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Brand Activation Management

Brand Activation Management and your business: how to take control of your brand

Papirfly
15 minutes read

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

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

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

What is Brand Activation Management?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What can BAM software actually do?

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

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

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

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

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

What is brand asset management?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brand Activation Management vs. Digital Asset Management

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

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

BAM vs DAM

Is a DAM more powerful with BAM?

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

Why is Brand Activation Management critical for businesses?

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

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

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

Brand consistency

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

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

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

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

Brand relevance

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

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

Brand efficiency

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

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

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

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

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

Brand automation

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

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

BAM and the importance of brand consistency

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

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

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

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

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

How does Brand Activation Management help you achieve brand consistency?

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

1. Set parameters for your employees

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

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

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

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

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

3. Embrace the power of repetition

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

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

What benefits does BAM software offer businesses?

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

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

Localising your content

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

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

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

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

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

Enhanced efficiency across the board

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

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

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

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

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

Reduce reliance on agencies

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

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

Supporting the 4-day working week

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

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

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

Empowering your employees

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

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

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

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

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

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

Optimising content creation

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

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

Is BAM software a better option than outsourcing?

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

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

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

Do you really need BAM in your budget?

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

BAM customer brand stories

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

> Watch Vodafone’s story

> Watch Thon Hotels’ story 

> Watch Unilever’s story

> Watch DSV’s story

Brand Activation Management is redefining the way brands approach marketing

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

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

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

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

Table of contents:

  1. What is Brand Activation Management?
  2. What can BAM software actually do?
  3. Brand Activation Management vs. Digital Asset Management
  4. Why is Brand Activation Management critical for businesses?
  5. BAM and the importance of brand consistency
  6. What benefits does BAM software offer businesses?
  7. Is BAM software a better option than outsourcing?
  8. Do you really need BAM in your budget?
  9. BAM brand stories
Employer brand

Back to basics: how to improve your talent retention

Papirfly
5 minutes read

It may sound obvious to say that it pays to hold on to your best talent, but you may be surprised at just how big of an impact it makes. A recent study of more than 600,000 researchers, entertainers, politicians, and athletes found that high performers are 400% more productive than ‘average’ ones.

Over the last decade, there has been a widening skills gap across all sectors and a growing trend in changing jobs much more frequently. According to research by McKinsey, nearly a third of senior leaders cite finding talent as their most significant managerial challenge. Be sure to read our previous article, ‘Employer branding – how important is your employer brand?’ to gain some expert tips on navigating today’s unique recruitment landscape.

The gap in skills is largely due to a gap in experience. We are at a time when many baby boomers who have developed their skills at a company over a long period of time are beginning to retire — taking decades of knowledge and experience with them. 

On top of this, millennials tend to be less loyal towards their workplace. In their report, ‘How Millennials Want to Work‘, Gallup found that one in five millennials have changed jobs in the last year and two in five are currently looking for a new job.

What does it take to attract and retain talent in 2022?

Remote-friendly interviews and onboarding

65% of candidates say that bad interview experiences will make them lose interest during an application process. Hindered by technical issues, a lack of face-to-face interaction and not being able to convey the atmosphere of the office can make it difficult for employers to make the best first impression.

“Trust has to exist from day one. When you’re remote you don’t have the opportunity to lean into someone’s cubicle to see how they’re doing. You have to get creative about ways to nurture that relationship.”
Chloe Oddliefson, Head of People Operations at Dribbble
(via Miro)

How a company supports employees working remotely will also have an effect on how long they decide to stay at a company. This all starts with a well-thought-out onboarding process that accounts for the challenges of not being in the office. If you want to retain great candidates from the get-go, using a digitised version of your onboarding document and omitting anything in-office related won’t cut it.

When new starters aren’t able to meet their team in person, onboarding is even more important for sharing elements that will help them learn all they need to know to become a successful addition to the company. Depending on the role, a comprehensive onboarding process may last around three months and cover these five areas:

  1. Pre-onbording by HR, line manager and recruitment team
  2. Onboarding by HR, line manager and payroll team
  3. Orientation by line manager, colleagues and senior management
  4. Feedback on first tasks and assignments by line manager
  5. Ongoing support into their new role by line manager and colleagues

Promoting health and wellbeing

For obvious reasons, health and wellbeing has taken the spotlight over the last year. After companies saw first-hand the effects of employees suffering from poor physical and mental wellbeing during the pandemic, this will be an important value in employer branding going forward.

Many companies already offer health and wellness benefits like gym memberships, cycle to work schemes and free healthy snacks. However, these make no difference when your employees are working unreasonable hours or are not getting the right kind of support.

More than creating a more enjoyable place to work, addressing employee wellbeing issues at their root cause will help reduce burnout, increase productivity and retain employees for longer. Consider initiatives like:

  • Allowing flexible hours
  • Organising social activities
  • Regular employee check-ins

Empowering employee growth

Companies that leave their employees’ career growth stagnating have always been more likely to lose their most enthusiastic people more quickly. 

In fact, 70% of high-retention-risk employees say they’ll be forced to leave their organisation to advance their careers.

A focus on offering opportunities for personal and professional development will be a key factor in facing the current global retention crisis. These are especially important for retaining new talent at the beginning of their careers who are looking to learn fast and constantly improve. Some of these opportunities could include:

  • Internal learning and development programmes
  • Access to online courses 
  • Room to grow within roles
  • Mentorship from senior employees
  • Opportunities and encouragement to put ideas forward

Internal comms is key

Internal communication is often one of the most overlooked areas of an employer brand proposition, yet it’s evident in the employee experience every single day. Part of making it a positive one is determined by building a connection and maintaining engagement. 

