What are digital assets and how do you manage them?
Papirfly
4minutes read
Digital assets are indispensable valuables. They consume our surroundings more than we probably are aware of. In your private life alone, you have family photos, video recordings, insurance papers, banking papers, and personal papers to name a few. At work, any file you create, capture, copy or consume on your digital devices are considered digital assets. In 2020, this data required 64.2 zettabytes, in 2025 this number is expected to grow to more than 180 zettabytes.
Where is this data stored, and most importantly, how is this data stored? Do you have control of your digital assets, and are you prepared for the data growth?
Every company and every person has some sort of system for their digital assets, but the devil is in the details. How you do this means the world of difference and the impact when something backfires can be devastating.
Digital assets are valuables
Images are a good example of why digital assets are valuables. We constantly take pictures with our phones or cameras because we want to preserve a moment, whether it is of our kids, pets, partner, or a place. But then what? Do you store these images on your iCloud, Google Photos, or do you just leave them on the memory card?
Digital assets are indispensable valuables. They consume our surroundings more than we probably are aware of. In your private life alone, you have family photos, video recordings, insurance papers, banking papers, and personal papers to name a few. At work, any file you create, capture, copy or consume on your digital devices are considered digital assets. In 2020, this data required 64.2 zettabytes, in 2025 this number is expected to grow to more than 180 zettabytes.
Where is this data stored, and most importantly, how is this data stored? Do you have control of your digital assets, and are you prepared for the data growth?
Every company and every person has some sort of system for their digital assets, but the devil is in the details. How you do this means the world of difference and the impact when something backfires can be devastating.
Digital assets are valuables
Images are a good example of why digital assets are valuables. We constantly take pictures with our phones or cameras because we want to preserve a moment, whether it is of our kids, pets, partner, or a place. But then what? Do you store these images on your iCloud, Google Photos, or do you just leave them on the memory card?
Digital assets are indispensable valuables. They consume our surroundings more than we probably are aware of. In your private life alone, you have family photos, video recordings, insurance papers, banking papers, and personal papers to name a few. At work, any file you create, capture, copy or consume on your digital devices are considered digital assets. In 2020, this data required 64.2 zettabytes, in 2025 this number is expected to grow to more than 180 zettabytes.
Where is this data stored, and most importantly, how is this data stored? Do you have control of your digital assets, and are you prepared for the data growth?
Every company and every person has some sort of system for their digital assets, but the devil is in the details. How you do this means the world of difference and the impact when something backfires can be devastating.
Digital assets are valuables
Images are a good example of why digital assets are valuables. We constantly take pictures with our phones or cameras because we want to preserve a moment, whether it is of our kids, pets, partner, or a place. But then what? Do you store these images on your iCloud, Google Photos, or do you just leave them on the memory card?
Employer branding – how important is your employer brand?
Papirfly
22minutes read
In any organisation, the skills and dedication of the workforce is the lifeforce powering its future. You want to attract the best possible talent to your company, and retain them for the long term to bring continued success to your business.
Employer branding is critical to achieving this objective. How effectively you market the values that underpin your organisation, emphasise the unique benefits of working for your company, and demonstrate a strong, defined culture will have a powerful influence on your ability to capture the imagination of those at the top of the talent pool.
This guide is designed to help you unlock the true potential of your employer brand in 2021 and beyond. Settle in and discover everything you need to know in today’s landscape.
What is employer brand?
Employer branding at its most basic is the way a company promotes itself as a place to work. It comes from the external reputation the company has as a business and the way its employees view it. Having an effective employer brand in place can lead to benefits including:
Reduced turnover of staff
Attraction of high-quality talent
Help in retaining valued employees
Less money spent on hiring new staff
Engaged employees
In the modern world of business, employer branding and recruitment have become entwined, creating strategies that are as much Human Resources department initiatives as they are marketing.
Employer branding and employee branding are different too. Employee branding is really a focus on how the employees act in accordance with the values of a company, and how the organisation promotes this.
Employer branding and corporate branding differ in that the latter focuses on a value proposition to customers, defining what your organisation offers to the marketplace.
Some employer branding statistics
When you’re successful in employer branding, the numbers really stack up. These are just some of the statistics reported in the employer branding space:
43% decrease in hiring costs
67% of employees would accept a lower wage if a company has positive reviews online
69% of employees are likely to apply if the company actively manages its brand
84% of employees consider leaving their current job if another company has a better reputation
88% of millennials believe that being in the right culture is important
72% of global recruiting leaders believe that employer brand has a significant impact on hiring
79% of jobseekers are likely to use social media in their job search
A good employer brand leads to 50% more qualified candidates
Staff have serious expectations of what they want from a company. And one of the very bottom line commercial benefits of employer branding is that staff turnover can be reduced by 28%.
High turnover is demoralising for other employees and costly for a business. Taking into account recruitment hiring fees, it can cost an SME £5,500 to replace a member of staff on a national average salary wage.
