5 Ways Brand Activation Management Can Boost Your Marketing
7 May 2020
The world is experiencing extraordinary upheaval right now, an upheaval that could prove devastating for brands and organisations the world over.
Nevertheless, it is important that we can continue to think about the future, and how brands can turn the corner and take the opportunities that will emerge as we come out the other side.
With this in mind, let’s talk Brand Activation Management. A term that is rapidly gaining prominence in the global marketing landscape, BAM is providing companies of all sizes and across all industries the potential to form lasting, emotional bonds between them and their various audiences.
All controlled from one single, central destination. All without the need for support from creative specialists.
The importance of having a distinct, consistent brand is more crucial than ever. Keep in mind:
- Consistent branding can result in up to 23% more annual revenue compared to companies that are inconsistent
- 89% of shoppers remain loyal to brands that express their values
- Organisations with poor company branding pay up to 10% higher wages
But what exactly does BAM do to help you realise these advantages? Here, I outline what I believe to be the 5 fundamental benefits that BAM offers global businesses to help their
brand shine.
The 5 key features of Brand Activation Management:
- Making marketing more efficient and effective
Producing studio-standard, on-brand marketing assets has long been considered a long-winded task. Work needs to be briefed into either your in-house studio or outsourced to an agency, then painstakingly worked on, before being passed back and forth a number of times before receiving approval to be published.
Brand Activation Management plays a critical role in revolutionising this traditional approach. Through easy-to-use software and customisable templates, this empowers employees to produce assets when required for all channels you utilise, removing the need to go through a dedicated design team or external specialist.
In addition, with functionalities in place for approval in the same central hub, someone can quickly sign-off on work or arrange amends without lengthy wait times. This saves a lot of hours, meaning work is turned-around quickly and ready to be disseminated to your audiences worldwide.
Remember, it typically takes 5-7 impressions for someone to remember and form a connection with a brand. Having the capability and capacity to produce a greater volume of collateral, all while making savings, demonstrates how effective a role BAM can play in raising your brand’s profile on a global scale.
- Total brand consistency across all channels
As the statistics I highlighted earlier indicate, brand consistency is vital in painting a clear, unambiguous picture of who you are as a company. Without this, it proves difficult for your target audiences to form the strong, emotional bonds towards your brand that inspire repeat business.
To achieve this consistency, BAM makes brand guidelines and similar documentation easily accessible to all employees. Remember that while 95% of companies have published brand guidelines, only 25% stick to them – this approach helps keep people aware of your parameters.
Plus, with the potential to adjust how much autonomy your team members have over each asset in the software’s bespoke templates, this prevents any disparity over branded collateral.
Brand consistency, particularly for companies operating across multiple geographical locations has always been a challenge. By establishing this single, central space for employees globally to manage your brand, this stops it being distorted from region to region, meaning an unambiguous presentation to all your audiences.
- Reducing dependence on creative specialists for day-to-day requirements
The whole point of outsourcing work to an agency is to get better results, whether that’s a greater quality of work or freeing up time for the rest of your team. However, in reality, it’s not normally one agency on a global scale – it’s multiple agencies. And this approach leads to several problems, such as:
- Discrepancies between assets and your brand values
- Extended waiting times for work to be produced
- Lack of collaboration/communication between the company and agencies
While these issues often arise unintentionally, with an agency finding it difficult to develop as deep an understanding of your brand as you have, it can still result in an avoidable drop in brand equity.
By enabling your team to take brand marketing in-house, Brand Activation Management cuts out the middleman, allowing you to save money by reducing your reliance on agencies. Of course, you may still work with agencies to support concept development. But beyond that, you can reap the benefits of total self-sufficiency.
- Achieving global localisation
80% of customers are more likely to respond to a brand that provides them with a personalised, localised experience. For organisations situated across the globe, achieving this granularity for customers (without the support of a local agency) is a tough predicament.
From differences in language and culture, to gearing campaigns around the local climate, traditional approaches run into the same issues of mistranslations and missing the boat on short-term trends.
Through Brand Activation Management’s intelligent hub, it is possible to safely customise assets for your international audiences. Everything from differences in languages, weights, currencies, measurements and more can be accounted for across all collateral.
By taking global campaign assets and enabling your teams in each location to adapt these, capturing cultural nuances and reacting to local market demands, you can meet your customers’ desire for a personalised experience, while never compromising on your fundamental brand values.
- Connecting employees with your brand
Fifth and finally, Brand Activation Management is a terrific tool for bringing your brand and your employees closer together.
I’ve already noted how this software’s capacity to give complete access to your brand guidelines and supporting documents is valuable in keeping everyone in-sync with regards to brand colours, typography, values and more.
But beyond that, by empowering your employees to play an active role in producing branded materials for a range of purposes, be it for an upcoming email or marketing campaign, your employer branding efforts, or your communications internally and externally, this encourages your global teams to understand and connect with your brand.
And, with the time and cost savings achieved through BAM, employees can be more efficient and productive, making them more happy overall and helping your organisation concentrate on their work-life balance.
Feel the benefits of BAM
I hope this insight into the incredible advantages that Brand Activation Management can offer companies to build, enhance and ignite their brands going forward has been useful. The power of a consistent, relevant and prominent brand cannot go understated in today’s landscape – and BAM is the key to global companies forming deeper bonds with their target audiences.
If you are interested in learning more about Papirfly’s BAM™ software, you can find out more on our website on how it can help you:
- Create an infinite range of on-brand marketing assets across all channels
- Educate teams across the world on the values and vision of your brand
- Manage and oversee the delivery of campaigns across international teams