What Are Some Effective Brand Management Techiniques?

A consistent, recognizable brand that is visible – clearly and often – across both traditional and digital platforms is a company’s biggest asset.

But managing a brand across constantly changing delivery channels serving a wide range of stakeholders and users needing to interact with it, is a challenge.

Brands must maintain a consistent tone of voice across advertising, editorial, retail sites, user generated content, and multiple platforms whether owned, bought or earned. All the while, the brand owner must keep control of its assets, for example maintaining accuracy and currency, retiring outdated assets and circulating new ones, all while keeping an eye on budget, efficiency, and effectiveness.

It can seem like a daunting task but, with the right technology and the whole organization on board, it is one that can be as routine as turning on the lights in the morning. Here are 10 simple tips to stay on top of brand management:

1. Set Rules

Outline the parameters of how the brand should be represented. Lay out in detail the rules brand assets must satisfy, from the pantone color and precise font of the logo, to image rights and use cases. Keep the rules updated and written down, easily accessible and clear to everyone involved in using brand assets.

2. Bring Employees on Board

Rules work best when everyone understands why they are in place. Make sure that the process of setting rules for who can use assets, why, and in which scenarios, are clear and explain the rationale. Understanding the rules helps employees make quick decisions and avoids poor choices in the future.

3. Include Third Parties

Lines of communication between suppliers and consultants aren’t always as direct as within the company. Involving third parties in brand conversations, providing easy access to brand asset materials, and building in time to refresh or update partners on asset changes or evolutions can all be invaluable best practices to a brand and its assets. If practical, onboard third parties into any content management systems.

4. Define Workflows

Workflows with clear action points allow employees to make the right choices over asset use and help them to understand the scope of their task. Transparency in workflows allows for better collaboration and fewer misunderstandings or effort duplication.

5. Centralize Assets

Where possible, centralize brand assets to provide easy accessibility and transparency. With all assets in a single resource, it is easier to see which assets need updated, where gaps need to be filled and what assets are at the company’s disposal, without wasting money on duplicating assets or creating rights issues.

6. Facilitate Regional Marketing

Centralized assets make it easier to adapt marketing to a more customized, personalized customer approach. It is easier to select the most appropriate asset, create a single, regionalized version and make it available back to the business. It also means that regional offices also have a ‘single source of truth’ for assets, despite being geographically distant and brand cohesion is maintained.

7. Promote Collaboration

Being able to access and work on assets simultaneously across departments allows for greater collaboration across the business. It eliminates the need to wait for one area to finish its workflow before another can access the asset and increased visibility of centralized assets allowing multiple parties to discuss strategies in real time.

8. Bring Brand and Customer Experience Closer Together

Brand management is typically a proactive policy created and evolved from the business, while customer experience is informed by customer interactions. Centralizing asset management means those involved in customer experience can feed back to the organization, allowing it to react quickly and develop the brand on the basis of this valuable insight.

9. Scale at Speed

The centralization of assets allows for single ‘master’ assets that can then be adapted to changing consumer needs, such as rapid localization for new markets. But by minimizing duplication and speeding up workflows, there are also cost savings that allow the company to invest in growing the business elsewhere.

10. Improve Relevancy

Markets – and consumers – move fast. Companies have to keep up with changing trends and tastes. With a single asset resource, it is easier and faster to identify which areas need to be reviewed and which assets need to be updated to meet these changing demands, allowing the company to stay relevant in an efficient manner, in the face of slower competitors.