The definition of work-life balance is quite different depending on who you work for. For some, it’s unlimited holiday, flexible working hours and perks-a-plenty. For others, the reality is much starker.

However your work-life balance scale is tipped, one thing’s for sure: If your time at work is full of stress, all the perks in the world won’t make a difference.

BAM by Papirfly™ was designed with one aim in mind: To give teams the freedom to fly. To free them from the fast-paced, ever-changing environment that demands high-level thinking, concentration, energy, multi-tasking and more.

Software isn’t going to save the world, but it can help to make work-life more enjoyable and fulfilling.

How BAM supports individual employees

Manageable hours and no longer working late

Whether resources are low or your team is stretched, there’s nothing worse than working through lunch or staying late just to meet deadlines. Rushing not only compromises the quality of output, but also leaves it more prone to errors. Working this way is unsustainable and unfulfilling. 

Working long hours is mentally draining and sees people missing out on important events with family and friends, as well as leaving them with less time for self-care and other activities that keep their mental and physical health in check.

BAM automates many time-consuming and manual processes, meaning that work gets done more quickly. There are predefined templates in place meaning that anyone in any team can create what they need when they need it. There’s no need to worry about things going wrong because the sign-off process is digitised and the creative is completed with guidelines enforced. 

In summary…

• No more long hours 
• Automate time-consuming tasks 
• Digitise sign-off 
• Prevents rushing 

Feeling less stressed

Many of BAM’s features are designed to make marketing as stress-free as possible. There’s less reliance on agencies or others around you, the responsibility of creation or editing can sit almost anywhere – with no design experience needed to create an infinite amount of assets, including print, digital, video, social, email and more.

These can all be made on-brand in a matter of minutes, so no panicking to push through any last-minute changes or amends. All the power is in your hands.

Able to meet deadlines and keep up with demand easily

When your marketing team is relied upon by all areas of the business, demand can quickly outweigh capacity. Often there’s not an option to say no and teams need to muddle through to achieve what they can, as quickly as they can.

With a dedicated campaign planner built-in to a DAM, everyone understands their deadlines. Marketing materials can be created quickly thanks to smart templates. Technically, anyone in the business can create the assets they need by themselves, as long as they have had the initial hour of training they are good to go.

This means no more over-committing, only seamless execution.

In summary…

• Shared responsibility and burden
• Deadlines met with ease
• Capacity is increased to cope with demand

Reduce the risk of anything going wrong

Anxiety and panic are significantly reduced when the scenarios that can cause them are eliminated. Having the assurance that stops things from going wrong is one of many ways to do this with BAM.

Predefined smart templates are built tailored to your brand. Locked down image libraries, colour combinations, layouts and more so that nothing can be created off-brand.

An optional digital sign-off process can also be embedded into any asset you create. This allows people to comment on particular elements of an asset, approve changes and give ultimate sign-off on the marketing’s release. A full audit trail is left which means you can see who did what and when. 

In summary…

• Full audit trail on assets
• Digitised approval process
• Pre-defined templates prevent anything being off-brand
  

More scope for remote working

When all or part of your team is working remotely, it’s important for them to be able to access what they need without always needing server access or software installed. Your brand’s dedicated brand portal is accessed via a URL and login on your normal browser, which means anyone can access and create what they need from anywhere in the world.

This pulls down huge barriers for teams who have been unable to embrace hybrid working. The power of BAM means they can always pick up where they left off, whether they’re at home, on-the-go or in the office.

Unmanageable workloads are a thing of the past

Taking on too much or feeling under too much pressure often only ends in one way – an unhappy person that looks elsewhere for a new role. Marketing is by its very nature a complex beast, but too much to deliver and too few resources is an unnecessary strain on teams.

Each of BAM’s four feature categories work to make workloads more manageable in the following ways:

Create – An infinite amount of print, digital, social and video assets. There’s no limit to the amount you can create so budgets can be stretched as far as you need them to go. Assets can be created in a matter of minutes, which means more time is freed up for individuals.

