Video size options when downloading
15 Nov 2024 - Users can now download a smaller 720p video if they prefer at download time - great for posting to Social Media without further edits.
What's New in Brandkit
We went back to the drawing board with a complete rewrite. Say hello to the simpler, faster, better way to find, manage and share your brand content. World class software, honed and refined on 25 years of know how and real world experience.
New Content Alert Email
15 Nov 2024 - We now offer a a weekly email called a New Content Alert that is sent automatically to every user who is subscribed to updates, if there are new Assets added to your account.
Improved Conversions / Custom Download Sizes
17 Oct 2024 - Brandkit’s image conversion settings (aka custom download sizes) now comes with new cropping options. For example want a 1080px square image for Instagram? - Easy. In the article we introduce the new options and how to use them.
AI Chat Bot
15 Oct 2024 - Brandkit introduces an AI powered Chatbot to help users find answers to product related questions. The chatbot is an Answer bot only. It's NOT a way to chat with Brandkit staff/humans. It will refer you to contact details or video call booking forms if you want to talk directly to a human.
The Chatbot will be accessible by an icon/button on the bottom right of the Brandkit.com website and in the Admin area of all accounts.
HTML Email Templates
30 Sep 2024 - Brandkit brings back customisable HTML Email Templates for system emails sent by Brandkit from Customer accounts. Each Customer can now optionally have a custom HTML email template and set HTML as the default email format.
A/B Testing
9 Oct 2024 - You can now A/B test custom pages in Brandkit with page settings in the CMS.
Print Contact Sheets
9 Mar 2021 - You can now print a contact sheet from a Basket selection.
5-10x faster
Brandkit 2 has been rebuilt from scratch on the ErlangVM/Elixir and Phoenix stack, providing amazing thread safe performance. Page load speeds are typically 5x to 10x faster.
Simplified
We applied seven years of learning, and removed unnecessary options, and code. We've managed to reduce the lines of code in our software by more than 50%. Less code means we have less bugs, more speed, more reliability, and we can add features more easily.
Beautified
We pared back design elements to reduce the noise, with a more minimalist UI (less is better), a rethought UX and a new base theme. Your Brandkit portal looks better than ever out of the box.
CMS Access
Customers now have direct access to the CMS to create, manage and edit Portal pages, meaning you can enage your preferred web designer to customise your portals, whether on staff, external agency or the Brandkit support team. It's up to you.
Vaults
Vaults (new in Brandkit 2) are used to ensure only the right users get access to the right content. Vaults mean that now, for example, you can configure a User Role that can download assets from one vault, while having to request assets from another.
Search 2.0
Search is not only faster in Brandkit 2, with search results now displayed inline on the same page, and multi-faceted search is now more accurate and explicit with an Advanced Search option. Search Filters also support OR combinations in a single filter (e.g. type:Image,Video means find assets of type Image OR Video). Plus you can use OR and NOT search operators in your text searches.
Everything
We've added the ability to mix file based assets with Posts (e.g. blog posts, press releases, instructions, stories), and Link assets (e.g. a visual link to a social media post), so you can truly manage every piece of brand content in one place.
2-way Syndication
We've overhauled Asset Syndication so you can now syndicate assets out to partners, AND receive syndicated assets from partners, at the same time. You can also now curate a received feed of assets and only publish the ones you want.
Native Integrations
In Brandkit 2, you can ingest all your images from a connected Google Drive acccount. Later, you'll be able to bring Instagram posts into your Asset grids and Embeds. With additional native integration added in the future.
In addition to native integrations we have a Public API, that allows you to connect via services like Zapier to literally hundreds of third party applications.
Embeds 2.0 (BETA)
Embeds now provide several size options and responsive code for image embeds. Embeddable Galleries will support both Owned Assets and linked UGC. Plus views of Embedded assets will now be tracked and reported back in Brandkit, giving you better insights as to what Assets are performaing best.
Content Attribution 2.0
When adding attribution aka a Credit to any Asset (common for Photos), we now provide a maintainable database of Credits and dropdown select for adding Credit text to any Asset. This helps with accuracy and data quality. Plus we now automatically provide a link to a special search page that contains all the Assets attributed to that same Credit. This search page features Credit contact details and optional Bio that supports links to 3rd party websites.
Design Themes
Brandkit 2, delivers a whole new theme system, giving you complete control over your Portal design, right down to layouts and your preferred grid. You can choose one of our standard themes, or develop your own theme (or even multiple themes) if you so desire.
Masquerading
Powerful and flexible access permissions is fantastic, but things can get complex. Role Masquerading now makes it much easier to see what each user see's, giving you confidence in your configurations.
Posts as Assets
Posts are now Assets. They are essentially text based documents that you write natively in Brandkit. Use the Posts feature to write and share articles, press releases, blog posts, approved brand copy, story ideas, etc.
Posts can be created, edited, shared, and even downloaded (as .html files). What's more, you can easily embed images inside your new text assets, with a simple Asset look-up.
Links as Assets
External Links are now Assets. They are essentially links or URLs. Use the External Link feature to create visual links to external web pages, media articles, stock images, ecommerce pages and much more.
Now when users Search for a topic, they can find uploaded file based assets, written posts, syndicated assets from partners, and now links to external media/pages as well. All in one unified visual search result.
B2C friendly
Brandkit has traditionally been about serving B2B/Trade users, and that continues to be a core focus. Two new view options (Masonry Grid and Timeline), ability to allow View access only or allow Public downloads, mean that you can configure your Portals to suit public content consumption experiences.
You can also combine this with new more flexible CTA links to drive B2C conversions (e.g Link an asset to your booking or ecommerce page) to support your B2C comms.
Guidelines 2.0
We've overhauled how we manage brands and brand guidelines for more power and flexibility. You can now build any custom brand page you want via the CMS and then use our smart widgets to include a grid of Brand Assets.
Brand Guidelines are now just like other Assets and support versioning. Then use the newly upgraded Attachments feature to explicitly attach your Brand Guidelines to specific Assets, such as logos and design files, and these will be attached automatically when downloading.
Attachments 2.0
We've ditched the old idea of attachments uploaded as auxialliary files.
An Attachment is now any Asset that an Admin explicitly selects to attach to another Asset (or a batch of Assets). The attached Asset will then be automatically added to the download of those Assets.
We re-designed Attachments with Brand Guidelines in mind, but they can work with any other type of attachment too (e.g. Contracts, Talent Releases, etc).
Multiple Portals
New in Brandkit 2 is the ability to create multiple portals, each with a unique URL and theme, served by a single DAM/Asset library. Now you can create personalised content experiences for consumers, staff, the trade, media, etc all in one place.
Passwordless login
Fed up with too many passwords. Us too!
While we have the usual email/password combinations, plus single sign on with Google and Micosoft credentials, we now also offer a passwordless option, where we send you a magic login link(a unique URL) to your registered email address. Click the link and you'll be logged in automatically.
Built in Web Analytics and better content analytics
Privacy is a big issue, and Google Analytics fairly or unfairly has been tarred with the privacy concerns. In Brandkit 2 we've partnered with privacy first analytics engine Plausible and embedded web analytics directly in your Brandkit reporting dashboard. It's simpler (less is more). It's 1st party data only. And it's awesome.
Global Edge Network and CDN
Our new architecture meant a new infrastructure, and we've partnered with AWS and Fly.io to create a distributed edge network with primary nodes in the USA, UK and Australia. Plus we now use AWS's CloudFront CDN for global delivery of Portal images, meaning significantly lower latency and a faster user experience across the globe.
