What is a brand portal?

A central online space for all things branded

A brand portal is where a brand lives. It is a digital platform that serves as a central hub for all assets and information related to a brand. Brand portals are a powerful tool to easily provide stakeholders with access to brand guidelines and marketing materials. This includes practicalities, like logos, fonts, images, or useful templates. Additionally, it also covers more conceptual matters, like the brand’s values, its personality and messaging guidelines.

“The essential tool to future-proof brands in the digital age”

What’s the purpose of a brand portal?

Always on brand, easily

The goal of a brand portal is to facilitate better brand management. In this day and age, there are so many platforms and channels where customers interact with a brand, it can be difficult to maintain a consistent image across all of them. A brand portal conveniently makes guidelines and assets available to everyone who plays a part in how a brand expresses itself. It allows better control of a brand's narrative and ensures stakeholders have a uniform experience every time they engage with a brand.

How does it work?

From chaos to harmony

A first step towards improved brand consistency is establishing brand guidelines. Think of it as an instruction manual for a brand's identity, both visually and strategically. On the one hand, these guidelines ensure creative consistency, outlining all the core design elements, such as fonts, logos, colours and other visual resources. On the other hand, it serves as a passport, containing all useful information about the brand’s character, origin, value proposition, etc.

Once established, these guidelines must be followed without fail. This is easily accomplished by providing stakeholders with a central platform where brand guidelines can be consulted at any moment. It stands in great contrast with the usual way of working, where a well-designed on-brand PDF gets stored on a server. When this document is updated, there’s a risk of different versions being used interchangeably, undermining the brand’s consistency. A brand portal makes sure only a singular, up-to-date version of the guidelines is available.

Brand management made easy

A brand comes to life through its many assets. They have been carefully crafted to align with the brand’s identity and serve as a means for a brand to manifest itself into the world. The number of assets a brand utilises can increase over the course of its life. This may lead to a point where it gets hard to manage them, with inconsistencies as a result: different types of business cards, outdated presentation templates and previous versions of a logo, all used simultaneously. It’s nothing new, but something that’s easily prevented with a brand portal.

The platform allows for better management of all brand assets, granting different types of access depending on the purpose of each asset. For example, by selecting and granting access to only the specific assets that the marketing team needs for a campaign, a brand manager can ensure that his team is using the correct and up-to-date resources during the set-up phase. This can save time, reduce confusion and help to maintain consistency in the brand's messaging and visual identity throughout the campaign.

Creating more with less

During its journey to growth or due to changing circumstances, the brand’s need for new or updated assets may rise. Even though brand guidelines and other examples of assets are handily available through the brand portal, the creation of new assets may prove to be time-consuming. But what if it didn’t need to be that way?

With smart templates powered by creative automation, the creation of new assets can be done in the blink of an eye. The initial investment of building the template allows for a quick rollout of customised assets, freeing up time for other creative endeavours. No more fiddling to have everything pixel-perfect in its place, or updating every design with 5 different types of copy by hand. Simply load in your input and generate on-brand assets in minutes.

What's in it for you?

A brand portal can be beneficial in many ways, both in the short and long term. Here are 6 ways how:

Immediate quick wins...

• A brand portal ensures that all stakeholders are using the same branding assets and following the same guidelines, which improves consistency and cohesiveness.
• By making it easier for employees and partners to access the resources they need to create branded content or campaigns, a brand portal increases efficiency.
• A brand portal can facilitate collaboration between different teams or stakeholders by providing a central location for sharing work, feedback and updates, which enhances collaboration.
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... and long-term benefits

• A brand portal can be used to educate stakeholders about the brand, its values and its unique selling points, which helps to increase brand awareness and understanding.
• By consistently delivering on its brand promise and maintaining a consistent brand image, a brand builds stronger relationships with its customers and increases customer loyalty.
• A brand portal can be a cost-effective way to manage and distribute brand assets, as it eliminates the need for a plethora of different storage systems and the physical distribution of materials. This leads to cost savings.
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In short, why use a brand portal?

Your next big brand step

A brand portal serves as a central online space for all things branded. It improves brand consistency, streamlines brand management and enhances collaboration between teams. On top of that, it fuels brand awareness and customer loyalty, all while saving costs. It is the essential tool to future-proof brands in the digital age.