BaseCamp Franchising See how BaseCamp Franchising created & distributed 4000+ assets to over 200 franchisees, despite a temporary 90% reduction of staff. Who is BaseCamp Franchising? BaseCamp Franchising is a U.S.-based company headquartered in North Salt Lake, Utah, operating two upscale resale clothing brands: Kid to Kid and Uptown Cheapskate. With over 225 locations across 30 U.S. states and internationally, the company specializes in sustainable fashion retail through franchising. Location: North Salt Lake, UT Industry: Retail Company size: SMB Joined MediaValet: 2020 Features: Wrike Integration, Branded Portals The Challenges The team struggled to manage and distribute marketing assets across a large franchise network. Disorganized storage led to outdated content and branding issues, which worsened during COVID-19 when staffing was reduced by 90%. The Results With MediaValet, BaseCamp centralized its assets, making them easy to access and use. The team distributed 4,000+ assets efficiently, ensured consistent branding, and improved franchisee support even with limited staff. Amy Logreen Marketing Director, BaseCamp Franchising How does a single marketing team create and distribute 4000+ campaign assets to over 200 franchisees – all while adjusting to a temporary 90% reduction of staff? This is the question we had for Amy Lofgreen, Marketing Director at BaseCamp Franchising. In October 2019, Amy helped the BaseCamp marketing team find and implement a digital asset management system to help them with ongoing challenges with its franchisees. Little did they know how indispensable the system would be in March 2020, when a global pandemic was announced. This interview shares her story. To start us off, can you tell us a bit about BaseCamp Franchising? “Of course! We’re a franchise of about 200 resell retail stores. We have a young adult brand, Uptown Cheapskate, and also a children’s brand, Kid to Kid. We always do what we can to help the customer, as well as our franchisees, have the best experience they can with our stores. A challenge with some resellers is that you have to go through 20 things before you find something great. We provide training to all of the people buying products to resell in our stores so that what you’ll find on the racks is actually something in-season that you would find in a store right now. It’s a very sustainable business that keeps all the money local. We’re really proud of what we do, and how we help communities and the environment.” We’re always curious, what initially caused you to start evaluating the marketing team’s tech stack? “It was maybe a year and a half before I moved to the marketing department, and I vividly remember how it happened! The executive team was sharing their concerns with me about the marketing team. We have always had a really good group of people on our marketing team, but there had been frequent mistakes – things like the wrong phone number, the wrong image, etc. – but with 200 stores and 2 brands it’s bound to happen. After evaluating the situation, it was clear that the problem wasn’t with the people, but rather the system they were using – we, as a leadership team, were failing them, not the other way around. We knew we had to get the marketing team a better solution. I set out to find a few alternative products and solutions to our challenge, before handing it off to one of our Marketing leaders to make a selection. After vetting a few products, they ultimately decided on Wrike. So, long before I was on the marketing team, they adopted Wrike and a lot of the pain points that they had diminished during that time. In the future, we knew that our DAM would need to connect to Wrike – we wanted to build connections, not just another barrier that we’d have to hurdle over.” So, now that you had Wrike in place, why was MediaValet added to your tech stack? “While Wrike was able to help, the franchisees felt they didn’t have enough assets for the many posts and advertisements they were making monthly. They needed to jump through a ton of hoops to get their marketing needs met. The largest stumble that we continued to have was that while we were creating great assets, the franchisees didn’t even know they were there to use. We invested in creating beautiful content, yet off-brand content was still being produced by franchisees – not because they wanted to break brand standards, but because they needed to get the information out to the customer quickly. The goal of our DAM project was for the marketing team to become more franchisee-centric, and to do it incredibly quickly so the franchisees weren’t waiting a year or longer for things to get better. This was the major keystone of the project. What I didn’t realize though, was how many hours were being spent by my team just trying to find assets. I assumed they knew where everything was, but quickly realized that there was only one person that actually had our server memorized. As a result, she was relied on to answer everyone’s questions about where assets were. Now, once any set of assets are added to our DAM, she’s never asked for those assets ever again. The extra time we got back from implementing a DAM has created more bandwidth of my team to get to all sorts of projects done that were unfeasible before. We were so optimistic about what we were going to achieve in 2020…and then COVID hit.” How has MediaValet helped you during the crisis? “February was our annual meeting, so between October and February, I wanted to make sure that we could have MediaValet up and running quickly. Little did we know what was coming our way. We were so thankful that MediaValet was completely functional as March 11th, 2020 rolled around. They announced a pandemic on March 12th, and I informed the team that everyone was going to be working late that day. I could see that stores are going to be closing at a fast rate, and if they weren’t closing, we would need to change everything we were doing. Resell is not an industry where people will feel confident if they feel like germs are floating about – and we were very sensitive to that. So, that day, we created a Branded Portal containing 60+ newly-created assets for counter displays, standing displays, new store hours – anything the 200 franchisees would need. And before we even left that night, our franchisees were already printing and using the new signs in their stores – this would have never been possible without MediaValet. I get really emotional, because it’s a time when you really need to support your franchisees, and thanks to MediaValet, we were able to be there for them. Before the crisis, my team would work 530 hours per week, and when COVID hit, our hours were drastically reduced to 53, due to reduced sales and the overall economic environment. Despite this, I still needed to get a new Q2 and Q3 for two brands out, as well as create both closing and reopening kits. The challenge with these kits was that we weren’t entirely sure when the stores would re-open – would we be using summer or fall images? As a result, we had to make multiple kits so they would be relevant in warm weather or cooler