Our latest article in B&T is getting a lot of traction. In our new work-from-home reality, our CEO – Tessa Court – shares her perspective on how marketing departments around the globe can best ‘remote control’ their brand during these unforeseen and challenging times.
The Q&A style article covers how marketing departments can transition successfully to a remote workforce as well as providing readers with “The Marketer’s Guide to Remote Working.” The step-by-step guide has been designed for marketers to help them leverage Digital Asset Management (DAM) systems, online brand guidelines, creative approvals and project management tools to streamline operations.
Here are the top five questions that we’re regularly being asked and are covered in the interview:
1) How did IntelligenceBank transition towards a remote working climate and what solutions do you have for your clients?
As a marketing technology company, working virtually comes naturally to us. It’s simply part of our DNA. Since our staff work and live across the globe, we’re used to working with a geographically dispersed team. To manage this remote workforce, we have daily video calls and use instant messaging tools. The solution that our clients use is our very reason for being – IntelligenceBank’s marketing operations software. Internally, we use it to centralise our own marketing materials, route creative approvals and enable our marketing, sales and customer success teams to access content instantly. You could say that we are ‘drinking our own Kool-Aid’. While technology has dramatically improved our documentation & processes, we can no longer rely on ‘over the workstation’ chats, so having systems in place has never been more important.
2) If an organization doesn’t have a system in place for their marketing operations – how should they begin?
The best place to start is by having a centralized digital asset management system where you can put your marketing collateral, branding and sales materials in one place. We are currently standing up IntelligenceBank Digital Asset Management systems for clients within 48 hours. By having a central hub, it ensures that everyone who is remote is using the right materials and are automatically alerted when new materials are being added to the portal. This is especially important when content has talent usage rights associated with the image or video. That way you have an audit trail and you know exactly where your creative is going and when.
3) For managing multiple projects, what is the best way to collaborate with remote teams?
In the spirit of keeping things simple – yet effective – we are using our online project management tool that integrates a Kanban board. The board provides everyone with a calendar view of what’s going on in marketing and decision makers are able to collaborate on prioritizing projects. What’s even better is that each card links back to the creative so you can see the campaign’s creative in the same interface.
4) A lot of industries are hurting right now – especially retail and consumer services – what are the best ways to manage creative and save money?
To tackle this, I have a couple of thoughts on the best way forward. Firstly, if you can de-duplicate creative by having marketing content in a DAM, you will save you money since the artwork can be reused and not reinvented every time. Another way our clients save hundreds of thousands of dollars each year on agency fees is using our creative templates feature for repetitive creative that needs continuous customization such as business cards, point of sale and other miscellaneous pieces of content. It’s pretty simple and all you have to do is upload a ‘locked down’ inDesign template. Your team can adjust only what you permit such as logos, names of people, images and text to ensure there are no mistakes. The best part is that you also run this through workflow approvals.
5) Do you have any parting thoughts for what marketing teams need to be doing during these unimaginable times?
This is obviously a very challenging time and to get through this marketing teams need more robust systems to continue to collaborate above and beyond what email, spreadsheets and consumer file sharing systems can do. What’s equally important is that now is the time for marketing teams to do what they are good at – it’s time to get creative. In this new ‘business unusual’ reality that we have all been thrown into, marketers need to pivot their offerings to their customer base in a way that is relevant and meaningful.
For those marketing teams who are not yet armed with an online marketing operational capability and grappling with the fallout of losing brand control by managing a remote workforce, we would be happy to stage a virtual demonstration. Please feel free to connect online or over the phone.
