Blog

Brand Asset Management / BAM, Brand strategy

What are brand assets?

Papirfly
3 minutes read

Brand assets are the visuals and elements that define a brand’s identity and create value for your company. As simple as that? Yes, but not quite. Brand assets can have a different meaning to different brands, this article will look at the diversity of brand assets and best practices related to how to protect them.

Digital asset or brand asset?


It’s easy to mix up the two. Digital assets are any digital file or document a company owns regardless of who created it or what purpose it serves. Brand assets however are directly related to the brand and marketing. Whereas a digital asset excludes nothing, a brand asset excludes everything but the brand.

And with that out of the way…

Physical brand assets establish brand recognition

Colors, typeface, logo, slogan, packaging, illustrations, patterns, icons, and more including the actual company name, are all elements that define the look of your brand. Designed to distinguish your brand from everyone else with the purpose of establishing successful brand recognition, creating a competitive advantage.

Examples of brands that have successfully achieved brand recognition with brand assets are Dunkin Donuts with their pink and orange letters, or McDonald’s yellow arch. These are perfect examples of how colors are powerful brand assets. For Adidas, it’s their distinctive shoe patterns, and let’s not forget the famous apple icon by Apple. These brands have spent years building their brand consistently, creating that unique identity that makes people instantly think of their brand when they see the physical brand elements, both in and out of context.

Non-physical brand assets establish emotional brand connections

There is more to a brand than what you can see and touch. How your brand is communicated through the voice of your employees is just as important as the physical parts of your brand. Every day, employees are in contact with external stakeholders, whether it is potential or existing customers, vendors or investors. How your employees represent your company and your brand shapes the stakeholder’s interactions and can mean the difference between a long-term relationship or a non-existing one.

Rules of engagement, code of conduct and social media rules are brand elements without a physical form, yet crucial for your brand identity. It is essential that how to communicate is controlled and established across your entire company to ensure unified and consistent brand building.

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

Brand assets create brand value

The purpose of brand assets is as stated earlier to define and create the uniqueness that puts you in front of your competitors and helps you become the preferred brand. Your brand’s value will be the reflection of how successful you are at establishing this competitive advantage.

Manage your brand assets

Knowing how important brand assets are to a brand, how you manage them can mean the difference between success or failure when it comes to establishing brand recognition

  • Make sure your assets are available: If you want colleagues to use the correct assets, you need to make sure they are easy to find. Establish a single location where everything is searchable.
  • Make sure your brand assets are understandable: Don’t expect everyone else to understand your brand like you do. Asking colleagues to read pages of information on how to use the brand before getting hold of the brand assets is not realistic. Instead, make your brand rules are bulletproof with the help of digital brand guidelines.
  • Make sure your assets are usable: It’s not uncommon that brand assets need adjustments before use. By transforming your assets into digital templates, you allow your colleagues to be self-sufficient. There is no need to involve a bunch of people and they can quickly get hold of the assets they need.

Curious to learn more about how you can manage your brand assets? Download our free whitepaper for more valuable insight

 

 

Brand Activation Management

How 4 of the world’s biggest industries use BAM

Papirfly
7 minutes read

While their purposes and priorities are often worlds apart, the brands we work with across different industries are often facing similar challenges.

Faster times to market. Seamless in-house asset creation. Global consistency with local messaging. These priorities are likely to hit home with teams working in every industry.

This article will be exploring the way that each of these challenges impact global brands in the Pharma, Banking, IT and FMCG sectors. We’ll be explaining how they have adapted their output to meet new demands and what it means for them to produce relevant content for the world we’re living in.

Before we get stuck in, let’s take a quick look at two of the most significant industry-wide changes in the marketing landscape:

Increasing the focus on digital

We’ve covered the digital revolution a few times within our articles. As game-changing innovations continue to emerge, it’s a topic that never stops being relevant. 

It has given marketers a constantly evolving suite of platforms and technologies for reaching their audiences. Virtual reality. Tailored online shopping experiences. Digital healthcare. Plus new social media platforms that seem to be emerging every month. Customers and consumers have more ways to interact with products than ever before, and the overwhelming majority are digital.

Time for a refresh?

2020 saw an unusually high number of brands refresh their identity. While this is a good thing to do before your brand starts feeling a little out of date, so many companies rebranding at a similar time was no coincidence. For many, it was more of a timely response than a routine update.

The media had named 2019 ‘the year of protest’ with demonstrations taking place in every corner of the globe. They were centred around various injustices but a vast majority were taking on gender inequality, racism and climate change. More people took part in protests than any other year, and the implications for brands were huge. 

Consumers were demanding a change from unethical business practices, unsustainable products and insensitive messaging. Apologies for ‘missing the mark’ in their advertising no longer cut it. To earn the trust of audiences in 2021, brands need to prove that their brand has a positive influence on the world. For many, rebranding has been an opportunity to bring their positive attributes front and centre, and show where their products and services provide genuine value.

4 industries getting the best from BAM

After reading the above, you might be thinking that marketers have got their work cut out — and you’d be right… Producing assets for endless new platforms, getting them to market at pace, and with watertight consistency, isn’t easy. 

To make matters worse, each industry will have its own nuance, trends and best practices that need to be thought about. 

Brand Managers need not despair – BAM can take the stress away from accommodating these extra workloads, new formats and cultural nuances.

Here’s how brands across four prominent industries can make change happen with BAM:

Pharma

The move towards a more patient-centric approach through the use of wearables, apps and cloud-based products has made pharma marketing one of the richest territories for digital innovation.

Despite being fairly late in adopting digital, this is an industry that is becoming ever more reliant on it. While brochures are still an important way for patients to learn about pharma products and services, there has been a landslide shift to the use of video and social channels for promoting new healthcare tech that provide patients with a more active role in their healthcare.

As well as an ever-growing number of products and services now available, an ageing demographic across most of the world will boost the market for prescription drug treatments. This is likely to equate to approximately $1.2 trillion by 2024. The resulting increase in digital output will require some big changes in the processes and best practices of pharma marketing.

Marketing any medical product is full of legal implications and often means lengthy approval processes. This can get unmanageable when launching a campaign in multiple countries each with their own laws surrounding the types of product that can be sold there as well as how they can be marketed. Luckily, BAM makes it quick and simple to loop your legal teams into approval processes. That means you can be sure that quicker times to market, doesn’t mean cutting corners.

As well as the ability to produce unlimited print assets, BAM gives pharma marketing teams the ability to produce digital assets at pace and scale. Plus they can be converted to fit relevant social channels in just a few clicks.

4 ways to use BAM in pharma

Digitisation

With the rise of wearables and cloud-based healthcare apps, BAM helps pharma companies take advantage of every digital opportunity with templates for a range of online formats.

Personalisation

Patients are taking a more active role in their own health. With BAM, pharma marketing teams have the in-house tools they need to make campaigns resonate with their audiences.

Videos and social media assets

Although the pharma industry has been relatively late to use the full potential of social media, having an online presence is now more important than ever. BAM is helping teams catch up with easy to use templates for every social channel.

Accuracy

For obvious reasons, there is absolutely no room for error in pharmaceutical marketing. BAM allows you to loop your legal teams into approvals processes so you can be sure that all your marketing materials are ready to go.