Too often, internal comms is kept to the bare minimum and lacks the personality and culture traits that a company’s employer value proposition is centred around. Focusing more attention on what’s relevant and interesting to employees helps make them feel more engaged with the goals of the business. This not only instils more purpose in their role, but builds more loyalty too.

If you are keen to tackle work-related challenges that might encourage team members to look beyond your company, download our handy checklist outlining what you can do to address these issues and make a positive difference to your employees’ experience.

While email, surveys and text messaging are an essential part of the day-to-day running of a business, there is nothing stopping you from exploring other channels for more engaging communications. Video, social media posts, podcasts and blogs are a great way to share information, invite discussion and garner enthusiasm about what’s going on in the office and the wider business.

With a brand management solution you can streamline your internal asset creation with easy-to-use templates that help teams produce studio-quality materials in minutes. It also gives you a bird’s eye view of your campaigns and makes it quick and easy to share relevant and on-brand assets within your organisation.

Here are some great examples of companies that got it right:

The NHS
To make sure that all their employees were getting their flu jab, the NHS used the power of video to create these engaging posts for their social media channels.

Waitrose
UK supermarket, Waitrose, created a digital suggestion box to help all employees make their voices heard.

Pizza Hut
At the beginning of the pandemic, Pizza Hut acted fast to create a two-way conversation between staff, franchises and restaurant managers. Using the simple medium of WhatsApp, they helped employees feel valued in their role in feeding Britain during a challenging time.

Back to contents

How to revitalise your talent retention methods

Improve personalisation

A more personalised approach shows a company’s ability to listen to the individual concerns of their employees. To retain the best talent, companies need to ditch the ‘one solution fits all employees’ approach.

Develop retention strategies that…

  • Understand the different visions and goals of their staff – both professional and personal
  • Allows employees to make their voices heard
  • Provides opportunities to take on new challenges and steer their own path

“Personalisation for millennials in the workplace is about them seeing their work and organisation as a projection of themselves, and that drives loyalty.”
Felicity Furey, Founder of the Professional Leaders Institute
(via The CEO Magazine)

Be more flexible

When workplaces were plunged into lockdown, some were more prepared than others to support their employees to do their jobs effectively from home.

The most successful strategies included…

  • Adopting the hybrid working model
  • Testing out the four-day week
  • Investing in technology that makes remote collaboration possible

Go further than raises and bonuses

Higher salaries and monetary rewards are one of the first considerations for an employee thinking of leaving an organisation. But they aren’t the only deciding factor. While having a competitive salary is undoubtedly a good thing, it does nothing to make a company stand out from the competition.

Establish a remote interview processes

Even if you have no immediate plans to bring in new talent, having a remote hiring strategy in place is vital for future-proofing your turnover, which is likely to increase going forward in 2021.

What should the remote interview process achieve?

  • Can assess a candidate’s ability to work independently
  • Reviews their proficiency communicating via digital channels
  • Highlights their ability to collaborate remotely

Discover more insights in our Ultimate Employer Brand Checklist — download for free here!

To learn more about how Papirfly’s all-in-one brand management platform can help you attract and retain the world’s best talent in 2021, and beyond, get in touch today.

Table of contents:

  1. What does it take to attract and retain talent in 2022?
  2. How to revitalise your talent retention methods
Retail Marketing

Tech that can help retailers keep prices low

Egzona Jaha
3 minutes read

Consumers have fallen upon hard times in recent months, with price rises across fuel, electricity, electronics, food and clothing making ordinary living more expensive than ever before.

As retailers, price rises are a necessity, as suppliers and manufacturers force you to pass on some of your additional costs to your customers. However, having to spend more to receive less is going to make purchasers much more selective about who they give their money to. That’s where your brand and marketing can help set you apart.

While marketing campaigns are an effective way of driving custom in difficult times, the reality is that retailers must explore other areas of the business to cut costs and ensure shoppers aren’t always the ones feeling the biggest squeeze during these financially uncertain times.

Retaining existing customers is going to be the greatest challenge and the biggest priority. There are only two sure-fire ways to do this: 

  • Keep costs low by increasing technology and automation

This article will help you discover different technologies that can be adopted across the business, help you optimise your operations and cut costs within your retail product space.

A powerful CRM: build relationships and maximise sales opportunities

A CRM or Customer Relationship Management system underpins almost every element of customer communication. There may be features you are paying for which are not needed, or there could be features that – if in place – could save you a lot of time and only cost a nominal amount to add on. 

A semi-regular review of your CRM system’s features, needs and processes is integral to keeping on top of costs and tasks. 

Additionally, providing better training on how to analyse consumer insights within the CRM could lead to better decision-making and higher average transaction values (ATVs). These insights could be taken from audiences you’ve accrued from different campaigns, loyalty programme data, customer service conversations or when measuring engagement from your omni-channel marketing.

Solid project management: Meet deadlines and go to market quickly 

This may sound like a no-brainer, but you would be surprised at how many large retailers are yet to make the switch to more modern methods of project management. Software such as Monday can help those in head office and area managers effectively push projects through at pace.

This can remove several layers of ambiguity and minimise the risk of miscommunication to ensure deadlines are met every time. 

