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Marketing

How to build brand awareness through powerful marketing

Papirfly
5 minutes read

Building brand awareness is about having people recognise, know and understand your brand in their everyday lives. There are very few of us who don’t know the golden arches means we are near a McDonald’s – that’s because they have spent a countless amount of years and money investing in brand awareness campaigns. 

Even today McDonald’s is one of the most prominently known companies in the world, yet they continue to create campaigns that keep the recognition high with both existing customers and help to nurture younger generations. 

Why is brand awareness so important? 

Without brand exposure, there’s no familiarity between a consumer and a brand. If you don’t tell your brand story, get your message out there and share your painstakingly crafted branding, there won’t be any trust or connection with the company. 

If we imagine a scenario where someone is buying a new car, and they are shown two in a showroom that are within their price range. One is slightly cheaper, but the consumer hasn’t been exposed to any marketing or the brand itself, so is reluctant to invest in a brand they don’t trust – regardless of how good the salesperson says it is. 

The other has been promoted on TV ads, featured on TopGear and has had lots of PR over its low emissions. The consumer has been served this media over a period of time which has built brand awareness and unknowingly helped shape their purchasing decision. Without familiarity, there’s no trust – and without trust you can kiss your sales goodbye. 

How can brand marketing aid awareness?

Unless you happen upon a lucky viral campaign or bring in an A-list celebrity, your brand exposure isn’t going to catapult overnight. You will need to nurture consumers with high-level awareness campaigns, educate them on problems you can solve, provide points of differentiation and establish yourself firmly as a contender within your market. 

Many brands struggle to justify their awareness campaign budgets, because they can be incredibly difficult to measure. But in order to increase brand awareness, get sales and build loyalty, these campaigns are integral for moving forward. Before you find yourself overwhelmed with marketing activity, make sure you take a moment to get your head above water and harness some brand awareness basics.

Take a look at these marketing priorities from Salesforce for some inspiration…

Establish a tangible goal

Aside from your detailed marketing strategies and objectives, think about how you would like to shape your brand perception from the point of view of a consumer. When your audience engages with your brand, what do you want them to think? As a bare minimum, you will want them to understand what you offer. What values do you want them to associate you with? Are you affordable or aspirational? A corporate giant or a global company trying hard to connect with consumers on a local level? 

There’s a lot to think about, but writing a simplistic statement that outlines what you want people to think can act as a great tool to ensure your marketing efforts are aligned. A quick reference back to this will help you confirm whether you’re on track. And you may have statements that vary for each of your audiences – these will once again help keep your marketing strands focused and targeted.

Start with a plan

Perhaps this is an obvious one. But you’d be surprised at how many people think they’re aligned with a marketing strategy without actually having the full picture. 

If you started the process with a brand workshop, be that internally or with your client, ensure there is a digestible document that accompanies the strategy plan for anyone that’s taking campaigns to market. A plan without context or that fails to understand the brand’s very essence will fall flat when it reaches those executing each part. 

Know your market

It’s not always possible to conduct huge market research reports prior to an awareness campaign. But before committing big budgets to media spend, you can invite a small portion of your demographic to feedback on your campaign creatives to ensure your team hasn’t been subjective or missed the mark. 

While this won’t be necessary with every brand awareness campaign launch, the initial launch should be guided, not shaped by real-world responses. 

Create a strong brand

A striking logo is only the beginning. Ensuring you have a full suite of branded assets that reach far further than your high-level campaigns is a must. Everything from letterheads used internally to the way your office space is branded. In order for consumers to buy into your brand, so must your team. 

Once you’re confident your asset library is built, and this will of course grow over time, make sure your teams across the world know their intended use. Producing a watertight set of brand guidelines will further instil consistency and brand value internally. 

Determine your purpose

Your brand doesn’t have to try and change the whole world, but it certainly should be changing a small part of it. Think about what it is you stand for, and how your products or services help those who purchase them. 

Let’s use Papirfly’s purpose as an example. Very simply, we aim to give people ‘Freedom to Fly’. On the face of it, we are brand activation management software, but our wider purpose is to make lives easier; to help those burdened with little resources and budget get home on time to read their kids a bedtime story, go to the gym or whatever it is that makes them happy. 

You may be bringing a sustainable product to the world that was previously harming the environment, or creating something high-end for a much lower price. Your purpose should be fairly clear, as it’s often the foundation your business and marketing is built on. But if you are struggling to find the words, use these handy prompts…

Our product/service helps our customers by…

We make the world a better place by…

Without us, consumers wouldn’t be…

In 5 years’ time we hope we will have helped to…

Perfecting your tone of voice 

How your brand conveys everything from key campaign messages right through to how it responds to criticism on social media will be key in keeping brand awareness consistent. Remember that your customers are humans, just like the people running your brand, so don’t be afraid to talk to them in a way that reflects this. 

If your brand is irreverent or controversial, you may stir up conversations and engage in witty banter online. If you are a luxury brand, you will likely keep things friendly and professional, and have a structured response plan for customer engagement.

Keep producing content 

A big part of brand marketing is producing great content. Put yourselves in the shoes of the consumer – what possible questions could they have, what problems are they trying to solve, and how can you serve them something that catches their attention? 

Whether you are creating a heavy SEO strategy or using paid promotion, keep on showing up. Producing content may feel like a time-consuming investment, but it will pay off. You may not capture those looking to buy right now, but in time they could be the person in the showroom faced with a purchasing decision. Be the brand they are familiar with. 

Don’t forget loyalty

When your brand awareness campaigns are up and running, the job is still far from over. Remember that those that have already converted will need further nurturing, to both keep them engaged with your brand but to also encourage them to recommend your brand to others if the opportunity presents itself. 

How BAM can help you quickly build brand awareness campaigns

BAM by Papirfly™ gives global brands the power to take marketing production into their own hands. Establish your brand guidelines, share them with your teams and allow them to create beautiful, on-brand assets without needing any design experience. Using pre-defined, smart templates, users have the freedom to create in a specified framework and get their creations ready for any digital or print application.

Find out more about how BAM has helped the likes of Coca Cola, IBM and more continue to build brand awareness across the globe. Or book a demo today.

Employer brand

Talent acquisition trends from across the globe

Papirfly
9 minutes read

When you’re scouring the globe for the world’s best talent, you may be looking for similar combinations of skill sets and attributes that make up the perfect candidates for your company. However, it’s important to remember that every one of them is an individual and will very likely respond differently to your employer branding depending on where they are in the world.

In this article, we’ll be exploring the trends, challenges and opportunities for employer branding in six of the most prominent talent hotspots across the globe:

  • The U.S.
  • Australia
  • Europe
  • Canada
  • UAE
  • Hong Kong/Singapore

Why global brands need to be local

To reach the best candidates in your chosen pocket of the world, your employer brand marketing needs to adapt and change in accordance with the recruitment processes, cultures and priorities that are unique to specific locations. 

At the same time, your employer brand value proposition must shine through consistently. No matter where your employees are based, it’s crucial that they feel aligned with the core values and goals of your business as a whole.

An increasing number of companies are seeing the benefits of looking for the skills their businesses need in different countries. With the recent and widespread uptake in remote or hybrid working, candidates are able to expand their search for opportunities, with location less of a constraint.

Every culture has its own way of doing things and that extends into their recruitment and hiring practices. Without being tactful in your hiring approach, you run the risk of missing out on so much of the amazing talent the world has to offer. This may mean a complete change in approach, or simply dialing certain aspects of your company culture up or down to suit expectations in different countries. In all cases, thorough research into the local employer brand landscape is key.

Local employer brand insights

Below, we’ve compiled some of the location-specific trends, insights, cultural nuances and potential challenges that will come into play when localising your employer brand in six standout markets:

The U.S.

Top insights and trends

A millennial workforce
Across America, millennials make up 35% of the workforce at 56 million, with that number projected to grow rapidly over the next few years.

Candidates live online
Hiring is more online-dependent in The U.S. than in Europe. Candidates are social media savvy and are used to communicating with potential employers via LinkedIn which now has 194 million users in the country.