weather. So, during that time, we created assets that would normally take up about three quarters of a normal year for two brands (which was about 4000 assets), on our reduced schedule. Miraculously, we were able to hit our deadline for Q3 and complete our reopen kits nine hours before the first store even asked for them. That would have been completely impossible without MediaValet.” Have you experienced anything unexpected? “I wasn’t expecting the amount of praise and positive feedback we’ve received from our franchisees during this time. Their vision of marketing has changed significantly now that they feel they’re supported with the assets they need to be successful. They continually express that our marketing standards have increased significantly. In reality, our marketing team isn’t creating better work – MediaValet is just showcasing the amazing marketing they were already creating. The franchisees used to not trust marketing. Now, on an almost-daily basis, they’re praising me and my team. MediaValet has completely changed the relationship between our franchisees and the marketing team.” So, what’s the next step for BaseCamp and digital asset management? “We’re going to be re-doing our internal website, which is clunky and hard-to-search, and moving everything our franchisees need, including documents, over to our DAM. Specifically, we’ll be using Branded Portals to curate content for franchisees from each department. I’m hoping the old site will be gone before 2021! Another feature that’s been picked up by our franchisees is the new cropping tool. I upload every asset from our photoshoots, which aren’t always social-media-ready, but our franchisees post multiple times a day and need quick, continual access to photos. I’ve created a cropping template for every element of social media (for example, Instagram posts and stories), and then they can easily create their own social media posts in optimal sizes. The last thing I’m working on is getting my creative team onboarded. They’re currently working on servers, which can – and have – crashed, leaving links broken and designs unsaved.” Ok last question, any pieces of advice you’d like to give to others looking into DAM? “We implemented multiple technologies at the same time as MediaValet, and MediaValet was head-and-shoulders above the rest when it came to onboarding. In fact, when COVID came around in early March, MediaValet was the only one that was ready to go. Everyone says that they provide white-glove service, but MediaValet actually does it. I’ll admit, I’ve set-up platforms before, so I really didn’t think I’d need much help, but I’m so happy I took advantage of MediaValet’s onboarding. My Customer Success Manager walked me through the onboarding process and got us from point A to point Z without the blink of an eye or any sense of frustration. My rep was so patient with me and helped me rethink how I should set things up so it would work for each franchisee. Some franchisees owned multiple stores in both brands, so we had to come up with a unique way to set up permissions for each person. My Customer Success Manager did all the hard work and trained me and the team. It’s so easy now because we got it right the first time.” Let’s have a DAM good time Meet with one of our product experts. Book a demo
University of Windsor See how the University of Windsor went from spending almost 25 hours per week sharing photos, down to less than 5. Who is University of Windsor? The University of Windsor is a comprehensive, student-focused institution located in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. With over 16,000 undergraduate and graduate students, it offers more than 200 programs across various disciplines. Location: Windsor, ON Industry: Higher Education Company size: Enterprise Joined MediaValet: 2020 Features: Adobe Connector, Single Sign-On The Challenges Before implementing MediaValet, the University of Windsor faced significant challenges in managing and distributing digital assets: Time-Consuming Distribution Workflow Bottlenecks Limited Accessibility The Results The adoption of MediaValet brought about transformative improvements: Significant Time Savings: Sharing photos reduced from 25 hours to <5 hours/week Enhanced Accessibility: Approximately 80–90% of users transitioned to a self-serve model Improved Collaboration: Centralized system facilitated better coordination among departments and external partners Naomi Pelkey Digital Media Producer, University of Windsor How does one marketing team go from spending almost 25 hours per week sharing photos, down to less than 5? This is the question we were hoping to answer with Naomi Pelkey, the Digital Media Producer for the University of Windsor. As the creator of all kinds of content at the University of Windsor, Naomi is all too familiar with the bottlenecks that are caused when employees can’t access the photos they need. After almost 5 years with the university, she decided to lead the charge to find a new solution. This interview shares her story. To start us off, can you let us know a bit about the University of Windsor? “The University of Windsor is a comprehensive, student-focused university. We have just over 16,000 students, including undergrad and graduate students, and offer over 200 programs covering a broad range of specializations. We also offer Professional Studies and course-based masters programs and we pride ourselves on our strong faculty-student connection. We’re located beside the busiest international border crossings and we have arguably one of the best views of Detroit!” Tell us a little bit more about your background and your role at the University of Windsor. “I’ve been at the University of Windsor for four years now as a Digital Media Producer. I started in the Student Recruitment department, where my role was initially created, and then moved into the Enrollment Management department, where I now work with the Marketing and Public Relations departments. In my role, I create a lot of creative content across a lot of different platforms. MediaValet has played a critical role in sharing those creative assets with a number of different departments, as well as individuals and from inside and outside our institution.” Can you describe the team using MediaValet? “Currently, there are around 30 to 40 people with access to our MediaValet library across the campus, as well as our marketing department, which is in Toronto. It’s primarily used by our Marketing and Public Relations departments, as well as our “Communications Officers” in each faculty department. Once the fall starts up, we’re looking at expanding to our everyday web users. We also have a brand relaunch in the works, so we’re planning on using MediaValet to distribute packages of on-brand campaign assets to extended departments, like engineering.” How did the team operate before using MediaValet? What were your major pain points? “Before implementing MediaValet, I was basically the human DAM. I had a bunch of 5-10 terabyte hard drives, and I would need to remember exactly where each photo was located, what year it was taken and in what