Marketing automation, AI and analytics: Using insight and data to drive business decisions

Automating processes within consumer purchasing, returns, inventory management and more will help save valuable time and improve the accuracy of reporting within your retail brand’s environment. 

Likewise, triggering automated marketing communications for particular actions can help improve the customer experience and increase what they spend on your products. For example, if they have forgotten that their online shopping basket is full, a quick email can give them a nudge to complete the transaction. 

Some retailers even go as far as using AI technology to analyse their retail store spaces and interact with their built environment to provide optimal temperature, air quality and lighting for shopping, while also ensuring that technology is powered down during off-peak hours or when the shop is closed.

Brand Activation Management: Reduce agency costs and bring asset creation in-house

Agencies are a necessity for large-scale creative campaigns and strategic work. But sometimes you just need to get things out quickly. Brand Activation Management is an all-in-one creation, education, management and storage portal. 

It gives teams, regardless of skill level, the ability to create on-brand video, digital, social, print assets and more. The easy-to-use interface allows individuals to create what they need from intelligent templates and only edit within the parameters that have been pre-defined.

This means you can go to market quicker and use your agency budget more effectively for strategic and topline creative work. Everything off the back of the campaigns, such as resizes, localisations and other edits can be easily executed by your in-house team.

The creation tool is also integrated with your PIM and ERP system, so all data and imagery that’s pulled into collateral is up-to-date and 100% accurate. 

Ready to make Brand Activation a reality for your retail brand?

Technology is queen when it comes to cutting costs and optimising every hour you have in the working day. BAM by Papirfly™ provides a game-changing way of working for retailers and their marketing teams. A tool that can be used by everyone from head office through to store-level managers. 

Discover more about the power of BAM for retailers or book your demo today.  

Table of contents:

  1. CRM
  2. Project management
  3. Marketing automation, AI and analytics
  4. Brand Activation Management

Marketing

Tools to cope with a reduced workforce in peak vacation season

Papirfly
4 minutes read

Vacation time should be a period of relaxation and tranquillity. However, all too often annual leave scrambles timelines, causes unplanned delays and results in teams stressing to meet deadlines.

Although employees working abroad can pick up the slack when colleagues are away, global collaboration can also add to the problem. This is because certain countries have unique ‘vacation cultures’ that can make working across borders difficult.

While workers in the U.S. are often allocated 10 days of paid holiday annually, most employees in Norway take 2 to 3 weeks off in July for a communal summer break.

For fast-moving marketing teams facing down important deadlines, having periods throughout the year where large swathes of people are off can feel like an impossible hurdle to overcome.

Although restricting when employees can take time off or slashing annual leave allowance can seem like the only way to stay on track, doing so could lower worker morale, diminish productivity and scare off potential talent.

To stay afloat with a reduced workforce during peak vacation season, we’ve identified a handful of must-have tools for any marketing team.

Programmes that streamline marketing processes

Whether it’s in the office or between your global divisions, different peaks in holiday mean there may be times when your team is missing large swathes of people.

Not only does this reduce your department’s capabilities, but it could also mean key expertise are temporarily missing from the company. Gaps in the workforce can send productivity plummeting, and often require those still working to pitch in longer hours to meet deadlines.

Expedite content creation with BAM by Papirfly™

For fast-paced marketing teams already facing shrinking budgets, delivering the variety of content at the volume required is already a mammoth undertaking. With the added disruption that peak vacation periods can bring, this challenge only gets harder.

  • Create on-style assets at pace with zero design experience using BAM’s smart templates and introduce a new era of consistency to your employer brand.
  • Get crucial details correct every time with in-built PIM and ERP integration tools; perfect for retailers creating custom offers or their own catalogue
  • Localise collateral in just a few clicks to ensure your message resonates with stakeholders all over the world.

Simplify project management with monday.com

To meet quotas and deadlines, planning is crucial – without a clear roadmap, teams can get lost, jobs can get missed and valuable time is lost. However, project management can be a lengthy exercise in and of itself.

To prevent this crucial task from further disrupting operations when teams are light on the ground, monday.com is a comprehensive project management tool that can streamline this process from start to finish.

  • Easily plan, track and monitor the progress of projects in a single digital place.
  • Identify and tackle roadblocks in advance before they cause issues.
  • Oversee projects at a glance to make crucial decisions with confidence.

Maintain your employer brand with ease using Personio

When the clock is ticking, and your marketing team is understaffed, it can be tempting to let candidate tracking take a backseat. However, an employer brand seen to be inactive can have a huge negative impact on how it’s perceived.

To keep job seekers all over the world engaged throughout the peak vacation season, Personio is a digital applicant tracking platform that focuses on simplifying and accelerating the recruitment process.

  • Automatically collate applicant details into a single, digital profile and tag strengths and weaknesses to identify top talent with ease.
  • Save time by using templates for invitations and rejections, and keep job seekers up to date at every step.
  • Access a detailed analytics dashboard to monitor stats, such as time-to-hire and cost-per-hire.

Platforms to centralise files

As well as reducing the time it takes to carry out certain tasks, such as content creation and applicant tracking, another way to cope with a smaller workforce during peak vacation season is to centralise files.

The last thing you want is to rely solely upon a certain colleague or office for files. Not only does this take time out of the sender’s day, but you may also be unable to access what you need when they are away from their desk.

Store files in one place with BAM

By using a Digital Asset Management (DAM) system, and storing everything teams need in a central place, there’s never a scenario where work has to come to a halt because crucial files are inaccessible.

