It’s a crucial process for companies that want to be more than just a product or price point. Brands can evoke emotions, communicate an inherent value, and build customer loyalty.

For example, Apple has long branded itself as an innovative electronics company, and, as a result, “38% of Apple users say they can’t live” without the brand, and another 23% willingly pay more to own Apple products, according to the 2019 MBLM Brand Intimacy Report.

In the same vein, Lululemon Athletica can charge more for its yoga pants, even though they are almost exactly the same as lower-priced alternatives. That’s because customers aspire to be a part of the fit and active lifestyle brand community the brand personifies.

The key to building this kind of successful brand is consistency. Brands that are consistent are up to four times more likely to have excellent brand visibility. That means every interaction a customer has with a brand — whether through the website, an in-store encounter with an employee, or a social media post — must communicate the same identity and personality through its use of colors, messaging, tone, imagery, and more.

With so many internal and external teams involved in building a brand, it can be difficult to ensure this kind of consistency. How do you ensure everyone is working from the latest guidelines and assets? Does the design team have the correct creative versions? Has all stakeholder feedback been incorporated?

Building a successful brand takes significant time and money, and it costs more for companies that have a poor process for sharing brand assets. Those that use brand management software can reduce costs by improving efficiency and understanding. When internal and external teams have clear brand guidelines and a centralized source for creating, storing and sharing up-to-date files, it helps increase consistency across channels.

The Biggest Challenge Your Teams Face When Brand-Building

Most large companies store information in a variety of locations, from clunky intranets to bespoke applications. And, as a result, employees “spend about 16% of their time searching for information” and assets they need but are finding them only 56% of the time, according to IDC. That means that 44% of the time, teams are wasting their effort on low-value activities, such as recreating assets.

A company’s brand-building team experiences the same challenges. Without an efficient method for communicating and sharing brand assets, time — and, as a result, money — is lost because members of the branding, marketing, design, and digital departments are

• searching for the latest guidelines and creative assets,
• recreating assets when they can’t find them,
• duplicating work when mislabeled or outdated creative is used;
• struggling to collaborate efficiently on projects across teams, and
• compiling feedback and approvals from multiple sources.

How Brand Management Software Improves Brand-Building & Saves Companies Money

One solution to improve efficiency and consistency across far-flung teams is a centralized brand management platform like Frontify. With a cloud-based platform, brands can keep guidelines and assets up to date, streamline campaign distribution to key stakeholders, consolidate feedback and approvals, and easily share creative templates with people throughout the company.

Based on time-savings alone, a tool like Frontify that improves understanding and collaboration can save brands more than $700,000 per year.

How Branding Departments Can Save up to $50,000 per Year

A large company with global reach has employees, offices, agency partners, and vendors around the world, which makes it difficult to ensure that everyone has the most up-to-date brand assets. From old guidelines sent via email to a mislabeled file on an outdated intranet, poor processes for sharing brand information can lead to mistakes and duplicated work.

Challenge

Ensuring that external partners and internal teams have up-to-date brand guidelines and assets

Solution

Frontify’s online Brand Guidelines is a web-based solution that gives internal teams and external partners access to the most recent assets and instructions. All brand essentials, including logos, color palettes, typography, and even UI patterns, are stored in one location. It is quick to create and easy to update and ensures that everyone is on the same page.

Time Savings

A branding team of 10 people could save up to 120 minutes per person, per week, for a cost savings of $50,000 per year (10 x 120 min x salary per week x 52 = savings per year/per department).

Frontify’s online Brand Guidelines makes it easy to share guidelines and assets with internal and external teams.

How Marketing Departments Can Save up to $150,000 per Year

Launching a marketing campaign requires collaboration with a host of different teams. Let’s say the marketing team developed the campaign with the company’s external ad agency, but now they need feedback and approvals from brand, design, legal, and key executives before they can move forward. This will require significant time for incorporating feedback from multiple sources, updating assets, and then chasing down approvals.

Challenge

Collaborating on campaigns across teams and departments and incorporating feedback and approvals

Solution

For marketers, our centralized brand platform connects internal and external teams. This hub helps streamline feedback rounds and approvals, which boosts speed, accuracy, and the quality of your marketing creative.

And with Digital & Print Templates, marketing teams can quickly update images and text on campaign components, like social media graphics, on their own through designer-created templates, saving time and effort across the department.

Time Savings

A team of 30 people could save up to 120 minutes per person per week for a cost savings of $150,000 per year (30 x 120 x salary per week x 52 = savings per year/per department).

Workflow streamlines feedback and approvals across internal and external teams.

Marketing teams can update campaign materials on their own through designer-created templates.

How Design Departments Can Save up to $50,000 per Year

Your company is rebranding, and the members of the design team are working on several individual projects, such as signage, company templates, websites, apps, and social media. All these brand components need to maintain a consistent look and feel and move efficiently through the design process.

Challenge

Ensure that projects are moving through the pipeline and everyone on the team is working with the correct guidelines and creative versions

Solution

Frontify’s Creative Collaboration allows the design team to coordinate projects and outline the entire design process in one place. With integrated custom workflows alongside actionable feedback loops and approvals, working as a unit becomes smooth and intuitive.

Time Savings

A team of 20 people could save up to 60 minutes per person per week for a cost savings of $50,000 per year (20 x 60 x salary per week x 52 = savings per year/per department).

Frontify makes it easy to move projects through the design process.

Digital Departments Could Save up to $125,000 per Year

To create a cohesive brand, it’s important that all digital touch points, including websites and apps, maintain a cohesive look and feel. Consistency issues can happen between designer-to-developer handovers or because multiple developers are working on the same project.

Challenge

Maintaining consistency of digital channels between the design and development departments and across the development team

Solution

Frontify’s Inspect Mode lets developers pull design specs to transform mockups into code without leaving the Frontify environment. And the audit functionality helps developers quickly verify that the correct brand colors and fonts are being used.

The platform also allows companies to centrally store code snippets in cloud-based UI libraries so code can be created once and reused, which speeds up development. For example, if you know you’ll need a red CTA button throughout your site, create it once and then store the snippet to reuse.

Time Savings

A team of 15 people could save up to 120 minutes per person per week (15 x 120 x salary per week x 52 = savings per year/per department).

Frontify’s audit functionality ensures consistency by verifying the correct colors and fonts are being used.

How Other Departments Can Save up to $333,000 per Year

Many people within your company will need to access some brand assets on a regular basis. For instance, HR needs the latest presentation template for the quarterly company meeting, or your sales team needs the new designs for business cards. Without an efficient method for sharing and creating assets, employees lose time looking for what they need, redoing work if they find the wrong files, or requesting help from the design department.

Challenge

Finding the correct assets and developing on-brand materials

Solution

Frontify offers accessible templates so employees can easily find and build their own brand assets, such as presentations, business cards, or print materials, all without leaning on any designers. This improves efficiency and saves time across the company.

Time Savings

A team of 1,000 people could save up to 10 minutes per person per week (1,000 x 10 x salary per week x 52 = savings per year).

Create templates for presentations or business cards and let employees build their own assets.

The Final Tally: How Frontify Can Help You Save More Than $700,000 per Year

Frontify improves efficiency for all branding, marketing, and design activities, meaning employees spend less time searching for guidelines and creative assets, replicating lost work, and compiling feedback and approvals from multiple sources. For a company with more than 1,000 employees using our cloud-based brand management software, this adds up to a cost savings of $708,000.

See how Frontify’s scalable, customizable brand-management suite can enhance the brand-building process across your internal and external teams by improving consistency and collaboration to help your company thrive.