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Challenge: BrewDog works with bars, retailers and partners all over the world. Their previous digital asset management (DAM), Brandfolder, made it difficult to separate the relevant assets they needed to promote and sell BrewDog products.
Solution: Dash has changed the game and allows BrewDog to split assets up across different countries and regions. They’re also paying less compared to their previous system, and they don’t have to pay extra for key DAM features. ✨
About BrewDog
When BrewDog first started out in 2007, they were on a mission to shake up the beer and ale industry. Tired of the same old companies dominating the UK market, they wanted to make people feel passionate about beer again.
Now, they have 102 bars around the world, 2000 crew members and have become one of the most well-known brewers in the UK.
To support the brand’s growth, bars, retailers, designers, agencies and partners all need access to the latest product images from BrewDog’s line of drinks. A tool for managing their images is vital for them to ensure everyone has what they need to promote and sell BrewDog’s products.
In this case study, Jack, the brand’s Campaign Activator, tells us how Dash has been a game changer for their teams. ✨
First, let's look at some of the challenges BrewDog was facing before Dash.
The challenge
Before finding Dash, the team at BrewDog were using Brandfolder to store and manage their visual content. For those who don’t know, Brandfolder is a big name in the DAM software industry. They primarily serve enterprise customers and have an extensive range of features.
The biggest downside is they’re super expensive, and you often end up paying top dollar for features you don’t need. 👀 (Just check out our Brandfolder alternatives article to learn more about their pricing.)
But whilst Brandfolder can be a good solution for many large businesses, BrewDog’s unique needs meant that their DAM was becoming unmanageable. Here’s why:
Brandfolder became cluttered and confusing
Brandfolder is built for big businesses with complex needs. Despite their hefty price tag, they still weren’t serving BrewDog’s needs. It was vital Jack had a way to make sure all their bars, partners and internal collaborators could access the assets they needed.
With so many people trying to access the Brandfolder system, it quickly became unmanageable. Jack and his team didn’t have time to delete and archive outdated content and people were struggling to find what they needed.
It was challenging to separate assets between countries and regions
BrewDog owns bars across the globe. They also work with retail partners who sell their drinks. Every country they operate in needs different information printed on their beers and in their marketing campaigns. When they were using Brandfolder, Jack and his team didn’t have a way to split up these different assets and share with the various different regions. This meant they ran the risk of their partners using the wrong assets.
Brandfolder’s contract was too expensive
As we mentioned, Brandfolder is built for enterprise companies. That means they have enterprise-level pricing which could cost you thousands of pounds a year.
Let’s be honest, no matter how big your business is, do you really want to spend thousands on a digital asset management system? Plus, there were lots of features that BrewDog needed that weren't included in this contract price. They would have had to pay more for simple DAM features like resizing images and they couldn’t offer the level of granularity that BrewDog needed.
Luckily, Dash costs a fraction of the price and includes ALL features. 😇
The solution
BrewDog’s old digital asset management system wasn’t serving their needs. It was time to find a new tool that was easy to use and reasonably priced. ✨
Finding an intuitive and affordable solution
BrewDog’s DAM is the single source of truth for all of their assets. That’s everything from product images to logos, tasting notes to campaign shots. Whether they have a bar in Germany or an agency in the US—everyone needs access to marketing assets in order to promote and sell BrewDog’s products. Jack told us:
“We just needed our DAM to be really intuitive. A person who's never worked at BrewDog or been on our DAM site before just needs to be able to go in and find what they're looking for. We don't have the capacity to constantly teach people how to use the system.”
They found Dash as the perfect new solution. ✨
Dash is designed to be easy-to-use and visually appealing. It means that anyone who logs in can instantly find what they need without much (or any) training. Image thumbnails and visual tags help you quickly find what assets you’re looking for. You can use the search bar to type a keyword of an image, and use tags and filters to search across multiple folders.
