Protecting brand guidelines by using templates

May 28, 2020

 Five minutes with Fleur Video series – Video #5 

How do you make sure you collaborate and manage your brand effectively while working remotely? In a series of videos, Fleur Elise Muller – Account Executive at Lytho, shares some tips, tools and tricks so you and your team can be more efficient and stay on brand while working remotely. 

Everyone is forced to work from home right now, which is a new situation to many if not all of us. Fleur Elise Muller is an Account Executive at Lytho, helping our customers in getting the most value from a Digital Asset Management Solution. This means she speaks with and advises a lot of marketing teams around the globe about how to collaborate and manage their brand (Assets) remotely.  Many of these teams have the challenge of staying consistent in creating their digital content. 

To provide you with some insights, tools and tricks so you can be more efficient during these times, Fleur created a series of short videos where she highlights certain subjects and offers some expert tips, tools and tricks, all relevant to collaborating remotely as a marketing team. 

  • In Video #1 Fleur shared some tips about managing your brand while collaborating remotely. Watch that video here. 
  • In Video #2 Fleur shared five tips for creating consistent Digital Content and managing your Brand Identity. Watch that video here. 
  • In Video #3 we discussed the six ways in which a DAM system can help you share files externally. Watch that video here. 
  • In Video #4 Fleur showed you the benefits of a DAM system as compared to a DMS. 
    Watch video #4 here. 

Video #5: Protecting Brand Guidelines by Using Branded Templates

In this video we highlight how you can protect your brand guidelines by using branded templates.  

In your organization there are probably a lot of departments who are all creating digital files, such as marketing, sales and HR. They create files such as presentations, flyers, business cards and social media posts.  

How do you make sure that every document will be created according to your brand guidelines? In order to control the creation of on-brand content, templates can be a very good and efficient solution.  

What does a template look like? How are you able to create such a template? What are you able to change and what not?  

Watch the video below: 

HubSpot Video

The four steps to using Templates to protect your Brand Guidelines 

Let's dive into the steps of such a process and into why templates are the solution for staying on-brand. There are 4 steps.  

  1. Set-up of the templates  
    Two things are needed; software and a creative designer. Firstly, you need a solution where you can make use of the templates, such as a DAM solution. Here you are able to upload the template and create a place where colleagues can create new material.  
    Secondly, you'll need a creative designer or a design agency. They are the ones that create new marketing material from scratch in an application like InDesign, by using their creative skills and design knowledge. They can pass on this document in a template format to people who do not have InDesign knowledge.  
  2. Uploading the document as a template 
    When the InDesign document is ready, you can upload this document in the DAM solution. When doing this, you are able to pre-set the fields that are changeable and the ones that are not. You can choose the right fonts, logo and brand colors which may be used.  
  3. Opening and using the template 
    When a colleague opens this template to create a new document, that person can only change the fields that they are allowed to change. Moreover, the place of that particular field will not change within the boundaries that are pre-set.  
  4. Downloading the new document and publishing it 
    When the new document is finished, you are able to download the document in any format, such as a PDF or High or Low resolution image. Then you are able to publish this online, for social media, or send it directly to the printer for physical printing. 

So, there you go - these were the steps that we wanted to share with you in this video. These are all related to a Digital Asset Management solution, which can help make sure that you are in control as a Marketing Manager or Brand Manager. A DAM solution can help you manage all your marketing content in an efficient and effective way. Multiple DAM solutions offer template functionality. 

This has been the fifth video in our “Five Minutes with Fleur” series. We'd love to hear if this video was of value to you. The next video will be up next week. Keep following Lytho on social media or be sure to check in with our blog. 

Need more info? 

At Lytho, we're all about delivering brand consistency. We'd be happy to get in touch with you to chat more about best practices for managing your visual brand assets in order to get more work done with less effort, all the while strengthening your brand and staying consistent.  

Finding and effectively using the right Digital Asset Management Platform for your organization can be of great help in that respect - it can save you a lot of time and money, especially if you're working as a marketer for a larger organization. Would you like to understand more about the value of a DAM system? 

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