Founded in the Netherlands with roots dating back over 100 years ago, De Heus is a leading producer and exporter of animal feed—exporting to 70+ countries and employing over 6000 people worldwide.
The global top-12 feed supplier is still run by the same family that started the business back in 1911, but inevitably a lot has changed since then. In the context of a growing global population and the need for higher standards of living worldwide, De Heus has undergone explosive growth in recent times to meet the demands of increased agricultural activity and food production.
Yet, the organization has always made it a priority to maintain its roots as a family-owned business, with the same vision, values and culture that enabled the company to become a global leader in the animal feed industry. But when scaling internationally, growth comes with its challenges.
With so many new business units coming under the De Heus brand in recent years, it was difficult for the core global marketing team based in the Netherlands to communicate and collaborate with international colleagues.
As a company, we’ve grown really fast internationally in the past few years. So making sure that new business units are sticking to our long-held brand vision, values and culture is extremely important to us.Evert Top
Global Communication & Marketing Specialist at De Heus
How can De Heus protect, manage, and grow their global brand operations effectively, while also encouraging international business units to collaborate on marketing efforts?
Fundamentally, De Heus needed to scale smoothly while maintaining a strong, on-brand identity as they expanded operations across the globe. And Bynder was more than up for the challenge.
What were the main challenges that needed solving?
From using old off-brand logos to fielding repetitive requests, the De Heus team were dealing with a number of challenges that meant their brand operations weren’t fit for the rapid global growth they were experiencing.
Relying on a photography agency to centralize their ever-growing number of digital assets wasn’t cutting it anymore. A more robust brand management solution that could scale with a growing team—and growing number of assets—was vital.
In a nutshell, the main challenges De Heus were looking to Bynder to solve were:
Siloed and unscalable content operations
There was no single repository for storing all marketing assets, with many business units having their own methods for managing files. Without the ability to centralize and collaborate from one place, it was a real challenge to coordinate with international colleagues
No control over how assets were used
Inevitably, on-brand marketing assets were crucial to leverage when promoting the De Heus brand worldwide, but alack of accessible brand guidelines made it unclear how localization should be carried out. This made for too many Skype meetings and back-and-forth emails; not enough structured, single-space collaboration.
Fielding repetitive content requests
Given that marketing efforts predominantly came out of Holland, the core global marketing team were facing endless emails requesting logo files and questions about which (and how) assets should be used. These repetitive manual tasks were killing their productivity.
How did Bynder solve these challenges?
With our business growing rapidly, Bynder seemed like the perfect solution to add that much-needed structure to not only how we store assets, but how they’re used within the team too.Evert Top
Global Communication & Marketing Specialist at De Heus
Since implementing Bynder, the critical improvement has been the structure and centralization it brings to collaborating on marketing efforts globally. The global marketing team now have the peace of mind that other business units have the messaging and structure needed to promote the De Heus brand worldwide—always on-brand, and smoother than ever.
So what are the main work processes that have improved?
Less repetitive requests; more do-it-yourself
As mentioned before, marketing assets were previously stored in multiple locations, making it a challenge for everyone to see what was up-to-date, available, and ready to use for marketing efforts worldwide. Now, all marketing assets are stored and managed from Bynder’s cloud-based portal, enabling other business units to be much more self-sufficient, while cutting down on repetitive content requests.
Clear, easily accessible brand guidelines
Assets are uploaded by both the Dutch-based marketing team and their global business units; the ability to customize usage rights for employees allows De Heus to have much-needed control over how their brand assets are used. And with brand guidelines available directly in Bynder, everyone knows best practices for how the brand should be communicated.
Searching that makes sense
During implementation, the team were shown how to create a custom taxonomy for their exact needs. With the help of Bynder’s Onboarding experts, De Heus were able to structure the portal in a way that ensured all departments could find what they needed, when they needed it. With content so easily accessible, employees are finding (and using) assets that they didn’t know existed—achieving a key goal that De Heus were striving for when implementing a DAM.
You’ve read the highlights; now see the full Bynder x De Heus story here
Over 1500 brands rely on Bynder to boost their branding efforts: from brand consistency and closer collaboration to centralizing assets, we have a tailored solution to fit the needs of each and every customer. Why not see what Bynder can do for you with a free demo?
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