Brand management as your organisation grows: who decides?

Why one brand guardian is no longer enough

As long as everything goes through one desk, things usually go fine. That one colleague knows the visual identity and sees almost everything. As your organisation grows, that person becomes a bottleneck. Questions pile up and people start doing it themselves.

That isn’t bad will. A new branch simply wants a poster quickly, a department wants its own presentation. Without a clear route, everyone makes their own choices. After a while you have several versions of your brand side by side.

The answer isn’t to keep everything with that one person. You share out the work, with clear roles and a few fixed agreements.

Four roles you can share out

You don’t need a large brand team to share out roles. Often one person per role is enough, and sometimes one person holds two. What matters is that everyone knows who to go to.

• Owner. Decides on the core of the brand: logo, colours, tone of voice and major changes. Usually someone from management or marketing.
• Manager. Keeps files and guidelines up to date and answers questions. This is the person doing the day-to-day work.
• Maker. Designs or writes materials, such as a designer, an agency or a communications officer at a branch.
• User. Applies the brand with templates and files, such as colleagues making a presentation or a quote.

What is fixed centrally, and what can vary locally?

Not everything has to be identical everywhere. A branch in another city or country sometimes needs its own images or its own language. So decide in advance what is fixed and where there is room.

Fix centrally what makes your brand recognisable. Think of the logo, the colours, the typefaces and the basis of your tone of voice. Nobody should tinker with those.

Allow local room where it helps. For example, the branch’s own photos, a local contact or copy in the local language. Also write down the limits. That way a branch knows what it can do without asking.

If you have sub-brands or labels, keep them side by side, each with its own files. Make clear what they share with the main brand and what is their own. Then they won’t get mixed up.

A simple route for approval and exceptions

Not every piece needs to go past the owner. A post made from an existing template can usually go straight out. Agree which materials do need a second look, such as a new campaign, a building sign or anything with a partner’s logo.

Keep the route short. The maker submits, the manager checks and, if in doubt, the owner decides. Agree how quickly people get a response, so nobody waits or works around it.

If someone asks for an exception, first ask why. It often turns out a template or file is missing. Fix that, and the next person won’t need an exception. Keep track of the exceptions you do allow, so you can see whether a pattern emerges.

In MarkBase you set this up with seven access levels, from brand owner to user. For each person you choose whether they can view, add or manage, and departments get their own access. Designs and copy are submitted in projects, where they are discussed and approved. Audit logs show you what has changed.

Signs your brand management is falling behind

Your brand management doesn’t grow with your organisation by itself. So watch out for a few signs:

• The same questions again and again. Colleagues keep asking where the logo is or which template to use.
• Home-made versions. Branches or departments create their own logo variant or colour.
• Waiting on one person. Materials stall because only one colleague is allowed to approve them.
• Nobody knows. When a brand question comes up, it isn’t clear who decides.
• Old files in circulation. Long after a change, the old visual identity keeps turning up.

Start small, then adjust

You don’t have to sort everything out at once. Start by sharing out the roles and write down what is fixed centrally. Then agree a simple approval route.

After a few months, check whether it works. Where do people get stuck? Which questions keep coming back? Adjust the agreements to what you see. That way your brand management grows with you, without becoming bureaucratic.