Digital Brand Management: How to Stay Consistent Across Channels in 2025

Managing your brand across multiple platforms, teams and campaigns is no small task. That’s where digital brand management comes in – the art (and science) of maintaining a consistent, high-quality brand presence wherever your audience finds you.

But with content saved across share drives, inboxes and personal desktops/download folders, even the best marketing teams can struggle to remember what’s on-brand and what isn’t. And, even with the best will in the world, traditional filing is fraught with opportunity for human error. 

That’s why more and more organisations are turning to Digital Asset Management (DAM) software to help them – finally – get on top of brand control.

In this article, we’ll explore what digital brand management really means, why it’s more important than ever (thanks to AI!), and how DAM software makes it easier than you think:

• What is Digital Brand Management?
• What Does Digital Brand Management Include?
• Why is Brand Management Important?
• Brand Management vs Speed-to-Market Complications
• The Role of DAM in Digital Brand Management
• Why Shared Drives Are a Thing of The Past
• DAM Software Alerts Users To Asset Updates
• An End to Excuses
• DAM Software *is* Your Brand
• Key Benefits for Brand and Marketing Teams
• Real-World Results for Elior & ShelterBox
• Take Control of Your Digital Brand Management

What is Digital Brand Management?

Digital brand management is the process of controlling and maintaining how your brand appears across all digital channels: websites, social media, email marketing, online advertising, and third-party platforms.

Managing your digital brand means making sure that everything your audience sees and interacts with online reflects your brand’s identity consistently and accurately, from your logo and colour palette, to your tone of voice, messaging, and even file naming conventions.

What Does Digital Brand Management Include?

• Consistent use of online visual assets (e.g., logos, fonts, imagery and videography. Do all your headshots have a solid background colour, or are they more ‘BTS’/‘IRL’)
• Consistent tone of voice and messaging style across platforms (e.g., are you a brand that uses emojis or do you prefer a more corporate style? Do you use Americanisms or British English in your copy?)
• Monitoring brand use to avoid off-brand content or outdated materials
• Controlled sharing of brand assets with internal and external partners (e.g., outlining usage rights or embargo information)
• Centralised brand guidelines accessible to all teams (i.e., a document that outlines all of this information and further instructions on the nuances of what can be used when and where. For example, your logo might be dark blue, which is fine on a pale background, but a white (or paler) version will need to be used on darker documents.)

It’s making sure that every touchpoint feels cohesive and recognisably you.

Why is Brand Management Important?

Digital brand management matters because it helps build trust and recognition with your audience by ensuring your brand looks and feels consistent wherever it's seen. It supports your brand’s overall reputation, making sure every interaction reinforces who you are. 

It also streamlines content creation across teams, enabling faster workflows and smoother collaboration. 

Crucially, it prevents errors, duplication, and off-brand content by keeping everyone aligned with the latest, approved assets.

But therein lies the challenge: Maintaining a brand can cause friction points. 

Brand Management vs Speed-to-Market Complications

Bottlenecks at approval stages can add days – even weeks – of delays, slowing down activity and causing real frustration for busy teams. 

Under pressure to meet deadlines, people may resort to using outdated brand assets that feel “close enough” or let an old logo slide, just to get content out the door.

And with the capabilities of AI image, copy and video generation tools, it’s even harder to stop teams going rogue and creating their own assets, often without considering brand consistency. 

Even with the best will in the world, with teams spread across locations, it’s all too easy for approved brand assets to go missing, guidelines to be misinterpreted, and off-brand content to slip through the cracks. 

This is where having the right tools – and systems – in place makes a huge difference.

The Role of DAM in Digital Brand Management

A digital asset management platform puts a stop to this by only ever providing a single source of truth. 

Launching a new logo? Simply overwrite your existing logo in your DAM, and users will be alerted that the one they were using is now out of date – even if they downloaded it to use offline. If your DAM software's connected with your CMS, you'll be notified of the chan. If it's integrated with Adobe Creative Cloud, you'll get a notification there too.

The old logo? Gone. Confusion? Eliminated. 

You can even alert users to new content (or content you want to highlight for whatever reason), by posting a message on your DAM’s homepage:

Plus, your approvals processes can be embedded within the platform, so no asset is ever available for use until it has been approved.

Why Shared Drives Don't Cut It Anymore

It's not unusual for brand teams to host their logos, images, videos – all assets – on an internal shared drive or network. Some host them in Microsoft's One Drive or on the Cloud, while others might use DropBox or Google Drive... These systems serve a purpose – up to a point. 

If you only have, say, a few hundred images, videos, audio files, etc, your whole team has a good grasp of what's available, and all assets are in a folder and file structure that makes sense, then these basic platforms can suffice.

But what about when an asset – let's say a brand video – could technically live in more than one folder/sub-folder? Do you make duplicates and hope that any future changes to that video are reflected in all subsequent versions of it? What if an update gets missed and someone uses an old one accidentally? The consequences might just be small, or they could be significant enough to lead to legal ramifications.

DAM Software Alerts Users To Asset Updates

With DAM software, an asset – such as that brand video – can be accessed via multiple folders, but there'll only ever be one version of it. One single source of truth. If any changes are made to that video, DAM users will only be able to see the latest version. 

