Business assets are quite clear to everyone in business especially the physical ones; the office building, the devices and equipment used to carry out business daily, company cars, furniture, storage devices and a host of other things tangible and intangible things. They cost the company money and everyone knows they should not be mishandled, mismanaged or misplaced.
Brand assets on the other hand are not always treated same. Brand assets are essentially those tangible and intangible elements that make up your brand’s identity; the things that help everyone recognise you and at some level like you. These include your logo, colours, slogan, visual patterns, typography and even your packaging design. All your marketing collateral including your website form part of your brand assets. The question then is, are your brand assets as well handled, managed or placed like your other business assets?
The availability and controlled access to your brand manual for instance is a way to ensure that your brand assets are well handled, managed and placed. Too often some brands in Ghana either do not have an up-to-date brand manual or simply cannot make it available to anyone looking to do work for the company – that leads to mishandling, mismanagement and misplacement of your brand assets.
Legally protecting your brand assets by way of copyright is another way to keep your brand assets safe. Yes, a vigilante entrepreneur may dare to create a knock off but that level of copyright will always get your brand out of a bind if ever the matter arises. Imagine a situation where you do not have to go to court to defend your three-word tagline because you registered it a decade before this imposter brand tried to rip it from you. That’s money saved like insurance on equipment in your factory.
Like the owner of a new luxury car may come across as petty to the passenger who has no sense of decorum during a ride in the car, brand owners must be extremely petty about their brand assets in order to ensure that wherever they are used, they are applied as correctly and effectively as expected.
Insist on seeing samples before large scale productions are carried out, drafts before sponsored event communications are finalised and sign-offs before adverts are flighted in the media. Just like your business assets, your brand assets can easily be misused to the detriment of the business’s operations, sometimes beyond the menial damage you could ever imagine.
Thanks to technological advancement, it has never been easier to secure your brand assets with cloud storage, password-enabled file sharing sites and intranet. So just like your business asset register, create a brand asset register (a brand audit will get you this result also), create storage systems for all the brand assets, package them and give access levels to various stakeholders and also orient your teams on the rules for their use just as you would for your other business assets.
You will find that this mindset and resulting actions improve consistency of your brand in the marketplace which comes with a world of added benefits for the business. It also makes brand champions of everyone in the company, where everyone helps to ensure that the brand assets are well-handled, well-managed and well-placed.
Your brand assets are business assets.
>>> is a creative consultant with expertise in marketing strategy, brand management, creative services management, marketing communications and creative direction. She’s the lead consultant at SMC Consulting focused on creating, producing and elevating ideas for emerging and iconic brands worldwide.
