Correspondence: Johanna Shalhoub, Siegel+Gale, 437 Madison Ave, 12th floor, NY 10022, New York. Tel: +1 212 817 6650; Email: jshalhoub@siegelgale.com

¹is Vice President, Business Development Brand Amplifire™ for Siegel+Gale. Her job is to facilitate the incorporation of the breakthrough, easy-to-use, Brand Amplifire system into the day-to-day and even hour-to-hour needs of today's brand manager and team. If you can use Google, you can manage your brand with Brand Amplifire.

²is Co-President of Siegel+Gale, and shares operating responsibility for the overall performance of the firm with partner David Srere. Slightly more fun than counting and allotting the corporate coins, however, is his role as Chief Creative Officer and anointed High Priest of Unorthodoxy. It is Howard's job to challenge S+G's corporate branding, advertising, interactive, and simplification creative teams to live up to and give fresh expression to the credo of our founder Alan Siegel — Simple is Smart. At Siegel+Gale, simple means brand expressions that are clear, fresh, honest, useful, and inspiring.

³is the CEO of SmartDoc Technologies, a leading company in the field of dynamic document solutions. Prior to SmartDoc Technologies, J.P. founded one of the most successful first-generation brand asset management consultants, BrandWizard Technologies. Mr. Terry writes extensively on technology and design issues including his recent book, Creating Dynamic Forms with Adobe LiveCycle Designer on Adobe Press.

Abstract

What started as brand guidelines in the format of binders that would collect dust on bookshelves has transformed into an industry of its own. For almost 15 years now, brand asset management (BAM) solutions have been helping companies worldwide manage a company's most valuable asset—its brand. As technology improved and the web transformed the way business was done, BAM solutions turned to the web to enable easy access to a brand's database. However, many of these first-generation systems, were not successful because they were difficult to use and they quickly became outdated. Enter Google. In an age where anyone can go online and find images for just about anything with a mouse-click, there is a need to simplify this essential solution. The following paper takes a look at how BAM has transformed and how Google technology is being leveraged to provide easy-to-use tools that can be used by anyone in your organization to ensure your brand is being expressed the way it was intended.