Stats revealed by Staffbase below show just how costly employee turnover can be for corporates:
While a company may consider its staff as its greatest asset, so many organisations still don’t employ effective processes when it comes to hiring staff. And retaining staff once on board, is often something that falls by the wayside. Even companies who do recognise the importance of retention, sometimes struggle to dedicate the time to implement change.
In an increasingly competitive market, hiring and retaining talent is tough, but attracting the right people to your positions can be pretty much impossible without a powerful employer brand.
Messaging, creative and distribution of campaigns need to be targeted and carefully considered. That’s only made possible with employer brand initiatives, driven by the employer branding teams.
…For hiring and retention
Your business should make employees feel proud to work there. Company culture is of course important for most people, but particularly for those from generation Y, who are more likely to read reviews and use social media to determine if they are a good fit for your brand.
Having an effective employer branding plan really helps retain employees and recruit new ones. People are the core of any business, so you will want to find the best. Having a popular brand makes it easier and faster to hire good staff.
This is because with good employer branding the Human Resources team will spend less time trying to find quality candidates. Talented people will want to work for your company and be drawn to it for all the right reasons. Hiring time can be as much as two times quicker with a strong employer brand. Generally, the hiring process will differ depending on the candidate’s circumstances such as how much notice period they need to give, but this top-line process from Google shows how an average application might unfold.
…For more engaged employees
When employees are happy and engaged with the brand they work for, they’re more likely to evangelise about these positive experiences. They become ambassadors and you’ll likely see more applications as a result of direct referrals.
…For reducing costs
There are two ways of looking at cost reductions in relation to great employer branding:
Firstly, if you have a good reputation a lot of the hard work in recruiting the best people is already done for you. Staff are looking for good companies with positive reviews and experiences. Applicants will seek out good companies to work for, and will see your brand as a good place to work.
Money is saved as hiring is quicker and talent is placed in the business sooner. It can be spent strategically instead of on recruitment costs.
Secondly, having a lower staff turnover reaps significant savings to the overall recruitment budget.
Cost per head goes down and potential staff are willing to accept a lower salary if the company had very positive reviews online. This is because the value of a good environment is worth more than a higher salary in the wrong environment.
How has the global pandemic reshaped employer branding?
The ground-shaking consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic turned the marketing landscape on its head several times over, and employer branding was not immune to its effects. While the pandemic itself will eventually subside, its ramifications will live on for significantly longer.
In times of crisis such as what many in the world experienced in 2020, or the uncertainty with which we entered 2021, employer brand teams will need to work harder to meet the expectations of available talent and existing employees.
Here’s a breakdown of what changed for employer branding since the start of the 2020s – and how you can adjust to meet this new landscape.
The response to COVID-19
Many organisations were hit hard by the global pandemic. The hit to the economy and restrictions to certain industries, namely retail, leisure and travel, resulted in many redundancies and cost-cutting measures.
Unfortunately, no matter how unavoidable these were in the circumstances, a brand’s response to COVID-19 will live long in the memory for many past and prospective employees.
75% of prospective employees consider a brand’s reputation before deciding to make an application (CareerArc)
Brands that demonstrated a desire to put people over profits during the hardest months of this pandemic will have strengthened their reputation among today’s talent. Even if they were forced to proceed with mass lay-offs, companies that handled it with compassion, like Airbnb, came away with credit for when the world returns to some semblance of “normal”.
Conversely, those brands that failed to convey this will need to spend the coming months and years rebuilding their image.
COVID-19 left employer brand teams with a valuable lesson – it’s not enough to say you care about staff, but this must be reinforced when times are tough. It will pay dividends for employer brand managers to explore the best and worst brand responses to this crisis to inform how they approach circumstances like this in future.
Values matter more than ever
The fallout from COVID-19 has put a magnifying glass on company values like never before. The worst company responses to the pandemic have made talent particularly skeptical of the values that an employer brand emphasises. To combat this, employer brand teams should go to greater lengths to demonstrate these values in action across their content.
Promote the ways you have prioritised the wellbeing of your employees throughout this challenging period, and harness employee stories of how they’ve appreciated your support in these strange times.
Any authentic stories of this nature will hit home with prospective employees in a way they never have before, helping your company stand out as a destination that cares about its team.
Global talent wants more from employers in 2021
Newly-hired remote workers want their onboarding process to be as robust and reassuring as it would be for ‘traditional hires’
Employees want to know their company has clearly defined remote and hybrid working models
Talent wants to see companies pushing their diversity and inclusion efforts further than ever, especially following the events of 2020
The need for clear communication
The excessive amounts of misinformation and hearsay about the global pandemic have made it more important for employer brands to deliver clarity and consistency to both existing employees and available talent.
