Part 1

Brandwidth Uncovered

Brandwidth Uncovered

Brandwidth is impacting brands, teams, and individuals. This includes feeling overwhelmed by workload, having insufficient time
to deliver multiple campaign assets, and delays affecting launches. This section explores these key challenges.

How is Brandwidth impacting brands?

Increased consumer demand is driving change and causing Brandwidth challenges, pushing it to breaking point. This extends beyond teams and negatively impacts business performance for both brands and their agency partners.

of respondents said product launches were delayed due to workload challenges faced by graphics teams, leading to increased operational costs, missed sales, and compromised production processes.
of respondents felt that consumer demand, expectations, and the emergence of AI and new tools were increasing their workload. This resulted in feeling they lacked headspace and time for creativity.

Delays in product launches lead to increased costs and missed sales.

The need to tailor campaigns to shifting consumer demands and expectations is straining graphics teams' resources.

of respondents felt this was a main cause of increased workloads, creating a catch-22 situation as brands focus on providing more choice through tech-enabled advances.

How is Brandwidth impacting graphic production teams?

Graphic production teams are under significant pressure. Every delay adds to the work pile, creating Brandwidth bottlenecks. Teams are trying to address this, but fear the impact of more technology and automation on their future creative roles.

of teams reported increased workloads, with almost all implementing improvement measures.

However, missed deadlines are a real danger, with of respondents experiencing this, and almost half (48%) missing more than 10% of deadlines.

Almost half of respondents miss more than
10% of deadlines.

Delays caused outside the graphics teams exacerbate the situation, creating campaign backlogs and overlaps. The average campaign delay of can lead to challenges such as loss of competitiveness, missed revenue opportunities, and future campaign delays due to lack of capacity.
The biggest challenge is time, with of respondents noticing its impact. Personnel and resourcing also play a significant role, with 61% noticing added pressure on already stretched teams.

How is Brandwidth impacting graphics professionals personally?

The impacts extend beyond the studio, affecting creative brand professionals personally. Preserving great people and skills is crucial to business success.

There is a genuine fear among creative brand professionals that the manual aspect of graphics production will be obsolete in as little as 5 years.

of respondents believe this, with stating that key skills for the new face of graphic production, such as writing AI prompts and managing AI, are already missing in their teams.

The job is changing faster than designers
can develop the required skills.

The feeling that the job is changing faster than they can develop the required skills means are increasingly stressed and anxious about their work. have experienced mental health challenges or burnout and fatigue.
In an industry needing to retain its best talent, it’s alarming that of respondents have considered a job change or career shift in the last year, and the same number have taken time off due to job stress.

Brandwidth is leading to less satisfaction among design and graphics professionals, potentially triggering an exodus from 
the profession.

In short

Nurture people skills and embrace automation

The future requires balancing the protection and nurturing of people and skills with embracing automation. How is your brand or agency handling these challenges? Does your experience differ from our findings?

We’d love to hear your experiences, or you can delve further into 
our research using the links below.

Explore more on Brandwidth

Agence Report

A Guide for Production Agencies

Part 2

The Impact of AI and Automation

Part 3

Closing the Skills Gap

Part 4

The Need to Get Personal