If you work in the pharma industry for an employer brand team, check out our ‘The future of pharma’ whitepaper.

If you work in a wider marketing team in the pharma industry, you might be interested in ‘The changing face of pharma marketing’ whitepaper. 

Banking

As noted earlier, there have been a number of sector-wide rebrands to come out of the last few years. Perhaps most notably in banking.

After the emergence of numerous unethical practices, the banking industry has been tarnished with a distinct lack of consumer trust. This led to a number of banks needing to shift their priorities and change their tone in order to prove that the industry had learnt from its mistakes.

One of the key factors for instilling trust in consumers is consistency. No matter how much your advertising tugs your audience’s heartstrings, emotional messaging won’t hold any weight if they are met with bland confusing financial jargon when they go through to your website, for example. For consumers to believe in a brand, its messaging needs to come through authentically at every interaction.

However, consistency can be tricky when you’re rolling out campaigns across the globe. You can’t just go full steam ahead with a campaign without understanding the nuance in every market it’s launching in. At best your messaging might be confusing, at worst it could be causing offence.

Getting to understand cultural nuance is one of the ways HSBC really was able to become ‘The World’s Local Bank’. With BAM’s easy to use templates and localisation feature, local teams can access relevant and culturally appropriate marketing materials for their specific markets. It means that all messaging can land as intended, in any location.

4 ways to use BAM in Banking

Cultural nuance

For a bank to become truly global, its communications need to land as intended in every market. BAM’s localisation feature helps teams make their marketing nuanced and culturally relevant across the globe.

Consistency

While capturing the subtle differences in every local market, BAM helps marketing teams ensure that the messaging, tone, look and feel of a bank’s marketing is familiar anywhere in the world.

Trust

Staying on brand is the key to building loyalty among consumers. BAM makes your brand guidelines easily accessible and shareable to keep all your teams up-to-speed.

Clarity

With its visual campaign planner, BAM gives teams a bird’s eye view of where and how marketing materials are being used. It allows you to tag briefs to specific campaigns and be sure that relevant teams are in-the-know.

IT and Telecoms

Arguably the greatest use of modern technology is its incredible ability to connect people. This makes it even more important for organisations like IBM and Vodafone to have a brand that connects with their audiences and their employees in offices across the globe. 

The sheer volume of assets that teams at large telecoms providers and global IT companies need to produce is astounding. It can also be overwhelming for the teams trying to get them over the line. Relying on agencies for routine tasks is too slow and costly, while ensuring global consistency with cultural relevance can easily spiral off-brand.

In-house asset creation. Global brand governance. Watertight approvals from one location. This pipe dream is an everyday reality for marketing teams using the power of BAM. With a simple creation suite, in-house teams can produce high-quality marketing materials within set templates. Approvals are made seamless too, with all key stakeholders notified at every stage of production. With BAM, teams can be agile, accurate and create with confidence without professional support.

4 ways to use BAM in IT and Telecoms

In-house creation

To cope with the volume of marketing materials that global IT and Telecoms companies need to produce, BAM’s innovative creation suite reduces the need for agency help. When you can bring more production in-house, you can cut lengthy back-and-forth approval processes and get better value for your agency budget.

Agility

With much faster times to market, your teams will be able to respond faster to new opportunities.

Approvals

When your teams are producing a high volume of assets for campaigns across the globe, BAM helps you keep track of approvals from a single location. It also ensures that all key stakeholders are kept in the loop.

Connecting employees across the globe

In a large global company, it can be a major challenge to keep your teams aligned with your core values and company goals. BAM brings your teams together from a central location, giving them access to assets that resonate with local markets and align with your employer brand.

Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG)

To meet consumer demand, Unilever, Coca-Cola, Mars and other FMCG conglomerates have to react fast on a global scale. These big names are omnipresent, with their products in almost every corner of the globe. Unilever, for example, has a presence in 190 markets around the world. 

To take advantage of every opportunity, in every market, their variety of brands need different messaging and imagery to appeal to consumers in different locations. To make matters more complicated, this varies in countries, states and even cities in the same region. 

To achieve this level of accuracy on such a colossal scale, Unilever uses BAM to empower local teams to take asset creation in-house. They can use PIM & ERP integration to respond faster to local demand and access relevant, localised guidelines from a single shared location.

4 ways to use BAM in FMCG

Scale of production

To keep up with the incredible volume of work required to market FMCG products across the globe, BAM streamlines your processes and reduces the need to repeat tasks such as recreating the same assets for different channels.

Speed to market

With easy in-house creation tools, BAM helps you respond in time to take advantage of consumer demand and other shifts in the marketplace well before the competition.

PIM & ERP integration

To react fast with pinpoint accuracy, FMCG marketing teams can use BAM to integrate their PIM & ERP systems. 

Localised guidelines

Keeping track of a number of different brands, in a number of different locations can become a little overwhelming. To take the stress away from this process, BAM provides a single location for localised guidelines. This means that teams across the globe have everything they need to ensure the materials they create stay on brand.

Taking on cross-industry challenges with BAM 

Even if your company doesn’t fall under one of the four industries above, some of the challenges we covered will surely sound familiar to you or your teams. BAM can create endless opportunities for companies in all kinds of sectors. Want to see where it can give your teams the freedom to fly? Get in touch with our teams to arrange your free live demo today.

Table of contents:

  1. Increasing the focus on digital
  2. Time for a refresh?
  3. 4 industries getting the best from BAM
  4. Pharma
  5. Banking
  6. IT and Telecoms
  7. Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG)
  8. Taking on cross-industry challenges with BAM
Branding templates, Template Technology

Energize your brand building with branding templates

Papirfly
3 minutes read

Do you ever find yourself at work thinking “I wish there was a better way to keep control of our brand output”? Watching over your brand is complicated when colleagues are constantly using or even creating assets with no respect to your brand guidelines. As a result, building and developing your brand becomes almost impossible.  

You might take some comfort in the fact that research shows that over 40% of companies struggle with brand inconsistency. In other words, you’re not alone with your struggles. Nevertheless, brand consistency is a fundamental requirement if you are to succeed with your brand building and we’re here to let you know that there is a way to control your brand output. The answer is – Branding Templates.  

Continue reading “Energize your brand building with branding templates”

Do you ever find yourself at work thinking “I wish there was a better way to keep control of our brand output”? Watching over your brand is complicated when colleagues are constantly using or even creating assets with no respect to your brand guidelines. As a result, building and developing your brand becomes almost impossible.  

You might take some comfort in the fact that research shows that over 40% of companies struggle with brand inconsistency. In other words, you’re not alone with your struggles. Nevertheless, brand consistency is a fundamental requirement if you are to succeed with your brand building and we’re here to let you know that there is a way to control your brand output. The answer is – Branding Templates.  

Continue reading “Energize your brand building with branding templates”

Do you ever find yourself at work thinking “I wish there was a better way to keep control of our brand output”? Watching over your brand is complicated when colleagues are constantly using or even creating assets with no respect to your brand guidelines. As a result, building and developing your brand becomes almost impossible.  

You might take some comfort in the fact that research shows that over 40% of companies struggle with brand inconsistency. In other words, you’re not alone with your struggles. Nevertheless, brand consistency is a fundamental requirement if you are to succeed with your brand building and we’re here to let you know that there is a way to control your brand output. The answer is – Branding Templates.  

