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Corporate

How to create dynamic display ads that count

Papirfly
6 minutes read

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

How to make your display ad stand out from the crowd

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

5 useful creative tips to boost your ad performance and ROI

1. Use compelling visuals

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

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

2. Write copy engaging copy

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

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

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

3. Use humour where appropriate

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

4. Solve the audience’s problem

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

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

5. Include a clear call-to-action

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

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

3 examples of great display ads

The North Face

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

Why it’s effective:

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

Microsoft

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

Why it’s effective:

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

Semrush

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

Why it’s effective:

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

Create dynamic display ads efficiently with smart templates

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Table of contents:

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

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Brand management, Brand strategy

How to manage a brand? You need brand management.

Papirfly
5 minutes read

In marketing, brand management is an extensive field of expertise and a full-time job. Nonetheless, it’s not uncommon that marketers have to combine lead generation, communication, content creation, website administration and social media with building a strong, long-lasting brand. If you’re one of those who manages to do this with success, then hats off to you.

Luckily, many of the abovementioned tasks are digitalized and thus easier to carry out and manage. Let’s look at how you can also digitize and automate how you manage your brand through proper digital marketing tools

1. Centralize your brand

Your brand consists of multiple elements and rules. Your brand’s personality, it’s voice and appearance along with a ton of brand assets outline your brand.

Continue reading “How to manage a brand? You need brand management.”

In marketing, brand management is an extensive field of expertise and a full-time job. Nonetheless, it’s not uncommon that marketers have to combine lead generation, communication, content creation, website administration and social media with building a strong, long-lasting brand. If you’re one of those who manages to do this with success, then hats off to you.

Luckily, many of the abovementioned tasks are digitalized and thus easier to carry out and manage. Let’s look at how you can also digitize and automate how you manage your brand through proper digital marketing tools

1. Centralize your brand

Your brand consists of multiple elements and rules. Your brand’s personality, it’s voice and appearance along with a ton of brand assets outline your brand.

Continue reading “How to manage a brand? You need brand management.”

In marketing, brand management is an extensive field of expertise and a full-time job. Nonetheless, it’s not uncommon that marketers have to combine lead generation, communication, content creation, website administration and social media with building a strong, long-lasting brand. If you’re one of those who manages to do this with success, then hats off to you.

Luckily, many of the abovementioned tasks are digitalized and thus easier to carry out and manage. Let’s look at how you can also digitize and automate how you manage your brand through proper digital marketing tools

1. Centralize your brand

Your brand consists of multiple elements and rules. Your brand’s personality, it’s voice and appearance along with a ton of brand assets outline your brand.

Continue reading “How to manage a brand? You need brand management.”

Branding templates, Template Technology

How Template Studio keeps your brand consistent

Papirfly
3 minutes read

There are many factors that have an impact on your company’s success. Branding is one of them. Your brand is your company’s identity, it’s what separates you from your competitors and helps you stand out from the crowd. That is… If you have managed to establish a strong and memorable brand.

The question is, how do you get there? First and foremost, you need to establish brand consistency. Easier said than done when less than 10% of B2B companies state that they are consistent across all marketing channels… Obviously, brand consistency does not happen by chance!

That’s why you need a proper platform to help you out. With Template Studio, you get a self-serviced approach to keep your design on-brand at all times.

The marketing tool that secures brand consistency

Branding is a task the entire company must embrace; every employee and department needs to understand and know how to communicate and use your brand. To simplify it, without uniform brand management you risk incorrect brand communication and brand dilution. And you don’t have to be Einstein to realize that this will damage your brand value.

Also read: How online layout design templates protect your brand identity

Template Studio saves your life and your brand

As a marketer, you probably have a long list of requests in your mailbox for brand asset changes. Whether it is a format change, file type request, translation changes, contact changes, image change or other localization adjustments, it is a task you must respond to. 

Unless you have Template Studio. This tool allows marketers to create the perfect creative template suite for the entire company, completely self-serviced and always on-brand.

