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Switching to a modern DAM solution is easier than you think

Papirfly
6 minutes read

1. Make sure your DAM system is up to the job

Having a central repository to store your digital content is essential for brands today in order to help you gain more control and higher productivity.

A modern Digital Asset Management solution (DAM) should be a cloud-based, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) system, accessible to everyone without any plug-ins or desktop installations. Its search functionality should go beyond file names and it should be capable of handling all file types so that all media assets are both shareable and adaptable. 

If the answer to any of the following questions is “NO”, there is room for improvement: 

  • Does your current system allow you to add any file type? 
  • Does it offer file format transcoding?
  • Does it provide previews of any file type?
  • Does your current system provide expiration and version control?
  • Can files be adjusted within your DAM system?
  • Can you create automated work-flows for easy use? 
  • Can you connect your DAM to a brand management platform or templates? 
  • Is it possible to integrate your system with Adobe, PowerPoint, CMS? 
  • Does everyone in your company have access to your DAM, or is the distribution of files done by email?
  • Do you have the option of Single-Sign-On (SSO) to ensure easy access to your assets?

For more insight into whether the capabilities of your current DAM system are fit for purpose, read our article “Is your DAM letting you down?”

2. Your brand deserves a modern digital asset management system

Fortunately, switching up to modern digital asset management functionality is easier than you might think. There are several DAM providers in the market that can help you with this, but you need to think bigger than an easy-to-access image library. 

An effective DAM solution is more than an image bank or file location. To meet today’s marketing challenges and tomorrow’s trends, you need a system that makes your life easier, while protecting your brand and its assets. 

It’s crucial that you understand the value and importance of a modern, global DAM system in order to evaluate whether or not the system you currently use is good enough. A high-quality DAM solution will provide a “YES” to all the questions above and in addition, incorporate many key features: 

  • Powerful search functionality makes assets easy to find.
  • Simple back-end administration that enables seamless maintenance.
  • Two-way management that creates intuitive work-flows between marketing teams and other stakeholders such as photographers, creative agencies etc.
  • Truly transparent asset control so you can have complete control over usage and asset performance. 
  • SSO enables trouble-free access control.
  • File transcoding makes file maintenance simple. Upload the approved file and let the system do the rest. Your users will automatically have access to pre-set file types without having to upload all types separately.
  • Pre-set crop settings that make file management a breeze. One single file can generate multiple formats based on pre-set crop settings. Flexibility for your users, easy maintenance for you.
  • Assign administrators and control settings so only certain users can access, upload or delete particular files, or can only do so when permission is granted.

Your assets are the core of your brand identity and separates you from your competitors. Digital assets are valuable intellectual property that you have spent substantial resources on designing them. They deserve a solution that will effectively store and share them in order to boost efficiencies and keep brand consistency under control.

When assets are out of control, you lose brand identity momentum, resulting in brand dilution which will harm your business growth. It also gets harder to keep up with the fast-evolving Martech space which demands highly responsive and efficient coordination. 

You need an effective digital asset management implementation solution that fulfills all your brand marketing requirements, streamlines your asset management processes, and increases overall business efficiency.

3. How to switch to a modern DAM

If you have identified that your DAM system is behind the times or not fulfilling your requirements as you would hope, making the switch to a better, more sophisticated alternative does not have to be difficult. But, there are some important considerations to take care of beforehand.

First, while you can drop all your files into a new DAM immediately, we always recommend an audit and clean-up first to make sure your digital assets are valid and usable. 

Secondly, you need to know if you have all the assets your company needs to execute and grow your brand as intended. In other words, you want to make sure your DAM delivers the quality that everyone can rely on. When they do, this can secure long-term buy-in from your teams across the globe.

Here’s a handy checklist to help you with the migration process:
  • Get a complete overview of all assets you want to have available in the new DAM. We always recommend an analysis and clean-up. First of all, you want to make sure your digital assets are valid and usable. Secondly, you need to know if you have all the assets your company needs to execute and grow your brand as intended.
  • Group and categorise your assets using logic that suits your company’s requirements. Categorisation should be multi-leveled to deliver proper “search & find” abilities. Make sure you have the flexibility to tailor this and filter results based on numerous criteria, including:
    – Media type
    – Language and location
    – Product or service
    – Marketing channels
    – Templates
  • Revise your assets and clean up. Exclude outdated and old assets and define what formats and crop/size dimensions you need your assets to be available in. You want to make sure your DAM delivers the quality that everyone in your company can rely on. When they do, you also secure long-term usage across your team, so it delivers a return on your investment.
  • Drag and drop your files into your new DAM or upload in bulk. The right system should make this process straightforward to do yourself, or you can work with the provider to check whether they can fulfill this step on your behalf.

4. Gain even more control with Brand Activation Management

As the demands on digital assets continue to grow and organisations increase efforts to streamline brand strategy processes, a single-purpose DAM system may not be enough for modern marketers and you may want to think about evolving to a BAM solution.

There is no question that DAM systems carry several strong benefits to businesses, particularly those who have identified their struggles with managing and distributing their assets. However, if digital asset creation is as great or greater an issue for you than asset management, you may need to consider a more comprehensive solution.

Brands need to connect with their audiences over an increasing number of channels and mediums. The demands on content creation and brand activations are escalating. Meanwhile, more and more marketing teams are feeling the strain of budget cuts, staffing shortages, or reduced access to freelance support. This increases the pressure on not just asset management, but also asset creation.

  • Large brands should be aiming to produce 4-5 blog posts every week for optimal brand awareness (Hubspot).

BAM solution has the capacity to centralise all digital assets into an easy-to-use, globally accessible repository. But unlike a conventional DAM system, BAM’s capabilities do not end there.

BAM provides complete control over how content assets are used and applied to campaigns, giving you the ultimate tools for brand governance.

BAM provides marketing teams with a more agile and cost-effective way to produce content. Intelligent templates lockdown brand consistency, and provide users with a simple, straightforward environment where they can produce high-quality assets quickly and easily.

This system keeps all variables within a predefined format, so that anyone can create, edit, and update assets without the risk of ruining your brand identity. This applies to digital and print formats – social media posts, HTML emails, posters, digital signage, videos, etc. All of this can be exported in the correct size and style quickly and easily.

5. Ready to unlock the potential of BAM?

If your company currently has fairly simple digital asset management requirements like getting to grips with the sheer volume of digital assets scattered across your various folders and files, a DAM solution will do the job perfectly well. 

But, if you want to take your brand marketing to the next level and make the move from DAM to BAM, then you’re enabling your team with the tools, information and motivation to drive your brand performance forward across every market your business touches. 

Discover more about BAM by Papirfly™ and give your team the power to create, educate, manage, store & share your brand like never before.

Table of contents:

  1. Make sure your DAM is up to the job
  2. Your brand deserves a modern digital asset management system
  3. How to switch to a modern DAM
  4. Gain even more control with a Brand Activation Management

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Brand management, CorporateLeave a Comment on Your 3 essential steps to rebrand strategy success

Your 3 essential steps to rebrand strategy success

Papirfly
9 minutes read

A rebranding strategy can help you rethink, refresh, and reposition your brand as efficiently and effectively as possible. Approaching the decision that a rebrand is the right move for your business is no simple task. If you and your enterprise are at the start of that journey, and are still considering whether a rebrand or a brand refresh is the right thing to do, then understanding what to consider when rebranding your business is a natural first step. 