Educate – A central place for teams to access all brand guidelines and documentation, ensuring that everyone knows what they’re doing and when. The right teams in the right territories have access to the resources that are relevant for them, which helps to improve accuracy, eliminate mistakes and prevent duplication of effort.

Store & share – A built-in Digital Asset Management (DAM), where everything is centrally stored and accurately organised. Teams can access, edit and share any marketing materials that have been created without having to hunt for what they need. The latest versions and their history is all recorded, and prevents having to go back and redo assets.  

Manage – A central birdseye view of everything that’s going on, no need for back and forth on emails or endless Zoom calls. Create and access timelines, briefs, project information and files in one place. Manage sign-offs digitally and only release artwork for download once it’s signed off.

Ways BAM supports brands

Smart templates ensure everything’s on-brand

There’s total peace of mind that teams across the world are all on the same page and delivering to a high standard.

Teams are always informed and educated

A dedicated education section means that teams in every country have access to the information relevant to them and that brands are activated correctly.

Time is used more effectively

Reduction in time searching for files. Assets created in minutes. Less time liaising with agencies. Amends made in seconds. Time freed up for strategic thinking. There’s no end to the productivity gains made possible by BAM.

Transform the way you work forever

Learn more about the power of BAM for your corporate, employer brand or retail marketing team. Book your demo today. 

 

Brand managers have a big responsibility: to make sure the brand is aligned across every asset, every campaign, and every channel, all over the world. And without the right approval process in place, it’s easy for the content creation workflow to spiral into confusion, delays, inconsistencies.

It doesn’t have to be that way.

With the right structure and tools, approvals can run smoothly – and even help your team deliver better and faster.

Here’s how to simplify sign-off and keep every asset perfectly on-brand.

Five steps to streamline your sign‑off process

There are many ways to approach your marketing content approval workflow. The right approach will depend on the size and nature of your brand. That said, there are some key principles that always apply. The aim here is not to micromanage the content creation process – this is about ensuring clarity, consistency and control over all your brand campaigns.

Step 1: Map your approval process

Before you can streamline, you need clarity. Start by identifying all the people and processes involved in getting assets signed off. Your audit needs to include:

• What type of content and campaign material is being created
• The stages involved in the creation of each type
• Who is accountable at each stage
• Timelines for each stage
• Triggers for moving from each stage to the next
• How progress is communicated
• How campaigns are adapted for different markets
• Any alternative processes that exist for urgent or topical content

Does everyone know their role in this process? The advantage of using software like Papirfly is that the marketing content approval workflow is automated and visible to everyone, removing any confusion over who does what.

Step 2: Document everything

Ideally, you’re fully digital by now. If not, you may still be using physical forms, emails, a PDF annotator or project management tool to submit requests. Either way, it’s worth creating a standard template to keep everything consistent. This may be in the form of a checklist, comment boxes, or signature sections. Don’t just automatically go with what you’ve already got. You need to make sure you have documentation that addresses the following:

• How to submit change requests
• What happens after approval or refusal
• Who is accountable if something goes wrong
• What happens if the approval is unavailable
• How many revisions are allowed before escalation
• How are general review phases separated from approvals

A clear, shared approval guide is invaluable here. It helps new starters and existing employees get to grips with how things work – and gives you peace of mind that brand quality will be protected, even when you’re not there.

Step 3: Share brand guidelines

Without comprehensive brand guidelines, your approvals process could end up being unnecessarily long and complicated. Or worse, campaigns could go to market completely wrong. At the very minimum, brand guidelines should include:

• Logo use across different markets and applications
• Typeface and text sizing
• Supporting visual assets and icons
• Imagery guidance 
• Tone of voice rules

Step 4: Make feedback meaningful

Marketing content approval workflows work best when feedback is:

• Specific – you point to the exact issue and solution
• Actionable – you explain what happens next, and who takes ownership
• Aligned – you use brand guidelines to prevent subjective or inconsistent changes

Does everyone in your organization know this? To boost understanding, include examples of constructive feedback in your approval guide or as a separate piece of training. For example:

Step 5: Keep refining processes and fix recurring issues

Even the best processes hit bumps. Debrief after major projects to identify bottlenecks and fixes. Map imperfect journeys and rebuild your process if it’s not delivering. It’s also important to ensure all templates evolve with your brand.