Okay, but what if a user has downloaded that video to their personal desktop, but the original version on the shared drive is updated? How will they be alerted to the change?

With traditional shared drives/networks, the only comms would be a manual alert – email/Slack/Teams, etc – but with DAM software, that user will receive an automated email to alert them that their file is out of date and that they need to make a change. 

An End to Excuses 

While naming conventions are critical in traditional shared drives, there’s really no excuse for not being able to find something in a modern, well-configured DAM system. You no longer need to know when/where/which campaign the asset is to do with – with DAM software, users just type in a logical keyword – i.e., ‘logo’ – to find what they need. 

Plus, AI Image Search (coming soon to Asset Bank) means your DAM is able to glean information from an asset even if that info hasn't been specifically detailed in the tags. 

The image below, for example, might be tagged 'woman', 'bicycle', 'sunglasses'. But AI would pick up on much more detail: her backpack, the blue jeans, black top, her brown hair. It can even go as far as to gauge weather or sentimentality: 'sunny', 'smiling', etc. This gives users a much greater chance of being able to find what they need, without needing to know a single thing about how the DAM platform is structured. 

What's more, crucial information can also be attached to every single asset, so users always know if a photographer needs crediting, or if a caption needs using, or if an asset’s usage is limited to certain platforms. If this lady on her bike (above) has signed a model release form, that will be attached to the image too, so usage rights are always visable.

Plus, single-sign-on (SSO) means forgotten passwords are a thing of the past, and pre-set resizing options at download mean, ‘not being able to find the size you need’ is so 2010.

Campaign-specific brand assets can even be linked, so users can easily see what’s available to them for that specific piece of work. 

DAM Software *is* Your Brand 

Your brand shouldn’t disappear the moment you work with a freelancer or the press. With a DAM, you can share a fully branded space – no more off-brand WeTransfer links. 

A fully customisable DAM system embodies your brand – your logos, your fonts, your colours – so you’re always representing a best-of-brand experience.

Just send a secure link, and external users can upload or download exactly what you allow. You control what they see, and nothing more. It’s slick, secure, and totally on-brand.

Even better, all your asset information (usage rights, any credits needed or expiry dates), remains, so you’re always in control of how your brand assets are being used.

With DAM, you’re not just storing assets, you’re actively managing and protecting your brand.

Key Benefits for Brand and Marketing Teams

Here’s what better digital brand management looks like with a DAM:

• Brand consistency – Every team, channel and campaign reflects your brand identity accurately – even when working at speed.
• Boosted productivity – With faster approvals, easier sharing and ready-to-go templates, your creative and marketing teams can do more with less effort.
• Stronger brand governance – Clear permissions and audit trails give brand managers greater visibility and control, reducing the risk of misuse.
• Improved collaboration – Whether it’s global teams, local offices or external partners, everyone works from the same playbook – wherever they are.
• Simpler onboarding – New team members or collaborators can get up to speed quickly by accessing pre-approved assets and clear brand guidance.

Real-World Results for Elior & ShelterBox

Hundreds of organisations use Asset Bank’s DAM software to power their brand management. From universities and non-profits to global enterprises, our clients have seen measurable improvements in brand consistency, campaign speed-to-market and internal efficiency.

Take Elior, for example – a major catering services provider in North America. With thousands of marketing assets spread across 13 distinct brands, covering everything from education to corporate events and correctional facilities, their teams struggled to keep track. Sales and marketing were often unsure which assets belonged to which brand, slowing them down and risking mistakes.

“Elior’s Proposal Team was wasting hours trying to find approved images to use in sales decks, when they could have been pitching and closing new deals. The Design Team was often grappling with numerous versions of the same photo, while others across the business were using outdated or unapproved visuals without even realising. 

“Perhaps most crucially, legal documentation, such as photography release forms for images that featured employees or dining guests, was becoming more difficult to manage, potentially putting Elior at serious financial and reputational risk.”

Check out the video here:

Read how Asset Bank helped Elior with their digital brand management.

Or, see how ShelterBox used digital brand management to give global fundraising teams access to the right content for their region, after managing brand assets across 12 countries in Microsoft had become “almost impossible.”

“Photos and stories were stored in Microsoft folders, making it almost impossible for teams across 12 fundraising countries to find what they needed. Early attempts to use platforms like Flickr weren’t scalable, and as the organisation grew, so did the demand for easy access to high-quality images and case studies.

“Valuable marketing collateral was getting lost. With teams fundraising in countries from the US to Australia, having a decentralised system wasn’t working… Without a structured system in place, assets were getting lost, and teams struggled to quickly find compelling content to share with supporters.”

See how ShelterBox sorted their brand asset management with Asset Bank's DAM.

Take Control of Your Digital Brand Management

If your brand lives across multiple platforms, teams and partners, you need more than shared drives or ad hoc folders. You need a system designed to protect, manage and empower your brand – today and in the future as you scale.

Asset Bank’s powerful DAM software helps marketing and brand teams take control of their digital brand management with confidence.

Book a chat with our lovely team to learn more about how our features can help your specific brand requirements.