Insights dated January 2021

Wesleyan’s contemporarily named bethebrand system, MaRS (Marketing and Regulatory System), landed the second week of January this year and has rapidly delivered results.

Founded in 1841, Wesleyan Assurance Society (Wesleyan) is a financial services mutual dedicated to some of the most trusted professions in society and is committed to creating brighter financial futures for doctors, dentists and teachers, so they can focus on the vital work they do. Wesleyan partners with leading professional bodies, such as NASUWT, The Teachers’ Union, and the Royal College of General Practitioners, as well as advising large public sector bodies, such as the NHS Pension Scheme.

Wesleyan had developed its own system approaches, both in-house and with print partners, for a number of years. With the ever-increasing sophistication of marketing techniques, channels and assets, and the associated shift from largely print to mostly digital, Wesleyan required an ever-evolving system application. This delivered a clear understanding to the team of what their system was going to be required to do both today and in the future. It also highlighted a clear opportunity to harness the expertise of a specialist.

The decision was made to look to proprietary systems that could meet the specification. Most of all, Wesleyan were looking for a system that would work for them ‘straight out of the box’ - something that could be configured precisely, but that did not need development time.

The tender process was extensive and intensive. bethebrand stood out because it has a clear and simple approach at its core that can power intricate and sophisticated workflow processes. This is an important consideration for Wesleyan, which takes pride in the rigour of its governance processes. Furthermore, with 20 years of dedicated and focused financial services sector development, and many leading industry names as long-standing clients, Wesleyan was confident that it had chosen a trusted provider who would hit the ground running.

bethebrand delivered an agile and fluid system implementation process which allowed the team to be hands on with the system throughout. The outcome of this was that there were very few snags to overcome at ‘go live’, allowing the team to concentrate on the migration of its extensive asset archive and take the opportunity to audit and rationalise it in the process.

Four months in, Wesleyan is already enjoying improved outcomes; moving through approval processes at even greater speed without any dilution of rigour.

Furthermore, many more assets are achieving ‘right first time’ approval by compliance because of MaRS’ collaborative and diligent workflow systems.

Lockdown did not slow down Petplan in getting their new bethebrand system from brief to live in just 3 months. The new system, nicknamed RAP (Review and Approval Portal), provides a suite of functionality fully configured for the award-winning pet insurer.

Over the last 40 years, Petplan has helped millions of pets through illness and injury. Today, Petplan insures over 1.3 million pets, more than any other provider, with an outstanding record of paying 97% of the claims received. Petplan is a subsidiary of Allianz Insurance plc, part of the Allianz Global Group.

As the UK’s leading pet insurer driving a market-leading marketing programme, Petplan needed a system that could support its sophisticated multi-channel, multi-media marketing communications mix. What’s more, they wanted to further boost the business’ ability to collaborate, be creative and be nimble.

Petplan reviewed many different systems providers prior to appointing bethebrand in the Autumn of 2020. What they found is that many involved too many workarounds and compromises, or were too complicated. The team did not want to compromise in getting a system that could be moulded to exactly to how they like to work.

A great example of this is the RAP system feature to allow peer review. Rather than a signoff procedure, this allows team members to provide feedback and ideas for the development of new marketing assets. So well before an asset proceeds along a sequential signoff round, everyone can contribute and work together. This not only enhances speed to market, but also delivers the very best solution.

Petplan has built a powerful brand and managing brand delivery across all touch-points is key for success. As part of the build, bethebrand has delivered a brand guidelines and imagery site, all housed within the RAP system, providing an important brand management tool to play its part in supporting the team in driving Petplan’s competitive advantage.

The pandemic created no barrier to getting the system up and running speedily. A series of remote workshops allowed the team to quickly identify how they wanted the system configured, which laid the blueprint for rapid implementation.

“I sang 'Nessun Dorma' twice with Pavarotti, and he told me he'd heard 'Smoke' about five or six times, and every time was different. He was so jealous because if he deviated one jot from the traditional interpretation of the famous arias, he'd be crucified. We have the freedom.”

Some of us at be the brand are old enough to remember when artwork was created and transported in paper form in the last century. It’s hard enough to say ‘the last century’ let alone remember the protracted and time consuming process of marketing communications in an analogue world.

In those days where office receptions saw an endless stream of bike helmets and leather the concept of control was a far off dream. Marketing was far more ‘rock and roll’ in the context of Ian Gillan’s quote above. But the management of a brand needs to be a far more of a classical piece.

We work for many different companies in many sectors. But services businesses are a centre of excellence at be the brand. Brand management in the context of a services business is complicated.

A brand is the heart beat of a services business. It is built and defined by the product of a thousand gestures. Every human interaction either feeds or starves the brand of its desired positioning. So the management of a services brand can be anarchy if systems and controls do not lie at its heart. Because the brand is in the hands of many many people.

Digital Asset Management (DAM) has a crucial role to play in the management of a services brand. The brand identity is the emblem of the brand’s promise. Every marketing communication is the articulation of the brand’s promise, underpinned by systems and behaviours that deliver a customer experience aligned to the brand.

So if a good DAM were music it would be classical. Because a good DAM negates the risk of human interpretation in both the emblem and communication of the brand’s promise. You maintain control of what happens.

The heart of our approach is simple; to deliver DAM systems that revolutionise our clients’ marketing workflow management, ensuring full internal stakeholder involvement and delivering detailed archiving to underpin marketing and business continuity.

There is an important place for rock and roll in marketing, defined by the creative process.

But delivery needs to be DAM driven, to a classical score.