If the same problems keep appearing in approvals, your brief might be the culprit. By refining briefs, you reduce amends – which means quicker sign-off and fewer bottlenecks. Check: 

• Are briefs detailed enough?
• Do different roles need tailored briefing formats?
• Does everyone have easy access to brand guidelines and assets?

How Papirfly transforms your marketing content approval workflow

With Papirfly’s Digital Asset Management and Templated Content Creation suite, your approvals are fully digitized, tracked, and optimized.

Key features to support your marketing content approval workflow include:

• Chat function — all stakeholders discuss feedback in one place, avoiding conflicting instructions
• Document markup — pinpoint exactly where changes are needed
• Locked templates — empower employees to create their own materials with core brand elements locked in, reducing the number of review steps required
• Automated workflows — from submission to sign-off, every stage is visible, accountable, and recorded
• Re-approval safeguards — any post-sign-off change reopens the approval process, ensuring final assets are always correct

The result? Faster approvals, stronger consistency, and full confidence in every asset you release – from one central portal.

Bring your approval workflow under control

With Papirfly, you can protect your brand, empower your teams, and get campaigns to market without the chaos. Book your demo today.

FAQs

When it comes to building a strong, memorable brand, consistency is crucial.

Presenting your audiences with a dependable, distinguishable identity on all channels is the origin of them building trust with your brand. Without trust, there can be no brand loyalty, and you lose your opportunity at securing that sought-after return customer.

To preserve consistency at a time where the demands on content production are greater than ever, organisations are encouraged to create clear brand guidelines that underpin everything that is published. Much of these concern the visual aspects of the brand, ensuring these don’t deviate from their identity.

Why tone of voice is so important

Just as important is keeping tone of voice and language on-brand and markets specific. Yet, this is often overlooked when it comes to these guidelines, as it is viewed as difficult to enforce and manage in the way visual assets can be.

The end result? Copywriters that are unsure of how to evoke their brand’s personality across content. With incessant pressure to produce this content, they instead write in their own style to compensate.

These inconsistencies impact how audiences view your brands. If there is no binding thread between your various touchpoints, this will prevent potential customers from gaining a solid sense of what your brand represents, making you appear less trustworthy.

What is tone of voice?

Although tone of voice is a commonly held expression, it is important to recognise that tone and voice are two separate entities.

Your brand’s voice is the base of your verbal personality. It represents the core values, characteristics and features that make up your brand’s unique identity, and will be unwavering across every piece of marketing collateral.

Tone by contrast is much more malleable and flexible. Tone is the application of your brand’s voice to fit the context of where it is used. For instance, a social post on Twitter hopping on the back of a trending meme will probably have a notably different tone than a press release about your latest development.

The tone and style it is written can be markedly different, but they can still carry that overarching voice behind your brand. That is the secret to a tone of voice that maintains complete consistency, but perfectly adapts to the channel it’s placed on.

This is a difficult balancing act, and certainly one that some brands perform better than others. But at the heart of the most successful examples are tone of voice guidelines, that remove any room for interpretation and make it clear to everyone in your company how you should be projected verbally in all circumstances.

Building your brand’s tone of voice guidelines

Your tone of voice guidelines set the rules for every aspect of your written communications. It is the document that all writers, both internal and freelance, should refer to in order to ensure they are producing content in line with your personality.

This will also streamline the process of onboarding new copywriters in how they get to grips with communicating your brand, and used as a reference guide for when it comes to editing and proofing.

Below, we’ve outlined our 9 tips to making these guidelines as robust and useful as they need to be to guarantee consistency throughout your content.