Continue reading “Energize your brand building with branding templates”

Corporate communications and marketing

The growing power of nostalgia in advertising

Papirfly
6 minutes read

Have you ever been flipping through TV channels and stumbled upon THAT movie, and that’s you occupied for the next couple of hours? What about when you hear THAT song come on the radio, and you can’t help but crank up the volume and sing along.

While THAT movie or THAT song will change from person to person, the reason it evokes these reactions is the same; nostalgia. The warm, reassuring feeling we get when something reminds us of “the good old days”, and an extremely strong psychological trigger that affects people from all backgrounds and generations.

For a long time, brands have turned to the power of nostalgia to connect with consumers on a deeper, emotional level, and it has become particularly prevalent in marketing towards Millennial audiences.

But why is nostalgia advertising such a sought-after strategy for modern marketing teams? Well put down your Pokémon cards and shut off your record player. This article will explain everything you need to know.

What is nostalgia?

Our understanding of nostalgia has come a long way since it was first coined by French physician Johannes Hofer in his 1688 medical dissertation. He believed it was a disease similar to paranoia, where any “sufferer” was manic in their longing for a specific object or place.

Today, a more accurate definition of nostalgia is provided by Alan R. Hirsch:

“Nostalgia is considered a yearning for an idealised past – a longing for a sanitised impression of the past, what in psychoanalysis is referred to as a screen memory – not a true recreation of the past, but rather a combination of many different memories, all integrated together, and in the process all negative emotions filtered out.”

Put simply, nostalgia is our emotional response to a trigger that takes us back to a prior, simpler, happier time, usually in our childhood. This can be directly tied to an experience you enjoyed with your family and friends, or a general connection to sights, smells and sounds that evoke a previous point in time.

Pretty much anything can be a trigger of nostalgia – food, films, songs, games, clothing, old photos – the list is endless. Anything that takes you back to a time and gives you a warm, comforting feeling.

The psychological power of nostalgia

So what is the purpose of nostalgia? A lot of research has been conducted into this phenomenon, and has revealed several standout benefits it has on people’s mood:

  • Nostalgia counteracts feelings of boredom, loneliness and anxiety
  • It increases self-esteem and makes life feel more meaningful
  • It evokes your connections to family, friends, and others who care about you
  • It makes people more tolerant of strangers and more sociable
  • It reduces stress levels
  • It helps people feel more optimistic about the future
  • It makes people feel more positive, and consequently improves their ability to recall information
  • It buffers against negative feelings, and provides a comforting barrier during significant life changes

Some of the most prominent triggers of nostalgia are negative emotions such as fear, sadness or loneliness. In these moments, as well as moments of upheaval in our lives, we often find ourselves yearning for a time where life was simpler and more fun.

That’s why it is no surprise that a survey conducted in 2019 by YouGov and the7stars revealed that 90% of people think fondly about the past occasionally, and 47% do it often or always, and 55% of people would travel back in time if it was an option. (Source YouGov)

The potency of nostalgia is clear to see in all forms of media, especially film and TV, whether it is the evocative 1980s tone and imagery of a series like Stranger Things, or the continuous stream of live-action remakes of beloved Disney animated movies over the past decades.

One of the most powerful things about nostalgia is that it affects people of all ages and generations. Of course, their specific triggers will be different depending on when they grew up – Tamagotchis and frosted tips will mean more for children of the 1990s than the lava lamps and easy-bake ovens of those who grew up in the 1960s.

But the phenomenon of nostalgia itself is fairly universal, which is why it has become such a prominent tool for marketing teams over the years.

Why modern marketers rely on nostalgia

People’s passion for the past has made nostalgia marketing a very effective technique for brands, particularly among Millennial audiences.

One of the strongest ways for brands to develop long-term, sustainable relationships with consumers is to connect with them on an emotional level. Leveraging nostalgia to tie their brand with triggers that bring people back to their childhood and happier times is a compelling way to achieve this.

For brands with extensive histories like Coca-Cola, Nike or Nintendo, the revival of retro products, old-school branding or modern interpretations of classic adverts can be used to remind people why they love the brand in the first place, or to reach out to more nostalgia-craving customers.

But, you don’t need to have a long legacy to harness a nostalgia-based marketing strategy. With the right concepts and understanding of your audience, any company can connect classic images, sounds and feelings that will resonate with consumers.

There are several reasons why nostalgia is believed to be so powerful among Millennial consumers:

  • The stresses of modern life make people learn for a simpler time
  • Events like the COVID-19 pandemic encourage people to escape for the comfort of the past
  • Modern technology is often seen as more impersonal and cold

The same survey by YouGov and the7stars we mentioned earlier revealed that more Millennials reminisce about the past frequently compared with older age groups. Nevertheless, by employing the right triggers, all generations of consumers can be successfully reached with nostalgic advertising.

6 examples of effective nostalgia advertising

Pepsi

Pepsi has often harked back on the company’s history to inspire nostalgia in their customers. Remember the limited-time return of Crystal Pepsi, a discontinued drink from the 1990s, back in 2016? To add even more meat to the nostalgia smorgasbord this delivered, advertising surrounding this revival including the “Crystal Pepsi Trail”, inspired by the revered Oregon Trail video game of the 1970s and 80s.


Spotify

To tug at the heartstrings of their Millennial audiences, Spotify reunited Falkor and Atreyu from The Neverending Story for a funny 2016 advert. The celebrated theme song from the movie plays in the background, tying it into Spotify’s brand purpose to deliver the music people care about.

Adobe

In a clever example of both harnessing nostalgia and current trends, Adobe jumped on the revived interest in Bob Ross and The Joy of Painting to produce a fun series of tutorial videos promoting their new Adobe Photoshop Sketch for the iPad Pro. The authenticity of this parody helped these videos capture a lot of clicks.

Burger King

After 20 years since their last rebrand, Burger King switched things up in 2021 by reverting back to an identity that mirrors their logos used in the 1970s, 80s and 90s. Jones Knowles Ritchie, the agency behind this rebranding, stated that their inspiration was to “pay homage to the brand’s heritage with a refined design that’s confident, simple and fun.”

Pizza Hut

Pizza Hut’s recent “Newstalgia” campaign puts a modern spin on its iconic branding elements. Again, designed to remind people why they love their pizza in the first place. This old-is-new approach is capped off with a Pac-Man collaboration, turning the classic arcade game into an AR experience on QR code-enabled pizza boxes.

Nintendo

Speaking of video games, Nintendo has always been more than willing to feed their customers’ cravings for nostalgia. This could be updated versions of classic gaming franchises like Super Mario World and Pokémon, creating new versions of old-school gaming consoles like the SNES, or the above advert from 2019 depicting two brothers growing up together, falling out, and then reuniting over their experiences playing Nintendo games together.

How to use nostalgia in your campaigns

Despite the incredible power of nostalgia in evoking emotions among consumers of all ages and backgrounds, using it in your marketing campaigns is no guarantee of success.

Without careful planning and strong attention to detail, it can be hard to get the right “feel” that you want to translate to your audiences. Plus, if the nostalgic elements have no connection to your brand values or identity, these attempts may be seen as hollow and inauthentic, and therefore more likely to turn people off your brand than leave them feeling all warm inside.

