How DAM supports your brand management

1. Introduction: What exactly is brand management?

Brand building is an important task for any company that wants to establish itself in the market in the long term. Those who succeed in this brand management task can look forward to many advantages, but it is a long way to go and the outcome is often uncertain. After all, a brand isn’t built overnight – it often takes many years for a company to establish a solid market position. And even then, the challenges don’t get any smaller: the brand image must be continuously defended, developed, and adapted to new framework conditions, trends, and developments. Brand management is a central part of this task and refers to the administration, maintenance, and provision of brand-relevant digital assets. Brand management is therefore part of comprehensive DAM and is explained in detail below:

2. Key insights

• Brand assets: The most important media in brand management include, for example, logos, image films, corporate images, fonts, colours, and guidelines for the correct use of brand assets. This term therefore covers all media that have something to do with a company’s brand image in any way, regardless of their form, file type, or use.
• The goal of brand management: In order to turn a company into a real brand, a number of important ingredients are required. High-quality communication material plays an essential role. It doesn’t matter who communicates about a brand, on which channel, and with which message: if the brand assets are outdated, inconsistent, or deviate from the guidelines, the brand development – and in the worst case, the brand itself – is damaged. The most important brand management task is to prevent this from happening.
• Brand management as an integral element of DAM: All of a company’s media content is managed, maintained, and provided in a DAM system. This naturally includes product images and videos for the creation of product content for product communication. But ideally, all other digital assets are also stored centrally here. In addition to internal documents such as training materials or images from company events, this also includes brand assets. Brand management should therefore be seen as part of comprehensive DAM.
• For more effective collaboration: Creative processes very often involve external parties such as agencies, photographers, or graphic designers, and this is particularly true for brand communication. Modern brand management facilitates both internal and external collaboration through sophisticated rights and role management as well as innovative collaboration tools.

Tip: Companies tend to provide brand-relevant content locally for a dedicated PR team, which often suggests more control over the logo and company images. In reality, however, third parties gain access to brand assets from all kinds of uncontrolled sources. The result is often low-quality and outdated communication elements. Brand management software provides both internal users and the public with up-to-date, high-quality material – giving the company real control over its brand image.

3. Why is brand management important?

The demands on corporate communication are becoming increasingly complex. This applies not only to product marketing but to all communication measures. The presentation of products, services, and company content is taking place on a growing number of channels. Digital commerce is opening up more and more opportunities for companies to market themselves and their offerings. At the same time, the challenge of communicating effectively, synchronically, and quickly on all these channels is increasing. This is important, however, as competition will not be long in coming.

Companies that use their brand assets efficiently have many decisive advantages:

• Recognition: Brand assets such as logos, colours, and fonts are primarily used to quickly identify companies. Anyone who sees the same brand appearing again and again on different channels automatically assumes that it has a certain relevance. Customers who have already purchased products from a brand are more likely to return to it if they encounter it again in different places. The recognition effect is therefore not only important for building a brand but also for maintaining customer relationships.
• Trust: Consistent quality in corporate communication with consistent brand assets and a clear brand image makes a significant contribution to building trust in the market. Consistent communication suggests reliability and a pronounced awareness of quality.
• Efficiency: PR and marketing teams benefit from centralised brand management software, as relevant digital assets such as logos and company images are always available and up-to-date. This saves a lot of time that would otherwise be spent on lengthy searches and internal enquiries.
• Transparency: Without centralised brand management, the reality is that brand assets are usually stored locally somewhere in the company – and often in different versions and as duplicates in different locations that not all employees have access to. In the end, nobody knows which version is current and authorised for use. With effective brand management, this scenario becomes a thing of the past.
• Professionalism: External parties such as business partners or the press also regularly require brand-relevant content, which can lead to unnecessary effort if requested manually. Those who actively ensure that these digital assets are always available in an up-to-date form also support their partner and press relationships.

These examples show that companies can successfully master many challenges at the same time with little effort, and the basis for this is provided by a suitable DAM solution.

4. How DAM solutions support brand management

DAM solutions such as Sharedien support companies in the management, maintenance, and distribution of digital assets – whether images, videos, documents such as instructions and certificates, or graphics. Modern DAM solutions offer a range of helpful tools and functions that also benefit brand management tasks:

• Centralisation: In a DAM system, all digital assets are provided in a single location. This makes time-consuming searches for logo variants or the latest image film a thing of the past.
• Automation: Whether workflows, image processing, or tagging: modern DAM solutions automate common creative processes, freeing up valuable time for more demanding tasks.
• Data quality: Clear review and approval processes as well as integrated validation mechanisms ensure the highest data quality when creating and maintaining brand assets.
• Provision: DAM solutions can make brand elements accessible in a wide variety of ways. For example, files can easily be made available via URL, email, clearly defined access rights or brand portals, and ultimately also via interfaces to other systems such as PIM, shop system, or CMS.

DAM therefore functions as a central data hub for brand-relevant media and plays an important role in brand development and PR work.

