Substantial customer loyalty
BY JÜRG WEBER
Consistent brand management – anytime and everywhere – is at the essence of any business. Consider it the best way to safeguard its health. Protected access then becomes the practical solution for sharing data and knowledge. The eldest private insurance company in Switzerland (Bern, 1826) got in touch with Censhare for a central brand portal as part of its brand redesign.
Most people holding a Confoederatio Helvetica passport will be able to see the logo in front of their eyes even when only hearing a Die Mobiliar commercial on the radio. The brand is a household name in Switzerland. Especially popular was a recent cinema advert about a hilarious stick figure featuring the slogan “Dear Mobiliar, …”. Ideally a brand has such emotive qualities. Still standardisation of this much cherished good is a necessity for any company striving for recognition and success.
Companies deal with a variety of applications as regards to their brands. Unstructured handling of logos, images, fonts and other elements of its corporate design may however result in that these are merely considered recommendatory. A simple example of this are e-mails from different employees of the same company which nonetheless differ greatly in layout. If the secretary of company XY is given the chance her signatures may turn hard pink Comic Sans embellished with flowers when the newly recruited accountant, unaware of recent changes, may regard it as a good idea to stick to the old company logo. A lot can go wrong with your brand identity when sending it to a local print shop if proper instructions are excluded. Unification thus becomes inevitable if one seeks to obtain professionalism. Enter the brand portal where only authorised users have access to files with the assurance that data indeed meet the exact brand specifications.
Different requirements and procedures stakeholders may have in processing print and web materials can be another hurdle. The system solution of a brand portal is a welcome support as it establishes order in the management of branding content and also aims at process reliability. The application creates texts, graphics, logos, icons, images, design elements, templates and other requirements in accordance to corporate design guidelines and is available from anywhere at anytime. It is also system-neutral and user-friendly. Storing documents according to desired resolution, colour and type of file for immediate use will be easy and the tiresome waiting for documents being processed is over.
The web-based portal of Censhare enables employees, partners, media and other external service providers of Die Mobiliar in an efficient and structured way to access to relevant brand content, aimed at various target groups in line with consistent branding: “Our logo, colour red, writings, images, designs, language are the constants in our corporate presence. All are aimed to emphasise trust. With them we provide a stage for our communication and create a seamless brand experience, for everything from online advertising to our staff.” The strategy is based on a clear conviction: “A brand can only develop when it is clearly defined. Such a definition provides clarity and orientation, and serves as a benchmark for the whole Die Mobiliar – whether in personal or digital contact with our customers and partners or internally. So we live up to our promise every day.”
To implement an efficient brand definition, Die Mobiliar settled for an online channel range in digital asset management, web2print and print editorial system which the implementation partner Censhare had on offer for several years. This was executed in consultation with brand agency MetaDesign. The portal has been in use since March. It is obviously a very easy and user-friendly system. Clearly defined modules, appealing colours and an intuitive menu navigation invite into a rich array of images and company fonts. It takes only a few clicks to obtain an image or template in the right resolution, size or file type. Apart from templates, various extra information can be downloaded as well: sponsoring and events, requirements to design principles, advertising frameworks, backgrounds, graphs and company history etc. Requests are handled fast and with great reliability. Modules are adaptive and can be continuously expanded. Innovative sharing and transfers of data for many companies is still uncharted territory. Once there, you wouldn’t want to miss this function. To have all documents available at any time provides a new way of working. It allows an easy and rule-based operation for internal and external contractors: employees, subsidiaries, affiliates, agencies, photographers, writers, suppliers etcetera. They can create and adapt business prints and publications for products, marketing and sales: all interdisciplinary and system-protected.
That is how to protect the immune system of a brand. Many companies consider their colds and flus, caused through improper brand management, as inevitable and so they decide to invest only for costly aftercare, rather than for preventive measures. Once the cold is caught the symptoms are treated, wasting valuable time – what is in fact not really healthy for the company brand. So it is high time to fight the cause and to strengthen its defensive forces.
Jürg Weber
Jürg Weber, co-owner and CEO of censhare (Switzerland) AG, has many years of experience in marketing, advertising production and the integration of cross-media systems.
censhare (Schweiz) AG
[email protected]
censhare.com
Customer
Mobiliar Brandportal
[email protected]
marke.mobiliar.ch
Additional Link
This article was published in The Produktkulturmagazin, issue Q3 2016. Picture credit © Jutta Kuss / Getty Images
