Fulfilling the brand promise

Every time you try on a pair of Nike train­ers, buy the lat­est giz­mo from Apple or swig from a can of Coca-Cola, you expect a sim­i­lar expe­ri­ence and lev­el of qual­i­ty. A brand is, after all, a promise of con­sis­ten­cy.

Suc­cess­ful brands con­vince us that their prod­ucts will be of uni­form qual­i­ty wher­ev­er they are con­sumed by care­ful­ly con­trol­ling the use of logos and colour palettes in their pack­ag­ing, adver­tis­ing and mar­ket­ing mate­ri­als. In a world of cheap but real­is­tic fakes, hav­ing a con­sis­tent iden­ti­ty is cru­cial to a brand’s cred­i­bil­i­ty.

How­ev­er, there is a bal­ance to be struck between cen­tralised cor­po­rate con­trol over brand iden­ti­ty and allow­ing retail­ers and over­seas offices flex­i­bil­i­ty in its use.

Train oper­a­tor Eurostar faces the chal­lenge of mak­ing sure that its brand is recog­nised in trav­el agents around the world as well as in train sta­tions across south­ern Eng­land, France and Bel­gium. Eurostar mar­ket­ing direc­tor Lionel Ben­bas­sat says that achiev­ing con­sis­ten­cy is vital for the brand to be eas­i­ly recog­nised by cus­tomers and to help it stand out from rivals. Equal­ly impor­tant is for the brand­ing to accu­rate­ly pro­mote Eurostar’s phi­los­o­phy and val­ues.

It is large­ly down to Eurostar’s sales­peo­ple to check that the brand is being used in the right way through their rela­tion­ships with third-par­ty sell­ers. But there is a lim­it to the lev­el of con­trol the com­pa­ny can exert, says Mr Ben­bas­sat. “It can’t be very strict. We have to be flex­i­ble as we work with dif­fer­ent par­ties. We need to be able to ful­fil the needs of every­one and give a set of tools which are used in dif­fer­ent con­texts and can con­vey dif­fer­ent mes­sages,” he says.

Only by get­ting staff to buy into brand con­sis­ten­cy can suc­cess be guar­an­teed

Brands are start­ing to gain greater con­trol over the use of their iden­ti­ties via the web. Dig­i­tal asset man­age­ment (DAM) sys­tems allow com­pa­nies to store their brand iden­ti­ties online. Staff and third par­ties all over the world can access these mate­ri­als, ensur­ing they use only the most up-to-date logos and images.

Eurostar uses a DAM sys­tem pro­vid­ed by brand man­age­ment soft­ware firm Brand­workz. “In the past, brands would have top-down cen­tralised con­trol. That doesn’t real­ly work any more; peo­ple don’t want to be force-fed adver­tis­ing and brand­ing. There is more local involve­ment nowa­days,” says Brandworkz’s chief exec­u­tive Jens Lundgaard. DAM sys­tems help this demo­c­ra­t­ic approach to brands, allow­ing local mar­kets to tai­lor cen­tral mes­sages to their par­tic­u­lar needs.

Anoth­er play­er in the DAM mar­ket is Adg­is­tics, which refers to its ser­vices as brand asset man­age­ment (BAM). Chair­man James Waite points to Ford deal­er­ships in the UK, which were respon­si­ble for cre­at­ing a wild melee of dif­fer­ent mar­ket­ing mate­ri­als. With a BAM sys­tem in place, the deal­er­ships can now pull adver­tis­ing tem­plates off the web­site, and send pdfs of their ads to local papers safe in the knowl­edge they are high qual­i­ty and on-brand.

Com­pli­ance is anoth­er area where DAM sys­tems can help. For instance, Amnesty Inter­na­tion­al lost con­trol over how it cred­it­ed pho­tog­ra­phers of images used in its mate­ri­als. The organ­i­sa­tion signed up for the Asset Bank DAM sys­tem, which enables it to instruct users on when and how to use the images, and con­tin­u­al­ly reminds users to cred­it them appro­pri­ate­ly. This has intro­duced a high lev­el of com­pli­ance.

One crit­i­cism of DAM and BAM sys­tems is that many poten­tial users are put off access­ing them by the sheer mass of mate­r­i­al that has to be wad­ed through. So it is vital that staff are trained in their use, while the sites need to be clev­er­ly curat­ed, edit­ed and kept in order by either the DAM provider or the brand’s mar­ket­ing depart­ment.

Indeed, only by get­ting staff to buy into brand con­sis­ten­cy can suc­cess be guar­an­teed. As Vicky Bullen, chief exec­u­tive of brand­ing agency Coley Porter Bell (CPB), says: “Brand-own­ing com­pa­nies are not like armies. You can’t just order peo­ple to be con­sis­tent; you have to make them want to be con­sis­tent.”

She gives the exam­ple of fast-grow­ing pre­mi­um whisky brand Chivas Regal. It was los­ing con­trol of its iden­ti­ty as sales boomed in coun­tries across Asia. CPB was tasked with cre­at­ing brand guide­lines that would encour­age local mar­kets to use mate­ri­als based on its core brand val­ues, rather than impos­ing a sin­gle over-arch­ing brand plan. “Our guide­lines were pri­mar­i­ly designed to inspire peo­ple,” says Ms Bullen.

Glob­al brands once strived for com­plete con­trol over their iden­ti­ties. But, with the rise of dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy, that con­trol has slipped. A bal­ance must be found between impe­ri­al­ism from the cen­tre and expres­sion tai­lored to local needs.

Every time you try on a pair of Nike trainers, buy the latest gizmo from Apple or swig from a can of Coca-Cola, you expect a similar experience and level of quality. A brand is, after all, a promise of consistency.