Should you have already been through that soul-searching process – and decided a rebrand is the right way to go – carefully considering your next move is crucial. The potential ramifications for your organisation and your relationships with your customers, employees, and the wider world can be significant. This means you need to consider three key areas; conducting research before creating your new brand identity, building the toolkit that will empower your people at launch, and choosing tools will provide strength and stability for this new era for your brand.
In this article, you’ll learn how to successfully rebrand to help you accomplish your specific business goals that are driving the change – efficiently landing your rebrand by rolling out your new identity to every location of your entire enterprise.

1. Conducting research in the rebranding process

Before making any changes, you need to do the research and find out how your brand can improve. What elements of your brand do people like? How can it connect more with your customers? There are endless questions to ask when building a new identity. The more knowledge you have, the more effective your rebranding strategy will be.

Carry out a brand identity assessment

It’s vital to identify the strengths and weaknesses of your branding to maximise your chances of success. It’s best to get a wide range of views by speaking to the company’s employees, stakeholders, customers, and prospective customers.

How do they perceive your brand? Do they think your company would benefit from rebranding? This insight is one final moment before crossing the threshold with certainty that a rebrand is the right choice for you.

There are various ways to canvass the opinion of key audiences, including one-to-one interviews, focus groups and consumer surveys. Some relevant questions to ask may include:

  • How would you describe our brand to a friend?
  • Who do you think is our target audience?
  • On a scale of 1-10 how much do you like our branding?
  • What words would you use to describe our branding and tone of voice?
  • How much does our branding reflect your experience you have with our brand?
  • How positive does our branding make you feel, and what could be improved?

The insights you gain from this research will shine a light on current blindspots, and highlight what is currently resonating with audiences – giving you what you need to help you shape a new brand identity, and a framework for an effective rebranding strategy.

Define what your business stands for

Once you know what your customers, employees and other stakeholders actually think about your brand identity, you can focus on what you want them to think about it. This requires a lot of self-reflection and discussion internally with your team.

Here are some questions to pose to yourself:

  • What’s our value proposition?
  • What makes us different from competitors?
  • What’s our mission, our core values and our beliefs?
  • Who are our target audiences and what are the ideal customer profiles?
  • Is the story of our brand’s history and where we are heading clear?

This exercise is useful in helping to clarify the reasons behind your rebrand and how your new or refined mission, vision, and values differ from when your current branding was developed.

How to write a brief for a rebrand

You should write a brief that sets out what you want to achieve from your rebrand, and what the work involved will be. Whether you are working with an external agency or carrying out the rebranding internally, a good brief will focus everyone on the purpose and expected outcome of the rebranding process.

A written brief is also vital in ensuring the ‘buy-in’ of other key people in your organisation, with all key decision-makers having approved it. Getting everybody on board is essential to avoid wasting time and resources when senior executives – often outside the marketing department – challenge key assumptions in the brief and changes in direction at critical moments can waste time and money.

The brief should include:

  • An overview of your company, including history, products and services
  • An overview of the current issues with the branding
  • Your newly defined brand positioning
  • A customer profile
  • Competitor analysis
  • Rebranding strategies
  • Key product messages
  • The scope of the rebrand and the activities it will entail

By including as much information as possible, you’ll be able to shape your brand proposal to apply the brand changes across all marketing channels, digital or print. And then its time to get the designers to work and bring your new identity to life.

Your new brand identity is almost there

Once you have some mock-up designs for potential new logos, web pages, packaging, or store designs, it’s wise to seek feedback before making final decisions. As well as allowing people within your company to have their say, you can see what your customers think by carrying out some creative testing.

Surveys can be an effective method for testing how a rebrand might impact an audience prior to its launch. You can reach out to existing customers or other people in your demographic to ask what they think of specific elements of a rebrand, testing how well it resonates and whether or not it creates the desired effect. Use online surveys to gather data from anywhere in the world – no matter how remote or widespread your target audiences might be, you can get useful data fast. Use open-ended questions to produce deeper insights amongst predefined questions that feel quicker and more simple to answer, such as multiple-choice, rating scales, and ranking questions.

Tweak. Amend. Test again if necessary. By doing this research, you’ll know when the next phase of your brand’s identity is ready to unleash upon the world. Now it’s time to empower your people to launch it.

2. Empower your people as you launch your rebrand

Once your visual identity and brand assets have been agreed upon, it’s time to compile everything into one handy toolkit. This will become a brand bible for anyone involved in marketing and communications for your company.

Creating a brand toolkit

Consider everything your teams will need to become fully educated on your brand guidelines. As well as elements that are specific to your enterprise and industry, make sure your toolkit contains:

  • An overview of your brand identity
  • Your logo and variations of it
  • Your colour palette
  • Your typography
  • Rules for layout and alignment
  • Brand illustrations and iconography
  • Art direction principles
  • Examples of your branding used across different applications e.g. landing pages, social media, product packaging, etc.

Your brand toolkit will be invaluable for communicating your rebranding strategy to business stakeholders and helping to make sure everyone is singing from the same hymn sheet. It’s also very useful when you work with outside contractors, helping to quickly on-board them in your updated house style.

Ensuring your rebranded visual identity is an indisputable truth

Your next step requires some intensive team action, as implementing your rebrand will touch every part of your business – and your internal launch must be a success to give your external launch the best chance of success and making the time and financial investment worth it.

You’ll need to set out all the rebranding activities to be undertaken, assigning each one to an individual or department, and agreeing a time frame to work to. You should plan weekly meetings where each person can update the team on what they’ve been doing. It’s likely that some things will take longer than expected, and you’ll run into a few obstacles along the way, so be realistic with your schedule and leave time for ironing out any issues.

To support this process, consider these corporate marketing activities required for your rebrand to be launched internally as effectively as possible:

  • Create a need-to-know sequence, so your rebrand is rolled out to your various audiences (executives, employees, customers, suppliers,media, etc.) in the appropriate order – some will be of a higher priority than others
  • As part of this priority order, make sure that your rebrand has been announced and accepted internally several months before you intend to launch publicly
  • Establish a narrative behind your rebranding, so it becomes clearer to those inside your company why you have taken this step, and can translate to your customers and how it will specifically benefit them
  • Spend several weeks building hype towards the rebrand, and communicate these actions internally – as well as helping to cement understanding within your enterprise, this will prepare your audiences for the upcoming change, and make it something worth anticipating rather than hitting them as a complete surprise
  • Create communication plans for the initial weeks and months after launch to make sure your employees, customers and the wider world are reminded about what your brand identity now is, so they can quickly familiarise themselves with your new look and feel – you new brand identity should feel normal after a few months

Keeping these steps in mind will ensure your launch is conducted as seamlessly as possible. You and your branding teams will be in the best position to receive an encouraging response, and with a solid rebranding launch strategy in place, be able to adapt to any needed changes along the way.

And when the rebranding is complete, make sure you have an internal launch party. Get your employees excited about the change, and they will be more likely to become brand ambassadors. If you have started to offer new products and services as part of your rebrand or you want employees to take a new approach to customer service, ensure they have been appropriately trained.

Preparing your organisation for your rebrand is a big challenge and a huge accomplishment. Yet a key element to achieving the growth – a factor that would have been at least part of your reasons for rebranding in the first place – is thinking beyond the launch, and truly preparing your people to unleash your brand for years to come.

3. Beyond the rebrand – the right tools for a new era

Having done the necessary research, and putting together a complete brand toolkit that equips everyone for launching your brand, maintaining momentum on consistency is key – not least, to ensure customer loyalty is maintained to help sustain and increase revenue. 

