Distributing files is difficult and time consuming, especially with standard file size restrictions on emails. However, it’s becoming increasingly important to be able to access and distribute large files, both internally and remotely. In order to overcome this problem, you may find that you are unofficially resorting to unsecured removable media or a number of questionable websites offering free-upload services. Such practices don’t just expose your organisation to inappropriate content and spamming devices, they also create serious security risks and undermine process controls that manage access to content.

The solution is 'My Store'.

My Store lets you professionally store, access, and share large files with ease, whilst also enabling you to manage access parameters. Below are some of the highlights and benefits of this

Highlights:

Adam Hainsworth (CEO of be the brand experience) attended the Westminster Carbon Counting Conference on the 24th of January 2008 on behalf of Noughtilus; a radical new online tool that enables marketing professionals to measure and manage their environmental impact.

With support from the All Party Parliamentary Climate Change Group (APPCCG), the Open University and the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, the conference launched the first of a yearly Carbon Counting initiative, bringing together leading figures in the field of carbon accounting to collectively review, develop and update the main carbon counting methods using case studies and rationales.

The leading public body for protecting and improving the environment in England and Wales has selected be the brand experience to create and deploy a centralised online brand asset management solution across their supply chain. The system will not only manage the development and use of key brand resources, but will also empower people to generate brand consistent marketing materials using templates.

Key benefits of the system include reducing the costs associated with developing and updating brand assets, increasing the utilisation of and value realised from key brand resources, and strengthening brand consistency. It will also free up design resources to focus on more creative tasks. From October 2007, a user base exceeding two hundred have been using the system with great success.

"We are excited that the Environment Agency selected us after a comprehensive competitor review. They are a fantastic client and we are very much looking forward to working together"

Adam Hainsworth (CEO), Be the Brand Experience

"Our Brand Bank system is a fantastic way to manage our brand. It means that our assets are up-to-the-minute and everyone works to the same standards. And our templates make for flexible, easy and cost-effective communications."

Margaret Gladstone, The Environment Agency

Who is the Environment Agency?

The Environment Agency is the leading public body for protecting and improving the environment in England and Wales. They work to ensure that the environment is looked after by everyone, so that tomorrow's generations inherit a cleaner, healthier world.

As brands are becoming more aware of the need become sustainable the scope of Marketing Resource Management systems needs to expand to consider the footprint of resources that are used in marketing. As the link between the consumer and production marketeers need to both incorporate sustainability into their brand message and ensure they work in a way that minimises the footprint of marketing activites.

be the brand experience has deepened the functionality within the MRM solution to incorporate sustainability gateways into workfow processes.

In a separate venture with Clownfish Marketing we are launching Noughtilus llp; a solution focussed on enabling marketeers to evalute the social, environmental and ethical impact of channel marketing activities.

be the brand experience has supported the initial phase of the recently launched AchieveZero. AchieveZero is a WOM (Word of Mouth) concept focussed on creating a community of people who want to support businesses that have committed to a sustainable future through changing their purchasing pattern (and influencing their friends and colleagues).

Fur further information on be the brand experience's leadership in marketing automation please contact us.

be the brand experience to present at the DMA Ethical Marketing seminar

Adam Hainsworth, CEO of be the brand experience, is to hold a session on green marketing at the DMA's Ethical Marketing: The Business Opportunity seminar.

Key Content at the seminar:

- What the latest research shows about consumers' buying habits and changing trends and how they are affected by ethical marketing around a product.
- How to be more ethically sound in communications in order to appeal to more environmentally friendly consumers.
- How to get your initiatives heard by the relevant parties.
- Plus a series of case studies from leading brands.

Please visit Ethical Marketing: The Business Opportunity website for more information.

Introducing MRM to Adetem, French National Marketing Association

09 March 2007, Paris La Défense: Adetem is the French National Marketing Association consisting of 670 companies and over 1300 members.

Adetem has 3 main objectives:

- to organise and promote exchange between marketing professionnals
- to provide information about markets, business environments, events and marketing news
- to communicate marketing best practices to all members

The presentation will develop understanding of how technology can be used by marketers to manage the challenges of maintaining brand equity in a multi-channel environment. Some of the issues discussed will be brand dilution, need of increasing speed to market/ internal process efficiency and lack of visibility on activities and costs.

Presentation will be for the 'Communications et Marketing' club (Adetem has 11 professionnal active clubs).

Details and subscription (text in french) HERE

News HTML CommsBuilder extension:

be the brand experience adds HTML template capability to CommsBuilder module

January 2007: be the brand experience have enhanced the CommsBuilder module, to allow end users to easily create professional, personalised HTML communications via customised pre-loaded design templates. The user needs no HTML skills or knowledge what-so-ever.

Templates have fixed place-holders built-in, which gives marketers the freedom to insert images, text, links or imbed video. These placeholders give great flexibility in design, but always adhere to brand guidelines specified during the creation of the template. Additional features include being able to easily hyper link the reader/recipient to on-page or external destination.

The templates link to a central database (the Asset Store), where all approved images are kept. In addition, users can also be allowed to add images from their local directories.

The HTML extension builds on the current (print) CommsBuilder functionality, with its easy to use interface, and can be linked to your existing e-communication distribution engine - drastically cutting the cost of creating and re-working e-communications.