So, to boost your chances of a successful nostalgia marketing strategy, consider the following tips:

  • Know the inspiration behind your campaign, whether it’s the revival of a classic product, a celebration of a brand milestone, or a refresh of your brand in general
  • Understand your audience and what memories, events and pastimes will encourage them to feel nostalgic
  • Tap into your brand history where possible to remind customers of their positive experiences with your company in the past
  • Check your archives for any classic video footage or imagery that can really inspire nostalgia in your audiences
  • Hop on social media trends like #TBT (Throwback Thursday) to share some classic content from your collection
  • Pay close attention to the details that matter – authenticity is essential for the success of any nostalgia marketing strategy

Evoke the past, embrace the future

When used correctly, nostalgia is one of the most powerful forces in building meaningful, emotional connections with your consumers worldwide. By recognising people’s fondness for the past, you can find the inspiration for creative, compelling campaigns that really resonate with them on a personal level.

However, to make the most of the past, it’s important to look to the future. BAM by Papirfly™ enables your global teams, regardless of design experience, to create studio-standard, on-brand assets that will feel right at home in your nostalgia-driven campaigns.

  • Benefit from fully bespoke, intelligent templates, empowering you to take asset production in-house and work more efficiently
  • House all created assets in one easily accessible location and share them with your teams across the globe
  • Make all guidelines, training videos and assets available company-wide to protect your brand identity

To learn more about how BAM can benefit your business, book your demo today.

Table of contents:

  1. What is nostalgia?
  2. The psychological power of nostalgia
  3. Why modern marketers rely on nostalgia
  4. 6 examples of effective nostalgia advertising
  5. How to use nostalgia in your campaigns
  6. Evoke the past, embrace the future
Employer brand

Your employer brand is strong – so why should you invest more?

Papirfly
4 minutes read

Up until recently, employer branding has been seen by many as a ‘nice-to-have’. Something that gives employees a few extra perks and helps improve morale.

Better late than never, senior-level CEOs have come to realise its true potential for their business’s profitability. Here’s why you should too.

What can employer branding do for your company?

Higher employee engagement. Better recruitment campaigns. Lower staff turnover. The direct benefits of a successful Employer Value Proposition (EVP) are pretty clear.

  • Companies that actively invest in their employer brand reduce turnover by as much as 28% (Source: Officevibe)
  • 50% of candidates will not work for a company with a bad reputation, even if they were paid more (Source: HR Daily Advisor)
  • A strong employer brand attracts 2.5x the applicants of a weaker equivalent (Source: Startup Bonsai)

Less obvious are some of the indirect ways these and other factors can have a big impact on profitability. Employer branding is still a hugely underestimated way of increasing revenue. Businesses are missing out on the enormous potential it can have when you give it the time and resources it needs.

If allowed to realise its full potential, a strong employer brand should reach every employee and enable them to do their best work – as well as empower your company’s ability to capture consumers’ attention in an increasingly competitive landscape.

Building your reputation

In a packed field of competitors all fighting for the attention of the same group of customers, the strength of a brand’s reputation directly influences how positively they stand out from the crowd. A good reputation could be the difference in who they choose to buy from, and your employer brand plays an active role in establishing this perception.

Whether it is highlighting your company’s culture through videos or on your website, or harnessing your employees’ experience on social media, your employer branding is a big influence on how incentivised customers and the wider world are to buy from your company.

Why this boosts profitability

Your employer brand helps you build a positive reputation by reflecting the purpose and values that come through in your advertising. As well as being hyper-aware of modern marketing tactics, consumers are now more in tune with the inner workings of well-known organisations. Research shows that the way a company treats its employees will have a significant effect on buying decisions.

Consequently, creating campaigns around your employees’ happiness and development will build customers’ trust in your brand. Plus, what they say and share about your products and services on their own personal channels often holds more weight than your conventional adverts or messages from the CEO.

If you commit to creating an authentic, positive environment for your employees, this will resonate with both them and your customer base. Don’t underestimate the power your employees yield in your overall reputation – when former employees at Brewdog accused the company of having a “toxic attitude” and creating a “culture of fear”, their positive reputation plummeted, as did overall buzz surrounding the brand.

Earning positive reviews

You should also never underestimate a positive (or negative) employee review. When we buy something online or pick out a restaurant to visit, many of us instinctively turn to review sites to gauge others’ opinions. The same goes for candidates planning their next career move.

Even with a suite of benefits and a recruitment campaign that ticks all the boxes, looking at what past and present employees are saying about a company is the logical way to find out what it’s like working there. 

As well as being one of the most cost-effective recruiting tools, employee reviews are the best way to attract the sharpest minds to your business. In the same way that many companies encourage product reviews to win over customers, your hiring managers have an interest in using positive employee feedback to attract in-demand candidates.

Why this boosts profitability

A strong employer brand means engaged employees who will put the word out that your company is a great place to work. Research from The Harvard Business Review has shown that 80% of employee turnover is due to bad hiring decisions. 

When you combine this with the fact that the average cost of employee turnover is estimated at over £30,000, bad hiring decisions – made as a result of a limited pool of talent due to negative reviews – stand to cost your company significantly.

Having a wider choice of better talent, attracted to your organisation by a strong, inspiring employer brand with numerous positive reviews, makes it more likely that you’ll make a successful hire, limiting your turnover rate… 

Improving employee performance

When your teams are engaged, they are more driven to achieve. This may sound obvious, but many companies fail to see the link between a strong EVP and high performing staff.

Getting your staff engaged with your business goals takes more than offering face-value perks. To build on your employees’ drive to succeed and make the most of their talents, it’s important to set clear goals, provide regular praise and feedback, and give them opportunities to grow through courses and learning opportunities.

Why this boosts profitability

Engaged employees have a knock-on effect throughout a company. It’s often the case that if one team achieves well, it will help another perform better too. Companies with higher employee wellbeing have long been associated with higher business performance. Recent research has proved this to be more true than many may have thought.

Make your employer brand shine with BAM

We hope this has illustrated the direct and indirect influence that strong, effective employer branding can have on your organisation’s financial performance. Getting the maximum ROI from your employer brand efforts can be a major difference-maker in how motivated customers are to buy from you, how long employees stick around, and how productive they are day-to-day.

While employer branding represents a sensible investment in your company’s future, BAM by Papirfly™ empowers it to reach peak performance. Offering the freedom to create consistent print, digital and email marketing without agency support, free your teams up for initiatives that drive employer brand excellence.

Enjoy cost and time savings, eliminate duplicated effort and gain a birds-eye view of your global recruitment activity – discover the full benefits of BAM today by booking a demo.

Table of contents:

  1. Building your reputation
  2. Earning positive reviews
  3. Improving employee performance
  4. Make your employer brand shine with BAM
Retail Marketing

Reimagining the retail production workflow

Papirfly
6 minutes read

Where does the time go in retail workflows?

Retail is one of the most complex and fast-moving industries worldwide, putting an immense amount of pressure on marketing teams in this sector. While technology has evolved significantly, some legacy systems and processes continue to hold these teams back from reaching their full potential.