Potential challenges

Companies in the U.S. are under less pressure from governing bodies to provide benefits like fully paid parental leave (something that many employees in Europe have long been used to). In fact, The U.S. is the only advanced economy that does not have mandated paid leave for employees. This makes perks and benefits of greater value to potential candidates who will be looking more closely at what your company can offer aside from a salary.

Australia

Top insights and trends

A shortage of recruitment consultants
According to the Recruitment and Consulting Services Association of Australia and New Zealand (RCSA), recruitment consultants have become one of the country’s most difficult positions to fill.

Remote staffing was already well underway pre-pandemic
The recruitment industry has become used to using remote consultants from abroad to fill Australian positions and train Australian consultants.

Potential challenges

Work-life balance has long been one of the top priorities for employees across Australia. According to research by Randstad, the COVID-19 pandemic has reinforced this position with more focus on working for an employer that makes them feel valued. In their survey of more than 10,000 Australians, 76% said they want an employer who puts their health and safety first.

Making employees feel valued should be one of the key elements of any employer brand proposition, but in a post-pandemic world, candidates will expect to see tangible evidence of this from potential employers.

Europe

Top insights and trends

LinkedIn
LinkedIn usage is widespread across The U.S. and Australia. While it continues to pick up momentum in Europe, many countries still favour platforms such as Xing (in Germany and Austria) and Viadeo (in France).

CV or résumé?
Made a little confusing by its French pronunciation, a ‘résumé‘ is something that candidates and recruiters will be more familiar with in America or Australia. The CV, meaning ‘curriculum vitae’, is the European equivalent. The documents are both very similar in style and purpose, with the key difference being that many countries in Europe expect an accompanying photo.

Perks and benefits
In most of Europe, candidates have come to expect a longer list of benefits such as; better-paid maternity/paternity leave, more paid time off, and better unemployment perks compared to the average American job seeker.

Cultural nuances 
Europe has a plethora of different cultures, languages and dialects to be found — especially when compared to Australia and the U.S. The starkest differences tend to be in the attitudes to work between North, South, East and West.

For example, almost 50% of people in southern European countries, such as Italy and Portugal, consider the loyalty of their colleagues more important than their personal goals. Whereas in Northern Europe, only 22% of people in Norway and just 16% in Lithuania feel this to be the case, stating personal goals to be of greater importance.

Attitudes to work differ between Western European countries including Austria and Germany where work-life balance is far more important compared to employees in eastern European countries such as Greece, Romania and Croatia.

Even so, European countries tend to work less hours than the U.S. on average. Although French employees generally end up going over their traditional 35 hour week, they are still well under the American average where, in many industries and regions, a 60 hour week has become the norm.

Further evidence of this can be found in the length of lunch breaks, the number of national holidays and working overtime. European countries including parts of Spain, France and Greece have become famous for their traditional extended lunches, which can be between 2 – 3 hours long. In comparison, the average worker in the U.S. takes just 36 minutes. 

Similarly, workers celebrate 13 public holidays in Austria, whereas Australians have only 7. As well as affecting the expectations of employers and employees, this makes keeping track of contactable times a challenge, even without the timezone.

Potential challenges

While states in the U.S. and Australia have their differences, potential candidates in these locations tend to be more closely linked. Covering more than 40 countries with different cultures, customs, laws and working practices, Europe is an incredibly diverse place to look for talent. This is undoubtedly a good thing for business, but it means that your employer brand needs to have the flexibility to change as it crosses from country to country.

Top insights and trends

They want to know why they were chosen
When you reach out to a potential recruit, a core priority for 75% of these is to find out why you believe they are a good fit for the role.
Cultural nuances 
Similarly to the U.S., there is a firm focus on healthcare and similar insurance policies among employees and candidates. As a result, making sure that these are positioned prominently as part of your EVP and any recruitment campaigns you produce is key to capturing their attention.

Furthermore, Canada both English-speaking and French-speaking inhabitants – around 23% of the population have French as their first language. Therefore, to best engage candidates from across the country, it is beneficial for your employer brand content to be presented in both languages, to ensure you don’t alienate a percentage of your potential workforce.

Potential challenges

Hybrid working has become an increasingly important priority for Canadian workers in recent years. According to Robert Half, 51% of employees prefer a hybrid style of working, splitting their time between home and the office. In fact, only 19% of those surveyed advocated for a full in-office approach.

Consequently, when attracting employees, it is crucial to showcase the flexibility and adaptability of your organisation to suit their needs. Highlighting features such as remote working opportunities, flexible hours, relaxed dress codes and more can help endear you to this evolving talent base. Emphasising this by extending the possibility of remote interviews and onboarding can demonstrate that you practice what you preach.

Another potential challenge for employer brand specialists is the shifting attitudes of younger recruits and where their motivations lie. While mature professionals value salary and benefits above everything, 18-to-24-year-olds are more interested in work-life balance.

So, it is therefore imperative that your employer brand, while consistent at its core, is malleable in what benefits it immediately presents to recruits depending on their age profile.

UAE

Top insights and trends

Diversity is a growing priority
57% of employees in the UAE say that diversity is a major initiative in their workplace, with 74% of women aspiring for senior leadership roles.

Companies are switching to flatter structures
There is a growing preference among the UAE workforce for closer collaboration and interaction across the various layers of companies, rather than a rigid, traditional hierarchy.

Cultural nuances
It is hard to nail down any standout cultural trends in the UAE as the population is so incredibly diverse. Close to 90% of the population are non-nationals, with up to 200 different nationalities represented, with different cultures and backgrounds. Recruits from Asia and MENA are primarily employed in low-skilled and semi-skilled jobs, while an increasing number of people from Europe and North America are sought out for high-skilled roles.

This makes it difficult to nail down a consistent cultural message for candidates, so it is important your branding can be quickly adapted to meet the unique needs, motivations and nuances of those living in the country. At a bare minimum, materials should be translated into both English and Arabic.

Additionally, this focus on international recruitment means that there is a big window of opportunity to prioritise Emirati talent. It is estimated that only 28% of UAE companies actively work to attract Emirati recruits – creating campaigns strictly built around their values and ambitions could help you stand out to these home-grown nationals.

Potential challenges

Alongside the cultural variation across the UAE, the biggest challenge facing employers in relation to talent acquisition is actually staff retention. Around 57% of working professionals in the region intend to switch employers at some point during a year, making it challenging for companies to maintain a steady, consistent workforce, and to present that image to candidates who are seeking a stable environment.

Consequently, to both encourage employees to stick around and to attract recruits with true staying power, it is beneficial for your EVP to contain initiatives such as:

  • Training and development opportunities
  • Employee mentorship programmes
  • Potential for employment progression
  • Performance and time-based incentives

Furthermore, showcasing signs of strong company culture on social media platforms – a channel that is widely underutilised in the region despite an increasingly tech-savvy population – can also help you stand out to candidates seeking long-term opportunities.

Top insights and trends


Flexible working is becoming the norm
While many organisations in the region have resumed office-based working, 20% have adopted hybrid models, while 50% have adapted to flexible hours so employees can avoid peak traffic and take care of their families.

Cultural nuances

Working hours in Hong Kong and Singapore are notoriously long and demanding. In the UBS 2016 survey, Hong Kong employees averaged 50.1 hours a week – the longest in the world and 38% more than the worldwide average.

However, this has helped contribute to Hong Kong being the fifth-most stressed population on the planet. As Western influence has helped encourage a greater appreciation of work-life balance in the region, companies that are able to offer a better balance will gain a stronger foothold with younger candidates.

The region is also fiercely family-orientated. As a result, presenting financial incentives and benefits in your EVP that relate not only to the candidate themselves but their wider family, such as healthcare or life insurance, will also give you considerable drawing power.

Potential challenges

There is a growing demand for flexibility in how people work across Hong Kong and Singapore – employees want to have a greater say in their workplace experience and more freedom of choice than in decades past.

