Developing Workflows to Help Customers Grow

Overview

The challenge

Our customer utilized packaging, commercial print, labels, envelopes, and direct mail in their retail and marketing efforts. They relied largely on third-party vendors to manage their spending and their product displays. However, their branding guidelines were not clearly defined or documented, resulting in numerous misprints with incorrect artwork. There was no process for documenting revisions and no automated workflow for artwork creation and approvals. Additionally, the customer lacked a digital asset management system; marketing images – many of them outdated and even expired – were still being used, some of them illegally due to expiration dates. Launch dates were consistently missed due to poor organization.

Their current suppliers offered no solutions.  

Marketing.com stepped in with a full audit – we reviewed what was on the shelves and on displays and observed that the printed pieces were not ideal. At this time, the company was still considered a mid-sized company, it had the potential to be BIG. The company would never grow without the proper resources in place. 

The Solution

Marketing.com met with the customer’s Marketing, Creative Services, and Supply Chain teams to review current workflows and addressed the challenges and pain points that were hindering their growth.  

We showed the teams our full analysis with recommendations; our illustration utilized one of their own packaged products we had purchased in store to show that what their customers were receiving was NOT what they had specified. Marketing.com got to work and developed workflow solutions to address all the customer’s pain points: 

• Comprehensive print management with a color-match guarantee; a color Delta was issued between pieces to confirm color matching was achieved. 
• Complete management over services including digital assets and account management using Dot, our SaaS marketing automation platform. This program allowed for virtual proofing, providing transparency and audit trails for edits, simplifying the overall approval process. 
• Special Projects – we worked with the client to develop a gift card program, as well as prototyping and structural design of their in-store displays. 

The Result