If you believe this applies in your situation, now is the time to reassess your existing approach to increase your speed to market and maximise your sales. To identify where stubborn, outdated practices are hurting your potential.

Reimagine a new streamlined workflow for retail marketing teams by examining where your time is currently being wasted, and how it should be applied instead.

Reduce manual tasks in production

Although advanced pricing and PIM systems have been around for many years, there remain organisations that still rely on spreadsheets to capture key data for campaigns and promotions. This takes many hours of copy and pasting, duplicated effort, and the risk of data quickly going out of date – meaning you present inaccurate information through your marketing.

21% of marketing budgets are wasted as a result of bad, inaccurate data
(Source: Digital Commerce)

Today, managing and organising your product data through PIM or ERP systems makes managing and updating this information more streamlined and straightforward. Plus, tools like BAM by Papirfly™ can integrate with these systems to translate their data into marketing assets and campaigns in just a couple of clicks.

No more hours wasted scouring spreadsheets for the correct SKUs or manually transferring product data into upcoming signage, social posts, email campaigns and more. Instead, connecting everything through one solution and automating this process, assets can be produced faster and more cost-effectively, with even greater accuracy.

More marketing asset delivery in-house

The support of a reputable marketing agency provides many benefits to retail marketing teams. Their expert insight and strategic thinking can help you conceptualise campaigns that boost sales, raise awareness and engage both existing and prospective customers.

But, their capacity to perform this for your organisation can become clogged by jobs like routine updates or reformatting assets for different markets. These reasonably straightforward tweaks do not demand the attention of specialist designers or require fresh, innovative thinking. Instead, it raises the costs you incur from your agency and limits the advantages they offer to your organisation.

To rectify this, it could be helpful to bring this routine work in-house. With an easy-to-use brand activation management solution in place, this becomes less a case of pushing more work onto your internal teams, and more about reallocating your agency budget to get more for your money.

By harnessing this technology, not only will your teams be capable of completing non-specialist tasks quicker than if it were sent to an agency, who would have to fit it into their existing schedule – your agency will now have more time and budget to devote to winning campaigns and strategies, delivering a greater return on your investment.

Reacting faster than ever before 

In retail, much of your success depends on having your products ready at the right place, at the right time, to take advantage of the most lucrative sales opportunities.

Trends can appear overnight. Consumer demand could skyrocket at any moment. Even unexpected weather will impact your sales. If your teams don’t have the tools to respond to these spur-of-the-moment changes in the market, you are missing out on business opportunities.

For instance, if you were dependent on an agency, it may be several days or even weeks until they can dedicate resources to this campaign. Then, after time spent planning and producing the required assets, this may be followed by more back-and-forth between both sides to get the design just right. By that time, the opportunity could have passed you by – an example where outsourcing tasks can actually be more time-consuming.

This is another occasion when it pays (in both time and money) to empower your teams to produce more themselves. Using creation tools with pre-defined templates (like BAM by Papirfly™), your teams have the freedom to create the assets they need without going off-brand. This means they can be ready to act before the competition with time-sensitive assets for trend-based campaigns and seasonal promotions.

Simplified cross-platform promotion

The abundance of marketing channels and techniques available today have left traditional retail production workflows outdated. These old-school approaches didn’t have to contend with this breadth of platforms, and the burden of maintaining total consistency across all channels.

To meet this challenge, it is important to introduce modern brand activation management software with preset templates for multiple channels into your workflows, as this will allow you to adapt assets automatically for all necessary platforms, rather than resort to tedious, manual tweaks.

Cross-platform promotion consolidates the process of bringing your brand to life with messaging that looks, sounds and feels the same across everything you produce. You can tell your brand’s story with consistency through in-store signage, brochures and more – you’ll also have extra peace of mind when your assets are printed by different stores in their specific locations.

Smarter decision-making

In any industry, quick decision-making is a great asset to have. Especially for those in leadership roles:

“In a survey across a range of business sectors, only 20% of respondents believed their organisations excelled at decision making. Plus, a large majority said most of the time they allocate to decision making isn’t used ineffectively”.
(Source: McKinsey)

In retail marketing, the pace of decision-making is vital to get campaigns to market quickly – any lack of pace can often be attributed to slow, complicated processes that require input from multiple team members.

While it’s important that key stakeholders have control and oversight of campaigns, in some cases their entire teams are involved – using different software, communicating different business priorities, and working in different locations. This makes the overall workflow more complicated and problematic than it needs to be.

By centralising assets, creation, approvals and final marketing materials in one location, you can reduce the number of people needed to oversee a task, eliminate convoluted sign-off processes and ultimately, help key stakeholders make faster and better marketing decisions. Products like BAM by Papirfly™ give you a birds-eye view of your marketing collateral so you can see what’s being used and where.

Self-sufficiency for local teams

Teams at individual stores are in the best position to respond to what’s happening in their local markets. However, by the time they have communicated with head office, received the marketing materials they need and secured sign-off, they may have been pipped at the post by the competition.

Using smart templates and making brand guidelines easily available gives teams at individual stores the freedom to make the right marketing decisions for their specific locations. At the same time, head office can be confident that all marketing stays consistent with the global brand.

As well as freeing up time for teams at local stores to spend on the shop floor, it also relieves unnecessary pressure on staff at head office. It’s often small teams with limited capacity that have to answer questions from many different local stores and provide the relevant assets they need on time.

Before and after a streamlined production workflow

Elkjøp is one of the largest consumer electronics companies in the Nordic countries. Before Papirfly, 85 employees would have been involved in any one production project. Unsurprisingly, this approach would drain resources and result in a sluggish speed to market.

Since then, Papirfly has helped them bring more in-house, aligning teams in different markets and empowering them to produce bespoke offers, promotions and campaigns way ahead of the competition.

“Using Papirfly has enabled us to have the speed to market that we did not have, prior to Papirfly. We can now communicate our unique offers, our unique guarantees and services in a much quicker, efficient, and controlled way than we used to do.”

Thomas Sourour, Marketing Production Lead

Not only do they have more time to take a competitive advantage, but Elkjøp has also reduced the number of employees needed for the average in-house production job from 85 to just 5. This works out as a resource-saving of 10-15 years.

What could a streamlined production workflow look like for your company?

The infographic below shows just how much time is wasted at various stages of production, against what your reimagined process could be like with BAM by Papirfly™. As well as freeing-up resources, it shows BAM’s huge potential for drastically cutting your time-to-market and getting materials across the line before the competition:

Embracing new ways of working for a new age of retail 

As you will have seen in the headlines, or felt in your own workplace, the pandemic has had a devastating effect on bricks-and-mortar retail. However, innovation from brands and the marketers behind them have the power to make sure they learn and overcome the events of the past year-and-a-half. After all, we’re social creatures, and physical stores will forever hold an important place in the shopping experience for consumers.

That’s why even with the devastation of COVID-19, we believe that there is a promising future ahead for retail. Retail brands that have adapted fast and embraced new ways of working are already proving us right. 

Discover the future of retail workflows with BAM

With the power of print and digital combined, smart templates, automations, PIM & ERP integration and more, BAM is your ticket to a more streamlined production workflow.

More than just software, BAM is a new way of working that will bring your teams, your brand and your business up-to-speed and ready to take advantage of every opportunity that’s coming your way.