How Template Studio secures brand consistency

If you have the resources and capacity to respond to all the asset changes on-time you are a star. If you don’t have the time, don’t worry, you’re not the only one. The digital marketing space puts strains on marketing departments all over; being present in a range of different platforms that demands attention and continuous nurturing makes it hard to keep up. In 2020, Martech found 8000 digital tools available. How many of these 8000 do you have to present your brand in: Websites, social media, advertising tools, email communication, sales tools and more?

Template Studio takes it down a notch and allows you to achieve brand consistency through a few simple steps:

  • You control your brand from one single source and your designs are always professional looking and updated.
  • The template technology makes sure your designs stay the same regardless of the creator. Responsive technology and content control always keep you in control of your brand image.
  • The online editor accepts a wide range of templates to be created. This secures a unified brand look across numerous platforms and channels.
Solutions_Design_Templates_04_Templates

Also read: How to automate document creation and stay brand consistent

Valuable template capabilities you should be aware of:

  • Template Studio transforms standard Adobe Indesign or Illustrator files into digital brand templates.
  • The technology is easy to use, and anyone can be a designer without any software know-how or design skills.
  • Brand assets are always updated and on-brand when digitalized. When you make changes to your designs or have new brand assets, just publish new digital templates to the studio and voila. Or update your existing ones.
  • The studio provides flexible brand control as you decide what can and can’t be changed. Each template can be modified to suit your company as well as the creator’s needs to ensure your designs are always on-brand.
  • File output is carefully controlled and allows you to prepare your files for multiple channels and platforms. One template = multiple formats.

Also read: Why marketers need digital brand templates

Template Studio keeps your brand management balanced

Apart from keeping your brand consistent, Template Studio also provides other benefits. When you establish self-serviced branding templates you no longer need to worry about your mailbox be stuffed with ad-hoc design requests. Neither do you have to worry about frustrated colleagues taking matters into their own hands and designing something without respecting your brand guidelines. Nor do you have to spend money on simple design tasks that require the help of a creative agency.

Instead, you can work peacefully with your strategic and long-term initiatives necessary to establish a strong and reliable brand that keeps your current customers loyal and future customers will desire your brand.

Curious to learn more about our Template Studio? Check out our brochure.

 

Corporate communications and marketing

Ad recall: How to make your marketing more memorable

Papirfly
5 minutes read

Have you ever mentioned a TV advert from the past to a friend and been met with blank stares? That’s because what we remember and interact with in advertising varies from person to person. What one person remembers seeing, another may have brushed over. As brands may use several messages on a single audience, they need to understand whether they made an impact and which ones were memorable – if at all.

Using ad recall, brands can gauge a better understanding of their marketing and its effectiveness. Let’s explore it in more detail…

What is ad recall?

Ad recall is a metric used for advertising and marketing campaigns where brands can find out the impact of campaign messaging on their chosen target audience. The metric has been used in physical focus groups in the past, where participants are physically shown the ad and asked to respond to questions about it.

Today, ad recall is used in a much less traditional sense (though outdoor ad recall was up 51% during lockdown). Channels such as Facebook and YouTube heavily push ‘ad recall’ surveys, where the user is disrupted in their feed or on a video and asked about what they have seen in relation to an ad for a particular product or service. Usually, the brand can use this data to decide whether the advert:

  • Had the effect it was hoping for
  • Had a powerful enough creative
  • Is being promoted on the right channel 

How is ad recall measured? 

At its most basic level, you could argue that ad recall is measured by the percentage of people who saw or interacted with your brand. But that data alone isn’t enough to make any informed decisions. Ultimately, the way it’s calculated will depend on the method used. Many big traditional media placement agencies will run physical ad recall groups, or approach people on the street. But ad recall is mostly used nowadays on Facebook and YouTube.

