I. Introduction

Definition of brand asset management software

Brand asset management (BAM) is a type of digital asset management solution. With a BAM, assets associated with a brand, such as logos, images, videos, fonts, and other brand-related content, are organized, stored, and managed using a central solution. The primary goal of brand asset management is to maintain brand consistency across all channels and touchpoints while also protecting and increasing the brand's value.

Globally, the adoption of BAM solutions has been increasing over the past few years. The marketing segment of the digital asset management market is expected to grow at a steep compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of around 15%. Small and medium-sized businesses are both implementing brand asset management solutions to streamline internal operations. The global asset management market was valued at USD 373.69 billion in 2022, with a CAGR of 34.7 percent projected from 2023 to 2030.

Importance of BAM software in the food and beverage industry

Brand asset management is critical in the food and beverage industry because trends are volatile and necessitate the continuous production of new ideas for brand promotion. This entails creating digital assets on demand, which can be a complicated process with many stages. By providing a single source of truth for creative assets, brand asset management can help to simplify this process. It also helps the internal teams work more efficiently, collaborate with both internal and external stakeholders and speed up creative processes. 

II. Challenges to Brand Management in the Food and Beverage Industry

There are several challenges associated with brand management in the food and beverage industry. Some of these challenges include driving sales during COVID-19, the inability to effectively gather customer data, providing consistent brand experiences, complex inventory management due to the limited shelf life of food products, and supply chain management.

#1. Rapidly evolving consumer preferences

Consumer preferences in the food and beverage industry are rapidly changing. Transparency is a major driver of change. Consumers want to know and understand what ingredients are in their products. Health and wellness are also important factors that influence consumer preferences. The modern consumer has made a clear shift toward an unprecedented ability to access and share information about food and beverage products via social media.

Moreover, social media has a significant impact on customer preferences. Social media posts can generate buzz about certain foods and influence consumer behavior. Food is one of the most popular social media topics because of its universal visual appeal across cultures, languages, and audiences.

A brand asset management solution allows brands to keep up with consumer demands by efficiently doing brand refreshes whenever necessary while providing a consistent experience. 

#2. Increasing competition

The food and beverage industry is becoming increasingly competitive each day. As more entrants enter the industry and consolidation becomes more common, the food and beverage industry's economies of scale continue to shift. This has resulted in fierce competition between brands.

Mergers and acquisitions have become a lot more common. Recently, Coca-Cola acquired BodyArmor, increasing its valuation to USD 8B. Hershey’s also recently acquired Dot’s Pretzels and Lily’s Sweets.

One of the most effective ways for businesses to gain a competitive advantage is through technology. Food and beverage companies can gain a competitive advantage by ensuring easy access to digital assets, driving brand adherence, and collaborating seamlessly. This software can also accelerate creative proofing by utilizing intuitive AI-powered tools to review files and complete projects without errors.

#3. The complex supply chain for brand assets

In terms of supply chain management, the food and beverage industry faces several challenges. Increasing demand for food shipping traceability, dealing with SKUs and order complexity, poor communication between food supply chain partners, growing food & beverage regulations, and cost reduction are some of these challenges.

The supply chain is a strategic brand asset, and effective brand asset management can help you avoid disruptions while maintaining brand reputation, workflows, and revenues. It can improve the resilience of your supply chain, from raw feedstock acquisition to final product delivery to customers. You can support uptime and revenue streams by keeping a "bird’s-eye view" of the supply chain and anticipating challenges before they occur.

#4. Regulatory compliance

Food businesses can adhere to several best practices to ensure regulatory compliance. Maintaining procedural consistency, implementing quality control measures, ensuring accurate labeling, proactively managing risk, and leveraging technology are examples of these. Companies should also assess entities in their supply chain and review their standard operating procedures (SOPs) for compliance with FDA regulations and guidance, including the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA).

Software solutions can help food and beverage companies ensure regulatory compliance by providing accurate management of vast quantities of data and documents, maintaining accountable and traceable workflows, and documenting the development of creative content. 

III. Benefits of BAM Software in the Food and Beverage Industry

Food and beverage companies can benefit greatly from a brand asset management software. It can assist in keeping brand elements, collaterals, marketing assets, and other files in a centralized, easily accessible directory. This software can also improve creative collaboration by streamlining workflows, improving brand adherence, accelerating creative proofing, and providing analytics on operational results such as costs and consumption.