Alongside BAM’s powerful suite of content creation tools, the in-built DAM is packed full of handy time-saving features for any marketing team.

  • Easily find the content you’re looking for with advanced filters and assemble retail promotions with speed and confidence.
  • Assign permissions to individual users to give your fiercest advocates the content they need to evangelise your employer brand.
  • Send and save files easily to ensure your international offices have the content they need to present a unified image.

Don’t let the peak vacation period send deadlines spiralling

For marketing teams that may already be contending with tighter budgets, holiday time can seem like an insurmountable hurdle to overcome. 

However, with the right tools, you can take charge, regain control and deliver the output you need on time, in budget and without the need to work long hours or limit holiday allowances.

To learn more about BAM and how it can help streamline content creation, centralise assets and keep up during peak vacation season, learn more online or book a demo today.

Table of contents:

  1. Programmes that streamline marketing processes
  2. Platforms to centralise files
  3. Don’t let the peak vacation period send deadlines spiralling
Brand management, Template Technology

Digital design templates are the must-have tool for brand consistency

Papirfly
4 minutes read

We all trust clarity and consistency. When we understand what somebody’s values and beliefs are, and they are communicated in a clear way over time, we know where we stand. We feel more positive emotions in our interactions with them.

This sense of trust is exactly the same for how brands are experienced.

Successfully building a brand requires you to stand out from your rivals in an increasingly competitive market place. With digital templates, you have the tool to strengthen your brand identity and build that long-term sense of trust and loyalty.

Empower everyone to speak with your brand’s one true voice

Every team needs a quick way to access on-brand assets, especially when things need to be communicated quickly. However, during particularly busy times, the brand identity can be at risk of being compromised as marketers rush to get important messages out the door.


With a digital template solution, all employees are empowered to create their own brand assets without the risk of compromising brand assets. At the same time, workflows become smoother, as the need to acquire assets from other departments or from brand books created by external graphic designers is minimised.

Speed  and agility is essential for all brands

The average workday is increasingly impacted by new technology. Your company’s ability to be agile – the ability to adapt, change and communicate based on data, trends and insights – while remaining on-brand with consistent messages, captivating visual elements, and iconic campaigns, all contribute to your reputation as a responsive brand. 

Being the last brand to react to an important new social media trend, or rushing out a message that doesn’t fit the personality of your brand or target audience, can quickly make you stand out in the wrong way. It may lead to a loss in market share to competitors who are more clear and prepared in their messaging. 

With pre-designed templates, anyone in your company can create consistent and strong brand assets in moments – giving confidence to all creators and managers that you are on-message, every time.

Saving money whilst getting more value

There are plenty of moments in the workday that can steal valuable time and productivity from building your brand – reducing the cost efficiency of marketing efforts. With digital template technology, delays around the approval of assets are eliminated and fewer employees need to be involved in local branding efforts.

By investing in design templates and spending time up-front pre-defining and aligning them to your brand guidelines, you reap the rewards. Colour palettes, visual elements and brand styles are predefined, ensuring that energy, focus and resources can be directed toward essential strategic goals.

As well as significantly reducing agency costs, design templates make publishing and launching less time-consuming. It makes sense to prioritise investing in a platform that will make an immediate impact and a significant long-term return on your bottom line.

One platform to create every essential asset

Whatever industry your brand operates in, a one-stop-shop for asset creation is a necessary tool to enable successful branding. Design templates can help your people create material that jumps out as superior to your rivals in the following ways:

Ads

Ads must enable customers to recognise your brand. A blend of pre-designed templates and automated working processes – that ensure consistency across all platforms and digital channels – will support your ads to get the desired attention from your target audience.

Social media

An unquestionable requirement for all marketing teams, social media has changed the landscape of brand marketing. Even the smallest brands have become rivals, as everyone extends their marketing channels and influences the market in new ways.


Responding to industry or global events quickly and consistently is made easy with pre-defined templates to create all social media assets.

Print

As much as we are into the digital age, the need for many brands to have a physical presence in front of customers is still essential. From business cards to posters, product catalogues to roll-ups for events, design templates help the ‘real world’ brand identity complement its online presence. 

Dynamic content

Any template solution needs to consider the range of ways your customers search for and interact with your brand. Whilst fixed imagery and content work, a template tool that allows you to create, adapt, tweak and publish dynamic digital assets to your chosen marketing channels is crucial to consider as part of your tech stack.

Video templates

Not so long ago, video was considered an expensive luxury for marketing teams. Today, 81% of businesses use video as a marketing tool, and to exclude video from your branding strategies would leave you well behind the competition. 


Creating videos fast and on-brand demands a template technology that’s simple, user friendly and flexible. With strong brand templates, assets that can make a huge impact can be made quickly and with ease.

Crafting a strong brand using digital asset tools 

A digital solution, connected with adjustable templates, will have a positive impact on your company’s efficiency and the overall consistency and reception of your brand with your audiences. Stand above your competitors and look for an intuitive solution that supports all activities associated with building your brand in the best possible way.

Table of contents:

  1. Empower everyone to speak with a clear brand voice
  2. Speed  and agility is essential for all brands
  3. Saving money whilst getting more value
  4. One platform to create every essential asset
  5. Crafting a strong brand using digital asset tools
Marketing

What marketers can learn from TikTok’s formula for success

Papirfly
4 minutes read

TikTok has taken the social media scene by storm garnering 689 million users by 2021. Immediately after launching, it landed especially well with younger generations with quick-fire viral dance routines, lip-sync videos and challenges.

