Brand management - make it DAM spicy

Maintaining brand consistency across all marketing content is a challenge for globally operating, decentralized companies. Doing business in different markets means localizing marketing materials. Balancing global brand consistency and localized marketing material seems like an either/or decision; and yet, it doesn’t have to be.

How, you ask? Check out this guest blog Q&A contribution from Canto, one of our DAM partners. Read on as Marketing Director, Ines Koehler, shows you how to maintain brand consistency in a decentralized team.

When working with decentralized, globally operating organizations, what are some of the typical challenges you see?

Ines: The main struggle they usually face is having to decide whether they go with a rather rigid, globally consistent strategy or whether they choose more of a laissez-faire approach – sacrificing consistency for more localized marketing material. However, the use of InDesign templates in the hands of local agencies, or users with limited InDesign knowledge, often leads to undesired results. This doesn’t even take versioning documentation, efficient workflows and approval processes into consideration.

How can integrating your Web2Print with a DAM system help organizations face these challenges?

Ines: The web-to-print software provides organizations with easy-to-use templates that allow staff with limited design skills to make adaptations without affecting brand consistency or design quality. That’s great because it subsequently reduces dependency on local agencies.

A digital asset management system, like Cumulus, can enhance workflows by:

Providing brand imagery that can be accessed directly from CHILI publisher and included in the layouts
Controlling usage rights of CHILI templates and visual assets across global and regional marketing and sales organizations
Functioning as a single source for all visual assets

Can you give an example of a typical company that would benefit from integrating a Web2Print technology like CHILI publisher with a digital asset management system like Cumulus?

Ines: The combination of DAM and Web2Print is especially powerful for organizations that:

Base their business model on strong, valuable brand equity and see maintaining brand image consistently across all channels as a key success factor and is essential for brand management.
Work with a decentralized internal or external marketing and sales organization that’s spread across many regions: these organizations need to be able to easily access the needed material and take care of necessary adaptions easily and quickly, without extensive approval procedures.
Work with a decentralized, channel sales organization.

The material we’re typically talking about here could be anything from product brochures, to business cards, stationary or event signage.

An example could be a car company that needs to advertise in multiple regions with printed material. Each individual dealer in those regions has its own prices and market and needs to be able to make changes to marketing materials. Without the right technology, there were just two choices for this car company: make all the individual marketing materials by yourself and coordinate with individual dealers or allow dealers to make their own – often brand inconsistent – printed ads. Now with CHILI publisher powered by DAM, individual dealers can easily make their printed advertisements tailored to their market with an easy-to-use template controlled by the marketing admin at the car company.

Another example is a typical German manufacturing company with offices in 100 different countries. They all need business cards, letterheads and invitation cards and must be brand consistent.

So, in the end, what’s the actual business benefit?

Ines: With a combination of Web2Print and digital asset management, companies can have both localized material while having the ability to easily maintain brand consistency. And the best part is: organizing visual assets in a DAM saves a lot of time.

How often do you create material and hunt for a picture, logo or previously used document?

Ines: A digital asset management system keeps all your assets stored in a central location so everyone in your company can find them quickly.

For documents you need to continuously update – like templates or layouts, for example – the version history is documented. And when using visual assets in several channels – like in your product brochures or website – you ensure the assets come from one source and are always up-to-date.

Another important topic is access control. There are some excellent features within Cumulus that let you control the access of your images within your team.

Since the modern team is made up of internal personnel, freelancers and agencies spread across the globe, you need to be able to coordinate who has the permission to view what asset. As an admin, you can configure Cumulus to only show approved assets to the team. This streamlines the content creation process and helps avoid any digital rights management issues arising from printed materials.

Picking up the Cumulus-CHILI integration is an excellent way to boost your printed masterpieces. It gives you a central location for the assets so you can create your materials faster and with more accuracy.