Companies based in the area can support this trend in several ways, including:

  • Placing a firmer priority on good culture and associated perks, such as paying for taxis after overtime or providing meals
  • Presenting flexible hours and hybrid working opportunities, which are more sought-after than ever before
  • Being flexible over how candidates are paid (base salary, stock options, commissions), as this can especially appeal to older, more experienced candidates
  • Offering chances to work in other global locations or instituting international rotations, with more professionals in the region looking further afield for opportunities

Furthermore, as mentioned earlier, finding ways to streamline and accelerate the recruitment and hiring process will help you stay in employees’ good graces. This could involve offering a mix of in-person and Zoom interviews to make these more available, or making onboarding material digital so potential recruits can be sent this immediately after your reach out.

Adapt your employer brand to local trends

With the subtle, and not so subtle, differences listed above, how do you keep your employer brand marketing in line with your value proposition, while making sure that it ticks all the right boxes to roll out in a particular country?

Know your candidates 
Before you expand your recruitment efforts into a new location, it’s vital that you find out what potential candidates value most and refresh your employer brand accordingly. Use your knowledge of the local market to tailor your strategy, approach and messaging.

Localise your marketing materials
Even the smallest things, like switching UK spellings for American, can make a big difference in showing candidates that your brand understands the needs and requirements of their local market. The key to getting this right is to create country or region-specific marketing materials that feel like they have come from a local team.

Use BAM by Papirfly™ to take your global brand local

With its seamless language and localisation features, BAM by Papirfly™ can make global employer brand governance a reality for your company. Your teams will have everything they need to create on-brand, market-ready assets with no outside help needed.

You predefine the templates to ensure consistency with your brand guidelines, and our software instantly tailors your campaigns to countries across the world.

Capture local nuance
Ensure that your assets only contain culturally relevant imagery, colours and logos.

Speak any language
Translate your marketing materials into multiple languages and dialects.

React to recruitment demands
Bring fast asset creation in-house and be ready to snap up top talent before the competition.

Learn more about these localisation features and the benefits of BAM for employer branding by booking your live demo today. 

Table of contents:

  1. Local employer brand insights
  2. U.S. trends
  3. Australia trends
  4. Europe trends
  5. Canada trends
  6. UAE trends
  7. Hong Kong/Singapore Trends
  8. Adapt your employer brand to local trends
  9. Use BAM by Papirfly™ to take your global brand local
Brand Activation Management

Humanising your brand: How to get it right

Papirfly
8 minutes read

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

What does humanising your brand mean?

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

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

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

Why do brands need to be human?

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

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

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

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

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

How to make your brand more human

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

#1 Tell your brand’s story

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

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

A brand that got it right:

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

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

#2 Celebrate your staff

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

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

A brand that got it right: 

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

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

#3 Empathise with your audience

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

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

A brand that got it right: 

tesla-logo-1

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

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

#4 Educate, don’t sell 

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

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

A brand that got it right: 

article-four-5

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

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

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

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

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

A brand that got it right: 

article-four-3

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

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

#6 Practice what you preach

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

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

A brand that got it right:

article-four-7

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

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

#7 Challenging perceptions

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

A brand that got it right:

article-four-4

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

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

Back to contents

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

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

Make your brand guidelines impossible to ignore

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

Create consistent on-brand assets

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

Empower your staff

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

Stay on top of your marketing output

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

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

Table of contents:

  1. What does humanising your brand mean?
  2. Why do brands need to be human?
  3. How to make your brand more human
  4. Bring out your brand’s human side with BAM by Papirfly™
Retail Marketing

A retail marketer’s guide to in-store signage and experiences 

Papirfly
5 minutes read

It’s one thing getting customers into your store with your marketing – it’s an entirely different ball game to create a unique in-store experience that keeps them coming back for more.

The debate on physical stores vs online retailing is one that has been discussed for many years, long before the pandemic took hold. And even though online sales have trumped in-store, we’ve learnt that consumers still very much crave the haptic shopping experience, but their expectations are much higher than before.

Let’s explore the different experiences that can be created in a retail store, their purpose and how in-store signage can help support its effectiveness.

Advice for creating an experience, not a store

Many brands have confused creating an in-store experience with simply remodelling their interiors. While modernising spaces can be beneficial for the customer, any drastic change should be backed by strategy and the data that informed that strategy. Here’s how to make sure your spaces hit the mark every time:

  • When updating an existing space, gain shopper input and suggestions – their insight could help you shape new stores. You could gain this from incentivised surveys, digital experience buttons, or by having real conversations on the shop floor
  • When planning every aspect of your store, think of it from a consumer-focused perspective. This means everything from ensuring your pricing is transparent, through to choosing the right curtains for your changing rooms
  • Try to offer something unique. Whether that’s style matching, product demonstrations or areas dedicated to your brand’s purpose – bring something memorable to the table
  • Ensure signage formats and selection allows for easy updating, window displays, in-store printed signs and digital screens need to remain current and interesting. A solution like BAM by Papirfly™ can be a valuable support here, enabling anyone to create and amend assets in a matter of minutes, so stores can immediately inform customers of new products and the latest offers
  • Every square foot is an opportunity to sell, but that doesn’t mean every inch needs to be product space. Creating areas where customers can relax and socialise can be just as powerful for sales, and creates a pleasant brand experience they won’t forget. From in-store phone charging stations, through to sofas in the changing room, you want customers to feel right at home
  • Even once a customer has made their selection and is ready to make a purchase, that doesn’t mean the deal is sealed. The checkout experience needs to be exceptional in order for your customer experience strategy to work. If a customer is greeted by a large queue or less-than-friendly associates, they may abandon their purchase and refrain from returning in the future

Help customers get the product they want, how they want it

In the age of Amazon Prime mentality, consumers often choose the delivery option that’s the quickest when ordering online. By bringing your physical stores into the online ordering process, you help to reinforce your brand’s physical presence while retaining convenience for your customers. Here are just some of the ways you can do this:

  • Offer faster home delivery when the product is available in a local store
  • Allow them to pick up orders from in-store, with the incentive of it arriving quicker
  • If your store has substantial outside space, offer curbside pickup
  • Give them the option to bring their online returns into the store – this allows them to choose a replacement product in-store, or spend their refund on an alternative purchase
  • If a customer makes a large purchase in-store, give them the option of reserving their selection, paying in-store and getting it delivered to their home address

Understanding the in-store customer

Even once stores are being enjoyed by customers, that doesn’t mean the hard work stops there. It’s important to have methods of gathering fresh insight and making sure your spaces are landing well with your audience.

  • Hold regular meetings with your sales team – they speak to customers every day and will understand their suggestions and gripes more than anyone
  • Get corporate staff on the shop floor once in a while. It can act as a great training exercise for them and helps keep them grounded when making decisions and interpreting insight from the sales team – in-person observation can provide invaluable information
  • Ensure everyone understands the ‘personality’ your brand is trying to portray – you want the customer to feel as though they’re with people that understand their needs and shopping for a brand that understands what they’re all about. BAM’s intelligent templates can help make it impossible for brand inconsistencies to creep in. Plus, it provides organisations with a single, central location to house all guidelines, so everyone working on your content knows exactly how to depict your brand’s identity
  • You can’t target everyone, or you’ll spend a fortune trying to make people happy. Focus on your core demographic, think about what makes them smile, what they care about – use this as a foundation for your decisions and try not to lose sight of them as your core customer base when receiving feedback

Signage to support the customer experience

We’re inundated with signage and promotional materials in everyday life. So much so that we wouldn’t understand how much we need it until it’s gone. Signage needs to span multiple stages of the buyer journey, including:

Invitation
  • What makes them want to enter the store
Direction
  • How they navigate around your store and find the products they need
Discovery
  • How they are led to new areas of the store to discover other product ranges
Engagement
  • What keeps them in the store
Decision
  • The information available to them to help them make a purchase
Confirmation
  • How their purchase is reinforced post-checkout

Here are our key categories of signage focus for every retail store:

Wayfinding

The most important signage of all. Help customers easily find checkouts, changing rooms, exits, products and more through simple and clear signage. Signage that isn’t properly considered or placed throughout the store will leave consumers frustrated and encourage them to leave the store without making a purchase. 