But if you think TikTok is just for teenagers, think again. Artists, celebrities, publishers, influencers and global brands are now capitalising on its potential.

The social platform might seem like it has a secret formula for creating overnight success, but in the words of TikTok themselves, the app is driven by a simple mantra to ‘Inspire Creativity and Bring Joy’. In this article, we unpack what that means and explain how it can be translated into five real-world marketing lessons.

#1 Content quality over production quality

The TikTok formula

TikTok creators embrace whatever filming conditions they are presented with on the day and generally don’t spend time and budget on professional sets and lighting. That’s because they know their audiences are more interested in seeing the content itself and are less concerned with its production value.

Actionable takeout for marketers

While a global brand might not want to put their name to anything that looks unprofessional, the lesson here is that it’s not the most important thing audiences care about. The kind of authenticity that comes with low budget production can even add a certain charm to your content.

Focus on the single idea that your brand needs to get across and bring it to life from there. Think of your idea as the foundation for your content, rather than prioritising what it looks like. This goes for videos with budgets big and small.

Back to contents

#2 Make every second count

The TikTok formula

The perfect platform for short attention spans, TikTok keeps viewers coming back for more with bite-sized chunks of highly engaging content. With videos between 15 seconds and a minute in length, creating successful content for TikTok is an exercise in keeping things concise and getting to the point. This leaves no room to deviate from a subject or go off on long rambling stories. Done well, it’s quick, punchy and much more powerful.

The average consumer attention span is approximately 8 seconds (Microsoft)

Actionable takeout for marketers

The trick is to keep it simple. By making sure that your content follows a single, clear narrative from start to finish, your audience is more likely to remember the message you are trying to get across. This is easier said than done when the content you are creating isn’t confined to the time limits of TikTok, but it applies to almost any kind of marketing material that you are producing.

Avoid the temptation to cram in extra messaging just because you can. Time-poor audiences expect short-form content, and you have a much better chance of getting through to them with one clear message in comparison to many different points. Think of the old analogy of catching tennis balls. One or two at a time is easy enough but when you get a barrage of them you’re likely to drop them all.

Back to contents

#3 Tell your audience something they don’t know

The TikTok formula

The most successful TikTok creators tend to stick to a specific niche and get creative within them. In fact, it’s arguably the most niche-driven content creation platform out there. When people tune into a particular creator, they are doing so to see content that’s focused on something very specific.

Actionable takeout for marketers

As you gain a following based on the type of content you’re creating, your audience will come to expect a certain amount of consistency. Being generic might seem like an effective way of reaching the most people but, in reality, it can make your content seem out of place or remove what initially attracted your hard-earned following.

Carving out a niche is a great way to ensure that your content is providing something useful. It should set the direction of everything you create and be driven by an in-depth understanding of the audiences you are trying to reach.

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#4 Be the first

The TikTok formula

TikTok’s ‘For You’ page is where many creators look to find ideas for their next post. However, the platform also lends itself well to trying out something different and has seen many irreverent, off-the-cuff videos become the next big trend.

Actionable takeout for marketers

Jumping on a trend can be hugely beneficial and has the potential to be the starting point of a string of successful content. However, your marketing strategy doesn’t have to become attached to what’s already been tried and tested.

Get inspired to create something original. Starting from scratch can sometimes be daunting, or just too time-consuming, so if you’re stuck for ideas, try looking at existing trends or content you’ve already created and adding to it in a new way.

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#5 Build a relationship with your audience

The TikTok formula

Part of the reason that TikTok has more than 2billiion total downloads is its capability to capture and show off the authenticity of users. No matter how many thousands of followers the platform’s top creators have earned, they still understand the value in throw-away content, often shot at home. In comparison to other social media platforms, there is a trend to focus on fun, relatable content in favour of showing off unattainable lifestyles at glamorous locations.

Actionable takeout for marketers

Your content may have the core purpose of driving sales, but that doesn’t mean there is no room to show your brand’s true personality in what you create. Authenticity drives credibility by instilling trust in audiences and resonating with them on a more personal level. 

To make a brand appear authentic, marketers need to create content that’s consistent with its identity and key values. Content that’s inconsistent can leave brand messaging open to different interpretations, lack clarity and lose the trust of its audience.

In summary

  • Focus on the quality of your ideas, not just production value
  • Know when to keep it snappy and get to the point 
  • Create content that serves a purpose for your audience
  • Don’t be afraid to try something different
  • Let your brand’s true personality shine

Back to contents

Find the formula for your next campaign

Of course, there is no definite formula for success. As TikTok proves in its billions of interactions, what’s in trend can change by the minute. So, if you’re going to have any chance of getting ahead, you need a marketing platform that allows you to create a steady stream of consistent content and react fast to changes in the market.

With a suite of asset creation features, BAM by Papirfly™ can help your teams do just that, and in a matter of minutes. Plus, you can ensure that everything they produce is on-brand by using bespoke templates.

Don’t miss another moment. Book your live demo today.

Table of contents:

  1. Content quality over production quality
  2. Make every second count
  3. Tell your audience something they don’t know
  4. Be the first
  5. Build a relationship with your audience
  6. Find the formula for your next campaign
Marketing

International MarTech Day: a celebration and a call to action

Karl-Fredrik Lund
6 minutes read

As key players in the thriving industry of marketing technology, we all have a great deal to celebrate in 2022. The first annual International MarTech Day marks how everyday marketing operations for global brands have been transformed by talented and innovative SaaS teams worldwide.

