What to Expect from Brand Asset Management (BAM)

Branding is one of the most powerful tools in an organization’s arsenal. Good branding draws in customers, cultivates communities and ultimately helps elevate forgettable brands to ones that are globally recognized. Branding isn’t simply something that’s “nice to have,” or something that can be approached in a haphazard or random way. Strong, authentic and original branding is vital for an organization’s success. To have good branding, you need to have good management of all your assets. Brand assets need to be used cohesively and consistently. But when organizations are reaching new heights, and more and more team members are using an ever-expanding collection of brand assets, how can you ensure that your brand’s assets are used correctly, each and every time?

The answer? Brand asset management.

What Are Brand Assets? And What Is Brand Asset Management?

To understand just how critical brand asset management is for a business’s success, let’s break down exactly what it is. To start, brand asset management involves brand assets, which are the recognizable features and elements that create the look and feel of a brand. Brand assets take many different shapes and forms, and can include a brand’s name, logos, icons, mascots, color palette, fonts and even sounds. Together, brand assets are what make a brand recognizable and unique, and memorable to customers.

Today, digital brand management is evolving, and brand asset management (BAM), is a digital tool that is used to centralize, store and manage brand assets. It allows all internal and external stakeholders to easily identify and store brand assets, and seamlessly collaborate with one another.

How to Identify Your Brand Assets

In order to understand the importance of brand asset management in your own organization, your first step is to identify your own brand assets. Some might be obvious, such as your brand’s name and logos. But some might not be as widely used or even known in your organization. In order to identify your brand assets, your organization can review these questions:

• What are the known graphic elements of our brand assets, such as logos and mascots?
• What are the less obvious elements of our brand assets??
• What are the verbal or auditory elements of our brand assets, such as slogans or sounds?
• What are some words that describe our brand voice?
• What is the style of our brand videos?

Why Is Brand Asset Management Important?

Brand asset management isn’t just about the organization of files or ensuring that logos are used in the right way. Although these are some of the benefits, it’s so much more than that.

Think about it like this: consumers choose where they spend their money based on branding, with data revealing that 77% of consumers purchase an item simply because of the brand name. When that brand is consistent across all platforms, revenue can further increase by up to 23%. Additionally, a recent study found that nearly half of marketers surveyed waste time searching for and creating assets that go unused (with more than half of marketers and creatives using Google to find their own company logo!). It’s estimated marketing teams spend 91 hours per week searching for or creating duplicate assets.

When a company is small and has hardly any brand assets, just about any organization system might be acceptable. But as brands grow, consistent and correct use of brand assets quickly becomes much more complex and challenging. When there are hundreds or thousands of assets, new versions, updated brand guidelines and complex file storage systems, finding and using the correct assets can be challenging when brand asset management systems are not in place.

Brand asset management solves two big issues for organizations by ensuring the consistent use of brand assets. First, it saves teams time and money spent looking for, creating and using brand assets. Second, it contributes to brand strength and recognition, potentially drawing in more customers and increasing brand revenue.

How Can Your Company Benefit from Digital Brand Asset Management?

When it comes to deciding which file storage system is best for your business, it’s first important to understand the different types of systems available, and what they’re used for. Brand asset management refers to systems that organize brand assets and facilitate their seamless use. If you’re looking for a system that involves all of your organization's assets in varying places and formats, you might want to consider digital asset management (DAM) systems. DAM systems go far beyond simple file organization and management, they help ensure that every team member can find digital assets at a moment’s notice. DAMs increase overall efficiency by organizing assets so they’re easily searchable and free of duplicates. Additionally, DAMs allow you to set expiration dates, analyze performance and create and collaborate on all digital assets in one place.

And that’s not all. These systems also allow you to easily distribute company content across digital channels and identify opportunities for repurposing digital assets. With digital branded asset management, you can ensure brand consistency while optimizing your team's work. At the end of the day, a DAM system is essential to supporting brand management strategies.

How Do You Know if BAM is Right for Your Company?

Now, when it comes specifically to branded assets, brand asset management (BAM) systems can be a powerful tool for any business. If your company doesn’t currently use a brand asset management system, here are some signs it might be the right time to use one:

• You’re interested in ensuring streamlined brand consistency across all channels, all the time.
• You want to fuel brand recognition with your customers so they are more likely to purchase from your brand.
• Your team could benefit from easily gathering, managing and interpreting data from assets.
• You want to speed up time-to-market (and you’re among the 46% of marketers who feel like they’ve wasted time downloading and uploading assets using multiple tools).
• You want to save your organization resources and ensure that all assets are put to good use.

Examples of Brand Asset Management That Will Convince You to Get Started

If you’re wondering how brand asset management systems can be put to use in your own organization, here are some examples:

• Brand asset management encourages brand consistency: Maintaining brand identity through consistent use of brand assets is far easier when a brand asset management system in place. You can ensure the most recent versions of files are accessible, restrict the use of outdated files, and give users a place to create, manage, share and collaborate while following brand guidelines. You can ensure consistent usage across all channels, such as brand storytelling in content marketing, and asset use on social media. Plus, when creatives are finished with a new asset, they can easily save the template so that approved users can repurpose the design.
• Brand asset management allows you to gauge the ROI of individual assets: Instead of using guesswork to gauge how assets are being used, brand asset management systems allow you to look at asset ROI with precise, valuable insights, so you can maximize the use of your digital assets to support your business goals.
• Brand asset management accelerates access to brand assets: Finding specific brand assets can be time-consuming and difficult when assets are stored in folders and across different platforms. With brand asset management systems, you can quickly find what they’re looking for. Plus, BAMs allow you to easily search through your assets by using AI and metadata to attach tags to assets.

How to Leverage Your Brand Assets for Better Results

Brand asset use should be intentional, consistent and targeted. Here are some ways you can leverage your brand assets using brand asset management systems for better results:

• Manage all of your brand assets in one place: Whether you have dozens of files or thousands, brand asset management systems solve the problems of managing assets because they act as one central hub for all of your files. Easily access your in-house videos, social media collateral and design files all in one place.
• Use an asset taxonomy that works for you: With brand asset management, you can create your own asset libraries with a system that best suits the user groups.
• Enable all stakeholders to be brand representatives: Brand asset management ensures your team has access to the latest, approved versions of content, ensuring that everyone stays on-brand. You can also publish and share brand guidelines with all users who access your content.
• Utilize a single source of truth: When brand asset management systems are used to distribute assets, these systems are able to serve as a single source of truth for your teams. This means you can centralize brand content, keep an organized library and take advantage of AI-powered features.
• Scale your content production with brand templating: Empower everyone on your team – non-creatives and creatives alike – to create and deploy content while keeping it on-brand and compliant. Brand templating helps get more campaigns launched faster, without inundating your creative team.

Are you ready for a brand asset management solution?

Ready to supercharge your team's workflow? Brandfolder is here to help! Our powerful brand asset management solution can transform how you manage assets, user activity and maintain control over digital recognition – all while saving time and money. Streamline the way you do business with a simplified yet advanced system that gives you more than just cloud storage. It's an investment worth making for any organization looking to take their branding game up a notch!

To see the difference Brandfolder can make for your team, contact us today to schedule a demo!