BRAND HELP DESK SERVICES:A BRAND POINT MANAGEMENT PERSPECTIVE

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Today’s marketplace puts enormous pressure on brands in every category – consumer products, professional services, pharmaceutical/life sciences, all of them. Consumers are more demanding, competition is more intense and varied, media are morphing and brands must explore every option for adaptation and growth in their product lines and geographical reach.

It’s not an easy time to be a brand manager.

But for all the change, one thing remains constant: the need to protect the values of your brand. How it “looks,” how it

“speaks” and the values its words and images convey. In fact, in the face of all the challenges, this need for consistency is even greater.

But how can a brand ensure this? In this Schawk white paper, we discuss the concept of a brand help desk.

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WHAT DOES A BRAND HELP DESK DO?

A brand help desk is a team of branding, design and copy experts who analyze marketing materials for adherence to all brand guidelines and quickly provide definitive instructions for bringing problematic pieces into compliance. A brand help desk can be made up of company employees or can be contracted from a proven supplier. Through efficiency and effectiveness, brand help desks have proven their value – fiscally and in brand equity protection – for some of the biggest brands worldwide.

A brand help desk addresses vital needs that brand managers and their staffs might not have the time or resources to address. At brands today, staffs are lean and the outsourcing of brand work is increasingly common. It’s easy to give brand “fidelity” less attention. And in the focus on new products, brand extensions and forays into new media, it’s easy for standards to lapse after launch. A brand help desk counteracts these pressures.

A brand help desk identifies misalignments, gaps and gray areas in brand presentation, inspecting brand communications as they’re generated and answering specific questions on brand standards as they arise in-house and from all agencies doing work for the brand, potentially worldwide. It analyzes materials for adherence to standards for visual identity, verbal positioning and consistency with brand positioning and strategy. And it makes suggestions for better alignment with the brand wherever necessary.

Whether in-house or as a contracted service, the brand help desk team acts as the brand standards authority for your employees and agencies, allowing you to focus on the bigger tasks of branding. These services are applicable to any kind of brand – CPG or pharma, products or services, consumer or business-to-business, etc.

A brand help desk is authoritative on all brand media – print and digital (including websites, ads, Flash assets, social media, etc.) and video and radio and is sensitive to the different needs of advertising, branding, marketing and promotional materials. And just as important, a brand help desk can perform these services at all stages of the brand process – strategy, creative and execution. Involving the team at the strategy stage can save considerable time and resources downstream.

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WHAT ARE A BRAND HELP DESK’S KEY FUNCTIONAL FEATURES?

A brand help desk can do wide-ranging work for your brands. To do this, it needs a specific combination of creative, branding, procedural and technological expertise.

Here are the key components.

• Geographical reach to match a brand’s product reach, to ensure timely responses to inquiries around the clock and to ensure an understanding of local and regional customs, visual sensibilities and language.

• A workflow system with a global inbox to ensure that all requests (in-house and from agencies) are handled quickly and approvals are streamlined and tracked. This system will encompass:

- Automated processes - A single inbox - Full file-sharing - A protocol for exchanging large files

• Best practices including standardized responses for the sometimes surprising number of similar requests for information or project approval. For example, Schawk handles more than 8,000 requests per year from one client, the largest consulting company in the world – proof of amount of legitimate brand standards work a company can produce.

In addition, a brand help desk can offer several proactive services, such as training your employees in brand standards, creating visual templates for high-volume deliverables and even doing full project management for the development of branded materials.

The key takeaway is this: When a brand help desk team is fully versed in both the specific standards of your brand and industry best practices for the creation of branded materials, it can perform a huge range of vital services, allowing brand executives and managers to do the high-level work they specialize in.

HOW DOES IT BENEFIT THE BRAND – AND YOU?

The simplest and most convincing way to describe the benefits of a brand help desk is this: it handles seemingly small matters of brand fidelity so that a brand and its managers can do the crucial work of generating sales. A brand help desk:

• Protects brand equity

• Supports the brand manager’s responsibility to ensure fidelity

• Heightens the brand’s visual impact to build affinity

• Maintains brand standards post-launch – a time when standards can begin to slip as managers move on to maintaining/growing the brand

• Consolidates and manages the approval process, to promote accuracy and speed to market

• Enables employees to understand and express the brand, ensuring quality work and stronger commitment

• Promotes speed to market by getting things right the first time

• Promotes agility in responses to market changes and opportunities

• Encourages scaling by size, volume and geography

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• Strict turnaround goals. Schawk sets a goal of 48 hours for its consulting client; most requests are handled in eight hours.

• A KPI tracking system for inquiries, responses, escalations and issues, to improve and streamline the work and processes done by the brand, its agencies and by the help desk itself.

• Assured confidentiality of brand-sensitive information, through strict systems and protocols.

IN-HOUSE, OUTSOURCED OR A COMBINATION: HOW A BRAND HELP DESK FUNCTIONS.

A brand help desk – comprised of a few or up to dozens of people – can be developed and kept in-house, wholly outsourced or a combination of these. For instance, it can be

“in-sourced” – that is, hired and trained by a third-party who turns over the team to you – or it can be transitional. In the transitional scenario, a partner provides help desk services as you staff up your team or as your partner does this for you.

Outsourcing has proven to be very effective. For the brand, it eliminates the challenge of hiring the right people and developing the right systems, which are key. And because many brands don’t handle most “creative” work in house, they are not accustomed to hiring people with the right combination of design, copy and branding/identity skills necessary for brand help desk work.

Can your company handle this in-house?

The simple answer is yes – but few do it extensively and with much success. An effective brand help desk requires special skill sets that brand managers aren’t expected to have and that brands don’t always have experience hiring for.

BRAND HELP DESK SERVICES AND SCHAWK.

At Schawk, we speak from experience: We deliver the full range of brand help desk services to the world’s largest consulting services company, and this client finds the services highly valuable and cost-effective.

Schawk’s brand help desk services are a part of our broader delivery of brand point management, which we provide to many of the largest brands worldwide. Brand point management is the integration of services across the lifecycle of a brand, covering strategy, creative and execution, to promote efficiency, agility and fidelity of brand expression. The ultimate benefit for our clients is compelling and consistent consumer experiences at all brand touchpoints.

By contributing at the strategic, creative and executional stages, a brand help desk neatly fits within brand point management. And by helping to streamline brand processes and consolidating and safeguarding a brand’s assets across multiple media and across geographies, Schawk’s brand help desk services promote the foremost goal of brand point management: compelling and consistent consumer experiences with a brand.

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Schawk, Inc., (NYSE:SGK), is a leading provider of brand point management services, enabling companies of all sizes to connect their brands with consumers to create deeper brand affinity. With a global footprint of more than 40 offices, Schawk helps companies create compelling and consistent brand experiences by providing integrated strategic, creative and executional services across brand touchpoints. Founded in 1953, Schawk is trusted by many of the world’s leading organizations to help them achieve global brand consistency. For more information about Schawk, visit http://www.schawk.com.

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