumer behaviour and global instability have forced retailers to adapt to survive.

Looking at 2024 and beyond, this ever-changing landscape shows no sign of slowing down:

• The emergence of Generation Alpha as shoppers will introduce an entirely new set of consumer demands and expectations
• The power and accessibility of technology is reaching new untold heights
• The balance between physical retail stores and e-commerce is in flux
• Customers are more conscious than ever about the social, environmental and ethical impact of the retail industry

Taking these overarching patterns into account, combined with our decades of working with retailer brands and marketers, we’ve identified 6 standout retail trends that you should stay on top of this year and in the years ahead.

Are you ready to embrace the future of retail? Start your journey below.

Retail trend #1 – The value of omnichannel retailing

Omnichannel retail. Hybrid shopping. Phygital retail. However you choose to label it, modern retailers must prioritise multichannel marketing to enhance customer experiences across the board.

Today, over 73% of retail consumers use multiple channels in their shopping experience, while 95% review products online before they buy. Gen Z and Gen Alpha identify products on their mobile devices, research these on search engines, test them out in physical stores, and complete the purchase online.

These multilayered journeys are far from uncommon for the latest wave of shoppers, which is why terms such as “showrooming” and “webrooming” have entered the retail vocabulary.

“Smart store” is another emerging phrase. These are brick-and-mortar stores that incorporate technologies to enhance the shopping experience, from smart sensors and cashier-less checkouts to interactive digital signage, mobile apps that work in-store and beacon technology.

As retailers aim to appeal to different generations of consumers, omnichannel retailing integrates multiple touchpoints to give customers flexibility, information and more seamless shopping experiences. And many successful retailers are already taking strides in this direction:

• Starbucks’ physical and mobile customer cards allow users to accumulate reward points that they can spend in-store or online, while their app enables them to find menu options in their local cafe or add songs playing in-store directly to their Spotify playlist
• Sephora’s Beauty Insider loyalty program lets users shop directly online, scan in-store items to explore alternative options, watch tutorial videos and gain reward points for discounts, capturing over 11 million members
• Timberland utilises near-field communication technology to give in-store shoppers access to tablets that explain more about the products they’re browsing, allowing them to shop independently and get personalised product recommendations

These are just some notable examples, but the reach of omnichannel permeates every level of the modern retail industry. So, to appeal to the next generations of shoppers, you must offer multiple routes across their purchase journey:

• Unified shopping carts that allow people to purchase in-store or online
• Geolocation technology that sends push notifications with personalised offers when customers are near a physical store
• Digital in-store kiosks where customers can browse your catalogue and check inventory
• Virtual fitting rooms that allow shoppers to try on clothing digitally
• Click-and-collect delivery where customers can buy online and pick up in-store
• Integrated loyalty programs that let customers gain points to use in-store or online

Consistency is also key to ensuring each component of your omnichannel network is aligned and trustworthy. Using brand management technology can help marketers maintain the harmonious presence that today’s customers demand.

Retail trend #2 – The explosion of generative AI in retail

The rapid evolution of artificial intelligence (AI) is touching every area of the world, and the retail industry is no different. A reported 40% of American retailers currently use AI solutions in some form, a number set to grow exponentially in the next few years.

Why is it on our trending list? Because the power of AI is already revolutionising the retail experience in numerous ways:

• AI algorithms analyse consumer behaviour to deliver more personalised shopping experiences – from relevant product recommendations to seamless buying journeys
• Chatbots, virtual shopping assistants and similar aids offer 24/7 customer support and personalised shopping advice, efficiently guiding customers on their path to a purchase
• AI tools can assess historical data to forecast sales demand for products and services, allowing retail marketers to tailor campaigns and promotions based on these predictive insights
• AI applications such as smart mirrors, automated checkouts and personalised in-store recommendations enhance physical shopping experiences

And this is just the beginning. With the speed and capabilities of AI platforms doubling every 3 months, retailers will soon be able to optimise supply chains and introduce dynamic pricing, adjusting price tags based on demand to maximise profitability.