The way these two tech giants measure the effectiveness of ads differs. Here’s a short summary of each: 

How Facebook measures ad recall


Facebook uses an estimated recall rate to calculate how memorable your adverts are. If engagement and views are your primary objective, this data will help you determine if your campaign has been successful within the confines of your goal.

A tool called the estimated ad recall lift metric will tell advertisers how many people they can expect to remember their advert if they were questioned within 48 hours of seeing it. This estimate is calculated based on the number of people you reach with your ads and how likely the person is to recall what they saw. Facebook then recalibrates this estimate by introducing ad recall lift surveys.

You may be wondering how Facebook could possibly estimate how likely an individual is to recall what they see. Well they have a lot of data to help them. Their algorithm considers likely thousands of factors, but could be calculated based on a scoring system across items such as:

  • Does the user like or interact with your business page already? 
  • Does the user regularly interact with adverts? 
  • How often does the user spend on Facebook every day?
  • Is the user less likely to interact with content if it is sponsored? 

As previously mentioned, this estimate is further strengthened by running polls to a random selection of users. 

How YouTube measures ad recall

While Facebook and YouTube have distinct algorithms for measuring ad recall, how they do it is similar. YouTube will also calculate a number of metrics that would assess a user’s consideration, purchase intent and awareness. Their use of surveys targets two particular groups: one who hasn’t been served the advert and one who has. They look at the differences between these answers to determine whether your ad was memorable.

YouTube also has a tool called Brand Lift which will go further than traditional ad recall metrics. They can monitor organic searches of your brand on Google and YouTube to see whether your campaign is making waves elsewhere. They perform this test on two control groups once again – one that hasn’t seen the ad and one that has. From this data, they’re able to compare the behaviour of both groups.

If you’re interested in YouTube’s Brand Lift, it’s worth noting that the service is only available for specific types of video campaigns.   

What factors influence how a user interacts with your advert

There are many ways a person’s response to your advert can be influenced. Some of them are tangible and within your control, others aren’t possible to change.

Factors within your control…

  • Where they see the advert
  • The advert creative and messaging
  • The call-to-action and the incentive to interact with it
  • How much the advert stands out on their feed/within a video/on the street
  • The creative’s readability across different formats and devices 

Factors (sometimes) outside of your control…

  • Whether they already have a relationship with the brand 
  • If they have an emotional connection to the brand 
  • If the brand colours used in the advert are a preference of theirs
  • Whether a friend or family member has mentioned the brand to them before
  • If they have read reviews on your product or service before
  • If they have made an in-store purchase with you before
  • Whether they have had a bad experience with your brand in the past 

Steps you can take to improve your recall rate in future

#1 Ensure your adverts are designed to be viewed well on desktop, mobile and tablets. Research has shown that people are twice as likely to recall your ad if they have seen it on multiple devices. 

#2 Before your advert goes live, ensure you set it up in situ as a preview – then view it across multiple devices. This will give you a better understanding of how the viewer will see it outside of a generic artboard or video editor. Likewise with outdoor or printed advertising, mockup a to-scale example of how this might look. For large formats such as billboards, you can do this on a smaller scale, or print off a few letters and hold them at a distance.

#3 Test multiple messages and different types of creatives where you can. Some people respond better to video, others to text or picture-based adverts. 

#4 Ensure your advert stands out. If it’s a static message, consider whether you could say it in a different way or whether the design is lacking something. If it’s a video, experiment with different lengths and ensure the first few seconds are the most engaging. 

#5 Don’t deviate off-brand. It can be tempting to stand out by doing something wholly unlike your brand, but this could end up doing more harm than good. If you are considering an alternative route, consider running a small focus group to test the water first. 

Ad recall is one of the hardest metrics to measure…

But as algorithms learn, the better the digital ad recall effectiveness will be. Ultimately if your campaign spans many channels and formats, the best way to make sure your advert is memorable is to embrace it at every touchpoint. Consider your email marketing, website banners, in-store promotions – if you’re pushing a message heavily, it needs to be seen across the board.

