If you want to stop the scroll on social media, a strong visual brand is everything. Whether you’re publishing content on Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, or LinkedIn, the more consistent your visual identity, the more engagement you’ll get.
No one knows this better than Rami Zaki, a social media manager from the United Arab Emirates. Rami works for SAE University, a higher education provider for the creative industries with over 47 campuses in more than 20 countries. SAE delivers creative media education, offering bachelor’s degrees in audio engineering, filmmaking, game development, design, and animation.
Rami’s role as part of the marketing team is to collaborate with design teams, influencers, and students to create in-house and user-generated content, ensuring visual brand consistency across all platforms. Not only that, but Rami also has to manage the branded assets of partner brands including NVIDIA, Wacom, and Xiaomi.
Needless to say, Rami needs a powerful digital asset management system to organize and manage all those branded assets — and that’s why he started using Playbook. We sat down with him to understand how Playbook integrates into his workflows and helps him maintain visual brand consistency for multiple brands across multiple channels.
Why visual brand consistency matters
To understand the role of visual brand consistency in a company’s success, think about Apple, which maintains a remarkably consistent brand identity across all its products, marketing campaigns, and customer interactions worldwide.
By projecting a unified brand image globally, Apple has reinforced its reputation for quality and consistency, breeding legions of diehard Apple fans all around the world.
Apple’s commitment to visual brand consistency has even reduced its marketing costs by using standardized marketing campaigns that resonate across different cultures.
But if you think brand consistency is only for tech giants, think again. On average, brand consistency can boost revenue by up to 23% for any brand.
Of course, achieving this consistency is easier said than done. “Ensuring brand image consistency is much more difficult than just managing the logo placement,” Rami explains. He points to the complexities of maintaining a consistent tone and voice of the brand, not only within the company but also with user-generated content from influencers and students.
Plus, coordinating approvals and back-and-forth feedback when working with multiple partner brands requires processes and workflows that make feedback and iteration flow more smoothly.
Rami elaborates: “Playbook is so good because we have a shared space that is constantly updated, and we get notified when they add comments. This allows us to respond with edits very quickly.”
How Rami maintains consistent visual branding with Playbook
Wondering how Playbook might help you better manage your visual brand? Take a peek behind the scenes at how Rami uses Playbook to keep SAE’s brand identity sleek and consistent across all platforms.
1. Organizing and managing content
“I love it in terms of the layout of the subfolders, they’re not like the solid folders in Google Drive — they’re much more scannable,” says Rami, who uses subfolders to categorize and access visual assets, ensuring his team stays aligned on brand direction.
With Playbook’s subfolder structure, he can quickly pull up relevant inspirations, organize mood boards, and track different versions of creative assets across campaigns, all while maintaining an intuitive visual overview of everything he’s working on.
2. Visual file browsing
“It’s like having a physical book where you have access to all the pages instead of just one screen. You have a glimpse of all the items in the folders, which is very helpful,” says Rami, who joins the 83% of creative professionals who say visual browsing is a must-have feature in a creative asset management system.
We couldn’t have said it better ourselves (after all, it’s called Playbook for a reason 😉). Thanks to our visual browsing features, Rami can quickly find and organize inspiration, campaign ideas, and brand guidelines.
3. Collaboration and approvals
Playbook's shared space and comment features make the processes of collaboration and approvals with partner brands more quick and efficient compared to using tools like Google Drive.
The visual-based nature of Playbook makes it easier to share assets, campaign directions, and other visual content with partners and design teams to align on brand presentation.
How to maintain a consistent visual brand identity: Rami’s tips for social media managers
1. Save inspiration and resources
One of the things Rami appreciates most about Playbook is that it hits the “sweet spot between a mood board and cloud drive,” making it the perfect place to save inspiration, create mood boards, and iterate on visual concepts.
But social media managers can also use it for social listening, like Rami does. "Whenever I do social listening or competitive analysis, it's very easy to add the screenshots to a Playbook board,” he explains.
“Then, next to it, I can add the findings or main points about the questions consumers and clients are asking,” making it easier to reference and track key information for future campaigns.
2. Use collaboration features
Playbook’s collaborative features like comments, @-mentions, emoji reactions, and one-click approvals help Rami maintain clear communication with all teams and ensure everyone is on the same page.
They allow him to manage feedback and iterations quickly, reducing the time needed to produce each asset and ensuring that projects are completed more efficiently and with fewer delays.
3. Use Playbook for presentations and pitches
With its one-click “Publish” feature and gallery of presentation templates, Playbook makes it easy to showcase your work in a way that makes collaborators, clients, and even your boss go “Wow!”
For Rami, it’s helped him get campaign approvals from the higher-ups more easily. “Playbook played a huge role in delivering my ideas to my marketing manager and managing director, visualizing whatever campaign projects I envision,” he says.
Boost your visual brand identity with Playbook
“Playbook is a great tool not just for artists, but also for marketers like us,” Rami explains, emphasizing the value of features like visual browsing, automated organization, and seamless collaboration for marketing teams. "I would advise other social media managers to give Playbook a try," he adds.
With 4TB of lifetime storage available on the free plan, there’s nothing to lose. Sign up for a Playbook account today or explore our full suite of features to see how Playbook can help you manage your visual brand.