In order to meet people’s need for clarity in times of substantial uncertainty, employer brand managers should:
Facilitate regular meetings/video conferencing calls with teams to communicate important information and check on employees’ wellbeing
House up-to-date company policies and guidelines in a shared, accessible space
Share positive events and stories where possible to build morale
Approach any bad news earnestly and empathetically
Investigate straightforward chat/workflow management systems that will keep remote employees connected
Up to a third of employees have contemplated leaving their job due to poor communication from management (Dynamic Signal)
Remote recruitment and onboarding
The greater emphasis on remote working inspired by the pandemic will have a long-term impact on how recruitment and onboarding will take place. Video interviews are now commonplace. Employees are hired and start work without ever having stepped inside an office.
While traditional, face-to-face interviews will never disappear entirely, employer brand teams should work to better facilitate these evolutions in order to deliver the biggest benefits to new recruits and your overall organisation.
Consider including someone from your branding team in video interviews to give recruits a strong picture of your company culture that they can’t experience in person
Account for technical issues on either side that might affect the interview
Make clear company literature available for newly-recruited employees to inform their understanding of your operations
Assign recruits with a remote “buddy” to ease their integration into your team and handle any initial problems they may be facing
Immediately engage them with your IT team to demonstrate anything they need to know to work effectively from home
Include them in team social events and gatherings so they don’t feel distanced from the brand following their introduction to your team
Remote working is not the only recruitment-based challenge that employer brand teams will need to confront and conquer this year:
Harness data for continuous improvement
Employer brand teams should be empowered to track the response and engagement to the content they promote, and use this data to inform agile adjustments over time and to guide future campaigns based on what resonates most with their audiences.
Restructure company material for the new reality
With a marked shift towards recruitment materials that prioritise empathetic, authentic storytelling over lists of perks, now is the time for employer brand professionals to reassess their content and determine the right story to tell prospective recruits in the current climate.
Remove barriers to internal recruitment
Internal mobility gained a lot of momentum in 2020, and employer brand managers in 2021 should work harder to emphasise this possibility within their teams. Consider what obstacles must be eliminated to educate talent on their potential to switch roles within the same company.
Supporting company culture
Finally, it’s important to recognise the impact of the pandemic on company culture. The transition to remote working across numerous organisations has rendered traditional office hotspots for socialising and creature comforts unavailable for the time being.
But, that doesn’t mean that company culture can be put on pause until COVID-19 is behind us. For many in the modern landscape, a strong, welcoming culture trumps salary and other perks in attracting them to work for an organisation:
With this in mind, the onus is on employer brand experts to rise to the occasion and find ways to maintain (and even strengthen) company culture for the remote-working era.
Document your company’s values clearly and make them accessible to all
Ensure consistency across all communications to make your values and identity inherent to everyone
Showcase the history and future of your company to help employees find their identity within your company
Harness your video conferencing technology for company social events like gaming, movies or friendly get-togethers
The importance of employer branding to an organisation
Two in five organisations say that hiring is becoming tougher. Businesses are having to become more flexible in finding the right candidate.
With a powerful employer brand strategy, you’re looking to become an employer of choice. By creating a strong, positive reputation you’ll stop talented employees from voting with their feet.
Potential candidates will often look to an employer of choice before all others. Positioning yourself in this way starts with the following:
Creating a positive candidate selection process
Having a focus on career growth opportunities
Putting the company’s values at the heart of everything
Reviewing your pay scales and benefits
You might also like to consider these eight values when positioning yourself as an employer of choice. They’re part of what may help attract a person in the first place:
Flexible placement – this is where an employee has opportunities to work in a variety of roles and settings within the organisation, where they have an interest in expanding their understanding. Employers should encourage staff to work in a variety of roles too, to give them a better view of the overall business.
A customer focus – business should be customer-centric and understand that for the employee the customer comes first. Managers should give staff the tools needed to achieve this, and support the idea that the employee serves the customer’s needs first, before those of the manager. For example, a customer service employee would want to satisfy a customer’s complaint, before serving a manager’s needs. This would require the entire organisation to have a customer-centric mentality.
Performance focus – employers should use performance and benefit-based rewards to support staff development and keep them motivated. This might include additional days off or performance-related pay bonuses.
Project-based work – where possible, employees should have work structured around internal projects rather than organisational functions. For example, this might see employees in a marketing department working collaboratively on a new project from the start, rather than being focussed only on their singular role within that project at the time it’s ready to go to market.
Valuable work – work needs to be meaningful for staff. If tasks become menial or meaningless, it can cause them to become disengaged.
Commitment is important – staff should be committed to the outcomes of the organisation, while employers should be committed to helping staff do their jobs to the best of their abilities.
Ongoing learning and development – the company should encourage staff to learn and develop within the organisation. Whether that’s a certified CPD course or discovering the way another area of the business works – professional development can be invaluable to employees. A typical process for keeping employees at their best can be found below, but will of course vary from business to business:
Share information – employers should help staff by giving them access to a wide range of company data. In return staff should be willing to digest this information and show initiative to help move things forward, address any issues and drive productivity.
