An In-Depth Guide to Brand Asset Management
Does your brand appear consistently across your organization and local channel partners, or does its image and messaging vary? When employees and partners need branded assets for marketing, can they easily obtain accurate, up-to-date files? Or is finding what they need a disorganized, confusing process?
If your answer leans toward the latter, your organization may benefit from an organizational process known as brand asset management, or BAM. Brand asset management organizes your brand’s marketing files and documents to create a more consistent brand experience. When your brand is presented consistently, it resonates with your customers and boosts brand awareness at the local level.
We’re here to walk you through the basics of brand asset management, its benefits, and how you can organize your company’s brand assets across multiple locations and channels.
What is Brand Asset Management?
Brand asset management is a single-source system that makes your corporate marketing and branding materials accessible across the entire organization. If your employees or channel partners want to leverage corporate brand assets for marketing materials, they can easily use the brand asset management system to obtain files that are brand consistent and approved by legal guidelines. This process streamlines marketing across your entire organization and can ensure consistency and visibility across all of the brand’s locations. Brand asset management falls under the umbrella of digital asset management (DAM), which refers to the organization and storage of all digital content. The key difference is that BAM refers only to marketing-specific materials, whereas DAM includes non-marketing materials, such as files for IT, legal, human resources, and other departments.What are Brand Assets?
Brand assets are the individual pieces, creative files, and documents that make up your brand and convey important messages to your audience. These assets must be consistent, up-to-date, and recognizable across the board. Think of brand assets as the everyday materials that portray your company’s identity and tell your story. Brand assets include:- Logos
- Brand colors
- Typography and text fonts
- Graphic elements and icons
- Images
- Slogan and taglines
- Templates (i.e. sales decks, letterheads, signage)
- Boilerplates
- Videos
Many brand assets, like logos, come in several sizes and colors. Different marketing materials call for different assets. It’s important to include all of these options when collecting and organizing your brand assets.
Benefits of a Brand Asset Management System
A brand asset management system offers numerous benefits. When a brand asset management system is put in place, companies can be assured that their brand’s integrity is protected through the proper use of brand assets. For example, your sales team won’t need to create a sales deck from scratch, guess your brand’s font color, or pull stock images off Google. A brand asset management system will provide the team a branded template filled with the proper assets, so they can build a winning pitch. Having the most up-to-date assets available also ensures that brand and legal guidelines are maintained during the entire creative process, which prevents channel partners from misrepresenting your brand. From visually appealing social media images to properly sized logos on a print piece, ensuring that assets are available for all projects helps keep a consistent voice and tone across every customer touchpoint. Finally, the right brand asset management tool saves time and increases productivity, because your employees can quickly sift through the system to identify the right assets for their marketing piece. Gone are the days when hours were spent searching for brand assets, or outdated or off-brand materials harmed your corporate image.How To Manage Brand Assets Across Channels
A recommended way to manage brand assets across channels is to use a through-channel marketing automation (TCMA) platform. A TCMA platform is a powerful solution for brand asset management that can effectively organize your files and provide customizable templates that your local channel partners can leverage when creating local marketing content. When it’s easy for your local channel partners to access the right brand assets, they’ll be more likely to use them appropriately. To further encourage local channel partners to utilize brand assets, consider implementing advanced content access control so users only see content that is relevant to them. For example, if you want to incentivize partners to run a Black Friday campaign, you can use a TCMA platform to engage partners with the approved brand assets for that particular campaign, from paid Facebook advertisements to streaming radio ads. The platform also empowers partners to seamlessly access channel funds when making marketing purchases. This simplifies brand asset management across channels by allowing local channel partners to execute personalized brand and legal compliant marketing campaigns quickly, accurately, and effectively. Using a TCMA platform for brand asset management can increase sales and ROI at the local level.How To Organize Brand Assets
To organize brand assets, follow these steps:-
1. Create individual folders for different types of brand assets
Separating folders for logos, brand guidelines, poster templates, boilerplates, and video files will streamline the navigation process for locating brand assets.
2. Use keywords and a structured nomenclature system for saving each brand asset
Develop a process for naming brand asset files. For example, when naming a photo file, describe the photo, its intended use, and write the date in a repetitive format like ProductBeautyShot.Advertising.7.22.20. It sounds tedious, but this simple step ensures users can easily find the file they’re looking for with minimal effort.
3. Make it clear which files are most up-to-date
Include the file’s date when saving it to make it clear which files are the most recent. If you’re retiring a logo or other asset but don’t want to delete it entirely, create a separate folder for archived files that should no longer be used in marketing materials.