Promotional

Finding the right balance of product promotion and your brand identity is a delicate art. Ensure these promotional spaces can be easily updated, and that there’s a process in-store for keeping on top of sales collateral. Leaving outdated campaigns up could leave consumers annoyed when products are no longer in stock. 

Experience-led and interactivity

Where possible, use signage to make connections with customers. You might promote the store’s Spotify playlist, use QR codes to give customers access to exclusive content, provide free digital magazines while they’re chilling out, or games to keep children entertained while their parents shop. The possibilities are endless, but very much depend on your brand’s vision and messaging. 

Making in-store experiences a reality

A retail store needs to run like clockwork in order to be successful, so tools for automation can help make the day-to-day more seamless. BAM by Papirfly™ gives you the tools to easily update digital and physical signage in-store, keep on top of campaigns and react quickly to customer demands.

Find out more about our retail solution here or book your demo today.

Table of contents:

  1. Advice for creating an experience, not a store
  2. Help customers get the product they want, how they want it
  3. Understanding the in-store customer
  4. Signage to support the customer experience
Employer brand

Recruitment then and now: What’s changing and are you ready for it?

Papirfly
4 minutes read

The pandemic has been a bumpy ride for employer brand teams. Long-standing employer value propositions suddenly needed a rethink. Candidates turned their priorities upside down. In some countries, remote working became mandatory overnight. 

Alongside the personal worries of COVID-19, there were unexpected challenges for employer brand teams. Making it through unscathed meant devising new strategies to take on a different and highly unstable recruitment landscape.

Such a monumental cultural shift has changed employer branding and our attitudes towards work in general. The first responses from industries, sectors and individual companies have already become permanent fixtures.

Recruitment then and now

There have been countless world-changing events and employment crises that came before COVID-19. Lockdown was not the first time that employment took a sudden and unexpected turn. Recruitment has been around since some of the earliest human civilisations. It has changed and evolved with the world and played a significant role in shaping society.

Despite its very early beginnings, the world of recruitment that we know today only really began to take shape after The Second World War. There had been a huge employment gap as people left their regular jobs to contribute to the war effort. This created an urgent need for recruiters to help fill empty roles during the war, and after it to find jobs for the returning soldiers.

Events that shaped recruitment as we know it

Recruitment in wartime

  • Recruitment agencies began taking out newspaper adverts to fill jobs left by those serving in the war.

Post-war employment

  • To help those returning from the battlefields, businesses began working more closely with recruitment companies to advertise their open positions.

The resume

  • As recruitment companies became more focused on efficiency, they began using resumes to match candidate’s unique skillsets with the most suitable roles. By the 50s, resumes had become essential for applying for most jobs.

Recruitment on the rise 

  • Recruitment agencies continued to thrive throughout the 1960s, and got even busier in the 70s. In a time of economic growth, more businesses than ever were outsourcing their recruitment.

Read all about it!

  • Previously, community bulletin boards had been the main space for promoting jobs. In the 80s however, this shifted towards newspapers which – by then – had dedicated sections for job seekers.

Recruitment gets connected

  • In the 1990s, processing large numbers of applicants went up a gear. The invention of email meant that recruiters no longer had to sift through applications sent by post, fax or delivered by hand.

The digital revolution

  • As computer software and social media improved throughout the 2000s, searching for jobs and processing applicants changed forever. This transformed the way recruitment worked and opened the doors to new tools and online hiring processes that made matching candidates and jobs much faster and much more accurate.

How did 2019/20 transform employer branding and recruitment?

Employees gradually return to offices. Lockdown restrictions are easing. We can cautiously say that we’re seeing the tailend of the pandemic. However, the world of employer branding is never at a standstill. Here are four trends that have emerged as a result of the pandemic:

#1

Whether it’s having time to think while on furlough or seeing their work-life balance from a new perspective, the pandemic gave employees the chance to reconsider their current roles. Hiring managers need to understand the needs and wants of their ideal candidates. Time to get your recruitment campaigns ready before the best talent is snapped-up.

#2

Flexibility will be a must-have for the post-pandemic candidate. If they haven’t already, companies need a way to align remote and on-site staff with their EVP. This might include remote on-boarding, flexible working hours or new employee benefits schemes focused on work-life balance.

#3

Work-life balance. Employee wellbeing. Preventing burnout. These were already hot topics in marketing pre-pandemic. Skip forward a year, and lockdown restrictions have only made things worse. Employees in improvised home offices have been juggling childcare, higher workloads and concerns about their own health. It shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise that candidates and employees want to see the wellbeing initiatives your company has to offer.

#4

With hybrid working here to stay for many, creating a unified sense of belonging has become even harder. At the same time, a tough 2020 for everyone has made it an even higher priority for employer brand teams.

The first place to start is with your EVP. Does it resonate with staff across the globe? Does it take remote working into account? Are there advocacy programmes that all employees can get involved with? If the answer to any of these questions is ‘no’, then you may have some work to do.

Brands that embraced opportunities from the pandemic

A strong brand purpose and globally recognised EVP makes it easier for entire corporations to react to new challenges. With a single company-wide goal, the world’s largest global brands have been able to steer their employer brand in a positive direction through the pandemic.

In fact, many had already been working towards better work-life balance, more staff flexibility and hybrid working models long before the pandemic hit:

IBM embraces flexibility

  • Most corporate organisations still have their hesitations about the hybrid working model. IBM has it set in place for the long-term.

TikTok tries its hand at recruitment

  • Funny clips and fast-paced dance routines couldn’t be further from the corporate formality of traditional job sites. Nevertheless, TikTok is working on a recruitment feature aimed at young adults. Could videos replace resumes in the not-so-distant?

Chipotle acts on its words

  • California-based Mexican restaurant chain Chipotle had made some big claims on employee benefits, promotions, and inclusion. Even when lockdown restrictions hit the hospitality sector especially hard, it kept its promises. After adding mental health programs to its benefits in 2019, Chipotle went on to bolster its parental leave program smack bang in the middle of the pandemic.

Prepare your employer brand for the future with BAM

It’s clear that the employer brand landscape is still undergoing some important changes. To help you stay relevant in the post-pandemic workplace and be ready for whatever is around the next corner, BAM by Papirfly™ has everything you need to: 

  • React fast to shifting priorities 
  • Achieve global EVP consistency 
  • Empower your teams to create the assets they need for specific campaigns

See everything BAM can do for your employer branding by booking your demo today.

Table of contents:

  1. Recruitment then and now
  2. Events that shaped recruitment as we know it
  3. How did 2019/20 transform employer branding and recruitment?
  4. Brands that embraced opportunities from the pandemic
  5. Prepare your employer brand for the future with BAM
Brand Activation Management

Content production burning your budget? Here’s what to do

Luke Davis
5 minutes read

Content is the fuel that powers the entire marketing engine. It is how organisations of all shapes and sizes engage, communicate and connect with their audiences worldwide. It builds brand awareness and spreads your messages to the masses.

Videos. Social media. Blog posts. Emails. Brochures. Posters. Web banners. The forms of content modern marketers can harness are broader than ever before, it’s hard to find anyone who doesn’t think content is king.

With an ever-growing number of mediums and platforms for content, the possibilities for marketers are infinite. Budgets, however, are not. Content production often takes a sizeable slice of any marketing team’s annual budget – leaving little room for other activities. And, despite the amount that is already spent, there is always more that can be done…

The importance and necessity of content cannot be overstated, but more than likely it poses a significant strain on your budget. We want to iterate some points about why content is crucial, the pain points it presents towards your budget, and how you can streamline production to maximise your budget’s true potential.

6 reasons why content production is crucial

To cover every benefit that content marketing offers to an organisation would take an article all by itself (and then some!). But, here are some of the top-line reasons why it is critical for marketers in the current landscape.

1. Lead generation

A brand’s content is a powerful technique for reaching out to prospective customers, helping them engage them with articles, videos, imagery and more in the build towards an eventual sale.