Creating and maintaining these processes are part of a culture change that needs to be supported in the long term by the HR staff. Building this relationship is critical when it comes to an effective employer brand strategy.
Whether it’s holiday allowance, perks or salary, great talent demands great benefits. But they also want a culture they can identify with.
So, in this context employer branding strategy becomes a combination of economic benefits, functional rewards and psychological attributes that make employees connect with your company on an emotional level too.
If you can understand these benefits and what they mean to staff, you can create an attractive benefits package, which helps create a stronger employer brand.
By investing in your employer branding tactics, you can engage better with prospective and current employees whose values fit yours. It’s this that will make your brand stand out to the right people.
Always begin with understanding who you are trying to reach, and what they want.
To be successful, and as with any form of marketing, you need a good employer branding strategy to help create and promote your campaigns.
Audit your brand’s perception
How does the world see you? What do your employees really think about working for your company? Unless you’re fully engaged in your internal employer branding you probably won’t understand how employees genuinely feel about working in the organisation. And working in hectic global organisations can mean these get forgotten, albeit unintentionally.
There’s a host of places to look. Check employment review sites – did you get five stars as an employer? Staff often post on social media too. Are they proud of their work or are they critical? Do they say nothing? Look for the underlying message. Other options for feedback include internal surveys or using an agency to monitor your reputation.
Whichever method you choose should uncover where staff are happy or where changes can be made.
Also check for brand consistency. Do you convey the right message at all times? Do your visuals and tone match that message?
It’s important to have a realistic understanding of how you are perceived. Then you can begin to address the issues with your employer brand.
Decide what makes your company unique
Once you know what makes your company unique you can create your story. Look at your company’s mission statement, its values, its social responsibility and culture. Look at what makes your company stand out. Is it the best? Is it the fastest? What do you stand for? Do you have a social responsibility stance?
From here you can create your brand story for prospective employees. By having a brand story you’ll be helping candidates to match their personal values to those of your organisation and your employer brand marketing. A story will also help provide clarity for existing staff too, and drive better employer branding internally and externally.
Create an EVP – an employee value proposition
This is a mission statement or marketing promise to employees. It’s important that it’s truthful, and that you intend to stick to it.
And it’s important that it creates a sense of passion for the business and working there, as well as relaying how many days’ holiday you get by joining. It might include any positives about corporate social responsibility, or how valuable staff are at your organisation.
It can also be shared with recruiters. It’s designed for everyone who interacts with your employer brand.
The employee should be at the centre of your EVP and ideally your proposition should have been well received within your organisation. Think about all the things that are important to staff. These might include:
Professional development
Workplace culture
Additional benefits such as healthcare
Flexitime
Quality of work
Bonuses
Office location
Perks such as free fruit, gym memberships and social outings
Company values
Work-life balance
People want to feel their work is valued and meaningful, and that the company culture is the right fit for them. Creating an Employee Value Proposition cements this for the entire organisation. It’s a chance to showcase your positive impact as a brand.
Offer career development and learning opportunities
What’s the reason most people leave their jobs? Its staff feeling bored and wanting a new challenge is at the top of the list.
By offering learning opportunities to staff you’re showing a commitment to the employee, and gaining a staff with an improved skill set.
By making their roles challenging will help stave off the risk of staff feeling like they’re stuck in a rut. You should find they’ll be less likely to move on, or in reality won’t move on so quickly as they might have otherwise.
Developing staff skills is an easy solution to the age-old problem of workplace boredom. Perhaps it’s strange then that still employees cite lack of challenges as the primary reason to leave, and organisations aren’t responding.
Employer branding begins at home
Current employees will be your best advocates, provided they’re happy. Candidates frequently use testimonials from current employees in the research as to whether to join a company or not.
Use testimonials on your website or encourage employees to leave reviews on sites where staff talk about where they work. Recruitment company Glassdoor is one of the most widely used in terms of encouraging testimonials.
Encourage staff to use social media to post about fun events that have taken place in the company. Staff posting about these things, whether corporate team building or a night out, will show your company as an exciting place to be and a vibrant place to work. If someone likes it enough to post about it in their spare time it shows you to be an employer that promotes a happy workplace.
This is important. Test and refine – success is only measured against goals or targets. Doing all the above is imperative but measuring the effectiveness of your employer branding marketing is the only way to know if it’s working. The list below should help with how to measure employer branding in your business.
Useful employer branding metrics
Quality of hire
It’s hard to measure, but the quality of hire defines the value a new employee brings to the company by performing and improving tasks and helping others. It is one of the most important metrics if you can get the data.
The value or performance of an employee generally drops when dissatisfaction kicks in so it’s a good indicator of the effectiveness of your employer brand. Unhappy employees are less productive and will not stay with you for long.