If you’re looking for an easy way to adapt digital and print creatives, Papirfly’s all-in-one brand management platform allows anyone to create new assets and make changes quickly, without professional support and while remaining on brand.

Table of contents:

  1. What is ad recall?
  2. How is ad recall measured?
  3. What factors influence how a user interacts with your advert
Brand management

Why marketers need design templates for content creation

Papirfly
3 minutes read

Consistency isn’t optional – it’s foundational. How your brand looks, sounds, and behaves when it shows up in the world directly shapes how it’s remembered. It’s critical that people encounter the same, recognizable identity across all marketing and advertising materials.

But how do you maintain control when so many different people are creating content across teams, regions, formats and multiple channels?

Digital design templates provide a practical, scalable solution, allowing marketing teams to streamline digital content creation while at the same time protecting brand identity.

Do design templates limit creativity? Debunking the myth

It’s a common concern. Some creatives see templates as restricting their freedom – a “production line” approach that stifles originality. But effective brands already put limitations on designers, through clearly defined guidelines. Templates simply turn those rules into tools, so every asset reflects your identity. 

In fact, templates often lead to increased creativity, not less. By freeing designers from repetitive production work, they allow more time for high-impact, strategic projects – where the real original thinking happens.

Key benefits of using digital design templates for marketers

Done right, digital design templates don’t just secure brand consistency – they enable you to deliver content creation services faster and more efficiently than ever before. Here’s how:

  • Anyone can create branded assets – Templates enable any team member to produce studio-quality materials, ranging from signage to videos to social media posts.
  • Brand protection is built in – Critical elements like logos, fonts, and color palettes are “locked” while features such as images, text and calls to action can all be changed.
  • Localization is easy – Teams can adapt content to match local languages, formats and cultural norms in minutes rather than days.
  • Assets can be produced on-demand – Flexible template technology allows users to define asset size and create the file type they need immediately. 

In short, it is a marketer’s dream – a world where any colleague can create their own collateral quickly, without any danger of straying off-brand.

4 steps to successful content creation with design templates

1. Define essential template elements for multi-channel content

The options can be overwhelming at first. Stay focused by considering the elements you need for your template before you even start. It’s usually best to go with the simplest option. You should also make sure your template is flexible enough to work across multiple channels and asset types.

2. Customize design templates to match your brand guidelines

Off-the-shelf options can be a good starting point. But in the long term, you should be customizing your templates in line with your brand guidelines. Your design team have a critical role to play in this process. With their oversight, templates can become more than simple content marketing tools – they can be true brand enablers.

3. Focus on clear messaging and content optimization within templates

Don’t get stuck obsessing over layouts. Use templates as a solid design base, then focus your time on writing strong, clear messaging, testing variations, and making content work harder. Templates take care of the format – you and your team can focus on results.

4. Integrate design templates into your long-term content creation strategy

Templates aren’t a shortcut – they’re a sustainable, scalable system. For small or growing brands, they offer enterprise-level structure at a fraction of the cost. For global brands, they unlock alignment across geographies and teams. And with Papirfly’s Templated Content Creation tools, you can make them an integral part of your brand ecosystem. Not only do you get complete control over how you create, adapt, and manage your design templates – you also empower all your team members to produce high-quality, on-brand collateral every time.

Empower your team with design templates for content creation tools

Discover how Papirfly’s Templated Content Creation solution can help you empower your people while protecting your brand.

Discover how templated content creation empowers teams to scale with brand-approved design templates

Table of contents:

Corporate

Why marketers need digital brand templates

Papirfly
5 minutes read

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

1. Reduce repetitive, manual tasks and save money

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

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

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

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

2. Are custom templates right for you?

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

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

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

1. Time

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

2. Consistency

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

3. Space for strategic thinking

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

3. What to look for in a template solution

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

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

Ads

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

Social media

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

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

Printed materials

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

Dynamic content

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

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

Video templates

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

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

4. Automate and simplify your workday

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

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

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

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

Table of contents:

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

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

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

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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