Recap of our Business Breakfast with Frontify

We look back with satisfaction and motivation on our first exclusive Business Breakfast, which we organized together with our partner Frontify. In a relaxed atmosphere, six experts – Anne Brüning, Holger Zeh, Tina Mushak, Matti Wachholz-Hausmann, Antonia Paul and German Schulz – discussed the topic of brand management and talked about their experiences and challenges in this area. We have summarized the highlights for you to read in this article.

Marco Spies and Katja Wenger opened with a fascinating presentation on “Spherical Brands”, an innovative approach to developing sustainable brand strategies. You can read more about this at thesphericalbrand.com.

In the panel discussion that followed, our six experts spoke on a variety of topics, such as the role of the brand manager as friend and helper, rebranding experiences, challenges in brand management and the use of creativity and agility.

What everyone agreed on: Brand management should never be perceived as the brand police, but more as a helper, coach, advisor or supporter.

Tina from BASF reported on how she manages to communicate the brand to around 100,000 employees with just a small team of brand managers. The so-called “brand champions” play a central role here, communicating the brands and their guidelines to the respective teams and being available to answer questions. Using messaging channels such as Facebook groups, the team offers a solution for sharing updates and responding to questions and concerns.

Holger from Deutsche Welle spoke about the importance of being responsive and adaptable, especially when it comes to news, social media and fake news. For Holger and his team, Frontify Publisher is the ideal tool to make processes simpler, more efficient and more trustworthy.

The ability to react quickly is also very important for German from VfL Wolfsburg, and not just on the pitch. Trust and loyalty are very important in soccer, and fans in particular expect their favorite club to have a high recognition value.

Anne from the Bundesdruckerei reported on how they have created a brand family of seven different brands, in which each one has its own identity and yet a family affiliation can be recognized among them.

Matti from Cornelsen talked about how important it is for his design team to ensure a high return on investment through brand management and long-term strategies, above all to ensure the company’s performance.

Antonia from Frontify emphasized the advantages of giving the responsible team a face and assigning clear roles in the brand management team. These roles can also be mirrored accordingly in a brand management portal such as Frontify and thus create a framework in which everyone can live out their creative potential.

The topic of creativity vs. control was discussed at length. Some ensure the creativity of their employees through best practices and clear communication, others emphasize that creativity sometimes needs to be controlled rather than encouraged in order to maintain brand consistency. Matti from Cornelsen is more concerned with creating a “tone of voice as a recipe”. According to Tina, it’s important not to dismiss employees’ ideas out of hand, but to appreciate that they are thinking while you communicate how and why an idea might need some tweaking.

We would like to thank all the panelists and participants who took part in the discussion. Also many thanks to our partners at Frontify for making this event possible!

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