Considering your current ecosystem is essential, as the user experience for your teams needs to be as seamless as possible to ensure mistakes are kept to a minimum if not eliminated completely. So ask yourself. “What do our people need to truly land our rebrand?”

While the importance of establishing all approved brand assets in your toolkit is undeniable, without Digital Asset Management (DAM) – one single source of truth for all assets – then old logos, out-of-date images and poor file storage could see your efforts diluted.

Having a powerful DAM is essential to centralising all documents, images and videos that you will need to activate your brand identity. When access is granted and integrated with one online home for your brand, guidelines are confirmed and available in real time, and concerns regarding ‘where to find what is okay to use’ can be eliminated.

When it comes to creating 100% on-brand assets – essential for any newly rebranded company – then the most useful way for everyone to feel reassured they are approving assets is to create a master design template from which many specific asset templates can be produced.

Keeping track of all rebranding activities and campaigns and simplifying execution of all global efforts is also an important factor to consider. When teams are spread out around the world, being able to see that you are aligned globally when you need to be is just as vital as ensuring every region and location has the autonomy to speak directly to their audience whilst keeping the core brand safe and consistent.

Supporting this is a continuous analysis of asset performance and brand adoption within your enterprise – essential in improving brand performance over time. Assessing the impact of rebranding on your bottom line goes in line with remaining aware of feedback from your target audience. Be constantly aware of social media channels, speaking to Customer Success teams, and committing to becoming more agile.

Download our guide to further understand how to map out the strategy and tools you will need to successfully rebrand your business.

Rebranding can be a huge undertaking but also marks a fresh, exciting phase in the life of your business. Done right, it will excite and re-engage your customers while also leaving you in a strong position to attract a new audience.


Good luck with your rebrand, and reach out to us at Papirfly to discover the power of our smart templates and the wider possibilities of our platform by booking your free personalised demo today. Papirfly’s brand management platform gives marketing teams everything they need to land their rebrand, in one single place.

Table of contents:

  1. 1. Conducting research in the rebranding process
  2. 2. Empower your people as you launch your rebrand
  3. 3. Beyond the rebrand – the right tools for a new era
Brand management, CorporateLeave a Comment on What to consider when rebranding your business

What to consider when rebranding your business

Papirfly
7 minutes read

“To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.”

Churchill said this in response to criticisms that he changed political parties. Great leaders are both courageous and vulnerable. They reflect on their strengths and weaknesses, and course correct – sometimes in very public ways – to ensure their behaviours match their values and goals, even when it’s not easy.

We all grow and change over time… and so do brands. Whether in response to a new line of products and services, an evolution in visual identity, or to reflect a shift in a company’s mission and values, a rebrand can keep an organisation aligned with an ever-changing landscape.

However, this is not a step that should be taken lightly. The cost of rebranding a business can be a steep one if the purpose of this change and the approach to this problem is not carefully considered. Not only can it cost you a serious amount of time and money, but your company’s reputation could be at stake if you miss the mark.

What is rebranding?

Rebranding is an exercise in changing or improving any major branding elements e.g. logo, colour palette, typography, etc. The idea behind it is that a brand is evolving, and the company wants people to know about it.

A business can rebrand as much or as little as it wants, from simply changing its slogan or logo, to changing everything, including the company name. It’s helpful to consider three different types of rebranding:

  • Brand refresh – You change minor details only, such as modernising individual aspects of your logo or slightly changing the hues of your colour palette.
  • Partial rebrand – You change certain elements but not others, such as using a new logo that uses elements, themes and colours from your old logo.
  • Full rebrand – You change everything as if you were a completely different company.

Whichever approach most appeals to your current circumstances, it is important that the purpose of your rebrand is carefully considered. History is littered with rebranding examples that had far from ideal outcomes:

These examples are not to say that rebranding a company isn’t a wise decision – given the right circumstances, a new look and feel can be a significant asset to a brand. Perhaps your existing image is lagging behind the times visually, meaning you are coming across as old-fashioned or limiting your chances of capturing a new audience. Or you reimagined your company’s objectives and values and want to reflect them outwardly.

In other words, it is crucial to carefully consider the reasons behind your rebrand, and weigh up whether this investment can benefit the business or not…

3 good and 3 bad rebranding considerations

Your motivations behind a brand change are vitally important to look upon with a critical eye. Due to the seismic shift a full-scale corporate rebrand could have on your organisation’s image, your relationship with your customers and more, it is vital that one is pursued for the right reasons.

Below, we give a quick breakdown of three worthwhile reasons to start the rebranding process, and three that might require a rethink:

Good reason #1: New company direction

Over time, the mission, vision and values of your company may have shifted to the point of being unrecognisable to what they were originally. Whether as a result of new market conditions, a change in senior management, or simply natural evolution, your brand identity may need to be freshened up or changed entirely to reflect your new direction.

Bad reason #1: Boredom with current identity

Just because you may have fallen out of love with your existing branding doesn’t mean your customers have. It is important to separate your own feelings from what your brand is meant to do – appeal to your target audiences. Making a change due to your own disillusionment could have major ramifications to your company’s future

Good reason #2: Reaching a new region or audience

Whether you are expanding to another part of the country or around the globe, or you have shifted focus to a new target audience, you might need to refresh your brand in order to better appeal to these customers. Alternatively, in the case of venturing abroad, you may consider adopting a ‘sister brand’ that aligns more closely to the culture you are entering.

Bad reason #2: A dip in sales

A recent reduction in revenue could be an indicator of many things, not just that people are bored with your brand. When Uber updated their brand a few years ago, half of their customers surveyed had no idea what their new logo represented. Instead of making this hasty decision, take the time to consider if other areas of your marketing strategy or overall business could account for this loss of sales.

Good reason #3: Mergers and acquisitions

If you find yourself in the situation of having joined forces with one or more additional companies, it can be beneficial to bring relevant elements of all brands involved into one united identity that previous customers of all sides (and future customers) can familiarise themselves with.

Bad reason #3: Covering up a crisis

While it might feel like a wise decision to rise from the ashes of a PR disaster as a completely different brand, today’s savvy consumers can see right through these attempts. This can actually exacerbate the crisis, making people feel you are trying to take the easy way out rather than owning up to and learning from your mistakes.

Added to this, you may have to convince important stakeholders in your organisation to opt for a rebrand. Make sure that you are well prepared by setting out any arguments clearly and draw up a strategy to help you make a decision that is fully supported by all parties.

Tips to prepare for your corporate rebrand

Once you have established your reasons for pursuing a rebrand are appropriate, a brand refresh rollout plan will involve several significant steps to best ensure a successful result.

Identify your company’s vision, mission and values

Start by reaffirming in your mind what your company stands for today, and how that differs from where you were when your current branding was introduced. How have your values shifted? Do you have new objectives and targets? By devoting time to this topic you’ll have a stronger sense of where your identity needs to evolve and in what direction.

Audit existing brand assets

You don’t necessarily need to reinvent the wheel to refresh your brand. Rather than start from scratch, look at your existing assets and see what can be salvaged. What still aligns with the new direction you wish to take your brand, and what needs to be reimagined?

These expressions of your existing brand will be indispensable for your team – only by understanding where your brand is now can you effectively plan for its future.

Secure buy-in from key stakeholders

Leadership. Employees. Customers. Shareholders. There are a lot of groups that you will need to convince in order to make your rebrand a success, so it is valuable to canvass their opinions and prepare them for the change that you intend to make.

