The demands of content production get tougher with each passing year. Today’s brands are expected to maintain a consistent flow of on-brand content, across a growing number of channels, to diverse, global audiences.
The pressure is on for modern marketing teams. But, budgets are limited. Hours are finite. Workforces are already stretched. Trying to meet the need for continuous content in a purely manual way is now utterly impractical.
Creators will be overworked. Errors will be made. Costs will run high. To keep audiences with ever-decreasing attention spans engaged with your brand, marketers need solutions that will enable them to ramp up production without compromising on quality.
That’s why the term “creative automation” has rapidly risen in popularity in recent years. It embodies the aim of many marketers to produce the substantial amount of content today’s audiences demand, without needing to massively expand their teams or work around the clock.
What is creative automation?
Creative automation is harnessing technology to allow marketers to scale their production significantly while maintaining a quality output. This is achieved by removing many of the simple, yet time-costly, administrative processes that go into creating assets for a wide range of campaigns and formats.
For instance, say you want to launch a digital campaign promoting a new product. This will involve:
- Multiple different asset formats – social media posts, videos, infographics, banner ads, digital signage, etc.
- Content dedicated to specific channels, from social media platforms to email campaigns
- Numerous audiences across the globe
All of your assets will have consistent branding and a unified theme. But, because of the different requirements for each channel – sizing, formats, languages, imagery – these small changes will take a lot of time and effort to produce.
Creative automation seeks to make these minor yet vital changes much faster to implement. Rather than designers and editors needing to hand-craft these across all formats, painstakingly making every subtle alteration for what is essentially the same asset, they would be able to do this in a matter of clicks.
Using intelligent, pre-approved templates, marketers could seamlessly adjust one base into multiple formats, sizes and localisations, all in one place. In a matter of minutes, one asset can become dozens, even hundreds, all perfectly on-brand and error-free.
This reduces the administrative overhead that these once manual, time-consuming tasks required.
It sounds too good to be true, right? Creative automation promises to be everything that marketing teams need to streamline their operations and free-up their creatives’ time for more suitable matters.
But, there are reasons why BAM by Papirfly™, in spite of delivering the same speed, cost-saving and consistency advantages outlined above, is not referred to as a creative automation tool…
Why BAM is not a creative automation solution
At Papirfly, we are averse to the term “creative automation” for several reasons. First, the phrasing of creative automation itself is problematic, as it indicates that the creative process behind the design and development of assets is automated.
This is far from helpful when one of the biggest barriers to this helpful technology being adopted is the fear among designers that these solutions are brought in to replace them, rather than support them.
With increasing doubts across all industries over the effects of automation and “the robots taking over”, referring to a tool as creative automation is unlikely to alleviate any concerns your design team may have about their status.
We firmly believe that the creative process behind any assets or campaign must remain manual and person-driven, and not confined by any kind of automation. BAM as a solution is there to accelerate the rate of content production once the creative behind an asset is confirmed, and that is why we avoid the confusion that “creative automation” can inspire.
Furthermore, the scope of creative automation solutions can vary significantly depending on the tool used. It has become something of a catch-all term for any technology that can aid the speed of content production, even if that is simply the ability to resize imagery for different social media channels.
With BAM, the scope of our intelligent templates is as comprehensive as possible. From social assets, videos and emails, to brochures, posters and presentations – all marketing materials can be adapted to these formats in-house with this all-in-one solution.
Plus, rather than simply take an existing asset and adjust it, BAM’s templates allow all users – even those with no design expertise – to create new, on-brand assets in a short span of time. These can then be adjusted to all relevant formats, increasing the reach of that asset across all of a brand’s audiences.
Take social media assets as an example. This is one of the most demanding areas of content production that marketers must contend with, competing with other brands for their customers’ attention. Through BAM, users can:
- Customise organic and paid assets in just a click, ensuring they’re perfectly sized for all channels
- Produce static, carousel, video assets and more from pre-programmed templates
- Maintain identity across your social channels with subtly different, yet significant, designs
- Create multi-image layouts, promotions and more
- Quickly adapt language and cultural imagery that appeals to your audiences worldwide
How BAM goes further than creative automation
In addition, BAM does not label itself a creative automation tool because its offering to users is so much more than just a means to create and adapt assets. While that is a major feature, BAM goes even further to be everything marketers need to activate their brand globally.
Digitised approval workflows
To further streamline the content production and ensure everyone who needs it has eyes on assets before they’re published, BAM’s approval workflows guarantees that the right people are notified when an asset is ready to be checked. This means that sign-off is fast-tracked and there is no risk of errors entering the public eye.
- Digital trail of sign-offs
- Make comments directly onto assets
- Complete edits inside BAM
Clear campaign planning
CMOs, marketing managers and more can have complete oversight of what assets are required at each stage of a campaign through BAM’s helpful campaign planner. This visual overview keeps everything neat and tidy, and everyone on schedule, with the ability to make certain briefs, templates and imagery only available to the relevant users and teams.
- A central, visual campaign planner
- Reduces wasted time locating files
- Pull stats to see how often assets are being used
Dedicated educate section
Give your entire team, from experienced veterans to new recruits, direct access to the guidelines that inform the identities of your brand and sub-brands. Users will be able to find colour palettes, typefaces, icons and more in one central location, with a clear idea of how each should be applied.
- A central place for all guidelines, documents and brand materials
- Specialised views for different teams
- Help teams understand why your brand is executed in a certain way
Fully configurable DAM
Maintain a unified database of all assets created by your teams globally with a comprehensive Digital Asset Management (DAM) tool. Through this, BAM users can easily save, search, edit and send assets to anyone with the right permissions. It’s a single source of truth for your entire marketing team, making sure there is no risk of duplicating efforts ever again.
- Store and categorise assets by team, sub-brand, campaign or country
- Download, save, share and edit from within the portal
- Keep on top of what’s being used and how frequently
Discover the full reach of BAM
By going beyond the boundaries of creative automation, BAM by Papirfly™ equips marketing teams to enhance the speed, quality and cost-effectiveness of their content output. Over 500,000 users across the globe, including names like Coca-Cola HB, IBM, Unilever and Vodafone, are transforming their approach to marketing through this powerful solution.
If you would like to learn more about the far-reaching capabilities of BAM, arrange a free, personalised demo, or get in touch with our team.