Sonic branding

Even before I did work for Nokia I was amazed by the free marketing done by all those Nokia owners turning on their phones the moment a plane landed. You know the tune, it’s ringing in your head now.

The Nokia tune is played more often than the Coca Cola tune and the Birthday song combined (or there abouts). Just take every Nokia phone out there, assume that at least 20% don’t change the default ring tone and multiply that with the number of calls. Whola, the most played sonic branding in the world…

This got me thinking that Apple might have missed a trick by not incorporating the famous boot up sound that they have on the computers into the iPhone as well. Would that classify as a big branding blunder?

Sonic branding takes many shapes and forms and a good friend of mine studying this topic informed my that for instance Audi takes great care to design every sound in the car. Including the closing of doors, clicks of buttons and swipes of wind screens. It all helps building that feeling of quality and enhances the brand experience.

Have you ever wondered how many takes are required and how much it costs to get that Tssschhh sound just right for a Coke advert? I also wonder if the old classic Christmas song is still played outside Iceland :p

Managing a sonic brand for your average company might just include audio files created as background music for video presentations, background music for telephone service or jingles for radio advertising.

Brand Capital will support all major audio formats and help you organize and redistribute those files where needed.

Branding might be the answer to the Icelandic banking crisis

After the collapse of the Icelandic financial system it was vital to restructure the country’s banks quickly to maintain basic banking services. New banks emerged from the old ones, and over the next couple of months they should be able to function like business as usual. But will they be able to grow? If the publicly owned banks ever plan on getting new investors and rebuild their reputation, it is essential that they build a brand from scratch. Let’s take Kaupthing as an example; the bank was alleged to have lent millions to its owners. It was one of the fastest growing banks in the world and over night the bank – and the brand – was ruined.

Kaupthing Bank is now known as The New Kaupthing bank. I’m not sure that the connection with the old brand is a good idea, because you immediately associate it with something bad. But there is an opportunity in every problem. This might be the time for ad or branding agencies to show what they are made of. If they are able to help make a brand that regains the trust of customers and lenders, they might even save the Icelandic banking system.

They say your brand is your company’s most valuable asset. If that is true, Kaupthing, or the other Icelandic banks for that matter, aren’t worth a lot. But with a solid branding strategy there might be hope for them yet.

I believe our app, Brand Capital, will be beneficial to banks, local and global. It might not save the Kaupthing brand, but that is not our intention. With Brand Capital our ultimate goal is to increase brand consistency and reliability by making your brand available to those who have anything to do with brand implementation and thereby make sure that when a new, redesigned brand rises from the ashes, it is used to its full potential in every aspect of a business.

Buying and selling brand asset management – what’s going on?

It’s a very messy industry, the one we are entering with Brand Capital. I kid you not.

Some things are moving forward, along with the times. I am seeing content and digital asset management vendors moving up from selling purely to IT clients to selling to marketing and brand clients who are the actual business owners of brand assets. At the same time, IT clients are collaborating with internal marketing and brand teams because in these economic conditions budgets get slashed so easily and even most acutely needed projects are frozen without a rock solid business case to defend them. Every person is accountable to the highest degree, and most of us have to prove our worth every 6 months if not more often. Having to think about what you are doing and why exactly is a good thing.

However, I am also seeing marketing and brand clients with digital asset management and marketing resource management needs still predominantly surpassing any talks with their IT team and going directly to their digital creative agencies. And then the IT folk going mad trying to integrate all these bespoke solutions that can be brilliant for their purpose but mostly unsuitable for any integration without pretty much reinventing the wheel. And then the brand or marketing client despairing over the sky-rocketing costs for the project that was meant to be straight-forward and low maintenance. Sound familiar?

So where is it all going wrong? Why aren’t demand and offer meeting? There are an extremely clever group of individuals, consultancies, and vendors in this industry who are doing a great job in educating clients and industry alike, but their work seems most appreciated amongst those forward-thinking companies who already know the value of good brand asset management tools. On the other hand, business is actually booming for some who are working hard to adjust their proposition and to offer not just process efficiency and financial gains, but also support for engaging and inspiring the brand communities they are serving. But even they are struggling to find the right clients to sell to.

What else is needed? There are 4 core groups that need educating about each other’s needs and requirements: the brand clients, the IT clients, the vendors, and the creative agencies. Even with the best of efforts, one of these always gets to join the conversation after decisions have already been made, and then it’s too late.

How will it ever happen? Through open discussion and debate about the role and value of brand asset management to different parts of an organisation, to a company’s creative agencies, and most importantly, to the brand itself.

Are your brand files scattered on network drives and FTP servers?

Last week I read a report from Aberdeen Group; The Marketers Guide to Justifying Investments in Digital Asset Management by Ian Michiels. How’s that for a snappy title. I have read my fair share of vendor sponsored reports and digest each one with a pinch of salt. This report however contains some very interesting statistics that chime with our business plan and support our outlook on the state of play regarding the management of brand assets within companies.

Aberdeen surveyed over 130 executives last April and May, mainly marketing people.

Storage solutions for Digital Assets

When asked about storage of marketing content, 72% of companies have some kind of a DAM solution. But still 55% use a shared network drive, 38% store files on individual hard drives and 38% use FTP servers.

This is the issue we’re tackling with Brand Capital. Our aim is to eliminate the use of those black hole mediums where digital assets go to die. The information not captured in the numbers are the Email folders and CD’s crisscrossing the planet with associated work and cost overhead.

One of the things I feel is missing from the report is identifying the type of DAM system in use. Is it an internal company solution behind the firewall or a web based solution?

My theory is that less than half of the DAM enabled companies have a true central repository where employees in offices around the world as well as 3rd party agencies and marketing people can access the digital assets. This again would explain the FTP servers. I might drop Ian a line and ask him to confirm this.

This quote from Kathy King, Digital Asset Manager at Staples Promotion is my favorite bit in the whole report:

[...]Today, the company has been using the solution for five years, “in the past, significant staff time was consumed with finding and disseminating assets, via email or FTP, as a result of customer, supplier or sales associate requests. We had one client for whom we were making 60 to 70 CDs per catalog release. Now it’s a simple matter of a ten-minute task”[...]

This is what we want to do for people like Kathy.
The vision driving us at Transmit is that we can actually do the world some good by freeing the marketing collateral from the shared network drives. We want them placed in a true central repository, easily accessible by all parties that have anything to do with brand implementation.

Tell us your story. How do you manage your files?