A mere glance at ecommerce platforms tells us the scale of creatives required to run a robust online marketplace. With thousands of product listings and display ads on the website real-estate and other distribution channels, there’s a lot of heavy lifting that goes on to make sure each of these visuals is high-quality and brand-compliant. The process becomes multifold during sale events. More often than not, this is a manual, repetitive process that stretches timelines, and inadvertently leads to delayed campaigns which hugely impact revenue. 

The answer to this challenge of meeting brand compliance needs at such a large scale is a brand compliance software powered by a creative operations infrastructure that will automate brand governance right from storing and organizing assets, to ensuring brand rules are followed while designing the creative and finally, an analytics layer to understand the impact of on-brand visual elements.

So how does ensuring brand compliance go from stretched to seamless? Ecommerce giants like Amazon, Walmart, and Jumia are already doing this by leveraging Rocketium’s brand compliance software and seeing great results on TAT, revenue, and conversions.  Let’s dive right in.

Drudgery and Delays: Why Brand Compliance Can Prove to be a Herculean Task for ecommerce Platforms

For ecommerce platforms, like most other sectors, the importance of brand compliance is multi-dimensional. It includes giving a cohesive and continuous brand experience to users and creating a distinct visual identity to stand out amidst the crowd. However, the coming of retail media has added another dimension to the importance of brand compliance. It has transformed ecommerce sites from mere transactional platforms to full-fledged media networks. ecommerce platforms are essentially monetizing ad inventory on their platforms and since they have access to much coveted first-party data, brands are literally clamoring for ad spaces on these sites. In their Q4 earnings reports for 2021, Amazon and Walmart posted $31.1 billion and $2.1 billion in digital ad sales, respectively – numbers that have shaken the retail sector.

However, it also means that ecommerce platforms have way more creatives on their plate to ensure brand compliance. A single sale event might have more than 1000s and 1000s of  creatives going live each day – eCommerce platforms need a brand governance system that can ensure on-brand visuals at such a humongous scale, without the need for manual intervention

To begin with, ecommerce platforms need to ensure that the product images on their category pages and product listings are brand compliant along with their communication across different channels including social media, emails, push notifications, etc. And then with retail media, these platforms have to further guarantee that the creatives made and shared by the advertisers are in accordance with the brand guidelines of the eCommerce platforms as well.

Now imagine you are entrusted with the responsibility of ensuring brand compliance for every piece of creative out there. Which means staring at your computer screen for hours checking for logo placement, color palette, fonts, etc. Well, truth be told, the sheer monotony of the task may make a lot of us put down our papers on the very first day. But this is the reality of most of the eCommerce platforms out there. Ensuring brand compliance is a manual process that requires endless person-hours spent in a loop checking for brand elements across endless creatives. Then begins another frustrating episode of trying to get hold of designers across multiple communication channels to rectify any brand violation. 

Needless to say, this highly inefficient cycle leads to innumerable espresso shots, sleepless nights, and not to mention delayed campaigns, and consequent loss of revenue.

Carving a Way Out: Leveraging Technology to Simplify Compliance

By now it is more than obvious how repetitive and frustrating brand compliance can be for eCommerce platforms, but does it have to be that way? Isn’t there a  way for eCommerce platforms to automate and streamline this entire process saving not only time and effort but also allowing them to go live with their campaigns faster and drive more value?

Well, of course, there is. Let’s talk about a CreativeOps system that is so efficient, it becomes a one-stop destination for every kind of brand compliance woes for eCommerce or any other sector for that matter.  It operates on three levels, starting with consistent on-brand creation that gives the audience a seamless experience across different platforms. Marketers can create a “brand toolkit” that includes important brand elements like logos and color palettes and brand assets.  

Designers get to focus on being creative instead of worrying about any violation because there are brand rules that are enforced during the process of making the creative. These rules are customizable and can include something as basic as logo placement, white space exclusion to something as nuanced as ensuring equal representation across gender and colors. One of the world’s largest IT services companies leveraged Rocketium’s brand compliance features to guarantee diverse and fair representation across race and gender in their visual communication. 

It just doesn’t stop there, thanks to AI-assisted compliance checks, non-compliant elements can be flagged and resolved in no time enabling brand teams to launch on-brand creatives at lightning speed. Finally, with super easy collaboration, teams can bid adieu to scattered feedback or endless loops. Stakeholders can share their thoughts right on the design canvas, and designers can organize and prioritize feedback for instant approvals. Say goodbye to slow approvals and hello to superhero-level speed!

Reality Check: Brands that overcame brand compliance struggle with Agile CreativeOps

Some of the biggest eCommerce platforms across the globe have had to struggle with brand compliance till they were introduced to an agile CreativeOps platform like Rocketium, which automated the cumbersome process of brand governance and helped them go live with their campaigns in days instead of weeks. 

Let’s talk about the world’s largest eCommerce company which has now evolved into a media network by monetizing ad inventory. As the platform’s advertising business continued to boom, so did its struggle with brand compliance.  Manually going through every creative to ensure they were on-brand led to endless feedback and rework cycles that delayed campaigns and cost big bucks. But with Rocketium’s agile CreativeOps platform, the eCommerce giant streamlined the process by implementing a simple self-service platform for brands and advertisers to create on-brand visuals. With repetitive work eliminated, they could onboard more advertisers, run more campaigns and earn more revenue. Talk about a win-win situation!

Another Pan African eCommerce platform also found itself facing huge brand compliance struggles but for different reasons. It heavily focussed on video ads which brought on more complications with brand-compliance detection. To add to this, they had teams spread across borders and time zones, making collaboration and reviews more cumbersome. However, with Rocketium, they were able to streamline their entire creative process and ensure that visuals were on-brand. Plus, with seamless collaboration feedback was organized and resolved faster than ever. They were able to launch their campaigns much faster without wasting time and money on non-productive work.

In a nutshell,  Rocketium’s unique capabilities make brand compliance a matter of mere minutes instead of days. Designers don’t need to waste endless hours on non-creative tasks and marketers can have a good night’s sleep knowing that designs will be brand compliant. The net result? Campaigns go live on time, engagement remains high, and any apprehension about lawsuits? Bid them goodbye!

Ready to simplify your life with automated brand compliance? Get in touch with us at marketing@rocketium.com 

Sreetama Chakraborty

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