#1. Enhanced brand consistency

The food and beverage sector can benefit from brand asset management software to create and manage a recognizable brand. The software enables straightforward asset management for every case, regardless of how many markets, warehouses, sales reps, or SKUs the brand must manage in its network. By making sure that digital assets are accessible, businesses can increase brand loyalty, make collaboration simple, and finish projects faster and more effectively than ever.

Using simple AI-powered proofing, such a software solution can also accelerate creative proofing. Over 100 different file types can be reviewed using the built-in tools, which can also help you finish projects without making mistakes. Stakeholders like regional market leads, sales teams, outside vendors, and international retail partners can create and find the most recent content whenever they want by having access to a single source of truth for creative assets.

#2. Improved brand visibility and recognition

Strong brand visibility and recognition can increase consumer trust because people tend to favor brands they are familiar with over unfamiliar ones. Customers are frequently willing to pay more for name-brand products because they believe they are getting a premium product, even if the quality is the same as other generic products on the market. As a result, increased brand visibility and recognition can also increase revenue.

Through well-organized digital assets, companies in the food and beverage industry can create quick and personalized digital marketing campaigns. Having quick access to brand guidelines will enable a more consistent yet personalized experience for consumers.

#3. Increased efficiency in marketing operations

The food and beverage industry must frequently address regional requirements. Brands frequently run region-specific marketing campaigns. A brand asset management solution can significantly increase the efficiency of your marketing efforts and increase the return on your marketing investment. It can increase your local marketing efforts, reduce marketing waste, keep customers engaged with marketing automation, and track and analyze your marketing activities.

A brand asset management solution, equipped with a brand compliance tool, empowers distributed marketers to address their unique marketing needs while ensuring brand compliance by delivering pre-approved marketing materials as needed. Consequently, production times may be shortened, and brand productivity may increase

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#4. Better collaboration and communication

Creative collaboration is essential when working on food packaging, beverage labels, or marketing materials. The food and beverage industry also has to work under strict regulations. By fostering better communication between team members through a central platform housing all relevant documents and information, a brand asset management solution can aid in increasing creative collaboration. 

Enabling team members as well as external vendors to access, share, and utilize resources more effectively, can increase efficiency.

#5. Better compliance management

Food and beverage brands are under constant pressure to stay up to date with ever-changing regulations. Bodies like FDA in the US, and FSSAI in India determine what information brands must put on the packaging, impose a certain restriction on packaging design, and even what packaging materials brands can use. 

A brand asset management solution can help with increased regulatory compliance by providing pre-approved marketing materials when they are needed. This gives distributed marketers the authority to act and react to their individual marketing needs without sacrificing brand compliance. By providing an easy way for authorized users to access any digital file such as brand images, logos, and important documents from one convenient place, a brand asset management solution can save time and help businesses adhere to rules that can protect their assets. 

IV. Features of Brand Asset Management Software in the Food and Beverage Industry

Brand asset management software in the food and beverage industry includes capabilities such as digital asset management, customizable brand portals, workflow automation, brand guidelines enforcement, analytics and reporting, collaboration, and interaction with other technologies. These capabilities assist firms in streamlining their marketing procedures, ensuring consistency, and increasing brand visibility and performance. 

Here are some of the features explained.

#1. Digital asset management

A digital asset management solution or DAM allows brands to centrally store and manage digital content. A cloud-based DAM solution, which is simple to use and quick to implement, gives internal and external stakeholders controlled access to all of their digital assets, including photographs, images, creative files, video, audio, presentation decks, and brand guidelines. Here are some of the key advantages of digital asset management: 

• Brand templating: This feature allows you to create templates for common assets such as logos, flyers, banners, and so on that anyone can customize without compromising your brand identity.
• Creative production: By enabling collaboration, feedback, and approval workflows within the DAM system, you can streamline the creative process.
• Organizing and searching: This feature allows you to categorize your assets for easy retrieval and management by using metadata, tags, folders, and collections. Using keywords, filters, and advanced search options, you can quickly locate any asset.
• Version control and history: This feature keeps track of changes to your assets over time and allows you to revert to previous versions.
• Sharing and access control: With this feature, you can create user groups with varying viewing, uploading, downloading, and sharing capabilities, ensuring that your assets are only used by the right people at the right time. You can also send your assets to internal or external users via email, link, or embed code, each with its own set of permissions and expiration dates.

#2. Brand guidelines management

Brand asset management software aids in the management of brand guidelines by allowing food and beverage companies to define and enforce their brand guidelines. This helps improve brand consistency and improve consumer trust. 

