Brand Central
Salesforce | Global Brand Enablement Site | 2020
VP, Group Creative Director, Brand Center of Excellence
Building the Digital Enablement Hub That Connected 80,000 Employees to One Brand
THE CHALLENGE
When I first joined Salesforce, I asked a simple question: “Where’s the brand book?” The answer floored me: there wasn’t one.
That’s not surprising for a startup. But for a growth rocket about to crack the Fortune 500? Shocking. Brand guidelines lived in disconnected decks or inside the heads of a few “brand elders.” If you didn’t know who to ask, you were out of luck.
Meanwhile, the brand kept getting more complex. We introduced mascots, nature imagery, product illustrations, a massive color palette, custom typefaces, and a distinctive voice and tone. But there was no framework to organize it all or make it widely available.
THE SOLUTION
We fixed that with Brand Central: Salesforce’s comprehensive, global hub for brand guidance.
As head of the Brand Center of Excellence, I led the team that built and launched the platform. We partnered closely with stakeholders across Brand, Product, Campaigns, and Web to transform Salesforce’s tribal knowledge into a clear and scalable system. The result was practical, easy to use, and available to marketers, agencies, and partners around the world.
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We also linked Brand Central to our Digital Asset Management system, so teams could access logos, templates, icon libraries, and other creative assets in the same workflow. The rules lived in one place, and the tools were right next door.
One thing I learned: systems like this don’t maintain themselves. Without a dedicated asset librarian, we committed to fast, proactive updates. When something changed, we updated Brand Central within 48 hours. New guidelines went live, outdated assets came down, and trust in the system stayed strong.
Results:
Created a single source of truth for 80,000+ employees and partners
Empowered global marketers to create on-brand work without needing 1:1 support
Turned Salesforce’s brand from an oral tradition into an accessible platform
Laid the foundation for consistent brand expression across all touchpoints
Animated “welcome” to the Brand Central site.
There are dozens of sections on Brand Central; it’s the Single Source of Truth for the Salesforce Brand. As with any complex system that represents a company, its history, and its culture, there’s a lot of “why” to go with the “how.” These featured pages will give you a sense of how we enable our people to understand the system, then use it to represent Salesforce consistently around the globe.