Once you have their support, the chances of a good outcome greatly improve than if you were to spring the ideas or change onto them without any warning. It will also give you valuable insight into whether your rebrand would be accepted and if it is necessary.

Build the right team

A rebrand must be a collaborative effort across your team in order to make the move stick and to ensure the final product does not alienate employees. Get representatives from across your senior management, marketing, sales, human resources and further departments involved who can actively lend their insight into repositioning your brand.

Get ready to update brand guidelines

As the key documentation at the crux of your brand identity, it is important that you are ready to update your brand guidelines with the new visuals, colour palettes, verbiage and more that will underpin your new direction.

Furthermore, storing this valuable information in a digital brand portal could be crucial in ensuring that everyone in your team is aware of the change, limiting the potential for any of your previous brand assets resurfacing later on.

Plan a successful launch

Consider how you will intend to make the world aware of your new direction. You may want to tease the arrival of your rebrand through a social media or email marketing campaign, getting people excited about the arrival rather than springing it on the unaware.

Or, maybe you feel an out-of-nowhere advert or website update will have a more eye-grabbing effect. A classic example of this is the Old Spice viral campaign that absolutely catapulted the previously old-fashioned brand into the next generation.

Of course, there is so much that must be taken into account for a rebranding strategy to work as intended. If you’d like to know more, download our essential guide to rebranding below.

Are you ready for a rebrand?

Whether you are opting for a light refresh of your brand visuals and messaging, or a complete brand overhaul that pushes your company towards a bright new tomorrow, it is essential to have the tools alongside you to accommodate this massive shift.

BAM by Papirfly™ offers a powerful selection of features that can help ease the process of rebranding and ensure that the results stick across your future marketing campaigns.

  • Use the template studio to bring asset creation in-house, locking down the key elements of your new branding so all assets produced are perfectly consistent
  • Keep all up-to-date brand assets in the in-built DAM system, preventing outdated logos and obsolete branding from re-emerging
  • Coordinate the steps involved in your rebrand with birds-eye campaign planning
  • Introduce an online, accessible brand portal to act as a single source of truth for all your brand now represents

Discover the efficient, consistent and exciting future of marketing – get in touch to learn more about BAM or book a free demo today.

Table of contents:

  1. What is rebranding?
  2. 3 good and 3 bad rebranding considerations
  3. Tips to prepare for your corporate rebrand
  4. Are you ready for a rebrand?

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Corporate, Corporate communications and marketing, MarketingLeave a Comment on The changing face of corporate social responsibility in marketing

The changing face of corporate social responsibility in marketing

Leanne Merrill
7 minutes read

Many brands and businesses have long championed Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) as part of their organisation’s everyday practices and policies. But how we view CSR has changed. 

CSR is less of an obligation that companies need to fulfil and is now something that’s totally intertwined with every aspect of what they do.

As part of your CSR strategy, you may traditionally have explored these strands. 

So what’s changed in the world of CSR and what do brands need to do to make sure they don’t fall behind? 

The fundamentals of CSR remain the same, but in isolation it’s no longer strong enough to hold a business accountable, or suggest they are following through with their plans. We now need to make sure that we have CSR and Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) strategies that work hand-in-hand with one another.

CSR is about telling the world and communicating to your employees your commitments and what you aim to do to have a more positive influence on the world. ESG is committing to measurable goals and ensuring that the policies you outline in your CSR strategy are met. 

For example, if part of your CSR policy is to become a more sustainable and environmentally-friendly company, your ESG may include an overhaul of packaging, rules around internal printing, increasing the use of recycled materials or efforts to help save wildlife. 

5 basic steps in CSR companies should be taking

#1 Readdressing company culture and values

Your code of ethics and core values may have shifted over the last couple of years. If you’ve already played catch up, well done. If you’re still realigning internally, ensure the outcome results in an easy, digitally accessible way for employees to understand your commitment to social and environmental responsibilities. You might also like to consider involving employees of varying seniority to feedback on your initial realignment strategy before sharing it with the wider team.

You may choose to create a separate piece of communication for stakeholders. Additionally, it’s worth reviewing any outward-facing communication (such as a dedicated CSR page on your website) to ensure that the message you are projecting into the world is an accurate one.

Don’t over-promise or commit. Set realistic expectations because as soon as it’s in writing, your brand can and will be held accountable.

How does this affect your marketing?

Your values will need to be present across your brand and in almost every piece of marketing material that’s produced – even in some small way. Whether it’s the person creating it truly understanding your values and ethics at a fundamental level before creation, or a message that you convey – people are more interested in the standards that brands hold for themselves than ever before. 

#2 Make health and safety in the workplace a priority

There has been a greater emphasis placed on employee wellbeing in the last 5–10 years. While a supportive culture will help to support them mentally, physical wellbeing should also be a key focus. 

If someone feels they are unable to complete their job safely, it will affect all aspects of their wellbeing and the workplace. Having policies in place that can be freely viewed and accessed will put employees at ease. Third-party vendors, manufacturers, suppliers and distributors should also hold a high standard of safe working practices.

How does this affect your marketing?

While the ultimate benefit of a health and safety strand to your CSR is to protect those who work for you, when it isn’t done correctly it could have implications for your reputation and your marketing efforts. 

When a company is seen to compromise the safety and wellbeing of workers, your marketing efforts become futile. Whether or not you were directly aware of lack of care isn’t relevant, health and safety must always be a priority. 

It’s not something that needs to be shouted about in external communications, as it should be something that is totally ingrained into the way the business operates. However, being transparent about positive manufacturing or working policies via social media can help build tighter relationships with your customers and audiences.

#3 Outline goals for reducing environmental impact

These will be top line commitments, ideas and outline plans that will communicate internally and externally how your brand is helping the environment.

Your commitments are usually broad in this context, and on a basic level, could look something like this:

  • Reducing energy consumption by 30% over the next year 
  • Moving to renewable sources of energy within the next year 
  • Creating partnerships with sustainable suppliers immediately 
  • Investing in green technology, research and development over the next 5 years

As you can see from the above, it’s important to put some kind of timeline against each commitment, so that when implementing your ESG, there are goals to work towards. 

How does this affect your marketing?

Your messaging and how your brand is perceived will need to be aligned with your environmental intentions. For example, a brand collaboration wouldn’t be proposed if it didn’t meet the sustainability rules your company needs partners to abide by. Or the imagery used in certain campaigns might reflect your green ambitions.

Ensuring that your environmental policy and standpoint is known by your marketing team is so important. One wrong step and your brand could contradict itself. 

#4 Introduce active efforts to increase diversity across the board

When talking about diversity in the past, many people tend to reference employees in the workplace or the types of people represented in campaigns. While these are both incredibly important and absolutely central to this step, your brand must go even further.

Where possible, your brand should be working with diverse suppliers and communities. Whether it’s giving back, showing your support, or working together in new ways, diversity extends beyond who you hire and work with on campaigns. 

How does this affect your marketing?

Giving a voice to different people across your business is important. Whether that’s internally during meetings, or campaigns you put out into the world. Diversity in hiring, suppliers and communities should be a natural strand of your marketing efforts, not one that’s forced or unnatural.

#5 Priorities feedback

There’s a misconception that the CSR strategy should be set by those who sit at the top. While this is often the case, some of the strongest insights and ideas can sometimes come from unlikely places. 

Start by having conversations with employees, customers, suppliers, about what they would like to see and what more they believe your brand should be doing.

How does this affect your marketing?