Job offer acceptance rate
Keep track of how many applicants reject your job offers and ask for feedback on why you’re not their employer of choice. Also, try to find out which company they have chosen instead and note at what stage of the process they dropped out.
Employee referral rate
Employees recommending your organisation to their family, friends and network as a great place to work means they like your employer brand. Employee referrals are a great source of talent. So if you don’t have a referral programme in place it’s probably time to start one.
Employee retention rate
There is no such thing as a static workforce. Employees will leave. However, the lower your voluntary attrition rate, the better because happy employees will want to stay and keep working for you. It also reduces the amount of confusion and disruption to daily projects and delivery.
It’s a powerful indicator of a strong employer brand and the savings in having a reduced staff turnover are great. Be sure to conduct exit interviews, as you can get valuable feedback.
Giveaway/takeaway ratio
This measures how many of your applicants come from direct competitors and how many of your current employees leave to join the competition. It’s a good direct comparison of employer brands.
Hiring manager satisfaction
Companies often overlook the hiring managers, but their feedback is valuable in determining the strength of your employer brand and the candidates it attracts. Are these managers satisfied with the number and quality of applicants, their fit with role expectations and company culture?
Number of open applications
Open applications are those received for no specific job opening but more to express interest in the organisation. Candidates are applying to you as a company because they feel there is a good cultural fit. If you’ve got a high number of open applications, it’s a good indicator of a strong employer brand.
For many prospective employees, the first engagement with a company’s culture is often their website. An attractive and engaging website remains a powerful tool in an employer’s arsenal when it comes to attracting new talent.
Modern progressive companies use their site to set themselves apart, fostering a positive, welcoming employer brand through their inclusive approach, open engagement and simplicity in navigation and application. They demonstrate care for their employees, a pride in their image and cultivating a desire in candidates that this is a company worth working for.
The careers hub
Beyond simple job ads and application procedures, a careers hub offers space and scope to introduce the candidate to additional content that supports the positive employer brand message. Think testimonials, links to your employee value proposition and company values. These should all make a good case as to why candidates should come and work for your organisation.
Staff contributed blogs
Just as happy staff are your greatest advocates; staff blogs can offer a glimpse of the company culture too. Having employees share positive stories is often directed towards social media. But populating staff-led content on your website shouldn’t be overlooked.
For example, look at the following themes:
Contributions on industry issues – shows that you trust your employees’ levels of expertise and value their opinions enough to publish them under the corporate banner.
Contributions around ‘out of work’ topics – employee biographies, stories of fundraising or personal achievements foster an inclusive culture. The organisation cares about the person beyond their job.
Prospective employees are immediately being offered an environment of inclusivity, engaging them in the culture of the organisation even before they’ve started their application process.
Brand-promoting content
It’s worth remembering that your website offers you complete control when it comes to building a positive employer brand. Again, this can be achieved by incorporating inclusivity into the content used on the site, as well as creative use of video and new media technology.
It’s a chance to blend the corporate nature of the business with the personal side. On the one hand, you have space to deliver video presentations that take candidates on the journey from application to successful career. While ‘off-setting’ this with supporting content from throughout the company, creating the rounded view that everyone has bought into the company philosophy.
Having campaigns that are country-specific isn’t just about having the copy in the correct language. There is culturally appropriate imagery, legal details, contact information, colour palettes, logo considerations and a whole host of factors to think about. Trying to make one campaign apply to multiple countries by tweaking it slightly won’t land well with prospective and existing employees.
If you don’t have a tool like BAM by Papirfly™ in place where all of this is made easy, you should consider involving team members that are based in the country you’re promoting in. Ultimately you will need to make sure your employer brand is consistent but the insight will need to come from someone that truly understands the market.
Employer branding online goes beyond just posting company updates and recruitment drives on LinkedIn. Sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Quora and Pinterest can all be excellent places to represent your employer brand.
But it is easy to get social media wrong. When using your employer branding through social media remember it’s a conversation, not a soapbox. Your first step should be to understand the conversation people are already having about your company. Then join in.
Here are some tools that can help you find out what people are already saying about your company:
Social Mention – These tools look at what people have been saying about you on social media and provides useful data such as the number of comments which are generally positive compared to those which are negative.
Google Alerts – The free Google Alerts service is a great way to find out what is being said about your company and have it delivered straight to your inbox.
Sites like Reddit and Quora can also be great for discovering what employees want from an employer in general. Here people are more than happy to express opinions about their experiences in detail.
Your communication should be friendly and open while still maintaining a sense of professionalism. Having your employees contribute to your organisation’s Facebook fan page is another great way to create content and show a human face for your company.
LinkedIn groups and company pages are another good way to develop your employee brand. Potential employees who follow your company page will receive updates into their news feed. This is a good way to share videos, articles and other content which helps people understand what your company is about. Pinterest is less used than the other major social networks but is perfect for showing the fun and creative side of your business.