faculty. Then I would have to plug in the hard drive and send the photos to whoever needed it. Most of the time, I couldn’t even send the images over email. I’d have to send them one-at-a-time using file transfers on Dropbox. On average, it would take about 20 minutes per photo, so it could take two or three hours out of my day, depending on how many assets I sent that day. I remember one week, one of the designers and I recorded the amount of time that we spent sending each other things. It was a good story for why we needed a digital asset management system because we spent about three hours Monday, two hours another day, etc. – not to mention the time we’d spend time walking back and forth between desks and different departments.” Do you still get a lot of asset requests or is everyone self-serve? “I’d say around 10-20% of people will still ask me for assets – either because they’re not comfortable with using MediaValet quite yet, or they’re looking for my opinion. But overall, almost everyone is self-serve and love the platform. Before implementing MediaValet, I’d sometimes get bottled down for a whole week just dealing with photo requests. Now, at most, I’ll spend about five hours a week sharing photos, which was a huge change overnight!” What have you been able to do with that extra time? “Oh, so many more things! I’ve been able to work on new campaigns with the marketing agency and work on new documents and policies. I finally feel like I can take time to organize and figure out what the next season is going to look like. Being able to easily upload assets to MediaValet and share them has been like a dream come true.” What initiated your search for a DAM? “It started when I was setting up a new server for all my video content. I needed to find a solution that could house a self-serve photo gallery so that I wouldn’t get bottlenecked with asset requests and could focus my time on implementing the server. The designers and I had a couple of conversations with our managers and explained the bottlenecks in our workflow and how they could be alleviated with a digital asset management system. After some back-and-forth, we were able to get it approved – provided it met specific criteria. We built an exploration team and spent six months evaluating our options. In the end, we found that MediaValet was able to best meet our needs.” What were some of the criteria that needed to be met? “Our main priority was for the DAM to integrate well into our whole suite of existing technology. So, for example: We’re Microsoft Office 365 users, so we needed that, as well as Single Sign-On access; We wanted it to integrate with Photoshop, so the Adobe connector was a must-have; and We wanted to work with Hootsuite, so that integration was a fit, as well. Those were the major technologies that were must-haves. While other vendors offered some of the technology we needed, MediaValet had the full suite and was hands-down the easiest to use.” What made you select MediaValet over alternative vendor options? “We evaluated a ton of other vendors and had three or four demos. A lot of the other vendors that we looked at didn’t have the same capabilities that MediaValet had. MediaValet was comprehensive and user-friendly and blew other vendors out of the water for permissions, user groups, training, accessibility, assets, categories and so forth. MediaValet’s unlimited categories, users and user groups also played a huge role in our decision making. We did look at a larger DAM vendor, but while they were able to meet some of our needs, they didn’t integrate with the technology we needed. As well, at a $170,000 price tag, it was a little excessive for our needs in higher education. So, do you feel like within the first year the solution has paid off? “Absolutely, hands down. MediaValet has more than paid for itself within the first year.” Is there anything you’re able to do now that you couldn’t before? “Sharing lightboxes has been a major addition – specifically, being able to create different lightboxes for each project. For example, we’re creating our 2020-2021 viewbook for the new recruits and sharing lightboxes is considerably easier than building and sharing a website. MediaValet has been an amazing platform. I can’t believe that it took me this long to find it. It’s just been the perfect solution for us – especially with working from home during COVID. We’ve been able to share files much more efficiently – even more so than when we were working in the same space.” Has MediaValet helped to set the University of Windsor up for business continuity while working from home? “100%! It’s been immensely helpful to be able to share creative content for the different campaigns that were going out right before COVID. It’s something that would have been impossible if I was still using the external hard drives. We’re also not supposed to go to campus, so I would have had to take all the hard drives with me and store them in my home.” What feedback have you heard from others about MediaValet? “Everyone loves it and uses it every day for things like email campaigns, web content we’re creating, landing pages, PowerPoint presentations, webinars – you name it! They no longer ask me when something will need to be sent – it all just gets done seamlessly. It’s been incredibly useful for the whole team to find the photos they need.” What are the next steps for digital asset management at the University of Windsor? “Our next step is to branch it out further to not only new user groups but most likely different departments – I’d eventually like MediaValet to be used by the entire campus. I’m not sure when we’re going to do this, because we want to make sure that everyone is well-trained and comfortable with using the system, but so far, the platform has been a huge success! Everybody seems to really love and enjoy it.” What do you think has contributed to the successful adoption of the platform? “The unlimited training has been the best – hands down. It makes all our users truly understand the features and functionality available to them, rather than making them figure it out on their own. It’s ensured they’ve been able to adapt and feel confident in the system.” Do you have any pieces of advice for others looking into DAM? “I would spend a lot of time on understanding exactly how each individual is going to utilize the software and use that knowledge to build out your user groups and categories as much as possible. This helps give a full picture of what your library could look like. It’s so important to think about from the get-go.” Let’s have a DAM good time Meet with one of our product experts. Book a demo
