5 years ago
The hidden challenges of brand implementation
Stuart Cripps-Schnoor
When people generally discuss brand management it is centred around the logo itself, the fonts, the tone of voice, imagery usage and how these are all guarded by the brand guidelines. However, by the very nature of the name, guidelines is all they are. They’re hard to enforce and open to interpretation. People working with the brand are constantly scared of using it for fear of breaking these guidelines and the brand guardians spend all their time trying to police what’s already been created and could already be damaging the consistency.
Our view of brand management is different… To us it’s about mobilising your brand and empowering your whole organisation to use it consistently and confidently. To us a brand is made up of many more elements than that contained in common brand guidelines. To be truly consistent organisations need to ensure colour control and replication, consistency of materials and finishes used on print items, replication across all digital and traditional channels and more importantly turning the whole organisation into brand guardians.
The next question is how can this be done? The simple answer is by deploying a brand management solution. But what does this actually mean?
By deployment a brand management solution you’re providing your organisation with the tools required to realise the full potential of the brand whilst retaining visibility and control over the brand.
Organise and store your valuable brand assets
Many organisations are familiar with the benefits of cloud storage solutions such as Dropbox or Google Drive. However, Brand iQ takes that a step further to allow a fully categorised, searchable and intelligent library of brand assets.
Empower and control your brand
Providing personal access and control over your brand both internally and externally can help to protect and mobilise your brand. Staff and partners have access to what they need, when they need it.
Design stunning on brand marketing materials
The intuitive web-to-publish engine allows you to create customised marketing materials and produce variable output saving you time, money and ensuring brand consistency. Modify preapproved templates giving marketing teams the control to localise and distribute improving speed to market.
Print, Stock and fulfilment
Taking brand management further means ensuring your brand is replicated consistently across all channels. Centralising your print procurement and production process ensures costs and specifications are controlled and SLA’s can be managed. Whether ordering a personalised business card or calling off stock or merchandise everything can be ordered and fulfilled together, saving time and resource. The system notifies you of low stock and manages every element to ensure you never run out.
Complete visibility and valuable insight
The management information interface allows segmentation and customisation of live data to track performance and measure usage. You can find out which assets are being used, how they’re being used and by who.
Deploying a brand management platform will allow your brand to work harder and by working with your organisation you can gain the buy in you need to make sure they feel confident and willing to use the brand. This doesn’t mean losing control or visibility, in fact it means you will actually know in real-time how and what the brand is being used for.
The details behind a successful brand implementation can often be hidden and taken for granted. Just because the brand itself looks great doesn’t mean it will be successful. Having a tried and tested brand management solution can help significantly and allows many of the operational elements to be taken care of.
To find out how the Brand iQ team can help implement your brand, get in touch.