Candidates from this group want idea sharing and innovation. Remember the co-founder of Google, Larry Page, is a Gen X, so don’t think digital is lost on this generation of employees. They’ve seen how digital has changed the working world.
They’ll visit your website and they’re sometimes on social media too. They’re looking for work-life balance and forward-thinking organisations, so ensure your messaging really reflects this where you offer it. Remember to tailor your recruitment campaigns depending on your audience’s needs. While you can’t generalise every person in a generation, you can use guides to steer your strategy, such as the one below:
A focus on employer branding reflects a change in the hiring market. Employees want to work for companies that have an excellent reputation, for example where a company has a particular corporate social responsibility in place.
Graduates are becoming more discerning when choosing a company to work for.
This means there’s an opportunity for a new approach for HR departments. Maintaining brand reputation becomes more of a consideration when building HR policies, because it has important implications for how HR departments recruit and retain staff.
The HR function becomes an extension of a brand achieving dominance in the market. They can get more access to, for example, marketing or other areas where traditionally they might have struggled to be an influence.
For HR practitioners, the focus on employer and employee branding is all part of an overall goal of getting existing employees and potential employees to identify with the brand. It’s not a ‘facing out’ process. It’s facing both in and out.
This Reputation Management Study from global recruiters MRINetwork, shows 35% of job candidates think that a strong employer brand is important and a further 34% regard it as ‘very important’. Employees want to see a strong, definable identity – and if it is not there, they will likely look elsewhere.
In tech, the skills gap is huge. Talent shortages are a global phenomenon – affecting sectors as diverse as construction through to healthcare. So, when it comes to talent, it’s most definitely a seller’s market.
And resource management is becoming more difficult. One estimate suggests that 85% of the jobs that will exist in 2030 have not yet been invented.
It’s becoming increasingly hard to predict precisely what type of roles you will need to fill in a few years’ time – and you may need to redeploy or recruit staff into new roles at short notice. If you have already built up a definite employer brand identity, you have a head start in attracting the right people into those new positions.
Trends to consider
Authenticity and employee authorship
Whether candidates are thinking of joining a company or mulling over whether it’s time to move on, people want to hear what real people have to say. And your employees are your most valuable asset.
Consider snippets of info that showcase the working environment, updates on projects they are involved with, individual career progression updates, fly on the wall videos, news relating to internal redeployments. Collectively, they provide an incredibly compelling and authentic picture.
Companies need to get creative – but stay consistent
How do you make sure that your central brand message stays consistent? If companies are doing more campaigns and content types this year, they will also need to look very carefully at ways to overcome this challenge.
For this, you need a clear set of rules, governing everything from what you can and cannot say in individual Tweets – right through to how and where your logo and straplines should appear.
The continued rise of VR
Virtual Reality makes it possible for new candidates to dive right into the workplace environment and to help employees get to grips with an organisation’s unique culture.
If you are considering making immersive digital experiences part of your branding strategy this year, just make sure that these experiences are authentic.
Doing more with less
Faced with the pressure of reduced budgets the focus is on doing more with less. For instance, is it possible to reduce your agency spend and still produce effective employer branding initiatives?
That’s why this is the year to equip your people with employer branding solutions that enable them to produce amazing assets – even without specialist knowledge.
You can understand why employer branding initiatives are important in an organisation. If a company’s biggest asset truly is the staff, then the quality of the staff is the same as the quality of the business itself. And therefore, investment should be put into getting the best.
But it’s not just about employer branding and talent acquisition, it’s about retaining that talent too.
Your culture is fast becoming the main reason candidates take on a role. So make sure your values are clear and communicated in everything you do.
Get feedback from both successful and unsuccessful candidates and ensure that your selection process is engaging. Career development and growth opportunities matter to employees. Review your pay and benefits where possible.
In summary
Involve, not just marketing, but HR, the CEO and find brand champions within the organisation. The combined efforts of all involved will reap benefits.
As an organisation you’ll find the speed of recruiting is increased, costs are decreased and staff churn is reduced.
And measure what you do to track its success. Even the smallest piece of data can lead to an improvement.
Employer brand building. If it’s not your present, it needs to be your future.
Marketers are no strangers to rapid change. New technology, shifting channels, and evolving audience behaviors are all part of the job. But that doesn’t make it any easier to handle. In a Martech landscape where formats multiply and demand for creative content marketing keeps growing, producing and publishing quality assets at speed is a constant challenge.
Banner advertising is one of those ongoing demands. While not every brand has embraced it in the past, our increasingly digital world is making it harder to ignore. The question is not whether digital display ads will remain relevant, but how you can create banner ads that stand out — and sidestep the pitfalls that make audiences tune out.
Why banner ads still matter – and how to make them work
We see display ads everywhere – news sites, online stores, niche publications. But with their rise came a backlash: ad blockers. In 2019, 25.8% of internet users were blocking ads on their devices (Statista, 2025).
