Brand automation uses technology to automate on-brand marketing production. This automation allows users without design software or skills to produce on-brand collateral.
What is brand automation?
Brand automation goes further than merely applying the right colours or logos based on a user profile; it produces assets based on data sources and data sets without manual set up or intervention.
This powerful feature enables users to produce an enormous volume of work quickly, straight from the single source of truth - usually a CRM or marketing automation platform.
A brand automation platform doesn't automate the brand experience, but it does make it easier for you to manage and influence brand perception through the creation of the right collateral, personalised, and served through the right channels.
The weight of expectation
Central marketing teams support the whole of the organisation by providing:
- central brand awareness campaigns
- acquisition and revenue-generation campaigns
- social channel and communications presence for potential and existing customers
- brand management
These actions are usually part of their mandate to reach the company objectives and achieve their KPIs. This best practice marketing work is either created and delivered in-house or delivered in partnership with creative and media agencies.
Additionally, many central marketing teams also function as an in-house agency providing marketing and communications solutions to meet a brief from an internal stakeholder.
Brand automation removes the weight of expectation for a lot of central marketing teams while supporting the whole organisation.
Brand automation supports marketers
Marketing team structures in large organisations tend to go through cycles - centralised and the decentralised and then back to centralised. No matter your marketing team structure, brand automation provides a robust platform to build and deliver your campaigns and collateral using content production software.
As a marketer, you chase engagement and sales targets. You juggle multiple markets, campaigns, channels and target markets. We know marketers struggle to produce enough on-brand content to satisfy your customers and deliver sales. Brand automation software allows you to build a campaign quickly, ensuring you can be faster to market.
Brand automation supports communications teams
Traditionally communications experts need to engage with the design team to produce on-brand collateral and content. Brand automation platforms remove this pain point as your communications team can seamlessly deliver on-brand content through templates without graphic design software or skills.
As communications channels proliferate and more content is required to build a story and have cut-through, communications teams are flat out producing enough content for these channels. Whether the content is snackable on a social channel, email campaigns or website landing pages, your team can create all of this on-brand through a brand automation platform.
Brand automation supports brand managers
You have invested significant dollars in building your brand architecture and visual identity, controlled through your brand team. Unwittingly, stakeholders misuse the brand in their need to have the right collateral at the right time. When using brand automation, your guidelines are always applied to guarantee brand integrity.
Traditional online brand guidelines treat the visual identity rules as a digital display system. Elements are still misused and guidelines ignored. A brand automation platform allows your brand architecture and brand hierarchy to be appropriately applied, with users only seeing the assets they need to.
Brand automation supports graphic designers
Graphic designers haven’t refined their craft to change logos or contact details on a business card. Great designers enjoy the campaign concept development and don’t want to make round after round of changes to a flyer. Brand automation allows design teams to stop doing the churn and burn marketing production tasks and focus on the strategic pieces you enjoy.
While removing the churn and burn from your list seems exciting, it doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice brand guideline integrity. The templates in a brand automation platform rigorously apply your brand guidelines, and users access your approved images and copy. No more well-intentioned, but misguided clipart, and crazy colours through the ease of templated marketing production.
Brand automation supports sales
You know how it is, a great opportunity comes across your desk, but to meet the deadline you will need to create your collateral instead of the central design team. They do great work, but the lead times are generally more than two weeks. Brand automation allows you to build your sales collateral, so it is always on brand, without design skills or a design team.
Lead generation can be a complex operation with multiple ad sizes and variations, flyer iterations and customised proposals. Brand automation makes it easy to build ads, print material and proposals to drive leads. Your artwork will always be on-brand and fast with tools like multi-edit, flexible sizing and pre-approved content.
Brand automation supports franchisees
Most franchisees have several design options - use only what is supplied by your franchisor, make design requests of the marketing team or employ a freelance graphic designer. These solutions can lead to you feeling frustrated. Brand automation eliminates this frustration by empowering you to produce collateral in the platform, without the need for a graphic designer or design software.
As a franchisee, you bought into the very brand you are now a part of, but ensuring you keep the integrity of the brand sounds easier than it is. There are complex brand guidelines, long lead times and tight deadlines to navigate. Brand automation allows you to keep the brand strong while creating collateral yourself.
Contact Outfit or request a demo to find out more.
