If you’re a large company — or just one that has a ton of brand assets — your employees may have a hard time tracking them down. 

It’s human nature to have trouble keeping tabs on everything at all times, or to be a little forgetful from time to time. 

Who among us haven’t lost our sunglasses only to find that they were on our head this entire time? Or thought we misplaced our cell phone and then checked our pockets and there it was! 

Just us? Okay, well you get the point. 

If we occasionally forget where everyday items are, then how can we expect our employees to be able to find every single brand asset when they need it if we don’t have the proper systems set up to make them accessible? 

For example, let’s say your social media designer needs to find the file for the new logo design, but your company employs a very messy strategy when it comes to organizing and storing all your brand assets.

At no fault of their own, they’re going to have a very tough time finding it, that’s for sure. 

To help you avoid this issue, we have got a helpful list of tips and tricks to make it easier for your employees to find your brand assets. 

First up, incorporating a consistent file naming procedure.

Organize Your Files and Assets Consistently Using File Naming Best Practices

While there are a lot of different ways you can name files and assets for organization and storage, you have to make sure that throughout your organization, everyone is consistent with the file naming methodology. 

Here are some file naming best practices to incorporate into your business to ensure that everyone can easily find what they are looking for: 

• Be simple, yet descriptive with the naming structure
• For example, you can have the first part be the name of the campaign, the second portion be the year, the third be the date, and end with a unique identifier (Example: FallSaleCampaign20191012BannerAdGraphic).

• Avoid special characters and spaces
• Your current asset management software likely doesn’t recognize file names with spaces. Along with this, using special characters (~ ! @ # $ % ^ & * ( ) ` ; < > ? , [ ] { } ‘ ”) can cause confusion and make it difficult to organize and locate these files.

• Use leading zeros for numbers 
• Instead of using “1,2,3, etc.” when using numbers, add leading zeros instead (i.e. “001, 002, 003… 010, 011... 100, 101). Once again, this makes it easier to organize. 

For more information on best file naming practices, take a look at this helpful article! 

Use Classical Conditioning Techniques to Help Them Remember Where Your Assets Are 

I know what you’re thinking — isn’t classical conditioning that thing Pavlov used on those dogs with the bells and whatnot? 

And to that I say, you’re damn right.  

To integrate this strategy into your digital asset retrieval process, have an employee be your designated Ivan Pavlov; they will monitor your employees closely. If they notice that they are searching in the wrong area for a specific asset, your Pavlov-employee will blow an air horn into their ears. This will go on until your employee re-routes themselves onto the correct path where the asset is located. 

Once they get on the right track, your Pavlov-employee — who should be dressed in 19th-century garb and speak with a Russian accent for full-effect — will then give them pieces of candy until they find the asset they are looking for. 

Now, this may take some time to work, and there will likely be plenty of employee turnover as last time we checked, people typically don't like having air horns blown directly into their ears. 

But hey, if you’re willing to put in the effort, implementing classical conditioning into your brand asset process is a surefire solution* to help make it easier for your employees to find what they are looking for. 

*Results may vary and we don’t actually suggest doing this.

Eliminate Brand Assets Entirely From Your Company

You know what they say: No assets, no problem. 

Take your business back to the stone age and completely strip your company of all the digital assets you own. 

You have to admit, this is a fool-proof solution. Your employees won’t have a hard time finding your brand assets because there are none. It’s genius! 

Invest in Your Own Personal Summit, the World’s Fastest Supercomputer

In 2018, the U.S Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory announced that the United States regained the crown for the fastest supercomputer in the world. 

The Summit’s theoretical peak speed is 200 petaflops — or 200,000 teraflops (yup, those are real words). 

To put that into perspective, roughly 6.3 billion people would all have to make a calculation at the same time, every second, for one whole year, to match what Summit can do in just one second. 

Can you imagine if your company had that computing power? Your employees could easily find any asset they need in a manner of seconds! 

You could even incorporate the Siri listening-and-response feature, where your employees would simply have to ask your supercomputer a question and get an answer almost immediately. 

“Summit, please find that digital asset of that logo redesign from last spring”

The asset you are looking for — ‘LogoRedesignMarch2019’ — has been sent to your email.

“Summit, can you please track down the new typography for the social media template for our food and beverage division?”

The typography file ‘SocialMediaFandBTemplate2019’ has been sent to your Slack.

“Summit, what is the meaning of life?” 

42

Sounds pretty rad, right? 

Well, for about $200 million you can invest in your own supercomputer! 

So what are you waiting for? Stop paying those utility bills, slash those office La Croix expenses to free up some of your budget and invest in your very own Summit! 

Welcome the Amazing Digital Asset Management Software That Is MediaBeacon Into Your Life

The best way to ensure that your employees are able to find your brand assets fast is by incorporating a reliable and advanced digital asset management (DAM) solution into your business. 

The good news for you is, we happen to offer one of the top DAM software available on the market. 

With MediaBeacon you can…

Store, Search, and Control Your Assets

• All your digital content will be seamlessly displayed in a single location, making searching fast and simple. 
• Assets can easily be converted on download for various sizes and uses.
• Digital rights management features that allow you to control who has access to assets, enforce expiration dates based on licensing, and require collaborators to acknowledge licensing agreements before downloading assets.
• Saved searches allow you to retain easy access to assets that you’ll be coming back to frequently.

Manage and Collaborate

• Enable your internal teams and external partners to work together in a single system from any global location.
• Business Process Management (BPM) workflows trigger review and approval tasks when it is time for the next step in the creative process.Easily compare and annotate versions side-by-side until the asset is approved.

Distribute and Track 

• Real-time updates and campaign management provide access to the status of your projects.
• Comprehensive view into the time it takes campaigns to go to market and identify areas for improvement.
• Track how digital assets are downloaded and distributed across the organization.

If you are interested in seeing MediaBeacon in action, you can request a free demo today! 

And, if you are looking for more ideas on how to improve your processes around your digital assets, make sure to check out our blog!