To learn more about the innovative features driving retail marketing forward, get in touch to book your demo today.

Table of contents:

  1. Where does the time go in retail workflows?
  2. Before and after a streamlined production workflow
  3. What could a streamlined production workflow look like for your company?
  4. Embracing new ways of working for a new age of retail
  5. Discover the future of retail workflows with BAM
Brand consistency

How brand consistency positively impacts budgets and ROI

Papirfly
6 minutes read

In today’s highly competitive landscape, it’s never been more important to maintain brand consistency. In order to stand apart from competitors, clear, distinct and steady branding is vital in building that strong emotional connection with your target audience. 

Your brand is your organisation’s identity. It’s the personality that potential customers see and identify with. This means that any semblance of brand confusion – be it an inconsistent brand presentation across your marketing channels or an ill-thought-out campaign jumping on a recent trend – can cause customers to lose trust in your company.

The consequence of poor brand messaging with your target audience has a knock-on effect on your ROI. Whether it’s loss of revenue from customers disillusioned by your unsuccessful branding, or investment wasted on campaigns that aren’t aligned with your unique brand identity, the impact of inconsistent branding can be far-reaching. 


So what are the effects of inconsistent branding? What pitfalls should marketers avoid? And what action can you teams take on marketing campaigns to build trust, prevent poor branding, and create a positive customer experience and improve ROI in the long term?

Where brand consistency falls down

First, let’s explore some of the most frequent factors behind inconsistent branding, and how this manifests itself.

Poorly implemented brand guidelines

Your brand guidelines should be at the heart of all past, present and future campaigns. They should highlight to your team members the core of what makes your branding efforts unique – whether they’re established veterans or freshly recruited, and wherever they’re based across the globe.

These range from details like approved colour schemes, brand styles and brand voice, right through to overarching explanations of your company’s values and ambitions. If these are strictly followed and communicated, there should be no threat to brand consistency.


However, would it surprise you to read that Marq (formerly LucidPress) has reported that while 95% of organisations have brand guidelines set up, only a quarter of these are actually observed?

How brand consistency positively impacts budgets and ROI

Without a clear understanding of the fundamental aspects of your brand, it’s impossible for teams to deliver brand assets consistently. There is too much room for interpretation and guesswork – both of which are big contributors to brand confusion.


This is why any brand management solution should include a dedicated portal to support  educating teams on their brand. It provides a distinct area users can visit to explore their brand guidelines and everything else necessary to deliver successful branding.

You’ve lost sight of your brand vision

Times change, and brands have to adapt with these in order to survive and thrive. However, meeting new trends and keeping up-to-date doesn’t mean losing your brand identity or your brand vision.

Your brand vision is a core component in what drives your company forward and why you approach your work in the way that you do. It informs your branding strategies, making clear what your company stands for and what makes it unique. 


Losing sight of this in an effort to stay on top of the latest trends might seem like a way to capture audiences with positive emotions in the short term. Without oversight and vision, however, it quickly undermines your original brand identity and any positive traction you’ve made on building brand equity.

Not keeping in touch with your target audience

Similar to the above, the impact of not having consistent branding can come as a result of not understanding the needs of your target audience, nor the activities that build trust in your brand in the first place.

The “New Coke” campaign is a clear example of this. While Coca-Cola flourishes as one of the world’s premier brands with a consistently maintained image, the company’s reaction to a decade of popularity for “The Pepsi Challenge” launched in 1975, saw the creation of New Coke – which proved to be a disastrous break away from what their audience wanted or expected.

Audiences want to know that the brands they’re loyal to understand them in a way their competitors don’t. If you don’t stay engaged with your audience’s interests, and adapt your messaging as this evolves over time, your branding efforts will eventually become inconsistent with what they associate with your organisation.


However, the best brands learn lessons and make those slip ups work in their favour. In 2019 the company signed an agreement with the Netflix show, Stranger Things, to feature the failed New Coke product in episodes. With the third season of the hit show set in 1985, Coca-Cola was able to bring a narrative of 80s nostalgia while showing its ability to make fun of itself as a brand – a charming and creative way to enhance its resonance with customers.

Miscommunication between global teams

When it comes to defining inconsistencies and where they come from, a common source is miscommunication. This is particularly a problem for businesses that have teams scattered across the globe, or those who work with external agencies to produce and distribute some of their brand assets.

While this can work in theory, it leaves a lot of room for mistakes. If parties miscommunicate, or instructions are misinterpreted by those responsible for creating the asset, then branding efforts can quickly be undermined.


This can result in poor branding, which either needs to be reviewed, briefed again, redone, reviewed again, and so forth, wasting time and resources. It could also be released to your audience, undermining efforts to build trust and damaging your brand identity.

Understanding the impact of inconsistent branding

So, now we’ve presented a few examples of the sources of brand confusion, how does this undermine your efforts to build a strong brand? You need to consider:

  • The time and resources you are investing into correcting poor branding
  • The time and resources it will take to gradually build the trust and loyalty of customers who have been disillusioned due to any negative branding
  • The damage that is being left to your overall reputation as a result of brand confusion

How to avoid brand confusion

If your brand’s messages, visuals and campaigns across your channels are misaligned, you are sending out confusing signals to your audience. Over time this can significantly undermine your customer experience and brand reputation. 


If you are concerned that your efforts are not ensuring brand consistency, consider the following steps:

Make your brand guidelines visible and accessible

Your brand guidelines are your strongest line of defence against brand inconsistency. Make sure they are stored in an accessible location for those responsible for your marketing channels worldwide, and provide prompt guidance if these are updated at any point.

Bring your team on board

As well as placing a more prominent focus on your brand guidelines, it’s important to ensure your team understands it. Ideally this should be done directly, either in the form of a branding masterclass meeting or group workshop, ensuring that everyone involved in executing brand strategies does so consistently.

Establish powerful approval workflows

To reduce any wasted resources on proofing, revising and reviewing assets, set approval workflows to lockdown on any inconsistencies immediately. These parameters keep your marketers and graphic designers in check, reducing the risk of anything being released that doesn’t accurately reflect your brand identity.

Build trust by asking customers for feedback

If you are worried that your brand message might be diverging with the interests and values of your customers, ask them for their feedback via email marketing, social media or other channels. This will help shape your understanding of what customers want from your brand and if you are delivering on these expectations.

The importance of brand consistency

Always remember that brand consistency is a mark of quality. It emphasises to your customers that you are a professional organisation that offers them stability, reliability and attention to detail. 


Any deviation from this can hurt the trust you’ve spent a long time building up among your various target audiences. This will leave an unflattering mark on your budget, and the return on investment you can expect from your campaigns.

Take marketing in-house

At Papirfly, we are leading the way on brand consistency. Through our dedicated software, our clients are ensuring seamless integration across their marketing channels. This empowers their teams worldwide with the tools to develop their own brand assets – all while observing brand guidelines and being monitored by key personnel.


Our brand management platform unlocks the potential to bring your branding in-house like never before. By providing your global teams with a platform to create studio-standard brand assets for your campaigns, you can reduce your reliance on external agencies and minimise the inconsistencies this can cause for your marketing. Mastering brand consistency is possible, with the right strategy and the most innovative brand management software.