Experian See how Experian used MediaValet to power a rebrand and today ensures brand consistency across 45 countries. Who is Experian? Experian is a leading global information services company, employing approximately 17,000 people across 45 countries. While widely recognized for its credit reporting services, Experian’s core competency lies in leveraging data to empower businesses and consumers to make informed decisions. Over the past two decades, the company has expanded from a primarily B2B focus into consumer services, offering insights that help individuals and organizations understand their financial situations and make better choices. Location: Dublin, IE Industry: Technology Company size: Enterprise Joined MediaValet: 2016 Features: Core DAM The Challenges Experian faced significant challenges in managing and distributing digital assets: Inconsistent Branding: Different regions had their own styles, causing brand confusion. Too Many New Assets: A global rebrand created lots of new content that needed organizing. No Central System: Teams across countries had trouble accessing and sharing assets. Collaboration Issues: It was hard for global teams to work together effectively. The Results Experian achieved several key outcomes: Consistent Branding: Everyone now uses the same brand look worldwide. Easy Access: Teams, partners, and agencies can quickly find and use assets. Better Teamwork: Global teams collaborate more easily with shared tools. Fast Adoption: The system was easy to learn and use across the company. Future-Ready: It works with other tools and can grow with Experian’s needs. James Carter Global Brand Manager, Experian How does one of the world’s largest global information companies ensure brand consistency across 45 countries? This was the question we had for James Carter, Global Brand Manager at Experian. As a critical player in Experian’s marketing team for over 9 years and one of the key stakeholders in their rebranding exercise, James was the perfect person to talk to about how MediaValet has helped transform their brand worldwide. To start us off, can you tell us a bit more about Experian? “Definitely! Experian is one of the world’s largest global information companies. When a lot of people think about Experian, they often think about credit – such as credit reports or scores – but we’re actually a huge data company, operating with around 17,000 employees across 45 countries. Experian started predominantly as a B2B organization, but over the last 20 years, we’ve expanded more into the consumer side. We use data to ensure that companies and individuals understand their current situation and help them make better business and personal decisions.” Tell us more about your background and role. “I’ve been with Experian for about 9 years now. My role has predominantly been in consumer brand marketing, covering advertising, television commercials, etc., but my most recent role is Global Brand Manager. My responsibility is to ensure that our brand is cohesive and consistent across all business units and regions so that we’re all speaking with a single voice and brand vision. I work with our various teams and departments to ensure they understand our brand and visual identity. I identify how we, as an organization, should present ourselves, and how best to implement best practices and guidelines around our brand. This is where MediaValet plays a big role – we need to be able to organize all of our brand assets in one place to ensure consistency across all Experian business units.” What initiated your search for a digital asset management system? “In 2016, we went through a major global brand refresh. It was a two-year project where we were trying to better understand our brand – our vision, strategy and purpose – and develop a new identity for ourselves. Prior to this, our brand felt fractured, with each region having a slightly different look and feel. As part of the refresh, we needed to address how we could ensure that all Experian branches operated as a single brand. To do this, we would need new tools to enable us to work collaboratively across regions, borders and business units. During the brand refresh, we were generating a ton of new brand assets. We needed a way to ensure all employees, partners and agencies could easily access them, as well as all future campaign materials. This is what initiated our search for a DAM.” Did you evaluate any other vendors? “We ended up evaluating a number of other vendors, ranging from medium to large-sized organizations. As you can imagine, as a massive organization, we have very strict procurement guidelines and security requirements for vendors. With clear requirements in hand, we were quickly able to reduce the list to a few vendors, one of them being MediaValet.” What made MediaValet stand out? “Since we would be opening our DAM up to the entire organization, we needed to ensure that the DAM would be easy to use for everyone at Experian, not just those with marketing or technology backgrounds. MediaValet stood out immediately as a front runner. It was a comprehensive, enterprise solution, that was incredibly easy to understand and use. The other consideration was we wanted to find a partner. Someone that we wanted to work with, and, equally as important, wanted to work with us. We evaluated some very large DAM suppliers, but none of them felt personal enough. We wanted to work with an organization that would give us the training and insights we would need to make the DAM project a success. The enhanced level of customer service was evident with MediaValet. Unlike other vendors, who focused on selling us features we didn’t need, MediaValet worked with us to find creative solutions tailored to the Experian team. We felt highly valued by MediaValet – rather than just another cog in a larger vendor’s machine.” How did you handle change management at Experian? “We were already going through a brand relaunch, so we were lucky to have our teams’ attention. We used a phased approach to launch MediaValet, starting with our European teams, then expanding region by region. By January 2018, we had successfully launched it across the entire business, using internal communications and a series of training sessions, led by our Customer Success Manager at MediaValet. The benefit of using a phased approach is that we were able to see what was working and what wasn’t. For example, we discovered a better way to categorize our assets to make them more easily searchable. We continually adapted our library, so by the time everyone was using it, it was working in the most optimal way.” Were there any unexpected outcomes? “One of the challenges we needed to address when we launched the brand refresh was how to get so many different countries using MediaValet. When working across regions, it can be difficult to maintain brand consistency, so high adoption of our new library was critical to better align our distributed teams. When we launched MediaValet, I wasn’t expecting each region to embrace the platform as quickly and smoothly as they did. The functionality is so intuitive that all of Experian’s business units were able to start using it instantly.” How are you using MediaValet today? “We don’t have a core central marketing region, so everything is done in business units, with dozens of marketing teams. MediaValet acts as the go-to point for all brand and marketing assets to ensure everyone is using the right assets, specific to their region. We’re currently storing about 10,000 assets in MediaValet. It’s used most extensively to manage and distribute the thousands