Here’s a peek at BrewDog’s Dash home page. 😍
Plus, Dash’s highest plan starts from just £449 per month (or £4,850 per year) and we don’t lock away any features behind extra paywalls. Instead, pricing is based on how much storage you require.
A better way to search for assets
Jack told us that Dash’s search feature has been the biggest game-changer for their team. By assigning tags to their images, people can easily jump into the system, search for a specific product like ‘Punk IPA’ and they’ll get all associated assets of that beer.
This means that even if you don’t know what type of marketing asset you’re after, you can use keywords and filters to quickly narrow down your search. For example, say you’re looking for some Punk IPA merchandise. Firstly, you can type in the keyword:
Next, use the filters on the left-hand side to quickly narrow down the search.
Then when you find the asset you need, you can download it in different sizes depending on what channel you’re distributing to.
You can pick from preset social sizes, or add your own custom dimensions.
The best part? This feature comes with every Dash plan—no need to pay extra.
Using portals so partners can self-serve
As we mentioned, Brewdog works with bars and partners all over the world. Each country and region sells different beers and needs different marketing assets. They’ll also have different information that needs to be printed on the beers. The people in these countries need a way to access the right assets for their region. That’s where portals come in. ✨
As Jack said:
“We need to split regions up because the information that needs to be on a beer can in the states is totally different from Australia, for example. What we really wanted to have was some degree of separation between them so that when partners search for an asset, they don't get four different cans and someone potentially prints the Australia version when they're in the UK. So that's why we use the portals.”
Portals is essentially a copy of your Dash that’s accessible to non-users. You can create as many portals as you need, and you can choose what folders are visible from your main Dash admin.
For their German portal, for example, BrewDog allows access to the German, UK and Master Brand Assets folder.
Partners will get a link to the portal, allowing them to grab assets themselves without needing to get in touch with a member of the team.
“Portals has been one of the big game changers. One of my biggest concerns before we moved to Dash was ensuring we didn’t have all countries in one folder. As soon as we worked out we could split it via portals, everything else flowed nice and easily off the back of that.”
This level of granular access wasn’t available in Brandfolder, so having Dash portals means the team can now stop worrying that the wrong assets were being downloaded by their partners. 🙌
Smooth and quick onboarding support
Every brand that joins Dash has one common goal: to easily manage their digital assets. On top of that, BrewDog also needed to set up portals and specific folders for all their different partner countries.
When Jack first got in touch for a demo of Dash, he met Al, our Sales Lead. Because Jack had so many assets to move from Brandfolder, he needed help migrating and organising them in the new system.
The good news is that, at Dash, we offer free migration and onboarding support. Whether you’ve got 100or 10,000 assets, we help make sure they're clearly organised in a way that works for your brand. In Jack’s case, sometimes he wanted a longer call to walk through the system, or he was after a quick helping hand to get him past a specific problem.
“Alex and I had a number of longer calls where we had a more defined meeting agenda. But quite often I would send her a quick email and ask if she had 10 minutes to hop on a call. She was so responsive and always so helpful about negotiating those little bumps in the road which for me, as a new user, would have held me up.”
On the flip side, Jack also said that because of Dash’s intuitive system, he could often solve the problem himself. ✨
BrewDog’s plans for Dash in the future
The team has big plans for the future. 🚀 And Dash is a key part of how they plan on achieving their ambitions. They want their teams to work closer together so they launch campaigns faster and sell more products.
“I can see us using Dash much more readily to get information out to our retail team and to our bar estate. We’ll also use it as a way of getting campaigns, seasonal offers and news out to dozens of different bar teams in the UK, I can see it being a really useful platform. We can just upload something and it will be immediately available to so many different people.”
Jack’s recommendation to other beverage brands
Wondering whether to use Dash for your business? Here’s Jack’s recommendation to you:
“I would absolutely recommend Dash. Firstly, it’s just so intuitive. Secondly, it’s super malleable so you can utilise it in a way that works for the quirks of your business. Both of those things have been really important to us.”