AI can also ramp up brand asset creation for retail marketers, enabling outlets to generate content in real-time to meet local trends, while always remaining brand-consistent. This is just one example of how AI-driven brand management can increase efficiencies for retail teams.

Fundamentally, responsible AI adoption offers retail marketers a route to understand and predict consumer behaviour, which they can then use to customise their shoppers’ experiences. With 70% of consumers saying that their loyalty is influenced by how well a brand understands their needs, AI is essential to deliver true personalisation in retail stores.

Retail trend #3 – The growth of AR, VR and other retail technologies

AI is not the only technology that retail marketers must get behind. Augmented reality (AR) shopping is a fast-growing trend, bringing the in-store experience directly to customers via their smartphones, tablets and other devices.

Nike is a great model to follow to see the potential of AR in retail. They offer a variety of apps to enhance the customer experience, including Nike Fit, which scans a customer’s foot to generate a 3D model of their shoes, recommending the ideal size and style for them.

Another, Nike By You, empowers customers to see detailed 3D renderings of custom shoes, with the ability to zoom in and view them from different angles. From here, they can immediately purchase their custom design and share it on their social profiles, giving Nike a healthy stream of user-generated content.

Both AR and virtual reality (VR) are becoming increasingly favoured by customers, enabling anything from virtual try-ons and immersive showrooms, to interactive product displays and gamification opportunities, such as Pepsi’s 2020 ‘For the Love of It’ campaign or IKEA’s virtual furniture placement app ‘Kreativ’.

Brand management software is another evolving technology that retail marketers should keep an eye on. As modern shoppers prioritise a consistent, seamless experience with any brand they do business with, these tools help retailers lock down consistency, upscale asset production and coherently execute marketing campaigns.

Similarly, Digital Asset Management (DAM) systems can be incredibly advantageous for retailers with a global reach. These tools provide a single dedicated resource for all branded assets – critical to maintain brand consistency in an increasingly omnichannel landscape.

Retail trend #4 – The rise of recommerce

Also known as resale commerce, recommerce represents the growing focus of consumer spending on pre-owned items. This is apparent with retailers such as Selfridges, which expects to derive half of its sales from resale, rental or repair by 2030.

Why is recommerce on the rise? The answer is two-fold. One, modern customers care a lot more about sustainable retail – close to 80% of consumers have changed their shopping habits based on social responsibility, inclusiveness, or environmental impact.

Resale initiatives encourage the reuse of items that would otherwise be neglected or scrapped by their previous owners. For a more conscious consumer base, this offers a compelling alternative – and it also inspires stronger feelings toward your brand.

Second, it is often a more cost-effective option, both for shoppers and retailers. In an uncertain economic landscape, the opportunity to purchase pre-owned products is a realistic and frugal choice for younger buyers. For retailers, it allows you to expand your product range without additional production costs, while giving your marketers more goods to promote.

Retail trend #5 – The evolution of creator and social commerce

Influencer marketing has already proven a powerful asset for retailers in recent years, and that power will only continue to grow in the years ahead. Goldman Sachs has predicted the creator economy market will double in size in the next 5 years, and approximately 50 million global creators will grow at a 10-20% compound annual rate.

Remember 69% of consumers trust influencer recommendations over what they hear from brands directly. Modern customers want to engage with people they trust and support; lending these voices to your products can make a major difference to their attractiveness.

In a similar vein, social commerce is also expanding to new heights thanks to the unstoppable juggernaut that is TikTok. In 2023, TikTok became the first non-game app to surpass $10 billion in consumer spending, while their own retail insights reveal that 4 out of 10 users will buy a product after seeing it in their short-form videos.

With TikTok Shop enabling direct purchases for customers, and TikTok One offering one-stop-shop access to the platform’s top creators, building a presence on this app should be a number one priority for retailers this year.

Of course, the social commerce market doesn’t begin and end with TikTok. Instagram, Facebook and YouTube remain vital ways for retail marketers to engage consumers in unique, creative ways.