of bespoke photographs and videos we’ve created for Experian. Anything and everything marketing, including tiny icons for website development, and, all of our logos and templates, are all made available using MediaValet.” What feature have you found the most beneficial? “I’ve found the lightbox functionality and sharing capabilities to be extremely useful! They can prevent a lot of back and forth between myself and other teams. For example, say someone sends an email requesting a logo, but doesn’t specify the format. Rather than asking which format or size they need, I’m able to share a lightbox with a variety of Experian logos they can choose from. The freedom to simply share a link has made my day-to-day a lot easier.” How do you monitor the health of your MediaValet library? “I monitor MediaValet on a monthly basis. Specifically, I look at the number of downloads, views, uploads and active users. I also work with our Customer Success Manager to review and understand the top search terms and the most downloaded assets. I don’t create specific benchmarks we need to hit each month, because it’s entirely dependent on people’s needs in any given month. Instead, I use it to identify access trends and popular content types. We’ve noticed we get a lot more activity during our Q4, since that’s when we host the most events, so our marketing and creative teams are using assets more frequently then. We’ve experienced a really healthy level of growth, which is great to see because it means that people are getting value out of the system. It’s been particularly valuable during this time, when everyone is working from home and not getting face-to-face interactions.” What’s the next DAM project for Experian? “We’re really happy with how MediaValet is working right now – in fact, we already feel like we’ve met all of our original objectives! However, as we get additional departments using MediaValet, we’re exploring new ways that we can squeeze more value out of the platform. I believe the next step is to start integrating into our other platforms, like Office Suite and other creative tools. In particular, we’re exploring ways that we can connect our assets with our website.” Let’s have a DAM good time Meet with one of our product experts. Book a demo
TDIndustries See how TDIndustries enables its marketing and sales teams with instant access to custom photography. Who is TDIndustries? Founded in 1946, TDIndustries is a leading construction and facilities services company based in Dallas, Texas. Offering services spanning the full life-cycle of a building, TDIndustries provides state-of-the-art innovations for hospitals, hotels, schools, industrial complexes and more. 100% employee-owned, TDIndustries has a reputation as one of the Southwest’s most respected construction companies and has been recognized by Fortune Magazine as one of the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For consecutively over the last 21 years. The Challenge Before DAM With seven offices, each driving various events, projects and initiatives at any given time, TDIndustries was quickly accumulating an unmanageable number of photos, videos and final collateral pieces. Using a set of naming conventions, TDIndustries stored thousands of digital assets on an in-house server. This solution, however, proved to be inefficient, with few employees conforming to the naming conventions, assets being misfiled, no metadata to search on and limited accessibility. As a result, a large number of TDIndustries’ assets were undiscoverable. Even when assets were found, employees were unclear if they were approved for use and resorted to using the same few assets. MediaValet has significantly improved our day-to-day productivity, as well as the quality of the collateral we produce at TDIndustries.” Dennis WashingtonSupervisor of Marketing Production, TDIndustries TDIndustries faced additional challenges with hosting video assets. The organization used YouTube exclusively, and while most of their videos remained private from the public, they were still subject to YouTube’s copyright policies. Depending on the song playing at an event or on the radio in the background of a site, their videos would frequently get removed by YouTube for copyright infringement concerns. Together, the myriad of challenges caused by using local servers and YouTube to manage their assets put TDIndustries in an untenable situation that was only getting worse with each new project. The Use Case Finding a Solution TDIndustries needed a way to confidently manage and protect their assets while making the right assets more accessible and discoverable by their various offices and departments. Specifically, TDIndustries needed a solution that could: Centralize their brand assets into a single, highly-redundant and secure media library that could be easily accessed by all seven offices. Improve asset discoverability, with comprehensive metadata mapping and a well-designed, centrally-managed category structure. Provide mobile-friendly access for remote teams to easily find, view and share assets. After evaluating several DAM vendors, it was clear that MediaValet was the ideal solution to drive the organization’s new digital asset management initiative. With its longstanding commitment to user-experience, MediaValet delivered a platform that was their team’s top choice. While TDIndustries was impressed with the security, speed and user-appeal of MediaValet’s digital asset management platform, what ultimately drove their decision was the people at MediaValet. The team’s unparalleled customer service, combined with their in-depth knowledge of digital asset management, privacy and security, made TDIndustries confident that their DAM initiative would be a success. For our specific use-case, several of the top DAM vendors could meet our basic needs. What stood out for us was the people. After talking to various vendors, the MediaValet team was a breath of fresh air; they were increadibly personable, ridiculously responsive and extremely knowledgeable. Bottom line, we were confident our DAM initiative would be successful with MediaValet’s help.” The Results How They Use MediaValet Today TDIndustries took a phased approach to implementing their digital asset management solution. They started in the Communications department with high-value, corporate assets and slowly implemented their new DAM department-by-department, collecting, organizing and securing assets. Today, their corporate DAM drives multiple initiatives and supports various use-cases across TDIndustries, including: Asset Organization An accessible, organized and secure central asset library ensures each office and department can quickly find pre-approved photos and videos, as well as the latest versions of brand assets and marketing collateral. Collateral Building Access to a wide variety of high-quality, high-resolution in-house photography enables TDIndustries to reduce the Communications and Production teams’ reliance on a few over-used photos, ensuring every piece of marketing collateral (including posters, banners and billboards) is unique, visually-appealing and