As a creative director, the power and influence to shape the brands you work with tends to be offset by the organisational challenges to align people, resources, stakeholders and deadlines across multiple projects.

Opportunities for visionary creative leadership are constrained by day-to-day struggles to get things done. When D&AD and Frontify surveyed a global sample of 60 D&AD judges, 70% cited lack of time as one of the biggest hurdles for creating their best work.

A similar proportion (67%) reported a lack of brand alignment as a key issue – ensuring everyone stays true to the creative vision as it rolls out. And for 57%, poor collaboration between people, departments and stakeholders is another major roadblock, worsened by siloed thinking and risk-averse decision making.

“One word stood out for me in the research: they feel they’re being ‘reactive’ all the time,” reveals Frontify’s senior creative director Hugo Timm. “They’re barely holding back the tide and keeping it together. And we’ll only get more of that: more data, more automation, more stuff.”

So, what’s the solution?

GET YOUR ASSETS IN GEAR

Spanning all these issues is one key insight: many creative directors still don’t have a trusted brand-building platform to oil the wheels of communication, collaboration and efficiency – freeing up sorely-needed time for creativity.

“A good brand-building hub gives a company freedom,” reflects Liza Enebeis, creative director and partner at Studio Dumbar/DEPT, who was one of those surveyed. “It should help you to feel the brand, not just go to the platform and input the correct data. It enables you to create.”

She wasn’t alone in this view: 80% of those surveyed agreed that they would benefit from a centralised, well-maintained digital hub that houses all the strategy, guidelines and assets for a brand, spanning everything from the visionary big-picture view to the granular details of asset management. The research culminated in a six-step checklist to help get creative directors and their teams back on track by establishing, and maintaining, a better brand-building system.

There’s no point making something absolutely brilliant if no one can use it.

It starts with a comprehensive brand audit, followed by a clear strategic direction: is the best course of action to reaffirm, refresh or rebrand?

The third step is to build a brand portal as a shared ‘source of truth’, followed by a robust digital asset management structure that’s designed for longevity. Wherever appropriate, step five is to introduce automation for repetitive tasks through templates, and finally, measure progress with targeted analytics. The result: a newfound efficiency and cohesiveness that frees up valuable time to dream bigger.

KEEP YOUR HOUSE IN ORDER

“It’s much easier to keep your house tidy than to tidy up once it’s messy,” reasons Timm at Frontify. “Establish a canon – the core of how you see yourself as a brand,” he continues. “You need a version that you believe in as a starting point, before it goes all frazzled because somebody does something without consulting anybody.”

“Investing in the beginning helps you in the long run,” agrees Enebeis. “Setting up a brand management platform is a future-proofing exercise – you can see how the organisation is evolving, make changes and develop further. If in five years’ time you’re doing another rebrand, you’ve already done the homework and laid the foundations.”

While a launch or a wholesale rebrand might enjoy a fresh, flawless set of brand guidelines on day one, Timm cautions that it never takes long to start diverging. “It’s like looking at a picture of a house in an architecture magazine,” he smiles. “It looks amazing, but nobody lives there. Before long there are toys all over the floor. And that’s just part and parcel of a brand that grows organically.”

Rather than just throwing everything at one exhaustive audit at the start, Timm advises using your brand management platform to oversee a rolling audit – and pick your battles. “Things will always pop out. You can’t chase them all or you’d go crazy,” he says. Consider how much impact each asset has as part of the system and focus on what makes the most difference. Improve what isn’t working; distil best-practice from what is.

CONSIDER WHO’LL BENEFIT MOST

Like any system, a brand management platform takes some work to maintain: “It’s a library exercise: cataloguing, making sure things are there and they make sense,” explains Timm. “When it works, it’s beautiful: it removes a whole layer of what the creative studio does and reframes its role. Supplying files should not be a creative problem: it can be a self-service thing.”

Of course, a system is only as good as the people using it. “The goal is for clients to become independent, not stuck to us,” says Enebeis. Tailor the solution to their individual needs, is her advice: smaller or less complex brands likely need a simpler system. “You need to understand what will make their lives easier,” she says. “There’s no point making something absolutely brilliant if no one can use it.”

“A great brand platform isn’t just for designers – it needs to work for everybody,” agrees Timm. “When you can explain what the brand is trying to do – and be – in a simple manner, that unlocks most things. For every application, from a LinkedIn caption to a campaign, there should be a binary question: ‘Does this feel like us?’”

“Some of our clients have teams internally whose only job is to keep the fire burning,” he reveals. “If people make a mess, you often need a ‘librarian’ figure to clean up and put everything back. They service the creative work and distribute it to people, so the native creative team can just do the creative work.”

MONITOR AND OPTIMISE AS YOU GO

An effective brand management platform goes far beyond a repository of easy-to-find assets. From a marketing perspective, it can also track vital analytics to help client-side teams to focus their energy on the right areas.

“If you see certain things aren’t being used properly, you can update them on the fly,” explains Enebeis. “You can see the pain points.”

And as Timm points out, every asset costs money at some point. “It’s great for understanding ROI,” he adds. “If something doesn’t get used, there’s a lesson for next time.”

Establishing a robust system will require upfront investment of time, money and resource from the creative team – to define the parameters; to produce, upload and organise the assets; and to onboard the people who’ll use it. But, done well, that system will then enable those people to roll out the brand coherently and consistently, while empowering them to flex it when needed.

“Thankfully the best brains out there already understand that a good brand is not a straitjacket,” concludes Timm. “Brands are very fluid nowadays. The clay must always be a little bit wet, so you can keep shaping it.”

Download the full creative director checklist here.