Worth 122 billion dollars, the MarTech landscape is growing at a rate of 22% each year. With 8,000 different solutions identified in the 2020 State of MarTech report by Scott Brinker – the ‘Godfather of MarTech’ and natural co-founder of this new annual celebration – companies find themselves spoiled for choice. 

Martech landscape

Brands have never had so many options to help create a satisfying stack of MarTech solutions. As product providers challenge one another to raise the bar in their offerings, a seemingly endless number of solutions can pose a problem. In the short-term, the people in charge of the marketing budget decisions must find the combo of the right solutions that bring true long-term value. 

Helping brands land immediate strategies is an essential role all MarTech should play. The next step is to provide solutions that empower brands to advance future ambitions. This next phase is a call to action for visionary leaders to emerge in the industry, creating a clearer picture of the must-have solutions to be included in any MarTech stack.

MarTech must offer a bird’s-eye view in 2022

Every brand is in an increasingly crowded marketplace. Solutions must serve brands in a way that supports activating brand identity and maintains a consistent, positive customer experience. Marketing teams must remove workflow barriers to attract new prospects, whilst nurturing the cycle of trust of existing loyal relationships.

As a brand gets bigger, the production bottlenecks, duplications of work and costly miscommunications can increase. This blocks a clear and unique brand encounter from being fully experienced with target audiences – customers, employees, stakeholders or the wider public. There is also a clear time, energy and cost drain here. The best people need to stay onboard to help a company stay on-brand. Giving individuals the right tools to thrive in their roles has never been more important.

Today provides an opportunity for all brand leaders and MarTech teams to ask if the technologies on the table truly support the longevity of a brand. So-called ‘solutions’ must genuinely contribute to: 

A positive ecosystem for talent

Every tool must positively support brand strategy and organisational goals. Less systems that do more could be the answer, as a brand’s MarTech should be working to serve its people – not the other way around.

Improving workflows to support better communication, data-gathering and targeted messaging creates more space for individuals to thrive in their roles. As a result, the employer brand is elevated when a company creates these conditions for its people. Teams are more likely to attract and retain employees devoted to such a brand.

Complete consistency and brand governance

Achieving a bird’s-eye view over the entire brand identity must be a constant goal for every brand. How teams are using implemented systems must be monitored to confirm the value they give. Uncomplicated approval processes across every location should always support strategy.

For example, consider a Brand Activation Management (BAM) plan of action – the cross-channel approach to create the awareness, engagement and overall experience for potential and existing customers. Access to clear brand guidelines is essential. Pre-defined material for on-brand asset creation with swift sign-off procedures helps deliver the brand experience fast and with flexibility and transparency. Every person must be empowered to champion the brand. Every piece of MarTech must support its people in doing so at every level, with no compromises. 

An investment in relationships that deliver ROI

Off-the-shelf solutions can make immediate impacts. Yet considering the ambitions of both brands – the customer and the MarTech solution – being a collaborative extension to each other’s team is better. The customers meet their goals by the solution provider taking action on identified needs. Something only a close relationship can provide for the best results.

Simply put, ‘shiny new object syndrome’ must be overcome to improve ROI. Prioritising positive relationships with expert collaborators creates a sense of longevity. After all, the success of both brands are interdependent – a mutual relationship where both teams win (or lose) together.

 As we think about these key points, it’s clear the ‘must-haves’ in future MarTech stacks will be those solutions that demonstrate such leadership. Supporting the creation of deep, long-term foundations. Confidently building brands’ ability to reach greater heights. 

Leading the way within MarTech

In order to stand out in MarTech, standing still is not an option. If you keep doing the same thing for too long – no matter how well you do it – someone will overtake you. Being inspired by competitors, not being afraid to make mistakes and constantly innovating products from lessons learned are essential survival skills. This likely means we will see more partnering of MarTech brands whose visions align. 

Papirfly Group has been empowering brands for over 20 years, preceding Scott Brinker’s first report by over a decade. Having recently brought the powerful MarTech brands of Papirfly and Brandmaster together – and other dynamic, aligned solutions – we also began this year with new growth-investment partners. Awarded the title of Best Growth Manager at the PE Wire European Awards 2022, Verdane brings expertise, support and a common belief in our potential.

This is excellent news for IBM, Unilever, Coca-Cola and the 200+ brands we are proud to serve. Our Product Marketing Manager, Frank Tommy Brotke, offers some insights which help outline why the one-stop-shop solution of BAM is becoming an essential inclusion within the MarTech stacks of forward-thinking brands:

BAM is a must-have solution for any brand’s MarTech stack

Tools that contribute to a positive ecosystem give everyday value and unleash team potential. The emergence of Brand Activation Management as a category has seen Papirfly Group’s own talent excel. Our product experts and customer success teams regularly innovate and evolve our service offerings – supporting customers to build their unique brands in a better way than ever before.

A brand portal as a hub for all identity guidelines. A platform for pre-approved templates for asset creation. A home for approval processes that contribute to a governing aerial perspective. As proud leaders in this category, our all-in-one BAM software leads the competition in providing these essential solutions.

