Maintaining Consistency With Digital Asset Management in the CPG World
In the consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry, brands have to fight to be noticed by consumers on shelves and online among a slew of similar low-priced products. One of a CPG company’s greatest assets in differentiating itself is its brand ? and consistency keeps your brand recognizable in every shopping setting. Learn how to deliver exceptional brand experiences at scale with the help of optimized digital asset management.
Understanding DAM (Digital Asset Management) in the CPG Industry
What Is DAM?
Understanding digital asset management for CPG companies starts with learning about DAM and how it’s used. ?Digital asset management? or ?DAM? encompasses the full lifecycle of every digital asset, from creation and management, to editing and approval, and even distribution and deletion. The term ?digital assets? includes any content stored digitally, including documents, data, and visuals.
While the general concept of DAM includes all of the people, processes, and tech involved in managing digital assets, a digital asset management system represents the tech side. DAM software gives marketers a central place to store, organize, and access assets and information ? promoting consistency and efficiency companywide.
DAM’s Importance in the CPG Sector
Today’s CPG companies face marketing challenges like:
- Communicating authentically: More than 70% of consumers spend more with brands they consider to be authentic. To enhance authenticity with consumer audiences, CPG companies need to focus on personalized campaigns that match messaging about their brand and its initiatives with consumer priorities. While doing this, marketers should maintain a consistent tone and brand elements that make the brand feel more like a trustworthy individual than a large, uncaring corporation.
- Escaping digital clutter: Creating content at scale that provides real value to consumers involves a delicate balancing act between quality and quantity. CPGs need to use smart strategies to break through the mountain of weak offers, spammy messaging, and mistargeted campaigns people receive every day. At the same time, better-targeted, more personalized marketing campaigns require efficient creation and management of a large content volume.
- Leveraging data and technology: CPGs face constantly evolving technology, complicated martech stacks, and conflicting information about the most important key performance indicators (KPIs) to analyze performance. With digital buying on the rise, CPG brands need to optimize their technology and data use to advertise, market, and sell to consumers competitively online.
Optimized technology for DAM helps CPG brands create more personalized marketing content at scale while maintaining quality and consistency. With AI content coaching, organizational features, and enhanced workflows, CPG marketing teams can use digital asset management software to pair process efficiency with messaging authenticity.
Importance of Consistency in the CPG World
In the competitive CPG market, brand consistency helps build consumer trust, brand loyalty, and an overall positive brand perception. Packaging has long been a noted example of this, as consistent coloring, sizing, and imagery in CPG product packaging have helped many brands become more visible and recognizable to consumers on store shelves. This translates online as well, with omnichannel experiences requiring the same attention to brand consistency to create a seamless consumer marketing journey.
For example, the outdoorsy brand Patagonia features high-quality, in-action nature shots across channels like Instagram and its website ? making its brand and its purpose immediately recognizable. Hershey’s is another brand that uses consistency to its advantage, with colorful imagery and kid-friendly messaging promoting its fun and imaginative brand identity on social media and its website.
Leveraging DAM for Consistency
A few key DAM system features help CPG brands create and distribute consistent content efficiently.
- Metadata and tagging: Streamline digital asset storage, retrieval, and distribution within a DAM platform by applying smart, clickable tags and background data to assets ? allowing the system to recognize them by more search terms. Easier searchability and findability of assets allows marketers to find, update, and reuse assets like images and videos that follow brand standards. This promotes consistency while also being cost effective.
- Version control: When marketers upload new versions of files with the same name as previous versions, a DAM system will automatically update the file while keeping a record of its past versions. To understand DAM version control, think of it like a word processor, which keeps a version history of changes within a document while outwardly displaying only the latest version. This helps in facilitating collaboration, especially in remote teams, as people can easily access, edit, and review the newest version of an asset without having to dig for it.
- Internal documentation access: DAMs store and organize internal documentation such as process documents and brand guidelines in a central, easy-to-access place. With brand guidelines kept fully up to date within your DAM, personnel across the company can easily find and follow them for consistent messaging and branded imagery.
Integrating DAM Into CPG Workflows
While adding any new tech to your stack can seem daunting, DAM integrations allow CPG companies to optimize existing workflows and processes without having to fully transform them. When implementing DAM solutions tailored to your specific needs as a CPG marketer, follow these best practices for a seamless transition:
- Learn how each department currently accesses and uses digital assets and listen to employees’ relevant pain points
- Include representatives from multiple aspects of the company in planning meetings for the new processes and technology to achieve maximum buy-in
- Set clear procedures for how teams should use the new tech and what each team is responsible for within the system
- Educate employees on how to use the DAM platform and use representatives from multiple departments to champion implementation and collect feedback
Overcoming Challenges in Maintaining Consistency With DAM
In implementing and maintaining DAM solutions, CPG companies often face challenges that threaten consistency, such as resistance to change and slow adoption. As discussed above, practicing the inclusion of multiple department stakeholders, extensive training, and clear communication throughout the implementation process helps to resolve these issues.
A new DAM implementation also challenges marketers to optimize their workflows within the system for maximum efficiency. People are your greatest asset in discovering how to use new technology to its full extent ? so challenge personnel to consistently look for new efficiencies, reward their efforts, and collect and implement feedback at regular intervals.