9 steps to great tone of voice guidelines

1. Perform a language audit

First, it’s important to assess the content that your brand currently produces across its various channels to identify anything that you feel is inconsistent with how you wish your brand to be perceived.

What words stand out most frequently in your content? How long are your sentences? How often do you use colloquialisms or abbreviations? Do you employ emojis?

Ask these questions and more across a wide body of your existing content. This will give your team a base to determine the elements you like within your current copy, and what needs to be tightened up or addressed in order to consistently present your brand’s personality. Understanding these will be important to what you include within your final guidelines.

2. Identify your brand’s personality

When determining the right tone of voice for your brand, think of it as a person. Imagine meeting them at a dinner party:

• Would they be loud and confident?
• Would they be thoughtful and reserved?
• Would they be assertive and forthright?

What would they be wearing? What subjects would they talk about? Who would they be inspired by? When you start to think of your brand in this context, you can develop a more vivid understanding of what its voice is and how it would be used in a variety of contexts.

By developing this persona, one that incorporates all of the top values and aspects of your brand, it becomes clearer how it would interact with your audiences.

3. Assess your target audiences

Speaking of your audiences, it’s important to perform some critical analysis on who they are and what they would want to hear from your brand.

Is your primary audience niche or is it more mainstream? Do they prioritise particular social issues over others? Is there particular jargon that they use day-to-day?

Building this understanding will cement what your brand’s voice should be to best engage your customers and, importantly, help you recognise how its tone needs to shift to capture the imagination of different audiences across your various channels.

4. Construct a glossary

An essential component of your tone of voice guidelines should be a glossary, which outlines specific terminology and jargon that is unique to your brand or industry, and that needs to be incorporated into your copy.

This will include product names, brand language, warranty terms and department names, and will span across both content you produce for customers, and phrases you use internally. It will also be valuable in outlining how terms will differ when used in different contexts or in a variety of languages (more on that later). It should also address any words that should be avoided at all costs.

Also, it’s important that this glossary is not left static. As your brand evolves and expands into different locations and onto different platforms, it’s crucial that this list is kept up-to-date.

5. List clear grammatical dos and don’ts

Alongside the glossary, your tone of voice guide should also have a distinct list of grammatical rules for your writers to follow. This should be as comprehensive as possible, but listed in a digestible way so it is easier for writers to understand and apply to your brand.

• Do you want hyphens to be used in words like double-click?
• What perspective do you speak with? (i.e. first-person, second-person, third-person)
• What slang words or abbreviations are allowed and which are forbidden?
• Are writers encouraged to use idioms, cliches, metaphors and other literary devices?
• What are your rules relating to punctuation and formatting?
• How long should sentences and paragraphs be in general?

This sounds like nit-picking, but if you want to achieve complete consistency, it is best that nothing about your voice is left to chance.

6. Put copy into context

Remember what we said about voice and tone being separate? That’s because the overarching language and grammatical rules you outline in your tone of voice guidelines might shift slightly depending on the context of the writing.

For instance, on a press release or product description, your copy might be more formal and to-the-point, with little margin for humour or creative expression. At the same time, your social posts could be more colloquial and quirky. The nature of these different types of content necessitates a change in tone to not appear jarring to the audiences reading it.

So, make sure your guidelines address any difference in approach on specific content channels. This will allow for the writing to be rightly adjusted for these various audiences, but not stray too far away from your brand’s core identity.

7. Provide plenty of examples

To give your writers complete clarity over how they should produce content for your brand, it is vital that you give them clear examples of copy that ticks all the right boxes, and copy that is completely off-brand.

Providing several examples, across all of your brand channels, will make it apparent to new and existing writers what is expected of them in a way that simply explaining doesn’t always cover. When you’re learning grammar in school, you will be presented with good and bad examples to make that process easier – this works in exactly the same way here.

Consider the “Goldilocks” technique here: If you want your brand to be perceived as “approachable yet professional”, you might title your emails with “hello” rather than “dear” (too formal and familiar) or “hey” (too colloquial).