No matter how you communicate with customers, there will always be feedback, whether verbally, on social media, or through customer service teams. Ensuring your customer service, sales and social teams have specific instruction on what they should be reporting back will help you gain on-the-ground insights into what your brand could be doing better.

7 steps for ESG success

#1 Complete a materiality assessment

This is an opportunity to speak to stakeholders to prioritise big issues in your industry, and what can be done within the ESG landscape to help alleviate these problems.

#2 Take a baseline of where your brand/company is

Using the information gathered in the materiality assessment, speak to different stakeholders, global heads and departments on the specific efforts that are currently taking place in relation to your priorities.

#3 Decide on exact goals

Once you know where your company stands in terms of ESG efforts, a discussion can be had on areas to improve, refine or maintain. Set your strategic goals, ensuring to complete a feasibility assessment (or at least a lengthy discussion), to verify that these goals are realistic.

#4 Check for gaps and barriers

Will these goals make a real difference? Is there scope to do more? Conducting a gap analysis on your plans can help you see whether other areas of the business can be optimised. Identify barriers to success early on, and ensure you assign an individual to clear these.

#5 Create a roadmap

This is where you take your goals and create a detailed roadmap for each of them. Barriers will have been identified at this point, so any additional steps can be added at this stage. Timelines, who is accountable, expected outcomes and results can be assigned at this stage.

#6 Determine KPIs and make them known across the business

Your ESG goals need to be implemented beyond your roadmap in order for you to actually make progress. Any associated policies, procedures, communication, training or procurement can now get underway.

The exact numbers, improvements or changes that need to happen should now be defined and communicated to the appropriate people, ensuring there’s a centralised way to access progress and reporting for both employees, stakeholders and externally.

#7 Ongoing progress updates

Without these final steps, your efforts up until this point are futile. Set a consistent schedule and method of reporting, implementing an easy way to collect data. This may be over email, spreadsheets, physical meetings and presentations or a dedicated dashboard.

Ongoing ESG reports should contain:

  • At which stage of the roadmap you are at
  • Which actions have been taken
  • How successful they have been
  • What has been learnt/what improvements need to be made
  • Any actions/follow-up that needs to take place

Managing CSR and ESG policies internally

With strategies such as this, they touch almost every level of employee to some degree. They all also act as key drivers in various aspects of campaign development, creation, strategy and brand management.

While the steps for CSR and ESG we’ve outlined in this article will take time, they will help to ground the foundation of your company and the good that it’s putting out into the world. It will help your brand be perceived positively by customers and employees alike, help you hire and could even help to make it more profitable.

Creating a centralised home for your education documents, while simultaneously ensuring that messaging and brand elements are all aligned sounds like a big challenge – and it is, without the right tools.

BAM by Papirfly™ is an all-in-one brand activation management platform. Over 200 world-leading brands and 500,000 active users harness its power to manage their brand at a local and global level.

Not only can you create an infinite amount of on-brand assets without experience – digital, print, social, video and more – it’s also the central home for brand education. It’s a single source of truth for what employees, marketers and more worldwide need to know, what to say and how to work towards a common goal.

Find out more or book your demo today.

Table of contents:

  1. What’s changed in the world of CSR?
  2. 5 basic steps in CSR brands should be taking
  3. 7 steps for ESG success
  4. Managing CSR and ESG internally

Corporate, Corporate communications and marketing, MarketingLeave a Comment on How to connect your people and protect your brand

How to connect your people and protect your brand

Jessica Chambers
5 minutes read

Your brand is what defines the way your company is perceived by audiences across the globe. It is the result of countless hours of research, strategy, creative and design processes, and it applies to everything your brand says and does. In other words, it’s more than just your logo and tagline.

As your company’s greatest consumer-facing asset, your external brand is at the heart of your marketing department, guarded closely by brand guidelines and strict approvals. But although they are the gatekeepers of your brand, your marketing team are not the only employees who need it.

How are internal branding and external branding connected?

It may be used in different ways and in different contexts, external and internal branding is more connected than you might think.

It’s your internal, or employer, brand that brings your employees together under the same company values and attracts the right talent to your business. But in today’s marketing landscape, it’s more important than ever to have an external brand that aligns with how your company operates internally. If employees don’t know what your brand stands for it will be more difficult to represent your company’s true image to customers.

Similarly, employees need to hear the same core values and company messaging as consumers, but in a way that’s relevant to them. Being clear about your brand’s voice, philosophy, and goals is the best way to make sure that your employees and customers are all on the same page. 

To prevent any brand misuse or ‘rogue’ materials from slipping through the net, both your internal and external branding needs to be understood by everyone in your company. 

But with thousands of employees and customers in different markets across the globe, this is no small task. Using the right tools and the right techniques, you can help your whole company get the best from your brand while staying safe in the knowledge that it will be used correctly and with consistency. Here’s how:

Keep a live and up-to-date brand guidelines hub

A brand is a living, breathing and ever-evolving thing. It needs to grow alongside your company as your business develops.

In the fast-paced world of marketing, it’s vital to keep everyone up-to-date with the latest version of your guidelines. With hybrid models and home working becoming the new normal, it’s more important than ever to ensure that your teams know exactly where to find the latest guidelines and have access to them from any location.

To prevent employees from getting lost among the various folders and documents containing the latest assets, use a live brand guidelines hub to store the most recent version of everything your teams need in one location.

Make your brand guidelines part of your onboarding

Aligning themselves with your brand guidelines is essential for new starters to become part of your brand and start embodying your company’s purpose and core values. 

Brand guideline training should be a key part of their onboarding process. New starters should be taken through the relevant information in your guidelines with an explanation of how they will be implemented in their day-to-day work.

Help employees stay in the know

As well as educating new hires on where to access relevant guidelines, and how to use them, a digitised process can be used to help keep your existing employees up-to-date with correct and relevant materials. 

With a digital brand guidelines hub, it’s much easier to create and share resource packs for recurring questions, notify employees about updates and more.

In addition to creating a live hub for everything ‘your brand’, facilitating regular training and Q&A sessions in person gives employees the chance to clear up anything that’s unclear and provide essential feedback to make your brand even better.

Bring your internal brand to life for employees

As we mentioned earlier, your internal brand should be a priority alongside your external brand.

Producing internal campaigns to the same standard that you would if you were communicating to an external audience will help instil trust, loyalty and a sense of pride in your employees.

Give teams access to relevant assets only

For a global company with thousands of employees rolling out campaigns in different markets, there will be countless assets and marketing materials in circulation at any one time.

To help teams spend more time producing ROI boosting campaigns, and less time searching for the relevant materials for their audiences, streamline your DAM system to create customised views that only give teams access to the assets they need.

Learn from mistakes

Even with watertight brand guidelines, the occasional instance of misuse can slip through the net of approvals.

If and when something does go wrong, it’s important to have debrief sessions to find out why. This is not to name and shame anyone, but to help your whole team learn from real examples.

Celebrate the wins

Just as important as reviewing mistakes, is showing praise for what went right. Keeping communication open and honest will foster a sense of teamwork and help employees understand the greater impact of their day-to-day work.

Making remote and hybrid workers part of the team 

With the popular uptake of hybrid working, or many employees choosing to stay working remotely post lockdown, bringing teams together isn’t as easy as calling an all-company meeting. 

Even if staff are working in different locations, languages and time zones, they still need to be working together.

If your employer brand and day-to-day practices neglect those who aren’t in the office, there can be a disconnect between what employees take from your company’s core values and what it actually stands for.

