Branding in the B2B market is about much more than a recognisable logo or catchphrase. However, managing your brand was, until now, something of a hit and miss affair, with even large corporations making costly mistakes. The good news is that software applications are now available that can help you manage your brand right from your desktop.
It is easy to dismiss brand asset management software as yet another expense your business could do without, but the brand is one of the most important resources that your business should protect at all costs. And once your brand becomes more exposed as it penetrates more markets – often on an international scale – managing your brand’s marketing becomes very important indeed.
Mismanaging your brand can also have grave financial consequences. For example, General Motors marketed its Nova model in Spain and South America without a name change. Unfortunately, ‘No va’ means ‘doesn’t go’ in Spanish! A robust asset management system would have eliminated the risk of this kind of mistake being made.
As Clare Millar, head of marketing for Company Net, explains, asset management is now more important than ever: “Brand asset management software – which uses technology to help organisations aggregate, store and share information – can reduce costs and improve day-to-day marketing operations.
“Any marketer or brand manager understands the complexities and the time involved in creating and managing assets such as graphics, images, audio, video files, documents and style guidelines. The problem is that these assets are created more quickly than they can be managed, and this can lead to a messy and unstructured method of storing and accessing them.”
According to industry research by Gistics, an average marketing professional looks after 5000 brand assets in more than 400 different formats and performs around 10 asset searches a day. Of these, around 35 per cent fail, and wastes around 10 per cent of the practitioner’s day. And the research also points out that replacing assets that are lost or misplaced costs organisations a huge amount of money, year-on-year. Asset management systems are now recognised as a way of saving time and money, and with average return on investment of between seven and 15 times the costs of the system, it’s hugely appealing to brand-led organisations.
What is on offer?
Generally speaking there are three basic types of asset management system: the first and most expensive offer a complete enterprise-wide management system. They enable your marketing department to manage multiple databases that can be widely distributed and accessed from any location on a global scale.
The second type of system is better suited to smaller organisations as they are easier to set up and manage. Generally, these systems only use one database, so if you need to manage a wide range of marketing collateral – for instance from one central office – these systems are ideal. However, be aware that they are not usually scalable, so make sure you won’t outgrow the system too quickly.
The third type of system is hosted asset management. What this means in practice is that all of the digital assets you want to manage will be held again on a database, but this will usually be hosted on the supplier’s systems. This type of asset management is usually the cheapest to set up, but you will have to commit to at least a one-year minimum hosting contract. If you decide to go down this route, pay special attention to how the data is stored on the hosted systems. When you move to another provider you want to be able to easily migrate all of your digital assets to the new system with the least amount of downtime.
Fundamentally, all brand asset management tools offer the same basic functions. If you think of this software as firstly an on-screen instruction manual that tells the user how your brand should be used across whatever marketing collateral is being designed, you’ll understand what this software can do for your business. This instruction manual is supported by a database. This is where all the elements of your brand are stored. This can be anything from logo designs, to press releases in various languages.
The last element of an asset management system is how it is accessed. As the web has become ubiquitous in the lives of all business, most asset management systems use the web – usually via a standard browser like Internet Explorer – as the user interface.
Select with care
When choosing a system for your business, do not simply look at the cost; you must ensure that you select the right system for your company’s needs. Look closely at the core objectives you want to achieve. How will you quantify the success of your new system? You need to audit the asset management system just like any other element of your business. Off-the-shelf packages look attractive, but ask yourself if they can do everything you need to achieve. If not, the extra cost of a bespoke system will be money well spent over the longer term.
If all you need to do is create a media asset library for your marketing team, hosted systems are ideal and start at around £3000. What is also happening is that increasingly ‘plug-in’ asset management systems are becoming available that you can simply attach to your existing intranet.
Whichever system you opt for your, Jens Lundgaard, director at Brandworkz, offers this advice: “Pricing and functionality varies significantly between vendors as this category of software is fairly new and not yet matured. However, in most cases you get what you pay for, and if something seems too good to be true then it generally is.”
Lundgaard also points out that for SMEs and large companies, a successful implementation often needs a certain amount of consultancy from the vendor, because installing the software technically is only half the story. Getting the assets ready, producing templates, liaising with design agencies, training the administrators, and helping with changing internal processes are all equally important aspects, so the ability for a vendor to provide these services can sometimes be as important as the provision of the actual software.