interesting. Since implementing MediaValet, every single piece of collateral that goes out our door has custom photography. We haven’t re-used a photo since, unless it’s part of an ongoing marketing campaign. Using just a few keywords, we can instantly pinpoint the exact asset that we need and feel confident that it’s approved for general use.” Agency Collaboration Private external web galleries allow TDIndustries’ various creative vendors and agencies to access curated sets of assets that are approved for distribution, significantly increasing productivity and reducing back-and-forth with the TDIndustries staff. Project Archiving User-friendly uploads allow TDIndustries’ dedicated Pursuits team, who build proposals to help win large construction projects, to archive the photos and graphics they create and curate for each proposal, so they can be used in other areas of the business. With MediaValet in place, our Pursuits Team can now better perform their “close-outs” after each project by uploading the assets they used into MediaValet, where they can be re-used by other teams throughout our organization. This new process has improved productivity and boosted the ROI of our assets.” Sales Enablement Advanced search capabilities enable remote users to quickly pull relevant sets of assets from previous projects (such as high definition photos, videos, and 3D architectural diagrams) during on-site meetings, helping them engage with prospective customers and win their confidence. In the final phases of a bid, one of TDIndustries’ superintendents will meet with the potential client and use MediaValet’s web or mobile app to showcase previous projects that we’ve completed. Using Advanced Search, the superintendents are able to quickly – on the spot – search for an owner’s specific project criteria and bring up high-impact imagery of relevant projects.” Moving Forward with DAM Today, with instant access to an entire library of approved assets, TDIndustries has seen a major increase in the use of in-house photography and quality of marketing materials. Using advanced search capabilities and a strong category structure, employees are now able to instantly find relevant, approved assets to use in their various projects. Now, every piece of content that’s released, regardless of the department, has a fresh, custom piece of in-house photography. Since implementing MediaValet, TDIndustries has been delighted with the level of support they’ve received from their dedicated Customer Success Manager. The team is frequently impressed by MediaValet’s responsiveness and proactive communication of upcoming product releases and upgrades. During the 3-4 years it takes us to complete each project, like building new stadiums, arenas, and other entertainment venues, we accumulate thousands of pictures, which become near-impossible to manage. With MediaValet, we’re able to quickly sort these photos into multiple categories and keyword them to improve discoverability. MediaValet has significantly improved our day-to-day productivity, as well as the quality of the collateral we produce at TDIndustries.” Let’s have a DAM good time Meet with one of our product experts. Book a demo
Air North See how Air North enables its remote employees and partners with on-brand marketing material and archives over 40 years of photos and videos. Who is Air North? Air North is a Canadian airline that offers passenger, cargo, and charter flights between twelve locations across Yukon and Western Canada. As a main driver of socio-economic development in the North, it employs over 335 staff in Yukon, as well as 120 staff in Vancouver and across other Southern destinations. The Challenge Air North was using various file management systems, internal servers and personal computers to manage 40 years of photos and videos. This not only created issues around discovering content, it also made it difficult to share up-to-date assets across remote workers, the media and its affiliate magazine, North of Ordinary. With an expanding team and a record year for sales, Air North needed to find a system that would better manage its valuable assets. They began to search for a DAM that could: Provide seamless remote access to up-to-date content for employees and affiliates. Share curated asset collections with external contacts, such as the media. Enable global photographers to easily upload photoshoots and organize them into categories. The Solution With unlimited users and support, as well as an easy-to-use platform, MediaValet was the clear choice for Air North’s team. With worldwide data centers, MediaValet allowed Air North’s users, partners and affiliates to quickly access the assets they need, while enabling photographers to seamlessly upload photoshoots to the library from remote locations. The Results After implementing MediaValet, Air North has experienced improvements to how internal and external users upload, access and use their assets. Specifically, they’ve seen: Improved sales and marketing productivity, with instant access to the assets they need to sell effectively Enhanced collaboration across partners, with assets available to remote partners at any time Accelerated upload workflow, enabling photographers to upload from remote locations We have finally made the decision to find a system that would not only protect our assets from the threat of being lost but to also help us manage and track the use of our assets. We chose MediaValet as we love their product, their team, and the way they do business.” Debra RyanStrategic Planning & Alliance Manager, Air North Let’s have a DAM good time Meet with one of our product experts. Book a demo
A&W Canada See how A&W uses MediaValet to maintain brand consistency and make assets available to their 863 franchises. Who is A&W Canada? A&W Canada is Canada’s original and fastest-growing quick-service burger chain. It is 100 percent Canadian-owned and is one of the strongest brand names in the Canadian food service industry. A&W is the nation’s second largest hamburger chain with more than 950 locations coast-to-coast. A&W has been a customer of MediaValet since 2016. The Challenges Before DAM Before becoming a user of MediaValet, A&W was experiencing inefficiencies in managing its branded assets across departments, franchisees, and with its creative agency, Rethink. With all campaign assets and product images stored in a database hosted by Rethink, it made for a lengthy asset request process. Other brand materials and logos were stored in A&W’s internal library, which lacked the ability to prevent their teams and franchisees from adding, deleting or accessing unapproved assets. For a brand as large and recognized as A&W, it’s important to preserve the integrity of branded assets. With rapid growth of new locations and industry-leading innovation, A&W has strong brand positioning. To best support the brand, A&W needed a more reliable storage solution for branded assets that could be accessed by various internal and external partners efficiently. The Use Case Finding a Solution With the help of Rethink, A&W began their search for a digital asset management