What is brand asset management?

Brand asset management refers to the organization and storage of a company’s brand assets to streamline in a centralized and secure environment. 

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It streamlines the sharing of brand assets among various departments and stakeholders and helps maintain a strong brand identity and reputation. 

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It also helps streamline the approval process, reduces the risk of using outdated or incorrect materials, and saves time and resources by making current and approved brand assets easily accessible.

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Benefits of brand asset management 

Brand asset management tools don’t just keep your workflows and communication processes streamlined. They’re also the key to successful business growth. Here are some of the benefits of brand asset management. 

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1. Saves money

With a centralized repository of approved brand assets, teams can quickly and easily create new marketing materials that meet brand standards and guidelines. This speeds up the production process and reduces the need for multiple rounds of revisions, which can be time-consuming and costly.

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2. Improves productivity

A brand asset management system helps organizations increase productivity. Firstly, they reduce the need for repetitive and time-consuming searches for the right files, which saves time and reduces frustration. 

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Additionally, these systems include collaboration and approval tools that streamline the review and approval process, freeing up teams to focus on more strategic tasks.

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3. Maintains brand consistency

With brand asset management systems, organizations can establish rules and guidelines for using brand assets. For example, they can specify which colors, fonts, and images are approved for use and how they should be used in different marketing materials.

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Some systems also include tools for creating marketing materials consistent with brand standards and guidelines. This helps them develop new marketing materials quickly and strengthen their brand identity without running the risk of using outdated versions.

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4. Helps manage and store brand assets securely

Another important aspect of brand asset management systems is that they help manage assets securely. Their functionality allows organizations to restrict or allow access to assets and ensure they’re protected from unauthorized use. This is especially important for organizations in highly regulated industries, where brand assets must be managed in compliance with industry standards and regulations.

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5. Provides insights and analytics

In addition to the core benefits of brand asset management systems, many systems also provide organizations with valuable insights and analytics. 

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For example, brand asset management systems can track the usage of brand assets, monitor brand compliance and consistency, and identify areas for improvement. This information can be used to inform brand strategy and guide future branding efforts.

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Next, let’s look at how you can estimate the ROI of a BAM system so you can make a case for it. 

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How to estimate brand asset management ROI

Calculating the value of a brand asset management system and the financial return it provides can be difficult as it depends on numerous variables. Nevertheless, we’ve provided a simple framework to help you figure out how much a brand asset management tool will likely save you with an example.  

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Determine how much you’re spending on your employees

For this step, you must calculate the loaded hourly rate of all the employees interacting with your brand assets. In most organizations, this includes executives and everyone on the marketing and design teams. 

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The loaded hourly rate is the total amount you’re spending on an employee including benefits, training, and other costs. If you want to arrive at a quick estimate, you can simply double the employee’s baseline hourly rate. 

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But if you want to do a more thorough calculation, you can follow the steps below:

1. Determine an employee’s hourly wage and the number of hours per year they work. 
2. Calculate additional annual costs like benefits, taxes, training, and other overhead expenses. 
3. Divide the number above by the number of hours your employees work to get the additional hourly costs. 
4. Add the additional hourly costs to the hourly wage to get the loaded costs.  

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Calculate the cost of your brand assets

Although every company is different, you’ve likely invested a lot of money on photoshoots, stock images, videos, and illustrations. 

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Here are a few things you can consider to arrive at a reasonable estimate of how much you’ve spent on the creation of brand assets and the approximate cost per asset. 

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1. Identify all your brand assets and calculate their number. This includes logos, videos, brand illustrations, templates, fonts, designs, and imagery. 
2. Estimate how much you’ve paid for all the assets. You can simply multiply the creative budget allocated for brand assets by the number of years you’ve had them. 
3. Now, divide the total cost of your assets by the number of brand assets. 

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Measure the time your team spends working with digital assets

Think about every employee who creates and uses your brand assets and measure the time they spend finding and sharing them each week. Consider the whole process, from creation to editing, publishing, distribution, and reuse, to get an accurate estimate. 

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Then, estimate the time required for these tasks when using a brand asset management solution. Also, ensure that you take into account the time it takes for you to reach your goal.

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For example, if you’re using a BAM solution to look for a particular asset and the tool returns 100 results instead of 10 or 20, you’re going to spend as much time searching for assets as you would manually. 

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Once you’ve got time estimates, follow the calculations in the example to calculate the money you’ll save by using a brand asset management solution. 

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Sample calculation to estimate the ROI of your BAM solution 

In this case, we’re considering a mid-sized business with 100 employees. For the sake of simplicity, we’re not including executives in our calculation and assuming that only 20 employees with similar salaries access the brand assets regularly.

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Next, let’s look at the value of your brand assets. 

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Value of brand assets

The numbers below are a conservative estimate we came up with. 

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Time spent searching for digital assets

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Calculation of ROI

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Again, we’ve made a lot of assumptions here, including the fact that a BAM solution is only 50% efficient. In reality, solutions like Artwork Flow will be at least 80% efficient, so your ROI will be much higher. 

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Now that we’ve calculated the ROI, it’s easy to see what factors you’ll need to consider before choosing a solution — the number of employees, their loaded hourly wages, the number of brand assets, their value, and your budget.

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Why Artwork Flow is the best brand asset management solution

Apart from storing and organizing your assets, Artwork Flow helps you communicate and collaborate more efficiently with the centralized workspace. Its search functionality helps you find the asset you need easily and ensures that you don’t have to recreate assets unnecessarily again. 

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Additionally, it gives you end-to-end visibility on your creative workflows and even sends notifications around deadlines so you can proactively address bottlenecks without missing deadlines. 

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To see how Artwork Flow can help your organization, book a free demo or sign up for a free trial. 

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Wrapping up 

Brand asset management systems play a crucial role in the success of your business. They help you store your brand assets securely and find the latest version of an asset easily. This way, employees can make brand-compliant assets quickly without spending too much time on revisions or approvals. But to make a case for a brand asset management system, you need to estimate the ROI on your investment. The framework given above will help you do exactly that. 

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