If you're working for a global Brand and working in an HQ you've probably already experienced or are experiencing something I call "Corporate Digital Anxiety". If you're a Brand Manager or Brand Director turning to a Digital Brand Manager and Digital Brand Director your environment and skillsets requirement changed in a blink of an eye. You might have adapted and changed and most of people did - improving their own digital skills directly (learning, trainings etc) or indirectly by being a consumer themselves in digital world we live in. However, you've probably experienced that you're overwhelmed by operational issues, especially evolving around operational management and day-to-day operations regarding branding / marketing. Does it feel like you're micromanaging production and putting execution induced fires instead of brand strategic management? Well if it does, it's a shared pain we see in many Brand HQs.

Digital Brand Managers and Digital Brand Directors are feeling the squeeze of the Digital Tidal Wave.

Digital Brand Managers and Digital Brand Directors are feeling the squeeze of the Digital Tidal Wave. Some have gone under, some are struggling, very few are riding it smoothly without getting burned out, putting in extra hours and working weekends. Reason the squeeze are multidimensional and I can divide them in couple of points :

Ballooning number digital touchpoints exponentially outnumbered people. So on the left side you have a change in marketing environment of 100-500 digital touch points and on the right side companies haven't beefed up number of people. The headcount I believe increased but not exponentially. Thus, fewer people manage and handle exponentially more brand touchpoints then couple year ago.

Organisational design and organisation of work - how people work, collaborate, communicate across teams was and is set up for much slower pace of work. Type of work changed, so now you as a Digital Brand Manager need Technical Knowledge that needs continuously to be updated. Moreover, if you're one of those who's using excel sheets to keep track of your brand execution, customer journeys, assets, dimensions, copy, you definitely are digitally disabled and set up to fail. You might be muscling it up but sooner or later you'll be overwhelmed by the quantity rise of tasks, projects that are linked with Digital Brand Execution in multi-layer multi department multi geographies HQ environment. In the end, you most probably depend on execution not just on yourself so if you're chasing assets across departments, people for approval, and you're constantly late or on the brink of deadlines for execution you have this problem.