Black & Yellow: How Borussia Dortmund developed operations and processes to become a global brand

A global challenge

Founded in 1909, Borussia Dortmund is one of the largest and most successful football clubs in Germany. But it needed to move with the times, which meant investing in the development of the Borussia Dortmund brand.

BVB didn’t just want to be a historic football club well-known in Germany. It wanted to become known and loved by football fans around the world. To do this, it needed to successfully position itself in both a national and international context by:

• Aligning all stakeholders’ interests, and communicate the brand’s identity
• Improving brand consistency with detailed guidelines
• Centralizing all brand assets, eliminated recurring requests for basic assets
• Enabling everyone to make quicker and more efficient turnarounds with a fast-paced, multidisciplinary task force – all while growing internationally
• Improving coordination and collaboration between departments, international offices, and external partners.

A streamlined solution

To support the international growth of its brand, in 2019, BVB implemented Frontify to develop and launch its brand portal. Frontify gave them a consistent and clear structure for all existing brand assets and communication channels.

Cross-functional teams, international offices, and external partners and merchandisers all work together within the platform. BVB has developed specific guidelines and a portal area for its partners. This makes it much easier to provide every partner with the information, logos and guidelines they need, as well as images and specifications for different asset types — from in-stadium LED boards to online banners.

Using Frontify has made that collaboration and coordination much smoother than before. BVB now has a structured workflow and process for reviewing assets and campaigns:

A resounding result

Frontify’s brand platform has helped BVB to take a national soccer brand, and make it truly global. It’s given them new, more efficient ways to work with internal and external partners, and sharpen its brand image with clearer messaging.

Using Frontify has helped BVB achieve:

• Simple asset organization: Instead of constantly fielding requests for marketing assets and brand guidelines, Frontify provides a central home for BVB to organize all its brand files. Now it has dedicated libraries for different assets, campaigns, and regions, which has almost eliminated recurring asset requests for basic brand assets.
• Streamlined global coordination: BVB’s international offices — from New York to Singapore — can access the same guidelines, assets, and resources as the German team, making it easier to achieve a consistent global identity.
• Simpler partner collaboration: BVB has developed a dedicated partner portal to collaborate with external partners within the Frontify platform. It houses guidelines and assets, and also has workflows set up for feedback and approvals, enabling them to run key projects smoothly. This has reduced the number of feedback loops required while taking partners through a more detailed feedback process. Up to 3 hours are saved by the brand and design teams each week thanks to more efficient approval processes.
• Improved brand ownership: All users can easily access the relevant tools, guidelines, and assets to create on-brand materials when and where they need to. This saves a lot of time as assets are organized and easily accessible in Frontify Libraries. This saves the brand and design teams at least 5–10 hours each week.