2. Brand awareness

Content across all platforms can project a brand’s values, identity, offering and more, consistently raising its awareness across a global audience.

3. Digital presence

In an increasingly competitive field for customers’ attention, content helps establish a strong digital footprint, increasing the possibilities of online consumers finding a brand’s website and platforms.

4. Customer demand

Modern consumers crave content on a daily basis, especially online. Content allows you to respond with the information your target audience wants, ensuring they associate you with the knowledge they gather.

5. Strengthens relationships

It takes time to build customer loyalty. The more you can supply people with useful, valuable content, the more likely that this will bolster their affinity with your brand.

6. Builds authority

In addition, the more value people gain from the content you supply, the more they will associate you as an authority in your market, enhancing your overall reputation.

Why is content production so expensive?

So, now it can be left in no doubt how crucial content is for today’s brands, this brings us to the crux of this article – the cost of content production. Of course, this will vary depending on an organisation’s size and reach, but it typically takes up a substantial chunk of their overall marketing budget.

There are many factors that contribute to this significant expense:

  • The ever-increasing content avenues for marketers to tackle – social media, video, emails, print, etc.
  • The need to meet growing audience expectations, both internal and external
  • The evolution of new techniques and platforms with which to present content
  • The challenges recruiting talented designers, copywriters, editors and others at the forefront of content production
  • The importance of optimising content for various mediums, especially mobile
  • The need to translate and adapt content for audiences around the world

While there is no hard-and-fast rule for the cost of content, you will have to consider aspects like:

  • The cost of the technology and tools required to facilitate content production
  • The amount of content that must be created for a particular campaign or channel
  • The hours it takes for your team to produce content
  • The financial cost of the hours, namely employee wages and overheads
  • The type of content being produced – a blog post or static image will probably be less costly to produce than a video or brochure

This can rapidly eat away at your marketing budget – and that is before incorporating the time and resources spent on the strategy and ideation of content, the project management surrounding each stage of the production process, how content will be distributed to the audience, and analysing its performance in the following weeks and months.

In short, the reason why content production is so expensive is that so many steps and moving parts go into creating, verifying and publishing any piece of content. It is much more involved than many outside of the marketing world give it credit for, and that comes at a substantial cost.

An example: the costs of video production

Video is the most-used content format, with 59% of marketers that perform content marketing using video. But consider the stages that may be involved in video production – all of which come at a price.

Depending on the scale of production, it can account for numerous hours of employee time and considerable resources.

The challenge sustaining mass content production

The heavy processes behind most forms of content production can often make performing this on a mass scale very challenging. With budgets and available time limited, something’s got to give, whether it’s the amount of content you produce, the number of resources you can devote to each element, or the overall quality of the output. Something inevitably suffers.

Many marketing teams seek to remedy this problem by outsourcing content creation work to freelancers or agencies. While this alleviates the time and cost problem associated with conducting this work in-house, this approach has its own limitations in respect to enabling mass content production:

  • Freelancers and agencies will have other priorities to focus on beyond your brand, meaning work may arrive to their schedule, not necessarily yours
  • The more your organisation relies on these third parties, the more costly their services will be
  • Being outside of your company, the content they create may not reflect the nuances and identify of your brand, leading to numerous edits and rewrites

This leaves marketing teams with a conundrum. They recognise that content is vital to their overall marketing efforts, and will want to produce as much as possible to meet their audience’s needs. 

However, they cannot break the bounds of their budget, without compromising the quality of their output, or forcing employees to work unreasonable hours to meet this demand.

BAM – the ultimate budget stretcher

If you are one of the many trapped in this uncomfortable state, BAM by Papirfly™ is empowering brands across the globe to stretch their budgets further than ever before, while producing more content than they could have possibly envisaged. All in-house. With no specialist support.

BAM enables teams to be more agile and cost-effective with their content production. Intelligent, pre-set templates lock down brand consistency and provide users with a simple, straightforward environment where they can produce high-quality assets in a matter of minutes.

All variables are kept within a predefined format, allowing those with little-to-no design knowledge or experience to create, edit and update assets with no risk of tarnishing your brand identity. This spreads across digital and print formats – social media posts, HTML emails, posters, digital signage, videos – all this and more can be exported in the correct size and style in a fraction of the time it would take to do from scratch.

Through this easy-to-use platform that allows no margin for error in branding and quality, any organisation can immediately scale up their content production exponentially – all while simultaneously saving costs that can be dedicated to other projects or marketing areas.

Plus, this isn’t the only way BAM makes life simpler and more empowering to marketing teams:

  • A safe and secure DAM platform allows teams to easily share resources with coworkers around the world, rather than waste time sending over large files
  • Entire version histories and audit trails are recorded, while approval workflows ensure that content can be checked, amended and approved promptly
  • Multi-language and localisation capabilities mean content can be rapidly translated for specific international audiences

Over 1 million users worldwide are harnessing the power of BAM. If it sounds too good to be true, download our dedicated pitch deck to explore the far-reaching benefits of our software, and give you all the information you need to secure buy-in throughout your company.

As content demands continue to grow at a greater rate than most marketing budgets, take a step today to transform your production power forever. Get in touch with our team to learn more about BAM, or get to grips with it yourself by booking a free demo.

Table of contents:

  1. 6 reasons why content production is crucial
  2. Why is content production so expensive?
  3. An example: the costs of video production
  4. The challenge sustaining mass content production
  5. BAM – the ultimate budget stretcher
Retail Marketing

Reshaping the retail catalogue

Papirfly
6 minutes read

As the world of retail becomes more and more digital, there doesn’t seem to be much room for the humble retail catalogue anymore. The far-flung days of flicking through Argos’ laminated book of wonders, or browsing the latest fashions on offer from Sears, feel like a lifetime ago.

Indeed, as online shopping’s grip on modern consumers continues to tighten, in recent years major brands, notably Argos, IKEA and H&M have shut down their magazine budgets and hopped aboard the eCommerce express. And there’s a lot of data backing this decision.

So, is it time to officially lay the retail catalogue to rest? Absolutely not. We have previously discussed how print still has a powerful role in retail, and the catalogue is a prime example. 

The tactile experience of flipping through page after page is something that is hard to replicate online, and helps brands engage customers in a way they can’t digitally. Where some brands like IKEA have moved away from catalogues, others have successfully doubled down.

Below, we explore why catalogues remain go-to collateral for numerous retailers, and the steps you can take to maximise the effectiveness of these assets moving forward.

The enduring relevance of retail catalogues

The retail catalogue has been with us since the 19th century and Tiffany’s Blue Book, enabling customers to browse a retailer’s range without having to step into a store. 

But, with the potential to contain all of this information – and much more – on the Internet, there are many who feel this novelty has worn off. Not to mention the potential problems caused by catalogues:

  • Once printed, they can’t be updated in real-time, meaning they can go out-of-date quickly
  • They can cost a substantial amount to write, design and print, depending on the catalogue’s reach
  • The environmental impact of printing catalogues can be heavy

However, flaws aside, there are many reasons why brands continue to rely on retail catalogues.

Physical and psychological sensation

Modern consumers are enticed by experiences, rather than cluttered inboxes of ads and sales pitches. While we wait for VR and AR technology to mature, the simple process of reading through a catalogue, touching and feeling what’s in front of you, can be a powerful pull for consumers.

Rather than be separated by a digital screen, customers play an active role in transitioning from one page to the next. For example, if you’re picking out furniture for a room, trying to drag your computer or laptop into the room to visualise the product in situ may not be feasible.

This helps you see yourself enjoying the products on offer at a deeper level. These experiences are more memorable, and therefore more likely to stay with customers.

Standing out in a digital landscape

While we can all appreciate the convenience and connectivity that the digitisation of retail has delivered, this online noise can become quite overwhelming. We can be left exhausted by streams of emails and social posts on a daily basis, with the opportunity to flick through a physical catalogue a welcome escape for many.

So, although the rise of eCommerce will continue, being able to move beyond the abundance of online content can help retailers stand out among their customers.