A digital asset management system where locked-down brand media are stored and shared is taken one step further. Working closely with our customers we create predefined templates. Every employee can deliver the assets they need in a short space of time. Now, on-brand assets such as images, videos, emails, POS and print material can be created within minutes. All inside one cloud-based solution so reviews, revisions and sign-offs can be actioned swiftly.

Costs and time-drains of dealing with agencies are eliminated, as are bottlenecks. In fact, no specialist design experience is needed. No single-point asset creator is required. The fully internal approval process adds the flexibility to respond to events, whether within a brand’s industry or the wider world. 

Our global reach has taught us the demands of different regions. The intuitive interface of our templates sets us apart, as it gives flexibility to serve every location. Culturally relevant imagery and language translation is no longer a problem. Creating hyper-local messaging for retail, employer brand or corporate communication purposes is simple. Our BAM solution truly serves the long-term future of brands globally. And, like many MarTech brands, we have the innovation of the industry to thank for pushing us to reach our potential.

A year is a long time in MarTech…

It’s difficult to predict exactly what the landscape will look like on the next International MarTech Day. We fully intend to remain leaders in Brand Activation Management, whilst we’ll respectfully be looking over our shoulder at our competitors.

Like all MarTech businesses, we welcome the challenge to constantly raise the bar. We should all be a voice in a rallying call for MarTech companies to take the lead and unleash their creativity and potential. In doing so we can inspire one another to deliver the changes that will ensure all brands can create strong foundations for many years to come.

This attitude will mean that those of us that continue to thrive will deservedly keep raising a glass to one another at this time, every year. 

With a skål from our home in Scandinavia – Happy International MarTech Day everyone!

Retail Marketing

The price point peak: creating campaigns that land during soaring costs of living

Frode Nortvedt
3 minutes read

With the cost of living spiralling, consumers are feeling financial strain. Needs, wants and motivations are changing, and marketers must keep up to ensure that campaign efforts don’t come across as tone-deaf or damaging to their brands.

For retail marketers, it’s not as easy as just promoting price reductions because the rising costs mean that many products are actually going up. And the products where retailers are able to offer competitive prices will likely be across the board, meaning that campaigns and brand activations need to be disruptive.

So if promotional offers are few and far between, what can retailers do to ensure they can stay competitive?

The answer has been at the centre of many retail marketing strategies for decades. It lies in value. But the term ‘adding value’ means more now than ever, and retailers will have to leverage the power of their brand in order to stand out.

Make a connection in a new way

Tons of retailers are going to be competing for the limelight, and a price slash here or discount code there simply isn’t going to cut it in a sea of similar offers. Brands need to work hard now to create a value-led strategy to keep people coming back to them for a single reason or multiple offerings.

These added extras are tokens recognised by consumers, and the more appealing the token, the more likely they are to commit to repeat business.

This could be in the form of a supermarket offering unlimited deliveries and priority slots for a monthly fee, a clothing retailer offering discount codes for trading in your old garments, or entering someone into prize draws every time they make an online purchase.

Let your values shine through

If, outside of the existing cost increases, your brand is already known to be more on the expensive side, you need to shout about why it’s a premium product now more than ever. 

Whether it’s showing your meticulous manufacturing process, shining a light on your local suppliers and distributors or all ways your product is helping to support a more sustainable world – it’s a great way to humanise your brand and encourage customers to feel an affinity with it in a new way and set you apart from comparable products.

Be empathetic

There’s a big difference between trying to add value and implying the customer’s problems could be solved by half price carrots. Anything you claim to be able to do for them must be backed up by action. People will find themselves in many different financial situations, some of which will be dire. 

For this reason, it’s more beneficial to use touchpoints as a chance to connect and inform, rather than a hard-sell. Active customers will appreciate the human touch and those that aren’t able to shop with you right now will remember your efforts on the other side, or choose to shop with you when they can.

Explain yourself

Everyone is aware of the price hikes, but not everyone understands why their favourite retailers are passing on the costs to them. Particularly if profits are reported, it can be difficult to justify price rises. 

That’s why it’s important to be open and honest about what the company is facing and why costs to consumers need to go up as a result. There will always be people unhappy with this, but being honest about the cost of fuel, increased costs from suppliers etc. is more valuable to a bigger demographic.

Provide reassurance

Communicating that products are of a certain quality or come with a particular guarantee will go a long way in giving consumers peace of mind. This could be highlighting where a piece of fruit was sourced from, the material quality of a t-shirt or providing a lifetime guarantee on a more luxurious purchase. 

Despite the need for cost relief, the demand for quality products isn’t going to fizzle out. Brands need to work hard to justify the costs by highlighting the benefits and origins of products.

Now’s the time for creativity

Deciding whether to go down an emotional or rational campaign route will be a coin toss for some retailers and a lengthy discussion for others. On the one hand, people want to understand the value you are going to offer them quickly, clearly and concisely.

On the other hand, with all the events that have been taking place in the world, consumers could do with some respite in the form of empathy or humour.

There will be a fine balance to be struck, but the difficult reality is that you will need to achieve both if you want to power through this blip.

React and create quickly with BAM by Papirfly™

BAM puts the power to create in the hands of your marketing teams. Videos, print, digital, emails, social. Teams can create campaign materials from scratch, edit existing assets with ease and adapt them for countries across the globe. No design experience needed. 

Produce vast amounts of content at scale for a single SaaS licence fee and explore every marketing opportunity available. Join over 500,000 global users from brands such as Unilever, HSBC, Vodafone and more. 

Find out more about BAM for retails or book your demo. 

