Here are three reasons why Balihoo's ad builder will turn you into a brand super hero. As defined by Wikipedia, a super hero possesses "extraordinary or superhuman powers."

1. Brand Control—Brands demand control over the minutiae that collectively embodies the brand, and rightly so, considering that the tiny details separate good brands from great brands and contribute to the incredible brand value as represented by the $432 billion of brand value held by the top 10 in InterBrand's Best Global Brands of 2010 report.
   
   While channel partners, remote sales teams, or distributed marketing organizations may regularly disregard branding guidelines out of ignorance or lack of attention, onus is on national brands to control every detail of their brands. That is where a robust ad builder becomes a killer app, or otherwise stated, the first building block essential for local marketing to happen. Balihoo's ad builder, for one, enables a brand to designate locked-down elements including logos, certain copy, layout, and customer and product imagery, among other attributes.
   
   Also important, brands can control the life of branded assets when using a SaaS system with a central repository of "approved" advertising. When the brand introduces, or retires a new branded asset, all of its downstream users have immediate access to the updated files. That is powerful version control.


2. Localization—In contrast to the brand's control requirement, local marketers (remote sales teams, distributed marketing teams, and downstream reseller partners) want the capability to localize a national asset into an effective marketing piece for "their" customers. Such localization may be as simple as adding local contact information, or in collaboration with the brand, may include a product shot in front of a local landmark, a shot specific to a unique use of the product locally, or may include mention of a reseller's local community involvement.


3. Reusability—Perhaps most exciting about Balihoo's ad builder is the capability to reuse national assets with its hundreds or thousands of local marketers who then localize elements of those national assets and execute advertising across 15 available mediums in an integrated campaign. Perhaps a local marketer creates touch points using TV, Radio, a printed coupon, email, twitter, and local microsites to capture leads. While it is common to create advertising for a given medium, a coordinated campaign reusing material and executing against a specific calendar is very difficult. Therein is the secret sauce that separates the average local marketer from the extraordinary.

As George Mulhern so eloquently stated in the October 14th webinar, Practical Practices for Increasing Channel Revenue Through marketing, smart marketers control each "moment of truth" or touch point with a customer or prospect. Done manually, control is almost impossible. Done using Balihoo's ad builder, marketers become Brand Super Heroes with extraordinary control of execution of their branded advertising through downstream partners.