Founded in Japan over a century ago, Brother is a globally recognised innovative technology brand. The company now has operations in 44 countries and its products are sold in more than 100 countries worldwide. Brother products include printers, all-in-one printer devices, fax machines, and labeling machines. New products for an increasingly digital and smart technology era include mobile print solutions and OmniJoin HD web conferencing software.
Brother Hub Stats
73,000
Page views per year
46,000
Total assets
1,500
Artworks created per year
65,000
Downloads per year
Challenge
Consistent with such a distinguished tradition of technological evolution, when Brother recognized the growing complexity of its global marketing needs, the company built a Web-to-Publish system designed to serve its worldwide network of offices with customizable marketing materials. Initially unaware that ready-made solutions were available, Brother teamed up with external consultants to complete this software development task.
However, the project proved more technically demanding, time-consuming, and expensive than anticipated. More cogently, it became clear that to work at maximum potential, the Web-to-Publish system would need to be integrated with a digital asset management capability. So, the Brother team searched for an off-the-shelf Digital Asset Management system.
Solution
Brother International Europe’s Product Communications Manager, Jackie Farrelly, quickly spotted the possibilities when considering the Brandworkz proposition.
‘It was obvious from the start that they were friendly, uncomplicated, and able to communicate with marketing people in open, non-technical language,’ she says. Brandworkz’s ability to deliver digital asset management plus web-to-publish as an integrated system was more attractive and a simple and easily accessible interface fronted it.
After experiencing the self-build project, Brother was confident in choosing this ready-made Brandworkz solution because it offered everything the company sought. Marketing and sales information was accessible and easy to understand, the interface was intuitive, and the sales process was facilitated smoothly. The smooth implementation process lived up to the Brandworkz promise, too. Jackie says, ‘Brandworkz was very good at advising us on what we needed; we felt we were well guided through the process.’
With the Brandworkz platform firmly in business, Brother’s marketers have centralized all new and existing brand guidelines, photography, campaigns, artwork, and other marketing materials. External creative agencies are also empowered to access and download the materials they need without going through the marketing team, which frees up their time.
Up to 400 people in the business are already using the system. Local offices and their agencies, as well as sales and technical teams within the global group, can all access brand positioning information, marketing materials, and technical specs from the system 24/7 without involving central marketing.
Results
Brandworkz is integrating Brother’s platform with its local websites across Europe so dealers can access and download product imagery from those sites in a closed area.
‘Time saved by head office distributing images to dealers will be huge,’ reckons Jackie. She also reports gratifyingly positive feedback from the regional offices about the system’s ease of use.
Having launched its brand asset management system, Brother is now implementing Brandworkz Web-to-Publish on its platform to make frequently used marketing artwork available for local offices to customize.
In addition, thanks to the showcase feature, other offices can reuse campaigns run in different locations. For example, the UK office created and paid for a campaign for its scanner products. Other offices wanted to use it, too, giving the campaign bonus value beyond one market and limiting the need for similar work to be recreated and paid for again. Each market is encouraged to upload its best work to the Showcase to be shared and reused.
Though it’s still in the early days, Jackie is confident that basic arithmetic is already proving the potency of the Brandworkz system. ‘Put simply,’ she says, ‘there’s no need for every office to go off and do its own campaigns any more. Why pay three or more times when you can pay once? I think Brandworkz is a great system, both from an admin and user point of view.’
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