Aligning internal and external branding creates a ‘one company’ approach that brings teams together with the same sense of purpose and one clear direction. After COVID-19, companies need to be doing more to keep all employees in the know, recognise their contributions, ask for and listen to feedback, and give them the tools they need to succeed from home and in the office.

Give everyone room to be creative

Letting non-specialist team members loose on your brand can be daunting. But when you know your teams are clear on your brand guidelines and have an easy way to access them, anyone has the potential to create market-ready work.

For an extra layer of assurance, digitised approvals processes help you stay in control of sign-off and notified of any changes post-approval.

Remind employees that they are the brand

Your employees have the power to shape the future success of your company. Creating, sharing and promoting your company values internally (via your employer brand) will help employees feel valued and driven to succeed in their roles.To take this a step further, using your brand to create employee advocacy programs is a great way to allow them to actively contribute to your marketing efforts. With BAM by Papirfly™ you already have everything you need to bring your brand to life and give your teams the freedom to make it the best it can be with features like: streamlined approvals, flexible templates, customised DAM system.

Discover more ways to boost your company’s employer brand potential in the Papirfly Knowledge hub. 

Table of contents:

  1. How are internal branding and external branding connected?
  2. Remind employees that they are the brand
CorporateLeave a Comment on How to create dynamic display ads that count

How to create dynamic display ads that count

Papirfly
6 minutes read

You can have the best display ad media strategy in the world but if the creative around it is underwhelming, you’re not going to see the results you hoped for. The best ideas stand out from the barrage of other ads individuals see each day. They use humour, emotional appeal, and functional messaging to leave a lasting impression on those who see them while browsing online.

How to make your display ad stand out from the crowd

One part of brand building is to separate your brand from your competitors. To do that you need to know who you are up against. Who are your competitors, what are their u

Creating ads that generate results requires a combination of powerful copy and visuals. Eye-catching ads are essential for keeping up and being noticed in a sea of online ads. In this article, we’ll explore how to make your promotions stand out.

Before you start creating copy, you must have a clear goal in mind for your display ad campaign. You might use your display ads to meet a variety of goals:

  • Generate more leads
  • Increase subscriptions
  • Highlight special offers for your products or services
  • Build brand awareness
  • Share updates and new offerings

Consider the action you wish readers to take, and use this to help select the words and visuals of your ads to connect with the relevant audience demographics.

It’s also important to consider the platform your ads will appear on. Since you can create display ads on several platforms, place them where they have the highest potential of engaging your target audience to get the highest return on your investment.

For example, in social media advertising you will find that younger customers are often found on platforms like TikTok and Instagram, while more mature audiences can be found on Twitter and Facebook.

5 useful creative tips to boost your ad performance and ROI

1. Use compelling visuals

Each display ad example in this article uses interesting visuals. The images are simple and tell the story with minimal complexity, making it easy for the viewer to understand what’s going on instantly, which is important when they might be scrolling through feeds or pages in a hurry.

Colour is a critical factor to convey mood and personality, so choose carefully. Warm colours like red, orange, and yellow generally convey a sense of energy and enthusiasm. Blues and purples more often connote poise, wisdom, and stability. Green, of course, makes people think of action and growth. Select your colours based on the immediate impression you want to give a potential customer.

2. Write copy engaging copy

Before you start shaping your brand’s identity, investigate market trends that will

Once you’ve chosen your display ad campaign’s goals and visuals, you’ll need to consider the copy itself. When you create ad copy, it’s crucial that you understand your audience. How they speak is especially important – tone and style matter – the copy must resonate with your audience.

People won’t read lengthy ad texts online. Long paragraphs will turn them off. Keep it short and punchy so viewers can take in everything straight away. You might find it helpful to write a few versions and A/B test them to see which works best.

3. Use humour where appropriate

People love laughing, and humour is one of the best ways to connect with your target audience. Don’t be afraid to go a little left-field with your visuals and copy. The payoff can be huge if you get it right. Just ensure that it feels authentic to your brand, respectful, and acknowledges a common experience they’ll recognise.

4. Solve the audience’s problem

Most consumers have learned to zone out ads that don’t help them solve a problem. If your ad provides something of value and tells the reader useful information, they are more likely to actually see it.

The key to a great ad is to remember that everyone has problems – your message has to instantly address and solve it. A creative brief should always have a clear problem that the consumer has, and a clear solution that the product/service provides. You have a problem. We have thea solution.

5. Include a clear call-to-action

Be direct in telling your audience what you want them to do next, and do it in such a way that grabs their attention. Whether it’s “Buy Now” or “Claim Your Offer,” using a strong action verb directs your audience to the next step.

A good way to make this desired action distinct is to use a contrasting colour that grabs your audience’s attention and stands out from the rest of the ad visually. As long as it still aligns with your overall visual identity, this can be useful in securing clicks, shares or other types of engagement.

3 examples of great display ads

The North Face

The North Face doesn’t just produce everyday winter coats, and this piece of collateral has done an excellent job of conveying this fact by creating an effective brand awareness campaign using a visually captivating story coupled with strong ad copy.

Why it’s effective:

  • Strong colours and relevant images.
  • The pictures and text tell a captivating story that’s hard to ignore.
  • This ad sends a memorable message about The North Face brand.
Microsoft

Microsoft’s Azure platform competes in one of the most competitive IT markets – enterprise cloud app development. This ad takes the typical “free trial” offer to a new level by giving their readers full control over the length of the trial period. The call-to-action delivers real value and solves a problem, instantly making this ad more click-worthy.

Why it’s effective:

  • Bright blue and contrasting white colours demand attention.
  • A unique and compelling free trial offer that stands out.
  • The clear and simple call-to-action button tells you exactly what you get.
Semrush

Semrush’s attractive promise to solve your biggest business problem in seconds is hard to resist. Even if their audience scrolls by, that enticing offer will echo in their heads and help further collateral stand out when they encounter another piece of Semrush collateral down the road.

Why it’s effective:

  • Bright contrasting colours and rich media helps this ad stand out on the page.
  • The ad promises very specific and attractive results.
  • “Competitors’ top products and offers” is a captivating result for business owners.

Create dynamic display ads efficiently with smart templates

Whatever your marketing message, you need to get it out in the world quickly in order to retain relevance and context. The ability to change graphics, layouts, frames, text, transitions and more, all without compromising on style or quality, can be a huge asset for brand consistency in the fast-paced world of marketing.

What’s more, building, previewing and publishing visuals from one central place can also help accelerate the efficiency and speed of content creation.

BAM by Papirfly™ allows all of this and more, enabling marketing teams to produce digital ads faster so you can take advantage of opportunities when they emerge, rather than lose precious hours, days and weeks on designs, proofs and revisions.

Give your teams worldwide the ability to maintain consistency across your digital display assets, customising offers and incentives whenever demand arises. Produce marketing materials in a simpler, more cost-effective way, and increase the volume and frequency of collateral to gain a competitive edge in the increasingly crowded landscape of digital advertising.

Everything your team needs in a single online portal. BAM provides the freedom to create consistent print and digital display ads without agency support – and a lot more:

  • A single brand portal for all the latest documents, information, fonts and guides.
  • Adjust permission levels to restrict who can use which assets.
  • Keep your brand consistent and accessible for everyone – wherever they are in the world.
  • Build on your asset collection as new creations are made.

Discover the power of our smart templates and the wider possibilities of BAM by booking your free personalised demo.

Table of contents:

  1. How to make your display ad stand out from the crowd
  2. 5 useful tips to boost your ad performance and ROI
  3. 3 examples of great display ads
  4. Create dynamic display ads efficiently with smart templates

The best way
to manage your brand.
See it in action.