8. Don’t forget the details

While it is important not to overwhelm writers with detail to make it as straightforward as possible for them to absorb and apply your tone of voice requirements, not covering all your bases widens the risk of inconsistencies creeping in over time.

With this in mind, make sure you also incorporate sections dedicated to:

• The degree of formality of your content in various contexts
• Your stance on swearing and other potential sticking points
• How and when to reference news and pop culture

Continue to review and assess your copy over time to see if any off-brand tendencies start to emerge, and if they do, update your guidelines where necessary to reflect this.

9. Make it easily accessible

Finally, you can have the most complete, comprehensible tone of voice guide imaginable – but if nobody can access it or knows where it is, it will have no effect. So, it is vital that the location of the guide is known company-wide, and that your teams globally can access it at all times to inform their writing.

This is where a platform like Papirfly’s all-in-one brand management solution can be a powerful complement to your tone of voice guidelines. By providing a single, central destination for all your brand guidelines, this keeps your teams worldwide aware of your brand’s unique identity and how they should maintain this both verbally and visually.

A single source of truth for your brand voice that your entire team can engage with.

4 brands that know their tone of voice

Coca-Cola

A brand that is already benefiting from the Papirfly Platform, Coca-Cola’s tone of voice has been clear and consistent across its 130-year history – it is all about bringing happiness to people.

Coca-Cola maintains a positive, friendly and down-to-earth tone across all its primary communications, built around their core personality trait of helping people live happy lives. Through the language they use, no one is left in any doubt what their brand stands for, and that’s helped it become one of the world’s most celebrated brands.

Examples

“Open happiness”

“Together tastes better”

“Refresh on the Coca-Cola side of life”

Starbucks

Starbucks’ voice guidelines plainly outline their tone of voice in a way anyone can understand, including several examples.

By employing a blend of functional and expressive language, Starbucks sets out their brand identity as one that wants to be clear, helpful and digestible for their customers, but to unlock their passion for what they drink and to indulge in what they love.

Examples

“That first sip feeling”

“It’s not just coffee. It’s Starbucks”

“Our mission: to inspire and nurture the human spirit – one person, one cup and one neighbourhood at a time”

Dove

As a company built around beauty and self-care, it is important that Dove’s messages of empowerment and body positivity are projected throughout its communications.

Dove keeps this consistent in their various marketing and social media campaigns, through to their website, where their vision aligns them as an organisation that wants to make beauty a source of confidence, rather than anxiety.

Examples

“Making a genuine difference”

“Welcome to Dove…the home of real beauty”

“We believe that real beauty comes from confidence, and confidence comes from embracing who you are”

Old Spice

Following their rebrand in 2010, Old Spice unshackled themselves from their former tone of voice, which was associating them with a mature audience, and revitalised it to attract a broader, younger demographic.

By focusing on wit, humour and a new perspective on masculinity, Old Spice used its new voice to regain its foothold as a global leader in men’s deodorant.

Examples

“The man your man could smell like”

“How to keep excessive sweat from stopping your swagger”

“Get more awesomeness, good smellingness, and Old Spice exclusiveness than ever before”

Lock down your tone of voice

We hope this has helped you recognise the absolute importance of being clear and consistent with your brand’s tone of voice and language, and how you can guarantee this in your own marketing.

Consistency is the cornerstone of customers trusting your brand – and this needs to be maintained every time you engage with them. Your tone of voice and the language you use is just one component of this, but it is one that demands your attention to prevent your voice from becoming confused or inaccurate.

Our all-in-one brand management platform is designed to help your brand lockdown consistency across all areas of your marketing, both verbally and visually. 

• Harness bespoke, intelligent templates to produce assets faster and more cost-effectively, with no chance of going off-brand
• Make all guidelines, training videos and assets available company-wide
• Set permissions for different team members to ensure they can only access features and assets relevant to them and their market

Start empowering your brand with a brand management platform – get in touch with our team today.

A brand portal’s power can’t be understated. It’s a game-changer for not only your brand, but for you and your teams – but that’s only when you fully understand what you’re signing up for.