The HTML CommsBuilder is currently in beta testing and will be live in the first quarter of 2007.

Prudential Expands use of Prustore beyond Marketing:

July 2006

After 12 months of running their marketing literature creation and sign off processes, and storing all materials via Prustore, Prudential are now rolling out Prustore to other areas of the business - thus further increasing its benefits. Over 9,000 projects (each equating to creating or updating a piece of literature or web page) have been run so far with a full audit trail of approvals easily accessible as per FSA requirements.

First to come on board was PruHealth (a joint venture with Discovery - a South African company) who went live in March 2006 after a short proof of concept. Where necessary, Prustore has been tweaked to accommodate variations in their workflow process.

The Customer Response Unit (CRU) went live in May and use Prustore to store, access and update all templates of all customer facing letters and post sale support.

Customer Services are likely to be the next area of the business to begin using Prustore and are currently going through the scoping process to agree their exact needs and required processes.

UIA has deployed a customised Marketing Resource Management solution, consisting of all 4 modules, to improve marketing efficiency and help keep marketing campaigns in line with financial regulations.

23rd June 2006

UIA has deployed a new customised marketing resource management solution to improve marketing efficiency and help keep marketing campaigns in line with financial regulations. The deal was signed with be the brand experience, a services provider firm.

Brandstore will enable UIA to co-ordinate direct mail, advertising and digital marketing campaigns, improve approval processes and keep complete, easily accessible, electronic audit trails for regulatory compliance purposes.

"We were impressed with the functionality of be the brand's MRM solution," said Damian Reilly, head of marketing at UIA. "The tool gives us the ability to electronically co-ordinate all parties involved in the marketing campaign process...

To read the full story, please register HERE to continue.

be the brand experience sponsors the annual Henry Stewart MOM conference held in the Radisson Hotel in London.

22 May, London: This summer marks the five year anniversary of Henry Stewart's Digital Asset Management (DAM) Symposium and sees the international event for DAM and Marketing Operations Management (MOM) return home on 20 & 21 June for its 2006 London show. The event features a wealth of case studies highlighting real world knowledge and lessons learned, and the successes and ambitions of DAM and MOM professionals who have successfully deployed and leveraged asset management to create new capabilities and revenues.
The symposium offers an intensive two-day programme tailored to the specific objectives of project leaders in all phases of DAM & MOM implementation - from basic storage, search and retrieval, to the integration of metadata into ingest-create-manage-distribute workflows.
Renowned for respecting the value of real world experience, Henry Stewart hands over to the true experts, professional practitioners of DAM and MOM, to provide essential best practices and actionable advice on how to select, deploy, maintain and leverage these technologies and strategies.

Read the full press release HERE

Citrix further integrate asset store and projects modules, linking with print mgt company stock systems

18th May 2006

be the brand experience have just updated Citrix System Inc's OneBrand MRM solution. This upgrade enhances the design of OneBrand to ensure that Citrix's brand management tool followed Citrix's latest website guidelines.

This update also saw OneBrand integrating with JKG Group, Citrix's print management vendors, print fulfilment system. The was a joint project in which be's technical team worked with JKGs technical team to provide a end to end asset management, workflow and print fulfilment ordering system for marketers in Citrix and their channel partners.

OneBrand added a cart shopping basket functionality that enables users to add selected orderable collateral. On checking out, the order is placed into the JKG fulfilment system.

"Implementing an MRM system can greatly improve the efficiency of a company's marketing function" says Adam Hainsworth in the May Issue of Financial Marketing Magazine.

05 May 2006

While it's fair to say that in the past financial services companies were never pioneers in brand management, over the last decade, they have done a lot to change this.
Today, successful brand building and management is vital to ensure survival.
With non financial brands entering the market and stepping up the competition, traditional financial institutes are being forced to re-examine the strengths of their own brand strategies.
In the past, banks and financial services companies spent little time and money on marketing activities. With tight regulations, they focussed attention on their traditional markets, avoiding competing on any other levels.

For the full article, please refer to the 05-05-05 edition of Marketing Magazine, issue 144.

be the brand experience launches a tailor made MRM toolkit for Financial Services Industry

be the brand experience have released their latest industry customised solution. The unique challenges faced by marketers, compliance officers and agencies in the Financial Services (FS) market require an MRM solution that manages the financial promotion literature creation and approval process, automates the job-bag/ archiving process and manages item availability/ withdrawal dates. Automating the literature approval across multiple locations delivers reduced cycle time increased visibility. The solution also captures all approvals and sign off given for items - providing a comprehensive audit trail to help meet FSA guidelines.

With the Financial Services MRM toolkit, FS clients will be closer to having an off-the-shelf MRM solution that meets their industry needs without requiring significant customisation during the deployment; reducing the time and cost of set-up and deployment compared to starting with a vanilla MRM solution.

With Prudential UK, UIA and Winterthur live as well as 2 other top 10 FS providers in deployment and other large UK Financial Services clients in the pipeline, be the brand experience has established its credentials providing a market beating MRM solution within the FS sector.

Please contact busdev@be-thebrand.com for further information on our various off the shelf toolkits and customised solutions.