  • Boosting revenues
  • Doing more for less
  • Activating brands on a global scale
See how it fits your needs

Related articles

Brand consistency

Brand guidelines are at the heart of your on-brand culture

Product Thought Leadership

Papirfly unveils seamless integration with Ungapped

Employer brand

How to develop and deliver an effective employer brand strategy

AI Product Thought Leadership

AI beyond the hype – Staircases to (AI) Heaven and Hell

Brand guidelines are at the heart of your on-brand culture

CorporateLeave a Comment on Why marketers need digital brand templates

Why marketers need digital brand templates

Casie
5 minutes read

Innovation in brand automation solutions such as template technology, is streamlining previously time-consuming, manually-driven, repetitive tasks that cost marketing teams time, money and energy.

1. Reduce repetitive, manual tasks and save money

According to Smartsheet’s report Automation in the Workplace, workers said they look forward to spending less time on repetitive manual tasks and spending more time on the rewarding aspects of their work. One of the ways workers believe they could benefit from automation in their daily work is by reducing the number of productivity-killing tasks they execute every day to keep the business running.

The goal of brand automation above all else is to eliminate the extra effort associated with creating and updating brand assets. Brand management teams worldwide all have to produce a range of content to tight deadlines for their consumers, but outdated, manual processes often prevent them from achieving the efficiency they’re after.

Professionals in all industries, but particularly in marketing, waste an excessive amount of time digging through files to find the resources they need. In the event that they don’t, they often start from scratch and create every new asset they need for their upcoming campaigns.

By providing intelligent templates and access to a wealth of on-brand resources, brand automation platforms reduce the time it takes to produce assets, gain approval and distribute it to your various audiences. In essence, you produce more while putting in less, allowing your brand marketers to achieve a much greater return on investment.

2. Are custom templates right for you?

If any of the following factors apply to your company, custom-designed templates may be beneficial to your business:

  • You have a team of people who create branded materials for proposals, brochures, presentations, ads and marketing campaigns. 
  • You have standard assets that are used across multiple channels. 
  • You want to achieve brand consistency across all materials. 
  • You want to look professional.
  • You feel efficiency can be improved by streamlining your processes.

Here are some of the ways that bespoke marketing templates could increase efficiency for your business.

1. Time

Working with a template can help you save time and meet tight deadlines. Templates should include colours, fonts, logo designs, and anything that needs to be in place to stay within brand guidelines. When the template does most of the work for you, a lot of time is freed up for other brand efforts.

2. Consistency

All outgoing materials should be standardised to ensure your brand is consistent and reinforced across all materials and channels. Templates will help guide the process when multiple employees and contributors are involved in content creation, and ensure that all content produced follows your brand guidelines.

3. Space for strategic thinking

With the time you save, you get more room for strategic thinking. When you have more space to think, analyse data and get creative with ways to meet their needs, you help your employees unlock their potential to improve their return on investment.

3. What to look for in a template solution

Template technology is a solution that provides employees with flexibility. By having the solution available online and removing the need to involve designers and other resources in repetitive tasks, your employees get increased flexibility that makes it easier to work more efficiently.

However, in order to maximise your marketing team’s output, it’s important to look for a system that provides templates for a complete range of print and digital assets:

Ads

To gain optimal conversion frequency, ads must be recognisable to potential customers. This is best achieved by using a combination of pre-designed templates and automated working processes that guarantee consistency across all digital channels and platforms.

Social media

More than any other digital marketing channel, social media allows companies to target their market segments with tailored content, but these platforms also come with many challenges for brands, especially with tone of voice. 

Timing and consistency are everything, and it creates a major challenge for marketers when resources are stretched and there are deadlines to meet. With pre-defined templates designing assets is easy, regardless of who makes it, and your brand remains intact.

Printed materials

Most marketing efforts have moved to digital channels these days, but your company will still benefit from having templates for print as well. With self-serviced business cards, posters, roll-ups and more, your employees can easily create the assets they need on-demand without having to contact a design agency every time a new update is required.

Dynamic content

Standing out from your competitors demands even more creativity from marketing teams. Static content is nice, but sometimes you need to go further and this usually requires the skills and expertise from an external marketing agency.

But not anymore. With a modern automation system, templates for creating, adapting, changing, and publishing dynamic content to the channels of your preference is quick and easy.

Video templates

ideo creation used to be out of reach for most companies. It was perceived as expensive with professional production costs. Now it is unthinkable to exclude video marketing. In fact, 81% of businesses now use video as a marketing tool.

It is important to be able to create videos fast and on-brand in order to engage with your audience effectively. So, look for template technology that lets you create and adapt your videos with only a few keystrokes so you can share high-quality content with your customers and prospects on a frequent basis.

4. Automate and simplify your workday

A digital solution with adjustable templates will reflect positively on your team in terms of efficiency. Create fresh brand assets like social media posts, video content, ad banners, posters and brochures by utilising predefined or custom templates to deliver new localised content on time, on brand and on budget.

Look for a solution that is available and intuitive and which supports all activities associated with your brand. With the template studio available as part of BAM by Papirfly™, anyone can rapidly produce on-brand, quality collateral for a wide range of digital and print channels – no specialist design skills required:

  • Social media assets
  • Videos
  • Posters
  • Brochures
  • Digital signage
  • Branded emails

Discover the efficiencies you can gain with our easy-to-use design software, and unlock the power BAM offers in helping you own, control and create your brand like never before. Get in touch to find out more, or book your free personalised demo.

Table of contents:

  1. Consistency is key for successful brand development
  2. Secure brand consistency with digital brand templates
  3. How to introduce brand templates to your business
  4. Templates are economical and effective

The best way
to manage our brand.
See it in action.

  • Boosting revenues
  • Doing more for less
  • Activating brands on a global scale
See how it fits your needs

Related articles

Brand consistency

Brand guidelines are at the heart of your on-brand culture

Product Thought Leadership

Papirfly unveils seamless integration with Ungapped

Employer brand

How to develop and deliver an effective employer brand strategy

AI Product Thought Leadership

AI beyond the hype – Staircases to (AI) Heaven and Hell

Brand guidelines are at the heart of your on-brand culture

CorporateLeave a Comment on How template technology drives new efficiencies for marketing teams

How template technology drives new efficiencies for marketing teams

Papirfly
5 minutes read

Innovation in brand automation solutions such as template technology, is streamlining previously time-consuming, manually-driven, repetitive tasks that cost marketing teams time, money and energy.

Reduce repetitive, manual tasks and save money

According to Smartsheet’s report Automation in the Workplace, workers said they look forward to spending less time on repetitive manual tasks and spending more time on the rewarding aspects of their work. One of the ways workers believe they could benefit from automation in their daily work is by reducing the number of productivity-killing tasks they execute every day to keep the business running.

The goal of brand automation above all else is to eliminate the extra effort associated with creating and updating brand assets. Brand management teams worldwide all have to produce a range of content to tight deadlines for their consumers, but outdated, manual processes often prevent them from achieving the efficiency they’re after.

Professionals in all industries, but particularly in marketing, waste an excessive amount of time digging through files to find the resources they need. In the event that they don’t, they often start from scratch and create every new asset they need for their upcoming campaigns.

By providing intelligent templates and access to a wealth of on-brand resources, brand automation platforms reduce the time it takes to produce assets, gain approval and distribute it to your various audiences. In essence, you produce more while putting in less, allowing your brand marketers to achieve a much greater return on investment.