5. Brand management best practices

If you see brand management as a real opportunity, you can make a strong difference to your brand – and with the right DAM system, the effort required is minimal. Here are three best practices for successful brand management thanks to DAM:

• Intelligent access rights: Creative processes usually involve both internal employees and external parties such as agencies, graphic artists, photographers, or designers. To enable genuine collaboration, modern DAM solutions offer sophisticated rights and role options that not only facilitate review and approval processes but also offer maximum security.
• Brand portals: DAM provides the perfect basis for brand portals that offer either unlimited access or access to all relevant media content using access data. This allows companies to effectively manage the provision of their brand assets – for example, directly via their own website.
• Retail media: The topic of brand management has received a significant boost with the current developments in retail media. Retailers and large online marketplaces such as Amazon and MediaMarkt are offering their brands more and more opportunities to design their product detail pages in line with their brand. In addition to basic information such as product data and descriptions, brands can also integrate marketing texts, documents, comparison tables, FAQs, and product videos. But even more importantly: everything will have the look and feel of the brand.

Tip: Wherever you can, take your brand communication into your own hands. The retail sector now offers numerous opportunities for brands to actively optimise their presentation. An effort that is definitely worthwhile with the right tools.

6. Intelligent content hub: brand management with Sharedien

With its modern DAM functions, Sharedien helps companies build their brand effectively and strengthen it in the long term:

Central data hub

Sharedien can be easily integrated into a company’s digital ecosystem. This means that brand content is not only available for all relevant workflows and work processes, but it is also distributed quickly and efficiently to all important channels and data recipients.

Brand portals

Brand assets such as guidelines, image films, and logos are managed centrally and can be made available transparently to all authorised users. This allows companies to ensure that their brand compliance is maintained.

Efficient collaboration with Workspaces

With Sharedien Workspaces, companies can create digital collaboration spaces for working with agencies and photographers and organise the creation of brand assets efficiently and transparently with the help of centrally stored briefings and integrated review and approval processes.

Get to know Sharedien here: Live demo and presentation of the most important functions.

7. Brand management in practice: two case studies

Use case 1: Press material of the highest quality

Press relations are an important cornerstone of brand development. This includes establishing press relations and supplying relevant press offices with high-quality communication material. Many companies therefore involve their press contacts and central partners in their communication measures and provide appropriate media material directly. In this way, third parties can be used easily and effectively as multipliers for brand messages.

Use case 2: Consistent communication on every channel

Brands also change their appearance over time. A fresh coat of paint not only ensures that companies follow contemporary design rules, but it also helps them to actively address new target groups. This makes it all the more important that adjustments to brand elements are immediately effective in every sales channel used, and it also applies to third-party platforms such as retailers’ online shops or online marketplaces.

8. Measuring success: how to evaluate your brand management

There are several key performance indicators (KPIs) for the evaluation of brand management software that shed light on very different perspectives. On the one hand, it is of course important to cover the internal perspective and examine the extent to which brand management contributes to ensuring the quality of digital assets and increasing the efficiency of creative processes.

On the other hand, brand strength itself plays an important role – and it isn’t easy to measure this objectively. Of course, metrics such as follower numbers and sales development can be used as approximate values, but it must be clear that these also depend on many other factors, and the actual effect of brand strength is impossible to derive. Additional KPIs are therefore recommended, such as:

• Brand perception: Companies can commission surveys to analyse how their own brand is perceived by a target group. This perception is influenced by, for example, personal experiences with the brand or communication measures and product messages.
• Customer loyalty: Loyalty to a brand is an important indicator of brand image and can be measured relatively easily using customer loyalty metrics.
• Market position: Finally, the market position can also be continuously measured and evaluated. However, this requires deep insights into the market, the development of demand, and the competition.

Would you like to find out how you can use DAM to build your brand? Talk to our experts with no obligation!

9. Common mistakes in the implementation of brand management

The field of brand management application is multi-faceted, so it’s all the more important not to neglect any of the potential when implementing it. Nevertheless, this is exactly what often happens in practice, and promising opportunities remain unutilised:

• Restricted access to brand assets: Many companies are reluctant to make their logos and other brand elements publicly accessible. They often fear a loss of control. However, the opposite is true: by ensuring that high-quality and up-to-date brand assets are freely available, companies actively take control of their brand communication.
• Brand management without DAM? In many organisations, brand assets are treated differently to all other digital content such as product images and videos. These are often stored locally in folders belonging to the marketing or PR team. As a result, companies miss out on many important efficiency and quality benefits such as centralising content, the ability to collaborate on the creation of new brand assets, and the automated updating of brand elements on all relevant sales channels.
• Unclear user roles and rights: For brand assets in particular, it is important that every user can access, review, comment on, approve, or edit the content according to their tasks. Without an appropriate rights and roles concept, not only do projects risk losing efficiency, but the security risk also increases.

10. Conclusion and recommendations for action

For companies that want to secure and strengthen their market position in the long term, solid brand management is crucial. Nevertheless, it is often underestimated and insufficiently implemented in practice. However, suitable DAM can create the perfect basis for effective and sustainable brand management. It is therefore advisable to start with the existing DAM processes and integrate all brand-relevant content in a meaningful way and make it available according to its actual and planned use.

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