Take advantage
It is easy to become blinkered in the B2B market and forget that your customer base could easily be expanded with the help of an asset management system. Many B2B enterprises are finding that once they have installed their asset management system, they are then to target customers outside of their traditional markets. Direct contact with consumers in the mass market is becoming an increasingly important part of their businesses. As Adam Hainsworth, CEO of Be The Brand Experience advises against ignoring this potential market: “Both B2C and B2B – the specific scope/functionality requirements may vary, but in our experience they vary more by industry than by a B2B/B2C distinction. For example, in financial services where both channels are relevant the solutions have significant benefits; not just for brand consistency/management but for aiding compliance with rules and regulations. For financial services the need to manage the accuracy of literature is driven both by brand and compliance.”
Andrew Yates, senior vice-president at Aprimo, adds, “At Aprimo we’re getting interest from both B2C and B2B organisations who want to adopt brand management technology. Both B2C and B2B organisations face similar challenges in terms of having to ensure brand consistency while operating through sales channels and across territories. Highly-regulated industries such as pharmaceuticals and financial services – where marketers need to be in complete control of what is stated within their marketing – are also prime candidates.”
Grab hold of the reigns
If you don’t feel that you’re in complete control of your brand and the marketing that supports it, now is the time to take a long hard look at your business. Marketing as Carol Meyers, head of marketing at Unica, points out that marketing has – in the past – been somewhat of an art rather than a science. Asset management systems can now enable your business to take control: “Quite simply, increased automation and process standardisation is the future of marketing and brand management. Marketing is the last functional department at most companies not to have migrated to some sort of technology platform. Marketers have gotten away with this up until now due to that tendency to view marketing as art.”
Meyer points out that the top marketers in the world have woken up to the fact that technology can help protect integrity of their brand assets and ensure it is represented in a consistent way, while at the same time improving the marketing organisation’s productivity, reducing overall costs and generating better results.
Lundgaard, of Brandworkz, concludes that you can expect asset management systems to become an essential desktop application very soon: “I believe that brand/asset management will become a mainstream software application type on the same level as CRM software. This is because branding is becoming an increasingly significant factor in retaining a unique selling point, and also the number of digital assets which companies hold is increasing exponentially because it is now so easy to generate them. Finally, the software on the market today is now mature enough to provide significant financial and operational benefits to most companies.”
Ultimately, branding is about reinforcing a set of emotions. This is carried out with obvious mechanisms like logos, straplines and marketing. If you can intimately understand what your brand is selling to your customers, you will be in a very strong position to capitalise on the investment you have made in your asset management system.Think about the last marketing campaign that your business mounted. Did you find it difficult to organise? Was the brand image of your business maintained throughout the campaign? If not, your business is suffering.
Whatever market you’re in, can you afford not to realize your brand’s full potential? Asset management software can help you do this. Costs vary, but it could be the best money you ever spend.
Case study: International SOS
International SOS is a leading provider of medical assistance, international healthcare, security services and outsourced customer care – providing key services to over 80 per cent of the Fortune 100 companies and numerous governments. With offices in 50 countries, International SOS wanted to enable its local sales and marketing teams to drive sales quickly and cost-effectively – using local knowledge to capitalise on opportunities whilst always presenting the brand correctly and consistently. International SOS worked with Be The Brand Experience to implement Easy4Us. Easy4Us is a fully branded system to store and provide instant global access by authorised users to all its marketing materials, including images, videos and documents.
Karina Thomas, group marketing & communications director, International SOS, says: “Due to the rapid expansion of International SOS, each country has always operated with a large degree of independence, and whilst we wanted to retain this, we also wanted to overlay a degree of control and more importantly consistency about how the brand was shown across the world.”
Adam Hainsworth, managing director at Be The Brand Experience, comments: “Brand consistency can be hard to control as it travels from country to country. We worked closely with the corporate marketing team looking at day to day working needs and processes to ensure we found the right solution. Easy4Us gives the marketing team peace of mind by ensuring brand consistency across the board.”