Time to give up? Absolutely not. The problem isn’t the format – it’s the execution. People don’t want intrusive, irrelevant messages. But that doesn’t mean they are opposed to all advertising – especially not if they are visually appealing ads for products or services they might actually buy.
Personalization is key here. Just as an in-store assistant offers tailored help, personal display ads can create a more human connection. Brands like Zalando use this to great effect, showing audiences products and messages aligned to their individual needs and interests.
The question is, do you have the skills and insight to do this on your own, or do you need expert help?
What is a banner ad creator — and why your brand needs one
A banner ad creator takes the complexity out of producing high-quality digital display ads. You don’t need to be a UX designer or have coding skills — the tool does the heavy lifting for you.
The process is simple:
Get the design right – work with a designer to create layouts that are on-brand and visually strong.
Turn designs into templates – these become the foundation for every ad you produce.
A good banner ad creator ensures brand consistency and makes updates painless across multiple channels, platforms, and formats. Need to change copy, swap imagery, or adjust an offer? Update once, and the changes roll out instantly across all formats.
The benefits of using a banner ad creator
Full control – manage all ad formats, platforms, and channels from one place.
Lower costs – reduce reliance on agencies for minor updates.
Increased efficiency – maintain, update, and publish from a single source.
Consistent branding – lock in your brand identity across every ad.
Multiple outputs, minimal effort – create every format without starting from scratch.
Personalization at scale – target the right audience with the right message.
Optimized performance – monitor results in real time and refine as needed.
Why should you avoid free ad creator tools?
Free ad creators and platform-specific tools (Google Ads, LinkedIn, Instagram) can seem tempting, but they come with limitations:
No brand control – restricted customization makes it hard to stay on-brand with fonts, colors, and layouts.
Poor format optimization – every format requires unique adjustments, which free tools often can’t handle well.
Platform lock-in – ads made in one tool are limited to that platform, creating duplication and extra work.
No real-time updates – changing ad content quickly is difficult, risking relevancy and performance.
The future of display advertising is smart and adaptable
With millennials turning 40 and Gen Z stepping into the workforce, today’s consumers are predominantly digital-first. A banner ad creator doesn’t just help you produce ads that grab their attention – it future-proofs your ability to stay visible, relevant, and competitive in an evolving media landscape.
Does everyone create content that’s on‑brand, every time?
Find peace of mind with better brand governance.
Does everyone create content that’s on‑brand, every time?
A banner ad creator is a tool that makes it easy for team members to create banner ads that are high-quality and on-brand. It turns approved designs into templates so anyone can create platform-ready digital display ads quickly – without needing design or coding skills.
Why are banner ads still relevant in today’s digital landscape?
Banner ads remain an effective way to reach audiences across news sites, online stores, and niche publications. While ad blockers exist, research shows users are more open to visually appealing, relevant ads – especially when personalized to their interests.
How does a banner ad creator benefit marketers?
It centralizes digital content creation and management, ensuring brand consistency and allowing performance tracking in real time. A banner ad creator can also support personalization and reduce dependency on external agencies.
What are the drawbacks of using free or platform-specific ad tools?
Free tools often limit customization, making it harder to create banner ads that are truly on-brand. They may not optimize for all formats or allow you to update ads in real time.
A brand is your company’s most valuable asset, it’s the asset that attracts attention and when done correctly, it’s what establishes loyalty and engagement. When you master your brand, your business will grow.
Branding would be easy if there was no competition, but of course unrealistic. Most brands and companies must work hard to get their markets attention, securing a growing customer base and loyal customers. So, what are the factors that will give your brand the outstanding edge? Logo colours? Images? Tone-of-voice? Or your choice of marketing channels?
What’s unique about your brand, why should the consumers choose your brand over your competitor? How do you make sure your brand stands out from the crowd?
There is no simple answer to this, it’s a bit more complex. Before you can build a stunning brand that stands out, you need to know how to communicate your brand, you need to know your audience and you need to know your competition. Let’s take it step by step.
1. Know your competition
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 unique selling points and advantages? What marketing channels and to whom do they reach out?
Without customers you can’t succeed. So, you need to attract them. How? First of all, you need to understand their needs and their buyer journey. Who is your target audience and how do you communicate with them? What channels do they engage with and what are their buying triggers? Why is your brand relevant to them?
Just like a competitor analysis, a customer analysis is just as important. There’s simply no point in communicating your brand before you know what language to speak.
The key here is to recognize the distinctiveness of your brand, but of course it needs to be appealing for your audience as well. Ask yourself what will make the audience choose our brand over your competitors? Spend some time on this one. It will set the grounds for your next steps in building a brand identity that stands out.
