With host Darrell Alfonso
By gaining central access to global marketing materials, BRITA can efficiently master the increasing demands of marketing.
BRITA is a global group of companies with 30 national and international subsidiaries or operating sites. Headquartered in Taunusstein, Germany, BRITA operates production sites in Germany, the U.K., Italy, and China. Today, the family-owned company is represented in 65 countries on all five continents. More than 80% of sales are generated outside the German market.
“The biggest advantage for us is that we can use Uptempo to make our digital marketing assets available globally in a simple and efficient way.”
Assets in the Digital Asset Management
Active users
Log-ins per month
Downloads per month
BRITA’s image archive, called BOA (BRITA Online Assets), was reaching its limits with the global growth of the company, the emergence of new brands, and the increasing number of marketing assets worldwide. The company was therefore looking for a platform provider to manage the assets on its own. BRITA began working with its own platform in the mid-2000s, but over time, the software partner and the company moved in different directions. BRITA marketing went in search of an alternative service provider and, together with IT and Purchasing, developed an RFP.
The partnership has existed since 2018. Today, BRITA uses the Uptempo Digital Asset Management, Work & Resource Management—and most recently added the Uptempo Brand Management.
Subsidiaries have access to all marketing assets, no matter where, no matter when. In the past, the required marketing materials had to be sent around the world by CD. Today, BRITA’s marketing colleagues in the country subsidiaries access the required material for the products directly via the Digital Asset Management. The Digital Asset Management contains product shots, pack shots, seals, icons, mood images, PDFs of product brochures and flyers, and much more. These can be freely downloaded and scaled down as required. The subsidiaries particularly appreciate the fact that they no longer have to download assets and distribute them to external agencies, and it provides them with the required material via a link to the BOA. In addition, many of the agencies also have their own log-in. As soon as they receive an order, they can search the inventoried material in the BOA. This saves a lot of time on all sides.
From a shortlist of three candidates, BRITA decided on Uptempo. The system already covered most of the BRITA’s requirements in the standard version, with the cost-performance portfolio having the best immediate fit. The corporate structures and cultures also meshed. “We are a family business—we maintain a cooperative relationship with service providers. We like to tackle topics together and work out solutions as a team. With Uptempo, we realized very quickly that we are on the same wave length,” says Andrea Baermann, senior manager, brand solutions, group communications at BRITA.
BRITA marketing uses Work & Resource Management to control its processes, from the final creative artwork for a package through to printing. As soon as a packaging design has been created and approved, the process starts. This is where the final artwork and the implementation of the packaging variants are controlled—a job that can be highly complex. After all, a single filter can come in up to 40 variants: All processes are controlled automatically via the Work & Resource Management, from approval by colleagues from product marketing to automated delivery of the print data to the print shop. The final print data is then transferred from the Work & Resource Management to the Digital Asset Management. Here, the print shops each have access to the folder containing their print data.
BRITA uses the brand templates contained in the Digital Asset Management to manage the production of business cards throughout the group, including the approval process by the respective departments.
The Brand Management recently began functioning as the BOA’s home page. It gives BRITA marketing the opportunity to also post editorial content and communicate both its CD guidelines and more detailed information on assets and their use. The goal is to optimize the user interface in the BOA and to make finding the appropriate asset as easy as possible. In this way, users are guided through the system in a targeted manner via questions.
There are more than 150 variants of the BRITA logo in the Digital Asset Management. When a sales employee needs a logo, it is not easy to know which logo is the right one for the desired use. Logos are applied to house walls, street signs, baseball caps, trade fair flags, or mouth guards (to name just a few possible uses). This immediately raises the question of which file format and color variant are correct.
In the past, the marketing team at headquarters spent a lot of time answering these requests. Or they didn’t ask at all, and mistakes were made. Today, with many more employees, brands, countries, and communication needs, that has increased many times over. These requests could no longer be handled by the marketing team at all. To better manage the employees in the Digital Asset Management, Uptempo developed the Logo Selector, which was launched together with the Brand Management. For which brand is the logo needed? For which purpose? Digital or print production? Does it have to be in black and white or color? By asking these and other questions, the employee is guided specifically to the right logo.
As a growth-oriented company, BRITA can efficiently master the increasing demands on marketing with Uptempo. Ten years ago, there were approximately 1,400 assets in the BOA. Today, almost 58,000 assets are managed in the Digital Asset Management. As a result, all digital marketing material can be made available globally, which not only ensures brand conformity, but also enables much more efficient work.
There are also efficiency gains in the area of print data production. The diversification of BRITA products is enormous. In 2005, there were two major product types. Today, these are in the double-digit range. The volume of print data has multiplied as a result. However, the processes are still controlled by just two people via the Work & Resource Management. They coordinate all the jobs, from artwork approval, to print data delivery, to the print shop. Between 800 and 1,000 print data jobs are executed each year. Work & Resource Management helps gain efficiency via workflow automation, making it more powerful without having to acquire more resources.
Next up is the rollout of the upload capability to the countries. If marketing colleagues from the country subsidiaries want to upload material to the Digital Asset Management, this is currently still entered centrally via the marketing team at headquarters. In the future, the countries will be able to perform the upload independently. In order to avoid errors from the outset, training courses are planned and initial talks are being held with Uptempo on the development of an image rights management system.
The cooperation between BRITA and Uptempo has been very close. In addition to the regularly scheduled meetings, team lists with technical topics are kept, which are successively discussed and worked through. While the teams have harmonized very well on a human level from the very beginning, they have also grown together on a technical level as well. Andrea Baermann particularly appreciates the attitude of the Uptempo colleagues, which fits perfectly with BRITA: “hands-on, accessible, open communication, technically competent, and professional in all areas and levels”.
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