Are custom templates right for you?

If any of the following factors apply to your company, custom-designed templates may be beneficial to your business:

  • You have a team of people who create branded materials for proposals, brochures, presentations, ads and marketing campaigns. 
  • You have standard assets that are used across multiple channels. 
  • You want to achieve brand consistency across all materials. 
  • You want to look professional.
  • You feel efficiency can be improved by streamlining your processes.

Here are some of the ways that bespoke marketing templates could increase efficiency for your business.

1. Time

Working with a template can help you save time and meet tight deadlines. Templates should include colours, fonts, logo designs, and anything that needs to be in place to stay within brand guidelines. When the template does most of the work for you, a lot of time is freed up for other brand efforts.

2. Consistency

All outgoing materials should be standardised to ensure your brand is consistent and reinforced across all materials and channels. Templates will help guide the process when multiple employees and contributors are involved in content creation, and ensure that all content produced follows your brand guidelines.

3. Space for strategic thinking

With the time you save, you get more room for strategic thinking. When you have more space to think, analyse data and get creative with ways to meet their needs, you help your employees unlock their potential to improve their return on investment.

What to look for in a template solution

Template technology is a solution that provides employees with flexibility. By having the solution available online and removing the need to involve designers and other resources in repetitive tasks, your employees get increased flexibility that makes it easier to work more efficiently.

However, in order to maximise your marketing team’s output, it’s important to look for a system that provides templates for a complete range of print and digital assets:

Ads

To gain optimal conversion frequency, ads must be recognisable to potential customers. This is best achieved by using a combination of pre-designed templates and automated working processes that guarantee consistency across all digital channels and platforms.

Social media

More than any other digital marketing channel, social media allows companies to target their market segments with tailored content, but these platforms also come with many challenges for brands, especially with tone of voice. 

Timing and consistency are everything, and it creates a major challenge for marketers when resources are stretched and there are deadlines to meet. With pre-defined templates designing assets is easy, regardless of who makes it, and your brand remains intact.

Printed materials

Most marketing efforts have moved to digital channels these days, but your company will still benefit from having templates for print as well. With self-serviced business cards, posters, roll-ups and more, your employees can easily create the assets they need on-demand without having to contact a design agency every time a new update is required.

Dynamic content

Standing out from your competitors demands even more creativity from marketing teams. Static content is nice, but sometimes you need to go further and this usually requires the skills and expertise from an external marketing agency.

But not anymore. With a modern automation system, templates for creating, adapting, changing, and publishing dynamic content to the channels of your preference is quick and easy.

Video templates

ideo creation used to be out of reach for most companies. It was perceived as expensive with professional production costs. Now it is unthinkable to exclude video marketing. In fact, 81% of businesses now use video as a marketing tool.

It is important to be able to create videos fast and on-brand in order to engage with your audience effectively. So, look for template technology that lets you create and adapt your videos with only a few keystrokes so you can share high-quality content with your customers and prospects on a frequent basis.

Automate and simplify your workday

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Look for a solution that is available and intuitive and which supports all activities associated with your brand. With the template studio available as part of BAM by Papirfly™, anyone can rapidly produce on-brand, quality collateral for a wide range of digital and print channels – no specialist design skills required:

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  2. Are custom templates right for you?
  3. What to look for in a template solution
  4. Automate and simplify your workday

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Corporate, Corporate communicationsLeave a Comment on Demystifying the corporate creative

Demystifying the corporate creative

Jessica Chambers
3 minutes read

There is a legend about a mystical creature. It cannot be tamed, no one really understands it. It can’t be touched and it strikes when you’re least expecting it – maybe during the night, or during your shower. 

That creature is creativity. And it’s one of humanity’s most desired skillsets.

But the myth remains that creativity can’t be understood, can’t be learned and that it is just something that’s born with its claws already in you.

It’s time to demystify this creature.

What does it mean to be a creative?

Being a creative is something not to be sniffed at. Inspired ideas. Insightful concepts. Masterful creations. Art, fashion, campaigns, food, performances and more. Each uniquely manifested from a thought sparked by any number of internal and external influences. Something so exceptional, they say you’ve either ‘got it’ or you haven’t. 

But what exactly is ‘it’? 

And is our perception of what ‘it’ is, the very thing that’s holding us back from achieving our full creative potential in the workplace?

While having the right talent in the right seat is incredibly important, perhaps even business-defining, has putting creative skillsets on a pedestal somewhat restricted the inner visionary in each of us?  

Often when people think of a creative they picture a designer or artist. It’s a visual thing.

But a piece of web code that creates a new function is creativity.

And the way that code is built into a website is all part of a creative process.

Even the colour coding on the spreadsheet that’s managing that website build is creative, granted on a smaller scale.

Creativity is there at all different levels in everyday life and in business. It’s about connecting things. Finding solutions. Looking at something in a new light. And often, it’s just a matter of unlocking it. Or recognising it. And then nurturing it.

One thing’s for sure – creativity is a product of imagination, so it’s free to anyone who has one. Which means everyone.

Are constraints holding back corporate creatives?

Constraints are actually a big part of creative thinking. Coming up against barriers forces you to draw from areas you wouldn’t normally go to – it’s called global processing. Many creative types cite constraints as a big influence on their final output.

That begs the question whether, if physical constraints were removed, could marketers deliver their campaigns more effectively and without specialist support?

Time. Budget. Resources. Ability.

These are the barriers that control creative output every day. Things are done a certain way to achieve a consistent result and reduce mistakes, which means opportunities for creativity are not always built into the process. How can we ever encourage creativity if we don’t provide the tools to support it?

Now consider these four areas, identified as key to the successful implementation of creativity in the workplace:

Motivation

What do employees really want to be doing in terms of creativity? How much freedom do they seek? What drives them? Putting tools in place to help with the creative process, giving employees autonomy and sharing the vision of the company are all ways to help motivate teams to approach their day-to-day with a different way of thinking.

Inclusiveness

When there’s a platform to openly share and discuss ideas, creativity thrives. Listening to problems, finding solutions and welcoming all ideas to the table – even if they’re not right, it could spark something.  

Creative thinking skills

When an employee has a problem, encourage them to think of solutions. Even if they’re not right or possible, it will encourage them to start seeing things differently, not just seeing barriers but the ways to overcome them.  

An environment that supports creativity

The tech revolution allows for more people to be involved in shaping a brand’s creative message. Digital platforms and software make it easier than ever for us to automate parts of the creative process. Empowering teams to deliver the marketing materials needed without having to engage a designer or writer sounds impossible, but with smart templates from Papirfly, creativity is encouraged while keeping output governed.

The creative renaissance: how do corporates embrace it?

Einstein said if you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. It’s likely he knew that everything starts with an idea, and the way to foster ideas is to feed them – read more, go to the theatre, take a walk, take a break, have a shower.

Creativity can stem from anywhere in life, but people often forget the role it plays in businesses. Retail marketers can be creative about the ways they utilise their window spaces. Corporate marketers can find new and engaging ways to make their internal comms as exciting as their external comms. Employer brand teams can make sure that every piece of marketing material embodies the values of a brand, and then some.

No two businesses’ needs or employees are the same, and in order to nurture the hidden talent which remains unrecognised, we need to shed our archaic perception of what being a ‘creative’ means and recognise that there’s one in all of us. And it’s time we embraced it. 

Table of contents:

  1. What does it mean to be a creative?
  2. Are constraints holding back corporate creatives?
  3. The creative renaissance: how do corporates embrace it?