4. Pay attention to market trends
Before you start shaping your brand’s identity, investigate market trends that will impact your choices. For example, authenticity is a fairly new concept pushed forward by Millenials, is this also something you have to deliver upon? Trust is another important factor. In other words, you can’t get away with b…shit. Your brand needs to be authentic, reliable, and transparent if you’re going to have any chance of getting noticed.
For many marketers this is the fun part. This is the creative part where your brand comes to life. But let’s not forget that your brand will be your company’s most valuable asset, so as fun as it may be, this is also a crucial step in creating a stunning brand. As you are shaping the life of your brand, you’re also shaping how you want your customers to perceive you. Now thinking back on your audience, it’s a good idea to ensure that the way you want to be perceived lines up with what your audience cares about. If you don’t, you will be shooting blanks.
When shaping your brand’s identity, test different variations of your brand. Dare to be different and evaluate reactions and perceptions. Use focus groups for an external audit, but don’t forget your company and colleagues. Sales and customer service also know your target audience, and you can get valuable insight that could impact how you should shape the identity of your brand.
Elements you need to include in your brand identity are:
Logo: This is your brand’s ID – your fingerprint and passport. Your logo represents your company, your offerings, your employees and more.
Tagline: The short and memorable description that communicates your brand message. This is the element that alongside your brand name, needs to tell your audience in a few words, what you are offering.
Colour palette: The power and symbolism of colours is complex. You don’t have to be a colour expert, as luckily you can find information online for this. Nevertheless, do some research to define a colour palette that fits with how you want your brand to be perceived. Never forget that colour symbolism can be very different, and can carry different weight in different countries. And so if your brand intends to have a very wide international profile, you should take this into consideration.
Typography: Just like colours, fonts also have a significant purpose when shaping your brand’s identity. Make sure you choose the font that along with your colour palette shapes your intended brand identity.
Brand assets: Illustrations, icons and imagery are visuals that really count when it comes to your brand’s identity. This is where your designers have to create that edge that differentiates your visual brand from the competitors.
Tone of voice: How do you want to communicate with your target audience? This can’t be random. You need to carefully choose your voice based on your target audience and how you want to be perceived.
When the above is defined and neatly put together, you have your brand’s identity.
Make your brand stand out
The expression “one does not exclude the other” complies with brand building. It’s a process and it takes time. Most importantly, you can’t ever take your eye off the ball. Your audience will change, the market trends will change, and you need to make sure your brand changes with them.
To make your brand stand out, you need to pay attention and preferably stay in front of your competitors 24/7. Yeap, managing a brand is hard work, luckily there are tools available that can help ease your brand management burdens significantly.
What good does any of it do, if all of the above ends up in a drawer, never to be looked at again? If no one knows how to communicate your brand or apply your brand correctly, the harder it will be to manage your brand building with ease.
Remember that branding is not a job for marketing alone, you need everyone in your company to move in the same direction if you’re going to have any success with your brand building.
At this point you should look into a brand management platform and how that can help you establish a brand that stands out.
Collect everything about your brand in one single place
Is it sensible to buy a boat without first thinking about a berth? The answer is an obvious “no”.
Yet many companies invest millions in rebranding or marketing campaigns without thinking about how to manage and care for them.
The summer months we have just left behind will probably go into our collective memory as the “stay at home” summer. Sales of leisure boats, among other things, are said to have exploded, and along the coast, there have at least been plenty of examples of clearly new captains where the pride in the new boat surpasses the knowledge of navigation and seaworthiness.
I recently thought about this in a conversation with a customer. They had invested several million in a new profile, followed by a rebranding campaign because their agency had said: «OK, this is the new you. But where will the brand live?”
Is it sensible to buy a boat without first thinking about a berth? The answer is an obvious “no”.
Yet many companies invest millions in rebranding or marketing campaigns without thinking about how to manage and care for them.
The summer months we have just left behind will probably go into our collective memory as the “stay at home” summer. Sales of leisure boats, among other things, are said to have exploded, and along the coast, there have at least been plenty of examples of clearly new captains where the pride in the new boat surpasses the knowledge of navigation and seaworthiness.
I recently thought about this in a conversation with a customer. They had invested several million in a new profile, followed by a rebranding campaign because their agency had said: «OK, this is the new you. But where will the brand live?”
Is it sensible to buy a boat without first thinking about a berth? The answer is an obvious “no”.
Yet many companies invest millions in rebranding or marketing campaigns without thinking about how to manage and care for them.
The summer months we have just left behind will probably go into our collective memory as the “stay at home” summer. Sales of leisure boats, among other things, are said to have exploded, and along the coast, there have at least been plenty of examples of clearly new captains where the pride in the new boat surpasses the knowledge of navigation and seaworthiness.
I recently thought about this in a conversation with a customer. They had invested several million in a new profile, followed by a rebranding campaign because their agency had said: «OK, this is the new you. But where will the brand live?”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
5minutes 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.
Why marketers need design templates for content creation
Papirfly
3minutes 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:
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.
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.
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.
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
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