From video tutorials and livestreams showcasing your products, to shining a spotlight on your customers through dedicated user-generated campaigns – robust social media marketing is more imperative than ever to retail success.

Retail trend #6 – The prevalence of ethical retailing

As noted earlier, the latest generation of shoppers is significantly more socially conscious than generations past. From sustainability and the environmental ramifications of the retail industry, to a clear passion for social movements and DEIB trends – the evolution of ethical consumerism shows no sign of slowing down.

For retail marketers, this means ethical practices can no longer be hidden in the background; they must be positioned front and centre to build your brand’s reputation with socially active shoppers:

• Highlight the ethical sourcing and manufacturing behind your products, both on the packaging itself and through explainer videos
• Build campaigns around your LGBTQIA2S+ employees and customers, showing your commitment to these causes
• Showcase your efforts to reduce environmental impact, such as eco-friendly packaging, recycling programs and carbon footprint reduction schemes
• Participate in and sponsor local events, charities and initiatives that align with both ethical values and your wider brand values
• Offer rewards and incentives for customers who make ethical choices, such as discounts for bringing reusable bags

Of course, marketers are simply messengers – the real change in this instance must come from the top. Retailers such as Patagonia, which utilises 98% recycled materials in its clothing, and Lush with its firm anti-animal testing stance and environmental policies, have shown how a strong position on ethics can build lasting customer relationships.

The newest wave of shoppers care a lot about people and the planet – it’s crucial your marketing demonstrates that you do too.

Enter 2025 with the right retail insights

There’s rarely a moment to rest in the world of retail, and the need to evolve has never been greater. Embracing these 6 prominent retail marketing trends will give your company a foundation to connect with ever-changing consumer expectations and guide your marketers on how to manage your brand in the years ahead.

So, to round up:

1. Prioritise omnichannel retailing, offering your shoppers a range of ways to interact with your brand
2. Embrace generative AI to streamline content creation and produce more personalised shopping experiences
3. Harness AR, VR, brand management software and more to raise the efficiency and potency of your marketing
4. Focus on recommerce to extend your product range and promote sustainability
5. Unlock the true potential of creator and social commerce by utilising the right channels with engaging content
6. Showcase the social, environmental and ethical responsibility of your brand to capture the loyalty of more conscious consumers

By taking these trends to heart and crafting your marketing around them, you can deliver exceptional retail experiences for your target audiences across the globe.

Your sales team’s job is to sell your products or services, right? Ultimately yes, but that overlooks the most important layer in this process: relationship building.

Sure, in the short term, a well-crafted hard sell can score fleeting transactions with passing shoppers. But there’s no sustainability to be found here. A strict sales-focused approach leaves customers feeling cold, greatly reducing the likelihood they will make repeat purchases.

A customer-centric approach places a premium on building relationships, encouraging healthy interaction at all touchpoints and giving people value without expecting anything in return. It’s how your brand can inspire lasting customer loyalty, build brand equity and grow your market share across your target audiences.

Fundamentally, customer relationships are the cornerstone of long-term customer value. Here, we’ll explain why this should always take priority over your sales goals, and share our winning strategies to achieve lasting sales success through relationships.

What makes a strong customer relationship?

Customer relationships are the points of interaction between your brand and your customers. Sometimes referred to as relationship selling, it’s how you engage with your audience and foster a true connection between them and your organisation – one that goes beyond a mere transactional formality.

Great customer relationships pave the way for consistent revenue, stable growth and positive word of mouth, particularly in times of market turbulence. But with buyer expectations higher than ever before, what separates a strong customer relationship from those unable to pull their weight?

Well, think of this like you would your connection with friends and family. In a strong relationship, you would have little doubt the other person genuinely cared about you:

• They want what was best for you
• They listen to your needs and goals
• They are interested in your interests
• They are trustworthy, dependable and consistent
• They make you feel safe and looked after

A strong customer relationship is no different. It’s authentic brand communication with no ulterior motive other than to help someone and make them feel better.

