Control brand assets
Control brand assets
1. Choose which assets are important enough to store by selecting recent, frequently used brand assets that will need to be shared with the entire organization or team.
Examples of assets are in-house images, infographics, logos. Think of items that represent your brand and are important to get right and use properly when employees need them. Visual assets may be the most obvious, but catalog written assets too, like executive bios, taglines, and what we do paragraphs.
2. Select a free or paid software program to store, organize, and control access to your brand assets.
Consider three key functions for a system that controls brand assets, often called Digital Asset Management or DAM. Secure storage and easy access: Store all of your brand assets in one place, securely, but easily accessible to those with permissions. Organization: As your assets list grows, organization becomes important to ensure everyone is using the right versions, for example, print vs digital logo files. Permissions: You may want to give different levels of access to different teams within your organization and external partners such as marketing or PR agencies.
3. Organize your assets into folders, segments, and sub-segments. All assets should be clearly labeled, organized based on team needs, and tagged for search optimization.
If assets are relevant to a particular team or business unit, give that group its own folder. Organize content based on how or where it will be used, and then narrow down even more to particular events or meetings.
4. Look for missing information or assets and fill in any incomplete data by comparing the assets that you have to a list of your team and departments. If a brand asset is missing for a group or department, add the missing asset.
Examples are a particular group or department’s logo or images used for a particular piece of content.
5. Create a set of instructions that defines the exact specification of your brand in terms of language choices and colors.
Include colors that are used in your branding, think hex code color number, and frequently used or avoided words like died or passed away. Examples and use cases, dos and don’ts are particularly useful here.
6. Create a review team made of a cross-section of your organization to give feedback. Task the team leader to review suggestions and pass along actionable suggestions to improve the asset organization system.
Employees at different levels of your organization may have different ideas on how assets can be best organized or stored.
7. Assign someone for ongoing management and set time to review regularly.
A dedicated staff member can be responsible for reviewing the notes and implementing changes as necessary.