Photo source: Pampered Chef
Maintaining a consistent brand message isn’t always easy — especially when marketers aren’t the only ones enforcing it. Pampered Chef, a direct seller of kitchen tools owned by Berkshire Hathaway Inc, has experienced this firsthand. For 10 years, it’s used a digital asset management (DAM) system to make it easier for both its internal employees and 40,000 external consultants to find the creative and marketing assets they need.
Pampered Chef started using DAM provider Widen in 2007. Widen’s VP of marketing Jake Athey, who was at the initial sales presentation, says Pampered Chef wanted to use the technology to create better efficiency, effectiveness, and brand awareness — a mission, he says, that is still true today.
Digital asset coordinator Natalie Daller, who joined Pampered Chef five years ago, says the company started using Widen predominantly as an internal tool. The DAM system, she explains, granted people outside of marketing access to everything from logos and signage to videos and social media content.
Then, in 2015, the brand made it possible for Pampered Chef consultants and vendors to access content through the DAM system. Indeed, Daller says partners ranging from merchandise vendors to PR agencies can access the creative that they need through the SaaS system. Consultants can also visit Pampered Chef’s website and log into a specific portal to access training resources, as well as available promotional content and videos. This content, Daller notes, allows consultants to engage with customers before, during, and after a virtual or in-person party, which is where the consultants sell Pampered Chef products.
“They’re essentially our sales force,” Daller says. “They’ll go out and try to provide that optimal experience for our customers.”
Making these materials easily accessible for consultants is important for a few reasons. First, Daller says providing these materials frees up the consultants’ time and allows them to focus on other business activities, like selling the products. She also says it creates a sense of brand consistency and makes the Pampered Chef brand more recognizable. Widen’s Athey says there’s even a human element to maintaining this consistency. He says “consistency breeds believability and believability breeds trust,” which is critical to forming relationships with customers.
To measure the effectiveness of the DAM system, Daller says Pampered Chef compares the number of aided asset requests she and her teammate facilitate to the number of unaided asset requests. The monthly goal, she says, is to have 82% or more of the total asset requests be unaided. As of April, she says 95% of requests have been unaided.
“We’ve improved each month,” she says in regards to the company’s asset request history.
Daller also says that the DAM system has helped reduce turnaround time for employees requesting creative assets.
In terms of future improvements, Daller says Pampered Chef is working to simplify its content taxonomy, arguing that the brand has created too many sub-folders since first implementing the solution.
“There are too many sub-categories….We want to take more of a minimalist process,” she says.
Indeed, Daller says it can be easy to get overwhelmed by the amount of creative assets Pampered Chef has created. That’s why she says it’s important to identify what her key measurable objectives are and home in on those specific aspects.