Appealing to particular demographics

For those actively shopping in the decades before digital took over, retail catalogues are as familiar as a childhood home. The power of nostalgia should never be underestimated, and it can help transport consumers to a simpler time in their lives. This is a feeling more and more people are craving, and catalogues can allow retailers to harness it to their benefit.

Yet, it is not only people with fond memories of browsing catalogues that can feel this pull. Millennials and Gen Z,who have grown up with digital as the norm, can also grow attached to retail catalogues, either as a brand new experience, or as an appreciation for something “retro”.

Holds customers’ attention

Compare the above asset to the number of digital ads or sales emails that are immediately closed or overlooked by people online each day. Customers feel compelled to read through a catalogue – it is a more personal, engaging experience. As such, this increases the amount of time a customer engages with a brand and their products.

Unlocks opportunities for omnichannel marketing

Finally, as more retailers seek to create seamless transitions between the physical and digital for their customers, catalogues offer a great way to achieve this.

By incorporating QR codes, social media tie-ins and other ways to link catalogues to the online world, modern retailers are providing the omnichannel experience that today’s customers crave, helping everyone enjoy the best of both worlds.

How 3 brands are still harnessing retail catalogues

C&A

C&A has embraced the blending of print and digital in their catalogues, delivering personalised magazines to customers linked to their individual Facebook account. This meant that, as people browsed their catalogue, they could hit a like button beneath a product, and this would account for an actual like on a corresponding Facebook advert.

While this was a fun quirk for customers, it also gave C&A invaluable digital data on products that were most popular with their audience.

Brookstone

Gadget and gifts retailer Brookstone has actively used QR codes within their catalogues to empower their readers to seamlessly transition into their digital world. With each code, customers can access more information and imagery on a desired product, as well as customer reviews to help reinforce their purchasing decision.

Condé Nast

As the home to some of the most popular magazines worldwide, including Vogue, GQ and Vanity Fair, Condé Nast’s analytics program within their digital catalogues offer crucial insights, such as:

  • How often catalogues are viewed
  • The number of visits received
  • The time of day catalogues were accessed
  • Which products were viewed and purchased online

What can you do to unlock your retail catalogues’ potential?

Embrace omnichannel

As the examples highlighted above demonstrate, retail catalogues offer an excellent opportunity to cross streams between the physical and digital.

Whether it is akin to Brookstone’s inclusion of QR codes to allow readers to immediately locate and purchase items online, or C&A’s clever Facebook integration, catalogues allow brands to prolong the journey their customers take with them.

This both ties in with the unstoppable rise of eCommerce, while giving customers escapism from the digital realm through a physical magazine.

Lock down data accuracy

One of the biggest problems in producing retail catalogues is, if they are printed with typos or inconsistent branding, the cost of rectifying this can be huge.

Software such as BAM by Papirfly™ can help ensure that catalogues reach the printers in pristine conditions, with no mistakes and no discrepancies. Easy-to-use, pre-set templates make it virtually impossible for users to produce something that doesn’t reflect your brand values.

Furthermore, PIM and ERP system integration guarantees that all product information and data incorporated within your catalogue is up-to-date and accurate.

Target your audience

Another criticism of catalogues is that they were a scattergun approach – costs to produce and distribute these could be high, and reach people that were completely uninterested with them.

If you have access to clearer data on your customers’ preferences and commitment to your brand, you can target who are most likely to appreciate the arrival of a catalogue.

When Amazon started producing holiday toy catalogues, these were targeted to children’s parents based on the children’s age groups and the TV shows they viewed. This tailored approach helped ensure that the catalogues were relevant to their audience, leading to more successful conversions.

Use sustainable materials

Finally, with an increasing appreciation towards the future of the environment and sustainability, it is beneficial that retailers focus on producing catalogues out of recycled materials.

This removes the concerns customers and others may have surrounding the sustainability of retail catalogues, while your brand can still reap the benefits that these resources can offer.

Revamp your retail marketing with BAM

We hope this has illustrated that the catalogue still has a meaningful role in any retailer’s marketing mix. In a world that is rapidly growing dependent on digital, these printed assets can provide customers with unique, powerful experiences, which may keep them engaged far longer with your brand than a flurry of online ads and emails.

If you would like to focus more attention on catalogues and other printed collateral, but are concerned about how this could affect your budget, BAM by Papirfly™ makes asset creation faster, more cost-effective, and more secure.

  • Produce all assets from a single platform, including campaigns, POS signage, digital marketing and more
  • Increase turnaround times by bringing all production in-house – anyone can use BAM successfully, regardless of design expertise
  • Create sizes tailored at store level, allowing you to proactively respond to localised demands
  • Effectively organise your in-store promotions, briefs and timelines in an intuitive campaign planner
  • Establish a central, global resource for teams to view, share, edit and reuse assets

Accelerate your retail marketing like never before – speak to our team about the full benefits of BAM, or discover them for yourself by booking a demo.

Table of contents:

  1. The enduring relevance of retail catalogues
  2. How 3 brands are still harnessing retail catalogues
  3. What can you do to unlock your retail catalogues’ potential?
  4. Revamp your retail marketing with BAM
Employer brand

Your simple introduction to the basics of recruitment

Luis Cupertino
5 minutes read

Whether you’re new to employer branding or a pro that’s been around the block a few times, it’s still sometimes difficult to describe exactly what an employer brand is to those outside the industry.

There’s no single roadmap or strategy to follow. For each company, an employer brand will embody something entirely different, even while working towards many of the same goals, or when looking to attract similar talent. 

So what if we try to humanise an employer brand, and take a step back to really put ourselves in the shoes of the prospective candidate?

Let’s not think of it as a roadmap or strategy and take it right back to basics. As a candidate, what are the key things you would want to see, hear, think and feel about a company?

In this article, we’re going to explore the key candidate ‘senses’ that brands should look to engage, and all the ways it can be done… 

What candidates want to see… 

Employee satisfaction

There’s no greater cheerleader for your brand than those who already work for you. If your candidates can have access to real-world testimonials and trust factors from employees, they are more likely to form a positive opinion about your company. 

While it’s not the be all and end all, more often than not GlassDoor is one of the first destinations for candidates. If you’re putting some great stuff about culture out to the world, but your reviews on GlassDoor are overwhelmingly negative, you’ll need some damage control. 

Active social media

When a company isn’t very active on social media it can imply three things:

  1. There’s nobody there to take care of it
  2. The team is too overworked to manage it
  3. The company is very traditional and will be reluctant to change

Keeping your channels fresh, engaging and populated will help candidates take your brand seriously. And what better way to tell your brand story?

Likewise, it’s not uncommon to have a friendly stalk of a prospective company’s employees’ LinkedIn profiles, so it’s important to encourage employees to be as active as they can. If not on their personal channels, showcasing them on your brand’s main channels can still work wonders.

Team spirit and culture 

Now this is an important one, but one of the trickiest to do. Company culture has been catapulted to the top of many employers’ priority lists, but when the pandemic struck it became difficult to maintain. Now we’re seeing a slow ascend back to some kind of normality, employer brand teams can really start embracing company culture once more. 

A big part of this is retaining the option to work flexibly or in some kind of hybrid capacity.

Benefits in action 

Think bigger than stocked fridges and massage Wednesdays. What are the perks that are going to really pay off for your employees and keep them happy longer term? 

Perhaps a paid sabbatical after a certain amount of years’ service. Or a free gym membership to keep their health in check. Small recurring gestures such as free fruit are a really nice touch, but there needs to be some bigger acts that can actually help your employees reach their goals – both inside and outside of work.

Detailed job descriptions 

Vague job roles are a red flag for anyone, but they’re guaranteed to make your candidate feel uneasy about applying. A job is a huge life commitment. You wouldn’t enquire about a house if there was a lack of detail – it would be suspicious and off-putting.

Provide as much detail as possible, and if the role is set to evolve, make that clear from the outset. Plus, be careful not to omit the salary as that’s a big red flag for most candidates.

What candidates want to hear…

Support and encouragement

When high-level jobs are advertised, the language used can sometimes be complex and intimidating. 