Table of contents:

  1. Where brand consistency falls down
  2. Understanding the impact of inconsistent branding
  3. How to avoid brand confusion
  4. The importance of brand consistency
Marketing

9 adverts from the 90s that will leave you feeling nostalgic

Papirfly
6 minutes read

90s nostalgia seems to be in vogue right now. From the Friends Reunion special and Disney’s remakes of classic 90s animated movies like The Lion King and Aladdin, to the extraordinary revival and cost of Pokémon cards, many look back on the final years of the 20th century with nothing but fond memories.

With the 90s a decade in demand, we wanted to hop aboard the nostalgia train and look back at some of the most iconic adverts from this period, and what lessons we can take from them for future campaigns.

So drop your Gameboy, put on some Backstreet Boys or Spice Girls in the background, and let’s see what marketing in the 90s had to offer.

1. Nike: Just Do It

Although the campaign technically launched in 1988, Nike’s now synonymous slogan “Just Do It” rose to prominence in the 90s, capturing the imagination of consumers for its empowering, universal message, whether people were interested in sports or not.

What began life as a throwaway suggestion based on the final words of a convicted murderer (no seriously) became the glue that connected all Nike’s then-disparate television spots. The message landed better than they could have hoped, and now it’s virtually impossible to distinguish the brand from the tag line.

What’s the lesson?

Think clearly about the solution that your product or service provides to your audience, and contain that into one simple yet powerful message. Also, don’t be afraid to toss out ideas in brainstorming sessions – you might unexpectedly land on a winner.

2. The Energizer Bunny


Again treading the boundary of the late 80s/early 90s, the Energizer Bunny ads were incredibly popular, parodying the established Duracell Bunny and highlighting its superior performance over its competitors. Since then, this pink rabbit has gone on to become just as recognisable as their competition.

What’s the lesson?

This lesson is more of a warning. Despite the popularity of the Energizer ads, sales actually declined, with speculation being that people thought the ads were promoting Duracell, not Energizer.

So, if you intend to make a direct parody of your competitors to promote the performance of your own product, make sure your own brand stands out from what’s already out there.

3. The Andrex Puppy


The mischievous little Andrex Puppy was all over UK television in the 1990s, with his antics not only designed to tug at people’s heartstrings, but to clearly demonstrate the strength of Andrex’s toilet paper and the length of each roll. Today, this loveable pup has made Andrex the biggest brand in its sector by quite a margin.

What’s the lesson?

Consider the benefits of introducing animals into your advertising to elicit a strong emotional response from audiences – of course ensuring to only use them in a way that ties directly to your brand, products or services.

4. The Tango Orangeman


Now onto a mascot that was just as memorable in the 1990s, but a lot more controversial than the beloved Andrex Puppy. The Tango Orange Man was a reaction against the norm television advertising where products improved the lives of those in the advert.

Instead, as the video shows above, after a man drinks Tango he is slapped in the face by a man completely covered in orange, followed by their famous tagline “You know when you’ve been Tango’d”.

The popularity of the ad caused controversy when children started mimicking the slaps in playgrounds, so it was later remade with a kiss instead. But, the campaign was an unquestionable success, boosting Tango sales by around a third.

What’s the lesson?

Don’t be afraid to challenge the status quo if the opportunity emerges. This Tango advert and campaign is considered a pioneer of future viral marketing and guerrilla marketing attempts, and that is due to it going against conventional approaches to advertising at the time.

5. Got Milk?


The campaign that launched thousands of memes and copycats. The first “Got Milk?” advert from the California Milk Processor Board aired in 1993, depicting a hapless historian unable to answer a $10,000 phone-in question because his mouth was stuck by the peanut butter sandwich he was eating.

The “Got Milk?” campaign is now considered one of the most memorable of all time, attracting the involvement of numerous A-List celebrities and producing many hilarious ads – although seemingly not making much of a difference to declines in milk consumption… 

What’s the lesson?

Often it’s important to target your existing customers with adverts reminding them what’s so great about the product or service you offer, rather than place all your focus on attracting new customers.

6. Wonderbra: Hello Boys


The Hello Boys advert from 1994 featuring supermodel Eva Herzigová turned the tide for Wonderbra in the battle of the bras against the Gossard Ultrabra. Previously considered the old-fashioned choice, this billboard reversed the fortunes of the brand, and has been voted the most iconic poster of all time.

It is so celebrated that Wonderbra revived the concept in 2018, but instead shifted the focus to promoting female empowerment, switching the phrase “Hello Boys” to “Hello Me”.

What’s the lesson?

Today, the lesson we can take from “Hello Boys” is that some adverts are products of their time, and would likely not prove as effective in a different era. In these instances, it is important to assess your landscape and speak to what your audience cares about, as demonstrated by Wonderbra’s transition to empowering messaging.

7. Coca-Cola: Holidays Are Coming


Coca-Cola has long been synonymous with Christmas time, and this advert from 1995 played a big part in cementing that reputation.

With the classic jingle, shots of people marvelling at the vibrant red truck driving past, and images of Santa Claus sipping a cold bottle, this ad has become a staple of Coca-Cola’s holiday marketing, to the point where many go out of their way to see these real-life trucks parade the streets throughout December.

What’s the lesson?

Building an association between your brand and a celebrated holiday can help forge a strong connection with customers when these holidays approach on the calendar. Even if you don’t reach Coca-Cola’s level of association, holiday-themed campaigns can be a great way to capture people’s attention year-round.

8. Guinness: Surfer


Considered one of the greatest television adverts of all time, this Guinness spot depicts a group of surfers waiting for the perfect moment to catch a wave powered by giant horses.

This is more akin to a short film than traditional TV ad, promoting the idea that good things come to those who wait, a reference to the fact that Guinness takes a long time to pour. Costing £6 million to produce, it is regularly mentioned as one of the most artistic and unique ads to have ever been broadcast.

What’s the lesson?

Sometimes putting belief and passion into a project will reap rewards against all expectations. When the ad was initially pushed out for public research, the response was negative. But, by trusting their instincts, they launched one of the most recognisable ads of the 90s.

9. Budweiser: Whassup?!


Finally, 1999 brought us a TV ad that not only captured a great deal of attention, but changed the way people communicated for a long time.

Budweiser’s series of commercials depicting a group of friends on the phone watching a football game and drinking beer launched the famous catchphrase “Whassup?!”, a word that quickly became a go-to introduction for conversations across America.

What’s the lesson?

Don’t be afraid to celebrate the absurdities, quirks and behaviours of your audience in your ads. The more that people can see themselves in your campaigns, the more likely it will resonate with them and create stronger, more sustainable bonds.

From the past to the present and future… 

We hope this trip back in time celebrating 90s advertising hit you right in your nostalgia sweet spot. As you can see, even several decades later, there’s a lot that brands can learn from these campaigns to inspire ideas that will have people in the 2050s looking back on old adverts with the same fondness.

And, with innovations like BAM by Papirfly™, it is now quicker and easier than ever for marketing teams to create captivating, perfectly-branded assets for global campaigns.

With the capacity to produce marketing collateral in-house much faster and more cost-effectively, you can have more time to brainstorm creative, compelling advertising for your worldwide audiences, with complete confidence that anything generated by your team is on-brand and studio-quality.