solution. They needed a DAM that could: Improve brand consistency, enabling all users with on-brand, color-corrected assets that are relevant to their job and location. Reduce administrative tasks, allowing the marketing team to focus on innovation and growing guest visits. Expand access and security, offering a multi-level permission structure for various departments and partners. Preserve the history of creative assets, effectively storing all marketing material without any risk of unapproved access. With in-depth knowledge and expertise in the digital asset management field, MediaValet was the perfect fit to help A&W congregate their assets, implement asset tagging best practices, and organize its new library for long-term success. With unlimited onboarding and training with a dedicated customer success manager, A&W was impressed with the level of service that MediaValet provides their customers. They were confident that the MediaValet team could ensure high adoption among their partners and franchisees. We needed to find a DAM that would give our team broad access, with high sophistication and security. MediaValet’s dedication to privacy and security, along with their commitment to customer success, made them stand out as the best solution for A&W.” Amy BearsAssistant Manager, Direct Marketing at A&W Canada How They Use MediaValet Today With MediaValet’s intuitive platform, A&W can onboard and train multiple departments, partners and franchisees with ease. Today, their library empowers A&W to address: Brand Management A&W’s new library provides a safe, single-source-of-truth for their brand and creative assets. Today, each asset is uploaded once in a high-resolution format and MediaValet’s in-system file rendering allows users to download the assets into various sizes and formats, such as JPGs, PNGs and MP4s. Multiple internal teams can instantly access the logos, product images and other materials they need to build on-brand prints, presentations, and more. Since implementing MediaValet, we’ve been able to expand into more teams than initially planned. When someone is attending a conference or building a presentation, they can go right into the library and grab the logos or material they need. Folks in marketing, development, and design have all made use of MediaValet.” Agency Collaboration A&W provides external partners, like their creative agency and menu board creators, with access to specific library categories, so they can build content using colour-corrected, up-to-date product images. A&W’s account managers at Rethink upload final artwork directly into A&W’s MediaValet library, granting the marketing team instant access to files. Franchisee Enablement A&W uses their library to connect their franchisees with the assets they need and improve the quality of locally-created promotions. With the ability to browse through pre-defined categories, franchisees have instant access to a broad set of marketing materials to build their promotions. Before implementing MediaValet, when a franchisee needed to build their own local promotions, a member of marketing would need to manually send them the assets they needed. Now, we simply create a user account for each franchisee, saving time and giving them instant access to the right logo, the right food photography and the right brand statement.” Moving Forward with DAM With their new MediaValet library, everyone has easy access to the content they need, with the appropriate controls to prevent the unapproved use, deletion and manipulation of assets. A&W has eliminated their shared drive completely and now hosts everything in the cloud, where only select administrators have the power to delete and add new categories or assets. MediaValet has dramatically improved the way we work with our creative agency and franchisees. Now that everyone has instant access to the assets they need, we can spend less time on administrative tasks and focus more on developing innovative menu items, advertisements and initiatives for the A&W brand.” Let’s have a DAM good time Meet with one of our product experts. Book a demo
Canadian Blood Services See how Canadian Blood Services enables nationwide employees, partners and volunteers with access to on-brand marketing material. Who is Canadian Blood Services? Since 1998, Canadian Blood Services has managed Canada’s national supply of blood, cord blood, stem cells, and bone marrow. One of their most crucial functions is to recruit donors through marketing and advertising campaigns that bring in about 850,000 units of blood each year. The Challenge Canadian Blood Services was becoming increasingly frustrated with its outdated, on-premise database that could only be accessed from the head office. With a growing collection of digital materials, the marketing team was spending hours finding their assets, resulting in process inefficiencies and wasted time. Canadian Blood Services needed a more efficient way to manage its digital assets. They wanted a system that offered: Ease-of-use for both their team leaders and their non-technical volunteers Unlimited training, support and users, and Worldwide access to the system for their staff across Canada. The Solution With unlimited users, training, support and onboarding, MediaValet was uniquely equipped to handle Canadian Blood Services’ growing internal and external team, while still keeping the solution cost-effective. MediaValet’s easy-to-use, cloud-based platform also ensured their assets could be easily accessed from anywhere in the world. Canadian Blood Services found MediaValet so intuitive that they started uploading and tagging their assets before training and onboarding even began. The Results After choosing MediaValet as its solution, Canadian Blood Services was able to meet its 3 main goals: Save time and money spent on administrative tasks. Streamline team collaboration and the donor recruitment process. Give partners and volunteers access to the assets they need. [With our old system], we had to send each other emails with piles of attachments of materials, which was incredibly inefficient… Accessing and using our assets is so easy for us now – I don’t know why we waited so long!” Virginia GaffneyAdvertising & Digital Innovation Manager, Canadian Blood Services Let’s have a DAM good time Meet with one of our product experts. Book a demo