While it’s important to attract the candidate that matches your desired profile, remember to keep an element of friendliness and warmth or you may deter strong candidates from applying. This is a particular danger when allowing external recruiters to write job ads on your behalf, you should ensure you always get the final sight of any job advert or description that goes out.

Additionally, giving candidates the option to interview via video call or in-person will help to widen your talent pool, particularly if a candidate is interviewing for the role and considering relocation.

It’s advised to weigh up whether a virtual interview will help or hinder the process, and assess what’s available on a case-by-case basis.

Inspirational messaging

While the practical and matter-of-fact information takes primary importance in any campaigns you put out, remember you could be against any number of competitors offering a similar role. Whether it’s a Spotify ad, a radio recruitment drive or virtual careers fair, don’t miss any opportunity to inspire and let the world know just how incredible it is to work for your company.

Voices from inside the business as well as the brand

If you’ve got plenty of branded content going out, that’s great news, but it will only take you so far. Candidates want to see real faces and hear the voices of your employees, whether that’s a general insight into working for the company or department-specific information.

What candidates need to think about your company…

“This is a company I want to work for”

How this is achieved…

  • Having a strong employer brand
  • Creating engaging and exciting recruitment campaigns
  • Boasting positive reviews from existing employees
  • Offering competitive salary and additional benefits

“They treat their employees so well”

How this is achieved…

  • Putting existing employees at the heart of your recruitment assets
  • Encouraging individuals to post about their experience on professional social media networks
  • Filming and promoting lots of high-quality video content about working life and culture

“I can’t wait to get started”

How this is achieved…

  • Keeping open, honest communication throughout the process, from application to hire
  • Providing new starters with an agenda of their first week/month
  • Putting together a welcome pack to make them feel welcome
  • Incorporating virtual or in-person ‘meet the team’ session prior to start date

“I can see a future here”

How this is achieved…

  • Promoting stories about employees who have been around a long time
  • Speaking about positive retention rates in collateral
  • Informing employees of incentivised loyalty benefits such as paid sabbaticals, increasing holiday or other rewards after ‘X’ years of service

How your employer brand should make your candidates feel…

Confident that what they’re seeing is genuine

Everything needs to add up. If the story you’re telling through your campaigns and social media isn’t supported by positive employee reviews or contradictory information online, candidates could disengage before they’ve applied.

Excited about their prospects and the potential of the company

If the company has ambitious plans for the future, ensure this narrative is woven through the recruitment and hiring process. Candidates need to be aware of when they’re starting at a business that’s going in the right direction. The greater the potential success of the brand, the more career growth opportunities they could be presented with. 

At ease asking questions and with the recruitment team

The interview process can be daunting at the best of times. But when your hiring managers are confident, engaging and welcoming, candidates will feel more at home being themselves and more likely to delve into the questions they really want to ask. 

Get every aspect of your employer brand on track with BAM by Papirfly™ 

By now we hope we’ve helped you understand the candidate’s experience from their perspective. Everything we have covered also needs foundations in a powerful employer brand.

With BAM (Brand Activation Management), you can create, access, manage and share every aspect of your campaigns and brand in one place.

  • Create infinite digital, print, social, email and video assets without professional support – all delivered on time and on-brand
  • Store, share and edit pre-existing assets and files – all perfectly organised with no need to waste time on searching or duplication of effort 
  • Manage campaign timelines, the sign off process and more effortlessly in our centralised portal 
  • Educate teams with a dedicated selection of assets that help them understand your brand and how to showcase your employer brand

If you would like to see the power of BAM for yourself, a demo is a great place to start. Find out more about our software or book your demo today.

Table of contents:

  1. What candidates want to see…
  2. What candidates want to hear…
  3. What candidates need to think about your company…
  4. How your employer brand should make your candidates feel…
Brand Communication, Brand identity, Brand strategy

How to communicate your brand

Papirfly
3 minutes read

Branding is all about communicating your brand – building a strong brand presence that creates desire and attracts customers. Successful branding = Business growth. Consistency and brand experience are two of four key qualities consumers value and that keeps them coming back for more. How effective is your brand communication? Are you attracting the right customers, and are they loyal?

Factors that impact your brand communication are your colleagues, available resources and manpower, the number of channels and platforms that require your brand presence, your competitors, and your audience to mention a few. As always, there are some dos and don’ts that affect your success rate.

Here’s a short list on how to successfully communicate your brand

1. Establish brand identity guidelines

A key goal for any brand should be to achieve consistency. Consumers expect your brand to be consistent and it is connected to the growth potentials of your company. This is not an impossible task, but it does require effort and dedication in addition to a real plan.

For brand consistency to happen, you need brand rules. Proper brand identity guidelines that concern everyone who is communicating your brand. These brand guidelines need to set the standard for all employees and external stakeholders on how to use and apply your brand across any and all channels.

Also read: Create branding guidelines with a brand management platform

2. Establish internal brand guidelines and align your branding processes

Employees are the central participants in your brand communication. It’s impossible to communicate a brand if you don’t have your employees on your side. Think of it as a football team playing a game. If the team isn’t aware of the purpose and goal of the game, and no one knows what position they play or how to do it, you will have a team scattered all over the football field, running in different directions. It’s safe to say that team won’t win the game.

The same applies to branding. Everyone in the company needs to know why branding is important and what role they play on the team. Therefore, make sure your brand guidelines include internal brand strategies and align your external and internal branding processes.

Also read: This is internal employee branding and how you get started

3. Establish proper brand asset management

Having brand identity guidelines in place is unfortunately not enough to achieve brand consistency. In fact, 95% of organizations have branding guidelines, but only 1/4th have formal guidelines that are consistently enforced. One step in the right direction is to establish brand asset management.

Brand asset management is the system that connects the dots between your brand guidelines and your brand assets. This is the system that enables seamless and intuitive user workflows, making it effective and easy to apply your brand regardless of who’s in need, or which channel or platform is utilized. By having this in place, growing and developing your brand becomes easier, and everyone who needs to use your brand can do so effortlessly and quickly from one single location.

Also read: What is brand asset management?

4. Create a brand communication strategy

To win the football game, or in this case, win against the competitors by achieving brand consistency and building a strong brand identity, your employees need to be included and informed about the strategy.

It’s not enough for them to know that they are a part of the plan and their role. They also need to know what is required from them. This part is essential in brand communication. Although a customer service representative and a receptionist represent the same company, their role and how they need to interact with the audience is different. To succeed, this needs to be accounted for in your brand communication strategy. By adapting the brand communication strategy to each role individually, you’ll have a better chance of realization.

5. Develop and grow your brand continuously and meet market expectations

There’s no resting when it comes to branding. How you communicate your brand today, might not fit or be sufficient tomorrow.

The market changes and so do consumers. On one hand we have a fast-growing Martech space that puts pressure on marketing teams and our ability to follow our own brand communication strategy. It’s not easy to deliver on demand when deadlines are behind us, and resources are short. On the other hand, we have consumers. How they search for information, what they value and how they engage with your brand varies between them. When communicating your brand, you need to adapt at the same speed and meet these expectations.

Communicate your brand with digital solutions

Just as you digitize your private life to simplify and increase your own efficiency, you need to do the same for your work life and your brand. By digitizing your branding processes, following the above steps will be easy. Everything about your brand can easily be maintained, developed, and communicated from one single solution.

No second guessing. Everyone will know everything they need to know to communicate your brand with ease.

Marketing

7 engaging team exercises for content idea generation

Papirfly
6 minutes read

We’ve all been there before. Stood in front of a blank whiteboard or sheet of paper. Awkward pauses that seem to last an eternity. Meeting rooms populated with blank or strained expressions.

Creating fresh content ideas can be a frustrating experience for all involved. Even highly experienced creatives can’t turn this on and off like a tap – sometimes inspiration just doesn’t arrive naturally, resulting in periods of stony silence during brainstorming sessions.

When this happens, simply sitting around and praying for an idea to pop in someone’s head won’t cut it. Instead, teams should look to resuscitate these sessions with engaging, collaborative exercises that have been proven to combat fatigue and spur creativity.