Table of contents:

  1. Connections
  2. Values
  3. Empathy
  4. Transparency
  5. Reassurance
  6. Creativity
Employer brand

EVP 2.0: Is it time to refresh your employer value proposition?

Papirfly
4 minutes read

The world of work has been turned on its head several times over in the last few years. The roles of HR, recruitment and talent acquisition teams have been especially challenging as they’ve worked to navigate the complex nature of the pandemic and other changes taking place across the globe.
While the basic principles of your EVP won’t have shifted miles from where it was, there will be new considerations and an element of realignment that needs to take place as part of your employer brand management.

Whether you are continuing in a similar vein to pre-pandemic strategies and trying to realign your team, or have completely transformed the way you work over the last couple of years, revisiting your EVP is an important step.

Why is an EVP 2.0 so integral?

The purpose of your employee value proposition is to align the company’s offering to your employees’ needs, wants and expectations. Employees and companies have seen some unprecedented events take place, but many have thankfully made it out of the other side. This leaves your recruitment colleagues and employer branding team with the following challenges:

  • Understanding the mindset and priorities of existing employees
  • Discovering what’s motivating top talent 
  • Differentiating your EVP from others in your industry

Your EVP 2.0 essentials

Take your purpose even further

It’s one thing joining a company because of its values, it’s another taking action to support those values. As people become more personally purpose-driven, it’s important that the brand they work for matches this.

For example, if your brand is known for its green credentials and helping the world become more sustainable, there should be an internal scheme that rewards ‘green’ behaviour – it’s all about building a great place to work. This could be vouchers towards owning a bike to encourage people not to drive to work, an internal recycling scheme, or special funding for sustainability projects (with additional holiday allowance to accommodate this).

Whatever your purpose, ensure you create a good workplace culture that is reflected in everyday working life as well as your initial promises – this includes ensuring that your internal communications are on-brand to show you’re committed to delivering them. 

Benefits that go beyond just the individual

Family and personal goals are a key career driver, but often employees spend so much time at work that these goals can be hard to fulfil. Explore benefits that will build a greater emotional bond with your employees to foster a positive and supportive  work environment.

This could be providing private health insurance for immediate family members or a training allowance to help the employee achieve new skills.

Get more flexible than ever before

If working from home mandates proved anything, it’s that employees can be trusted to work when and where they want or need to. Many companies are taking this one step further, and we’ve seen a range of working options and employee benefits including:

  • Working from home permanently
  • Hybrid working
  • Flexible start and finish times
  • Early closures in the summertime 
  • Unlimited holidays (providing that work is completed)
  • Extended maternity/paternity leave
  • Paid sabbaticals after a specified amount of years

Prioritise mental health support

A supportive company culture will help instil positive mental attitudes, but that alone isn’t enough to ensure your employees remain happy.

Create a forum that encourages open conversations – this could be through the acquisition of a digital mental health platform that employees can engage with as and when needed, regular mental health workshops, the introduction of wellbeing champions, and training for existing managers to effectively support someone who is struggling. There are lots of mental health awareness courses that can be taken, including mental health first-aid.

EVP 2.0: Company culture checklist

Ensuring all bases are covered

Our hierarchy of needs as humans is different in employment than it is in everyday life. Your EVP will be unique to your brand – hopefully including many of the initiatives mentioned already – but there are four basic boxes that your EVP 2.0 needs to tick. If lacking in one of any four areas, you could see your brand lose good talent to competitors and increase your employee turnover. To become an employer of choice, consider the following:

Physical needs

  • Health incentives such as gym memberships or on-site classes 
  • Partner with apps that can support sleep and wellbeing, such as Calm or Headspace
  • Provide access to private healthcare or nutrition services

Emotional needs

  • A supportive and open work environment
  • Access to therapy tools if needed
  • Offer coaching for high-stress positions
  • Conduct employee surveys to understand how people are feeling and what improvements could be made

Social needs

  • Regular meet-ups virtually or in-person to ensure teams feel connected
  • Embrace diversity
  • Encourage cross-department collaboration
  • Encourage giving back and volunteering days in line with your brand purpose

Financial needs

  • Offer employees access to financial advisors where possible
  • Provide interest-free loans for medium-sized purchases such as annual travel tickets, holidays or cars
  • Ensure peace of mind for employees’ families with life assurance
  • Conduct regular pay reviews

Communicating your EVP with Papirfly

A creative brand management solution can help to support the good workplace culture you are aiming to build. The platform we offer at Papirfly is used by some of the world’s most notable employer brand teams including Unilever, Vodafone and more. Teams are able to own and control their EVP in every aspect of marketing.

This gives your employer brand team the freedom to:

  • Create an infinite amount of on-brand digital, print, social, video and email assets in a matter of minutes – no design skills are needed. These documents are stored in a centralised system and you can manage all campaign
  • Store, edit, find and share every asset created in a centralised DAM system
  • Access all educational brand and employer brand documents 
  • Manage all campaign timelines, briefs and assets from a single portal. On the go. Anywhere in the world. 

So if you need agile talent acquisition, a brand management platform can help you keep consistency throughout your campaigns.

Discover our brand management platform for employer brand teams, check out our customer brand stories or book your demo today.

Table of contents:

  1. Why is an EVP 2.0 so integral?
  2. Your EVP 2.0 essentials
  3. Company culture checklist
  4. Communicating your EVP with Papirfly
Corporate, Corporate communications and marketing, 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