Embrace the future of marketing today by booking your personal demo.…

Table of contents:

  1. 1. Nike: Just Do It
  2. 2. The Energizer Bunny
  3. 3. The Andrex Puppy
  4. 4. The Tango Orangeman
  5. 5. Got Milk?
  6. 6. Wonderbra: Hello Boys
  7. 7. Coca-Cola: Holidays Are Coming
  8. 8. Guinness: Surfer
  9. 9. Budweiser: Whassup
  10. From the past to the present and future…
Brand Asset Management / BAM, Branding templates

How online layout design templates protect your brand identity

Papirfly
3 minutes read

50% of companies say their customers expect great design and cross-channel consistency from their brand.

Staying consistent in every channel, on every platform, anywhere and anytime… Yikes! You can feel the stress, right? Unfortunately, the importance of proper and consistent branding is growing simultaneously with the evolving Martech stack. And if you don’t have the proper tools to manage your brand going forward, you’ll soon be in brand trouble.

So, how do you enforce brand consistency? There is no magic recipe as brand management is extensive and there is no single tool that can fix everything. However, if there is one tool you should take a closer look at, it is online layout design templates.

This marketing tool is a must-have for marketers and brands. It simplifies how you manage and protect your brand identity and it streamlines company operations. Let’s take a look.

3 reasons how online design templates protects your brand

Strong brands outperform weak brands by 20%. It’s safe to say that all brands are aiming for brand consistency and with online layout design templates at hand, this job becomes a whole lot easier:

You’ll have one source of truth
  • One of the biggest challenges with maintaining brand consistency is the issues with asset distribution and storage. With assets spread all over the place, it is difficult knowing what file is valid and which is not, and the risk of brand inconsistency is huge. By collecting all assets in one place, this challenge becomes redundant.
You’ll get brand control and brand development happens from one single place
  • Not only do you get to control your brand output with online templates, but you also get to keep your brand alive and keep it up to date matching current market needs. Whatever design update or additional format options, you can easily update your brand in real-time.

Staying brand relevant is easy

  • Market demands, and consumer behaviour is changing fast, and timing becomes a crucial factor for marketers and their brand. With online design templates you don’t have to worry that your brand will fall behind its competitors. Anyone can create brand assets in seconds without involving anyone else.

How to get started with online design layout templates

Map up what brand assets are frequently used
  • There is probably no need to digitalize every brand asset your company has. Focus on assets that are repeatedly asked for and which need adjustments before use. E.g. posters, in-store promotions, menu’s, business cards, social media assets, ads and similar.
Map up what adjustments your colleagues ask for
  • You decide what can and can’t be changed, but you also need to make sure your template is matching the user’s need. Are they frequently asking for image changes, then you should allow images to be replaced or changed? Or how about the logo? Do you need to allow for different logo placements or even different logo colors? Regardless, with templates, you stay in complete control.
Digitalize your brand asset templates:
  • Transform your assets and make them available online. This tool allows anyone to create their own brand assets without risking brand disruption.
Make sure your brand asset templates are available
  • No tool alone secure usage. It’s crucial that everyone can access your templates 24/7. If not, it won’t take long before they give up and create something on their own.
Monitor usage and asset needs:
  • Your brand identity evolves, make sure your templates keep up with the development. But here’s the beauty with online templates, you can make changes and update your brand online, your colleagues will have access to the latest updates in real-time.

What kind of brand assets can be digitalized?

In marketing there is more to brand assets than static images and documents. Although this blog mainly mentions assets based on Adobe Indesign you need to know that with the right tool at hand, you can also create templates for video marketing and banner advertising. With a full range template suite at hand, your marketing efforts will never be the same again. 

Grow your brand, grow your business

Branding and business growth are closely connected. Not only is proper brand building and the ability to secure consistency important for your brand awareness and company growth, but a solid brand identity also attracts potential investors. According to a study done by Reuters, 82% see brand strength as an important factor for investors.

In other words, proper brand building is mandatory if you want to attract customers and establish brand credibility that keep you market relevant for the long-run. And online layout design templates is one tool that will make this job a whole lot easier. 

Brand Activation Management

Time-consuming tasks you can ditch with BAM

Papirfly
3 minutes read

It’s always busy around this time of year, and if your teams are struggling to meet urgent deadlines, then they’re not alone. With that in mind, we’ve identified some of the most time-consuming tasks in marketing and how your teams can tackle them without working overtime.

When workloads are high, resources are low and deadlines are tight, BAM by Papirfly™ can help take up the slack with a whole suite of innovative time-saving features. 

Time-consuming tasks you can ditch with BAM

#1 Sending large files

Where time is wasted

Compressing, packaging, waiting, uploading, downloading. These might not seem like much on their own, but when a deadline is approaching, every minute watching an ‘uploading’ screen feels like an hour. Throw a slow connection and large file sizes into the mix, and those minutes move even slower.

How BAM can save it

By removing the need to send large files in the first place! With a safe and secure DAM built-in, BAM allows you to store the assets you create before giving you the opportunity to share them with the wider company, or set specific access permissions to the teams who need them.

#2 Outsourcing everything

Where time is wasted

While agencies can give you an endless bank of creativity, strategic thinking and other expertise, back-and-forth approvals over minor amends is not the best use of their time, or yours. Although it may seem counterintuitive, outsourcing less of your work will help you get better value for your agency budget.

How BAM can save it

With BAM, you can empower your teams to create more in-house at the same quality you’d get from your agency, in a matter of minutes. The innovative template feature keeps their work constrained within your brand guidelines while still giving them freedom to create. Taking the simple routine tasks in-house saves agency time from being spent on what your teams can do themselves and frees-up their expertise for what they’re best at.

#3 Disjointed approval processes

Where time is wasted

Every marketer has been there. When lots of people (possibly too many) are involved in a project, and all of them need to give their input across a range of materials, staying on top of feedback becomes a complicated business. Without a streamlined approval process, comments can be missed, repeated or begin to contradict each other. This creates confusion instead of the clear actionable feedback your teams need for a successful campaign roll-out.

How BAM can save it

It can sometimes take several rounds of amends to get a campaign perfect. Without a way of structuring, documenting and sharing approvals with the relevant parties, comments and feedback can easily spiral out of control. With Papirfly, this doesn’t have to be the case. BAM allows you to automate digitised workflows within one portal where teams can access relevant assets, leave comments and receive feedback in a single location. The entire version history and audit trail are recorded, and marketing materials can only be released and shared once final approval has been given. You’ll also get extra peace of mind with the ability to notify stakeholders whenever assets are reopened post sign-off.

Are time-wasting processes holding your teams back?

Find out more about the features above and start streamlining your marketing today. Get ready for…

High-speed delivery

  • Create professional materials in a matter of minutes and be the first to respond to market demands.

Global localisation

  • Simplify campaign localisation and make sure all your materials land with impact.

Watertight consistency

  • Forget last minute amends and create consistency from the beginning by setting dynamic templates for asset creation.

Complete control

  • Keep teams and stakeholders in-the-loop and select who has access to certain assets.

Curious to know more? See the power of BAM for yourself by booking a demo.

Table of contents:

  1. Sending large files
  2. Outsourcing everything
  3. Disjointed approvals processes
  4. Are time-wasting processes holding your teams back?