Simply put, high-quality customer relationships are the difference between temporary, unsustainable sales patterns, and having access to a reliable, engaged pool of customers who put your brand on a pedestal.

Is relationship building only relevant for B2C businesses?

Absolutely not. While relationship building is more apparent for B2C businesses that communicate with countless customers on a broad scale, B2B businesses must also take strides to build meaningful connections.

For these organisations, the emphasis of relationship-building is on trust, reliability and partnerships. It typically centres around fostering a deep understanding of a client’s business needs and goals, and nurturing this over time through bespoke solutions and collaboration.

The importance of positive customer experiences on the path to long-term sales

Customer relationships are vital to sustainable success, but just how important are they? Here are just some of the significant benefits positive customer experiences can unlock for your brand.

Greater customer loyalty

The better your relationship with your customers, the more likely they will turn to your brand for information, support and products than anyone else in your industry. According to research by Qualtrics, happy, loyal customers spend over twice as much with a company than dissatisfied consumers.

Strong loyalty doesn’t only extend to sales. Dedicated customers are far more likely to share your content with others and stick around in times of economic hardship or PR crises.

Increased customer lifetime value (CLV)

Your customer’s lifetime value is the total worth of a buyer to your business throughout your relationship with them. Providing consistently positive experiences keeps shoppers around for longer, making them far more valuable to your long-term revenue than short-term, fleeting transactions.

Plus, loyal, engaged customers are often willing to spend more on your products and services than others would.

Improved customer retention

Did you know that acquiring a new customer can be up to 25 times more expensive than retaining an existing one? In the pursuit of sustainable sales and marketing strategies, retention beats acquisition every time, which is why quality communication with your existing followers is so vital.

Furthermore, studies have shown that increasing customer retention by just 5% can increase profits by as much as 95%.

Elevated brand awareness

When people enjoy interacting with your organisation, they are inclined to tell others about it. In fact, 72% of customers say they will happily share good experiences with people in their inner circle.

This first-hand word of mouth is infinitely more powerful with modern customers than what your brand can say alone. With savvy shoppers keen to read reviews before committing to purchases, a strong relationship with someone can encourage them to advocate for you, creating brand awareness.

Enhanced data gathering

Customer insights are the bedrock of effective, data-driven marketing. However, today’s buyers are understandably wary about sharing their data freely – they must trust a brand to reveal this information; trust that is fostered in positive, fruitful relationships.

Keep in mind that 56% of customers don’t mind sharing their personal information in exchange for better customer service. The more you value your relationships, the more data you can gather – and the more you can adapt your marketing strategy to tangible trends.

Supports strong brand equity

Finally, quality customer relationships are key components of brand equity building. Maintaining positive communication with your audiences boosts your brand perception, awareness and identity with your target audience. This in turn strengthens your brand equity – the value your brand adds to your products and services.

The stronger your brand equity, the greater the chance you’ll be viewed as a thought leader in your industry, and the more you can feasibly increase the price for your offerings.

7 relationship-building strategies to drive your sales forward

1. Regularly encourage customer feedback

A relationship is a two-way street – you should want to know what your customers think about your brand, positive or negative. To encourage customer feedback, set up and signpost avenues your audiences can use to leave feedback about your brand, including:

• Website contact forms
• Social media comments
• Messaging apps
• Customer surveys
• Chatbots
• SMS and text messaging
• Customer support portals and forums
• Review site profiles

Providing a wide range of communication options and responding quickly to messages shows customers you care about their opinions. It demonstrates their thoughts are valued and shape the direction of your brand, which increases their commitment to your growth.

What about negative feedback? Always address, never ignore. While no one likes to receive a bad review, responding to these compassionately and with practical solutions can noticeably raise your reputation across your customer base.

2. Introduce social listening tools

Not everyone will provide direct feedback on your organisation – many will just passively mention their experiences online. Investing in social listening tools can help you stay on top of the sentiment surrounding your brand, so you can adjust your approach accordingly.