Here, we’ll share seven of our favourite team exercises to trial for yourself, and how they all can be applied to content idea generation.

1. Empathy mapping

An empathy map is a collaborative tool that teams can use to develop a deeper understanding of their audience – their wants, their pain points, their preferences, etc. This dives into the thoughts and feelings of customers in order to determine what they would like to see, and what would hold no relevance to them whatsoever.

On your empathy map, you might include several sections to answer important questions about who your audience is, such as:

  • What do they think and feel about your product/service/brand?
  • What are their aspirations? What are their concerns?
  • What do they hear and see about your organisation on a daily basis?
  • How do they talk about your brand? Does this change whether they’re in public or in private?
  • What environments would/do they typically use your product/service in?
  • What barriers do they have to using your products/services?
  • How much have customers enjoyed using your products/services in the past?

How to apply this to content generation

Empathy mapping can be applied to all areas of marketing, especially content generation. By placing this map at the centre of your discussions, either by sticking it to a wall or on your whiteboard, you can use your audience’s needs, wants and issues to steer what content you create to address these head-on.

So, rather than use guesswork or pluck ideas from thin air, you work directly from what you know about your audience to guide the content you produce.

A similar technique is role-storming. This takes empathy mapping to a more theatrical level, where you have those involved in the brainstorming session take on the role of your audience personas.

2. Role-storming

This is designed to remove any personal inhibitions or judgements, and decisively step into your customer’s shoes. Rather than bring any preconceived notions about what content is based on from your perspective, you are forced to consider what your audience wants and needs, and respond accordingly.

How to apply this to content generation

This technique can be combined with empathy mapping to help influence your content ideas. Perhaps you could interview members of your sales or customer service teams – the people who interact with your audience everyday – to adopt these roles as they can best embody your audience’s desires and pain points.

Then, either act out a scene or conduct an interview with this “audience persona” to figure out what content would capture their imagination.

3. Starbursting

Instead of immediately focusing on answers and solutions, starbursting encourages creatives to prioritise the questions in brainstorming sessions. By devoting time to generating relevant, useful questions relating to the topic at hand, your team is in a position to answer these with greater clarity.

You should build your starburst map on the 5Ws and 1H:

  • What
  • When
  • Where
  • Why
  • Who
  • How

How to apply this to content generation

Say you are marketing for a real estate company and want to create content around property viewings. On each point of your starburst map, you may have questions like:

  • What will potential buyers expect to see during a property viewing?
  • When is the best day of the week to arrange a property viewing?
  • Where do potential buyers look first during property viewings?
  • Why are property viewings important?
  • Who can help someone prepare for a property viewing?
  • How can you ensure viewers have the best experience possible?

The questions built up during this session can inspire a wave of articles, videos, infographics, social posts and other assets designed to answer each one proposed.

4. Brainwriting

Also known as slip writing, brainwriting encourages a natural flow of consciousness involving every participant in a brainstorming session. First, without any prior communication, each person anonymously writes down their ideas and thoughts on a piece of paper, index card or post-it notes. These are then collected and positioned in clear view of everyone. 

The ideas themselves can be completely unconventional or bizarre, but the aim is to use these as jumping-off points for constructive conversation. Rather than wait for people to speak up, their anonymity gives them greater freedom to write whatever’s on their minds without fear of judgement, and ideas can then be discussed and adapted where necessary.

How to apply this to content generation

Brainwriting can be very powerful for content generation, as it encourages people to share ideas without risk of ridicule. It can also highlight the concepts of people who may not be as confident speaking in a group setting, so everyone is able to contribute.

During a session, you might pass ideas around from person to person for a few rounds to refine and add to the initial concepts. This can mean they are in a more complete state when the group reconvenes to discuss the ideas, so the chosen ones are in a better position to be taken forward.

5. S.C.A.M.P.E.R.

The S.C.A.M.P.E.R. technique inspires people to look at a problem or topic from a variety of different angles, allowing them to consider those areas in a very specific, focused way. The acronym is broken down into:

  • Substitute
  • Combine
  • Adapt
  • Modify
  • Put to another use
  • Eliminate
  • Reverse

By looking at ideas through these distinct lenses, it can offer fresh perspectives on how to approach a topic.

How to apply this to content generation

During a content idea brainstorm, S.C.A.M.P.E.R. can encourage attendees to imagine different ways to look at a topic, as well as build on an initial concept with one of these seven distinct approaches.

You might substitute the audience your topic is aimed towards, or combine one topic with another one brought forward to create a different concept altogether. Even if some of the ideas developed through this technique are non-starters, it is valuable in guiding people down different paths regarding a topic.

6. Six thinking hats

The Six Thinking Hats philosophy was developed by Edward De Bono in 1985, and is built around six unique thinking styles:

The six hats and what they mean

  • Blue hat – process
  • White hat – facts
  • Yellow hat – benefits
  • Green hat – creativity
  • Red hat – feelings
  • Black hat – cautions

To apply this to a brainstorming session, you could either have different participants within a meeting metaphorically wear these different hats, or have everyone wear one hat at a time to cover each area step by step.

How to apply this to content generation

During a content generation session, you might apply the Six Thinking Hats technique in the following way:

  • The chair of the meeting wears the blue hat, coordinating all other participants and reinforcing the goals and outcomes of the meeting
  • White hats bring forward any data or information they have available about the topic being discussed
  • Green hats encourage new and innovative ideas, and are there to think outside the box
  • Yellow hats bring forward the benefits and advantages of ideas generated during the session
  • Red hats focus on the emotions and gut feelings felt by their audience towards the topic
  • Black hats looks at the logical risks and concerns surrounding ideas brought to the table

By giving everyone a specific role in this process, it can make creative meetings more streamlined and enables people to play to their strengths, rather than conduct the brainstorming as a free-for-all.

7. Stepladder

The final technique we will highlight is the stepladder. As it sounds, it takes a step-by-step approach to idea generation, and is particularly powerful in an environment where a few individuals are drowning out others during sessions.

Once the meeting begins, everyone vacates the room outside of two people, who discuss their ideas together. After a couple of minutes, another person enters, who then shares their ideas uninterrupted. Then, all three discuss their ideas together.

One by one more people enter the room until every participant is back together. This ensures that everyone has a chance to share their concepts without interruption, and helps highlight common themes and thoughts that can be pursued following this session.

How to apply this to content generation

During a content brainstorming session, the stepladder technique can help bring the most popular ideas for a topic to the forefront, while also uncovering more out-of-the-box approaches that may prove just as valuable. 

Rather than a couple of powerful voices reaching a consensus, all ideas are given an audience. All perspectives are given a fair shake, which could unlock unique, compelling approaches for upcoming campaigns.

Showcase your ideas with BAM

If you have often found brainstorming sessions grinding to a halt due to a lack of ideas, organisation or enthusiasm, we hope this inspires you to trial new techniques that will get your team’s creativity flowing.

Find the methods that engage your participants the most and encourage the most abundant range of ideas, and your sessions will soon become a hotbed of unique, vibrant concepts.

But, once you have exciting ideas for your content, it’s time to share them with the world. BAM by Papirfly™ gives you the power to produce professional print, digital and video assets, online, in an instant, and control your content like never before.

  • Easy-to-use design software enables you to create an infinite amount of marketing assets in-house
  • Intelligent templates ensure BAM can be used by anyone to produce high-quality, perfectly branded assets – no design expertise necessary
  • Create brochures, videos, emails, social media assets and more completely independently
  • Adapt campaign materials, text and imagery for use in your markets across the globe

Take the speed, quality and cost-effectiveness of your content marketing to the next level. Discover the full capabilities of BAM by arranging your free demo, or get in touch with our team if you’d like to learn more.

Table of contents:

  1. 1. Empathy mapping
  2. 2. Role-storming
  3. 3. Starbursting
  4. 4. Brainwriting
  5. 5. S.C.A.M.P.E.R.
  6. 6. Six thinking hats
  7. 7. Stepladder