Is your brand identity consistently communicated across all channels?
Before we begin, here's a short marketing 101:
Your brand identity is the way you want your customers to perceive your brand. Your brand image is how people actually perceive it. Inconsistency, errors, and false information can damage your brand identity. If one of the following points sounds a little too familiar, you might want to consider investing more time and resources in your brand identity.
Wrong publications: marketing content that doesn't correspond with your brand guidelines
An enlarged logo placed where it's not supposed to be; a wrong font; colors that clash and don't match the predefined brand colors. For companies that haven’t made their brand guidelines available for all employees to see, or companies that don't have brand guidelines to begin with, this is a well-known problem which, in turn, can result in the following...
Sharing the wrong information or the wrong message
Even a little miscommunication can harm your brand’s reputation. Inconsistency can cause a wrong perception of your brand. Which one is worse, publications with errors or false information resulting in a damaged brand image? You choose.
Misuse of images
You’re being chased by a deadline and you haven't received the right content on time. You think you've found an image that will suffice, but whoops… Outdated, or even worse, a low quality photo. If you find out before you print those 10,000 flyers, no problem. However, once the 10,000 flyers have been printed and distributed, you might have to explain this to your boss. Just imagine how much time, stress, and monotonous work can be saved if all the right images and most recent logos are stored in one central place.
Sharing content is time-consuming
A common and time-consuming attribute of decentralized MarCom: Multiple people working with the same files. These files are often stored on multiple PCs, drop boxes, shared and re-shared, and given different names. Yet, when someone REALLY needs to find that one file, nobody seems to know where it is. This results in duplicate content, which makes the whole process time-consuming and error-prone. This leads to...
Sharing the wrong content
Employees and partners often work with the same content. Sharing and managing content takes a lot of time. This could be a risk if your brand identity is not secured. If people start to create and share content they are not authorized to, it poses a danger to your brand identity.
Digitalize your content in one brand portal
If the previous points rose any red flags, it may be wise to start looking at ways to protect your brand identity. For most companies, the answer lies in a central database such as a brand portal. With a brand portal, you secure your brand identity by storing all brand assets like photos, logos, and videos, in one place. You and your colleagues can access, download and share the right content with each-other, as well as your partners. With an integrated web-based InDesign Server, anyone with an assigned administrator role can create and publish marketing collateral with preset templates. A brand portal allows you to secure your brand identity, save time and costs.
These are a few of the advantages of a brand portal:
- Brand guidelines are always within reach;
- All files are always up to date (eg. most recent logos);
- On-demand access, anywhere, anytime provided you are connected to the Internet;
- No more duplicates;
- Full control by giving users access to certain folders;
- By giving access to partners or third parties you work with, you enable them to easily obtain the files they need without bothering you;
- You don't have to involve an InDesign expert every time you want to create new marketing content;
- Forget e-mailing for approvals: in a brand portal, you can create an efficient workflow.
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