Good examples of social listening tools to look into include:

• Brandwatch
• Brand24
• BuzzSumo
• Meltwater
• Google Alerts

Applying the right tools and completing active monitoring can help you proactively jump on any issues before you’re confronted directly. This illustrates to customers you’re willing to change to benefit their experience, and is a crucial building block of any strong relationship.

3. Prioritise personalisation in your content

People want to feel like people when they interact with your brand, not customers. Personalising your brand marketing makes their experiences with you feel more unique and exclusive – like they’re speaking to another person rather than a faceless entity.

From tailoring the email offers you send to customers around their distinct buying habits, to dynamic headers on bespoke landing pages. Crafting content around individual buyers or local audiences helps people feel emotionally connected to your organisation.

Unsure how to adapt content for specific audiences within time and budget restrictions? Using branded design templates can save precious time and money, providing a foundation for your assets to be tailored in minutes. This enables you to produce personalised, localised content for a fraction of what it would cost to produce each piece from scratch. 

4. Reward customer loyalty

Fostering long-term customer relationships and loyalty means incentivising your more ardent brand advocates to stick around. As we mentioned, a relationship is a two-way street, and customers want to feel like they’re getting as much out of it as your brand does.

Introducing customer loyalty programs, akin to the renowned Starbucks Rewards or Hotels.com’s points-based system, helps ensure your audiences feel they’re getting real value from their relationship with you. 

Remember – loyalty program members generate up to 18% more incremental revenue growth per year for a business than non-members.

5. Provide accessible, insightful content

Beyond loyalty programs, it’s vital you are frequently supplying your audiences with free, useful insights and information they can apply in their lives. This keeps people returning to your brand in the long term – by making a positive difference for them without expecting anything in return.

There are many ways you can share valuable tips with your followers:

• Write blog posts, guides and booklets
• Create regular webinars and livestreams
• Produce instructive videos and social media posts
• Host live demonstrations
• Provide personal shopping experiences

Sharing your own style of compelling content makes you a thought leader in your market, signifying trust and transparency in your business and setting you apart from your competitors.

6. Invest in customer-centric software

Technology is a crucial ally in your battle to build better customer relationships. And no solution is more important to this approach than a solid CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software able to oversee your communications with current and potential customers.

When searching for the right CRM for your needs, make sure you get the following questions answered:

• How much time will this save our sales and customer service professionals?
• How easy is the system to use day-to-day?
• Will the software integrate with our existing marketing tools?
• Does it collect data accurately and securely?
• Does it include effective automation features?

But better customer relationships don’t just begin and end with your CRM. A brand management platform is also essential to ensure that your communications across all marketing channels are brand-consistent and quick to produce.

With modern customers demanding fast responses and frequent, high-quality content, successful brand management empowers your teams to proactively create assets and bring communications in line with your overarching guidelines.

7. Establish metrics based on customer relationships

Finally, in the same way you would measure your sales team on leads generated, conversion rates and ROI, you must establish clear metrics to measure the success of your relationship-building efforts.

This gives your teams a standard to live up to, and helps ensure that they put as much effort and focus into building customer relationships as they do on securing sales for your business. Some useful metrics to use include:

Building positive brand equity with strong customer relationships

Successful relationships are the lifeblood of modern companies – and we hope this article has reinforced this for you.

While sales, profit and revenue will always underpin your brand’s performance, sustainable returns are only achievable if you devote time and effort to your customers’ experiences. Yes, it’s a long game, but it’s what builds, maintains and restores people’s love for your organisation, turning fleeting interactions into lifelong supporters.

Your customer brand equity hinges on the loyalty, perception and affection of your consumers. By showing them respect through your interactions and providing authentic value without any expectation of a sale, you can build a firm foundation for ongoing success.

Interested in learning more about brand equity models and becoming the brand of choice for your audiences worldwide? Check out our 4 steps to building brand equity.