The DAM component provides a centralized repository for all brand assets, such as logos, images, videos, and other marketing materials, ensuring that all authorized personnel have access to the most up-to-date versions of these assets.

Furthermore, the platform enables brands to define and enforce brand guidelines by establishing rules and permissions for the use of these assets. To enforce brand identity, a company, for example, can establish guidelines for the use of specific colors and fonts.

#3. Workflow automation

Multiple repetitive tasks are frequently encountered in the food and beverage industry. Manually reviewing whether different SKU labels are compliant with local regulations, for example, can be time-consuming. Brand asset management software contributes to workflow automation by allowing brands to automate repetitive tasks and streamline their marketing processes.

Approvals, publishing, and asset distribution can all be automated. This saves time and lowers the possibility of errors.

When a new asset is added to the system, for example, the software can automatically route it to the appropriate teams for approval or modification. Once the asset has been approved, the software can automatically publish it to the appropriate channels, such as social media or a content management system.

Businesses can also use brand asset management software to create customized workflows for specific projects or campaigns, which can be easily modified and tracked as the project progresses. This ensures that everyone on the team is on the same page and that projects are completed on time and within budget.

#4. Collaboration and approval workflows

By providing businesses with a centralized platform for all their brand assets and marketing materials, brand asset management software aids in creative collaboration. This enables team members like designers, marketers, and brand managers to collaborate more efficiently and effectively regardless of their location or device.

The software enables team members to access the latest versions of brand assets, such as logos, images, videos, and other marketing materials, and collaborate on projects in real time. For example, a designer can upload a new design for a marketing campaign, and other team members can provide feedback and make edits directly within the software. Built-in tools make proofing easier.

Reviewers can check for minor changes using the version compare tool, use color and font extractor tools, and even measure the size of visual elements on print. Using 3D models, they can check how a packaging design will look after the complete manufacturing process. 

Version control and commenting tools are also provided by brand asset management software, ensuring that all team members are working with the same assets and have access to the most recent versions. This eliminates the need for time-consuming email threads and file sharing, which can stifle creativity and increase the likelihood of errors.

#5. Analytics and Reporting

Brand asset management software provides businesses with analytics and reporting features that allow them to track the usage and performance of their brand assets. These features include usage tracking, performance tracking, customized reports, real-time analytics, and integration with other analytics tools. By leveraging these features, businesses can gain valuable insights into how their brand assets are being used, identify areas for improvement, and make data-driven decisions to improve the effectiveness of their marketing efforts.

V. Future Trends in Brand Asset Management Software in the Food and Beverage Industry

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) applications: AI and ML can help food and beverage companies analyze customer data, preferences, feedback, and behavior to create personalized and targeted marketing campaigns. They can also help optimize brand assets for different formats, devices, and contexts. Delivery and takeout services will likely use more customer data to provide personalized food and beverage products to consumers. 

For example, services like EatFit, happyGrub, Calorie Care, and Fresh-n-Lean are integrating food and beverage products with nutrition coaching. In such applications, AI and ML become crucial to create unique yet consistent experiences for customers that adhere to the brand guidelines and stay compliant with local regulations.

Increased use of cloud-based solutions: Cloud-based brand asset management software will become more popular, enabling businesses to store and manage their brand assets on the cloud, making them accessible to authorized personnel from anywhere and at any time.

For the food and beverage industry, this means improved collaboration across branches and with vendors. When the company updates the packaging design, the packaging vendors automatically get the new designs, and they provide all the stores with the new packaging. 

Integration with other marketing technologies: Brand asset management software will become more integrated with other marketing tools, such as social media management platforms, content management systems, and marketing automation software, providing businesses with a more comprehensive view of their marketing activities.

VI. Conclusion

Brand asset management software is a powerful solution for the food and beverage industry. It helps brands manage their brand assets more efficiently and effectively, improve their marketing efforts, and drive growth. With features such as brand guidelines management, workflow automation, creative collaboration, analytics, and reporting, brand asset management software is a must-have for any business that wants to take its marketing efforts to the next level.

The food and beverage sector has become increasingly competitive. Hence, it makes sense for businesses to invest in tools and technologies that can give them an edge. Brand asset management software is one such tool that can help businesses to streamline their marketing processes, improve collaboration, and gain valuable insights into the performance of their brand assets. To know how a brand asset management solution can help you, get a demo. 

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