AkzoNobel
Bynder offers us a dynamic platform for connecting with our stakeholders both inside and outside the company.
Brand Manager at AkzoNobel
1,000
man-hours saving per month
90
minutes saved per job
90%
fewer internal emails
AkzoNobel, a worldwide leader in paints, coatings, and specialty chemicals, faced a huge challenge when ensuring brand consistency throughout the whole organization. It was particularly difficult to collaborate efficiently with decentralized teams worldwide. With Bynder, AkzoNobel has one central point to communicate their brand identity guidelines to all employees, and create, update and share their communications and marketing materials with relevant stakeholders.
AkzoNobel is a leading global paints and coatings company and a major producer of specialty chemicals. Calling on centuries of expertise, they supply industries and consumers worldwide with innovative products and sustainable technologies designed to meet the growing demands of our fast- changing planet.
Headquartered in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, AkzoNobel employs approximately 47,000 people in around 80 countries, and their portfolio includes well-known brands such as Dulux, Sikkens, International Interpon and Eka. Consistently ranked as one of the leaders in the area of sustainability, the global organization is committed to making life more livable and cities more human.
Challenges on a global scale
AkzoNobel has offices and plants in many countries worldwide. All employees work within their own markets and with specific product marketing.
It was a challenge for AkzoNobel to maintain overall brand consistency. Keeping everyone in line with their branding guidelines, and auditing on-brand materials took a huge amount of effort on the part of all involved departments. Even simple queries regarding business cards or logo application generated a large amount of calls, emails and an overwhelmingly complex approval process due to global offices dealing with different languages and time zones, etc.
Another challenge was managing a complex approval process for communications and marketing jobs on a global scale. It was hard to keep an overview of the jobs to define who was responsible for which part of the specific project and to store the final approved artworks. As a result, there were a lot of problems in regard to knowledge sharing and best practices. Furthermore, the brand stored their marketing materials on local platforms, which resulted in many different systems within the company. This also limited sharing materials across the business.
Bynder offers us a dynamic platform for connecting with our stakeholders both inside and outside the company. It’s our central resource for creating, managing and sharing assets for over 100 AkzoNobel brands.Sarah Roozendaal
Brand Manager at AkzoNobel
How Bynder helped
The AkzoNobel brand portal communicates the many aspects of AkzoNobel’s brand identity and that of its brands. The Bynder team created bespoke video tutorials that helped maintain the tool’s high user adoption rate. This not only makes onboarding easier, but it also ensures users will enjoy coming back and using Bynder every day. These videos have also saved AkzoNobel time and money on first-line support.
Moreover, previously complex tasks such as business card creation and multiple on-brand approval rounds have been greatly simplified by Bynder’s collaborative tools. Using Bynder’s Creative Workflow, AkzoNobel can set out easily who is responsible for what part of a project. That way timelines are outlined and deadlines won’t be missed. Smart templates of different available formats ensure the on-brand creation of AkzoNobel advertising.
With the help of Bynder’s Digital Asset Management module, AkzoNobel can provide a wide section of images and other digital media within one place. In their asset library, employees and external agencies can download what they need and learn from best practices.
AkzoNobel is continuously exploring how they can improve their brand portal.
Benefits for AkzoNobel
With their brand portal, AkzoNobel is able to communicate in a more efficient way. As branding collateral has to go through a fixed endorsement approval process, they keep full control of all design projects - responsibilities, reviews, approvals, deadlines, etc. - while staying on brand all the time. Moreover, they have a full overview of stationary requests, collateral or business card approvals.
All in all, Bynder has helped AkzoNobel to save around 90 minutes per job and more than a 1000 man-hours per month thanks to the efficiency of their new on-brand approval process alone!