Pancreatic Cancer Action Network See how PanCAN manages its marketing assets in a library that's easily used by non-technical staff and volunteers across the country. Who is PanCAN? Founded in 1999, the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network (PanCAN) attacks the world’s toughest cancer on all fronts: research, clinical initiatives, patient services and advocacy. Since 2003 to 2017, PanCAN generated a total research investment of over $48M. Their advocacy efforts resulted in President Obama signing legislation into law requiring the National Cancer Institute to develop a scientific framework for pancreatic and other deadly cancers. The Challenge The Pancreatic Cancer Action Network stored their media assets on corporate servers and personal hard drives that were spread across the United States. With this outdated storage system, along with arbitrary taxonomies and keywords, the marketing team was in need of a more efficient way to manage their digital assets. The Pancreatic Cancer Action Network needed a system that was able to: Store thousands of assets, no matter where they were created, into one central library. Allow users to search for and find the assets they needed quickly and easily. Provide an efficient system for sharing assets with PCAN affiliates. Seamlessly scale to meet future storage and use needs. Ensure security for all assets and enable a flexible permission structure. Offer a cost-effective solution to a non-profit with a large user base. Be easy-to-use for the non-technical volunteer staff. The Solution MediaValet eliminated the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network’s pain points by delivering a solution that: Lives in the cloud, making the library easily accessible to anyone that needs assets. Scales seamlessly, allowing PCAN to grow as much as they need. Ensures enterprise-level security and asset protection. Is cost-effective and affordable, with unlimited users. Can be used easily by non-technical users. The Results MediaValet has helped PanCAN to continue its vital work raising funds and awareness to support families facing pancreatic cancer with a DAMS that provides: Accessibility: Staff and affiliates can now access assets when they need them, anywhere around the world. Streamlined Workflow: Volunteers can find the assets they need, when they need them, without having to ask staff members. Structure Permission and Control: The right people can access the right versions of assets with the appropriate usage rights. Easy Searching & Sharing: Assets are organized in one central library, where teams can quickly find and share assets, both internally and externally. Photos and videos are important tools in our campaign efforts. You can’t look at the faces of a thousand people – all sporting purple T-shirts or carrying purple light wands – see their hope, their determination, and not be moved. We can write reams about their personal journeys, but it’s the pictures that tell their stories.” Jenny IsaacsonVP, Strategic Partnerships and Projects, Pancreatic Cancer Action Network Let’s have a DAM good time Meet with one of our product experts. Book a demo
Brand USA See how Brand USA streamlines its content marketing and stores 50TB of assets with MediaValet. Who is Brand USA? With 800 partners worldwide, Brand USA is a destination marketing organization focused on promoting the United States as a premier travel destination and improving its share of the global travel market. The Challenge With a changing tourism market, Brand USA’s marketing team developed a new strategy to better engage tourists and showcase destinations across the United States. This approach introduced a digital plan that included new websites, an updated visual identity and an increased focus on partner-generated media content. To facilitate the upcoming increase in content production, Brand USA needed a system that could enable its partners and integrate into its existing marketing technology stack. The company needed a DAM that would: Streamline the syndication of partner-donated photos and videos, to be used in marketing campaigns, Manage and track the usage of Brand USA’s images, documents and videos, and Increase the marketing team’s efficiency when curating new content and collaborating with partners. The Solution After evaluating top vendors, Brand USA selected MediaValet to host its 50 TBs of content. With custom-built online forms to manage and track Brand USA’s partner content donations and asset usage, MediaValet provided Brand USA’s marketing team with the functionality they needed to create engaging content while ensuring their entire collection of visual assets remained secure. Leveraging MediaValet’s Drupal integration also allowed the marketing team to quickly build and update webpages using approved images and videos from their library. The Results After implementing MediaValet, Brand USA’s team has streamlined content production and increased efficiency. Specifically, they’ve: Improved processes for collecting content that’s been donated by partners. Increased speed of creative production, with easy access to brand materials. Enhanced security and accountability around when and how assets are used. To succeed, it would take a DAM partner with the infrastructure and experience to support not only our massive library and worldwide access and security needs, but also provide a simple and intuitive user experience with the training and customer support needed to ensure all our users are happy.” Mark LapidusBrand USA’s Director of Digital and Social Media, Brand USA Let’s have a DAM good time Meet with one of our product experts. Book a demo
Almond Board of California See how the Almond Board of California enables hundreds of users worldwide and saves 50% on IT costs. Who is the Almond Board of California? The Almond Board of California was set up in 1950 to represent the Californian almond growers, who produce 86% of the world’s supply of almonds, in matters concerning agriculture, exports, marketing and more. The Challenge The Almond Board’s staff and marketing agencies were routinely frustrated with their in-house, legacy digital asset management system. Users couldn’t access the digital assets they needed efficiently and the Almond Board’s IT department was spending too much time on support tickets. The Almond Board needed a better way to manage its digital assets. They wanted a system that would: Be globally accessible and user-friendly for its staff and marketing agencies, and Greatly reduce the time the IT department was spending on support and maintenance. The Solution Created on Microsoft Azure, MediaValet was able to meet the Almond Board’s technical and user requirements, as well as their need for a cost-effective solution. With the help of MediaValet’ support team, the Almond Board’s new DAM was fully implemented and launched within a 60-day cycle, exceeding the expectations of the organization. The Results Today, roughly one hundred users worldwide are happily using a custom-branded version of MediaValet on a daily basis to access and share the Almond Board’s 2TB and growing library of digital assets. Since implementing MediaValet: The Almond Board spends 50% less on IT and administration costs, compared to their previous DAM. The manpower needed to maintain their DAM has reduced from 10-15 hours per month to zero. The time required to perform back-ups has reduced from 16-20 hours per month to zero. Help Desk tickets for DAM-related issues have been reduced by 95%. MediaValet’s focus on exceeding our needs has been ‘par excellence’. They come up with creative solutions wherever we face challenges and their support team has routinely gone above and beyond – doing things you normally wouldn’t get from a vendor.” John JoynerA.D. Corporate Technology, the Almond Board of California Let’s have a DAM good time Meet with one of our product experts. Book a demo