It won’t transport you to another galaxy, but this kind of portal will take your brand to places it has never been before. 

There are hundreds, possibly thousands of brand portals available. It’s a saturated market and the term ‘brand portal’ alone is interpreted in many different ways, delivering many contrasting solutions.

The problem is that they’ve been developed by teams from all different backgrounds, solving different pain points and problems – which leaves you with an overwhelming amount of choice but not a lot of context or clarity. 

In this article, we aim to help you understand the core features of every solid brand portal, what it should help you achieve day-to-day and how it can propel your brand long term. Lastly, we’ll help you navigate and narrow down your choices.

What is a brand portal and what does it do?

At its most basic level, a brand portal is a digital home for your brand. Many give you access to brand assets, videos, guidelines and campaign materials. It allows employees, agencies, suppliers and whoever else needs access to log in and get what they need, when they need it, without having to interrupt anyone else.

This is still an accurate description of many brand portals that exist. But there are many vendors taking this to a new level, and redefining what a brand portal is and should be.

The trouble with the traditional definition is that it only solves one of many brand problems. A comprehensive brand portal should give teams the ability to create and edit assets, as well as access them.

Otherwise, there’s still a great disconnect between what’s being produced and what’s available. There’s no true oversight or assurance of brand consistency, and mistakes can only be noticed once the files are uploaded. 

What features should a brand portal have?

A brand portal solution like Papirflys are being continually updated and invested in, so it can be hard to know what you should be looking for in terms of features. We’re proud to say our core product allows for the vast majority of features to be accessed, with very few module upgrades available. 

Here’s the list of features you should be looking for in your next brand portal: 

An easy-to-use, customisable dashboard or ‘homepage’

Tailored login credentials, so that certain individuals or companies only have access to what they need

A built-in, intuitive Digital Asset Management (DAM) system to organise and locate files and assets easily – with tagging functionality, as well as the ability to download in different file formats

Dedicated education section for brand assets, guidelines, usage and more to educate teams on the wider brand consistency mission and reduce internal requests

Intelligent design studio integrated into the portal, with guaranteed on-brand digital, print, social, video and email templates that can be created from scratch, edited or translated and adapted for other sub-brands, languages and regions

Campaign planning tools and timelines where campaign materials can also be easily accessed – with the option to discontinue asset availability once campaigns have finished

How will a brand portal make your life easier?

Aside from giving you a centralised place for your content production and brand management, it will also give teams a direct way to get the assets they need. They can create and edit anything themselves, while you are assured your brand guidelines are always adhered to.

This means no waiting around for agencies or third-party suppliers; teams can go to market quickly and you’re not bombarded with requests.

Wider than this, everything your brand produces will be on-brand and consistent, helping to create a more unified approach to marketing and communications. A brand that’s presented consistently tends to generate 23% more revenue.

Budget will be saved by reducing agency spending. Time will be saved by having a single place to go to for files and creation of assets. Teams will be more productive and deliver more in less time. 

There are very few (if any) downsides to implementing a brand portal. The benefits extend far beyond just being able to deliver more day-to-day – it has an incredible positive impact on the wider brand and business. 

Making an informed choice

We’ve compiled a list of key questions to help you select the brand portal that’s right for you. 

• Are big, reputable brands using the portal?
• How many active users do they have globally?
• Can the company demonstrate reviews and detailed case studies (preferably video)?
• How many years has the company been established?
• How many employees does the company have? (this will help you to establish the level of customer service you can expect)
• Are the pricing and package levels transparent?
• Was the demo useful and informative?
• Are the sales and customer service representatives knowledgeable? 
• Is there a set roadmap for updates over the next year?

Could a brand management platform by Papirfly be your next brand portal?

We’re proud of the brand portal we created back in 2000. We’ve had a vision for over 21 years to become the best brand portal available and help global companies reach their full potential. And we’re doing it.

If you would like to learn more about Papirfly book your demo today.