SONOS How SONOS uses MediaValet to Secure and Amplify a Global Brand. Who is SONOS? Considered as the pioneers of wireless audio, SONOS wireless speakers bring every room and everyone together with incredible sound for music, TV, and more. Retailing across 60+ countries, SONOS works with a bold vision for the future of home sound and has invented the technology needed to make it a reality. Location: Santa Barbara, CA Industry: Retail Company size: Enterprise Joined MediaValet: 2021 Features: File Sharing The Challenges SONOS was struggling to manage a vast library of assets, mainly because they were working with a third-party creative production company that had their own asset library in place of a DAM. As the company expanded, the system in place simply couldn’t scale with SONOS; the search abilities were poor, and the ability to control their own work was incredibly limited. The Results Since migrating from traditional file sharing solutions like Box and Google Drive, SONOS have accomplished an amazing level of control on their assets. With the DAM in place, SONOS has: Streamlined asset access internally and externally, Improved operational efficiencies, globally, and Implemented stronger brand protections. Matthew Lawson Global Marketing Operations Specialist, SONOS The Challenge Makeshift Technologies Originally, Sonos was using a third-party creative production company’s asset library as a makeshift DAM, which was insufficient for their growing needs. Sonos had to rely on another party for asset management, leading to complicated processes for asset search and access and incrementally increasing costs. The system in place had poor search capabilities, and without a central, accessible library it was leading to duplicated and outdated assets. Additionally, the old system had weak security controls which was creating unnecessary vulnerabilities for the organizations’ sensitive, unreleased product information. When you’re not in control of your own work, you don’t really produce and make the efficiencies that you normally would if you had that kind of level of oversight that we do now with MediaValet.” The team wanted a dedicated DAM system that could enable true ownership and control of their asset library, and they found MediaValet. The Use Case Global Organization Since implementing MediaValet, the team at SONOS has used it as a central source of truth. The repository serves the entire global organization with all go-to-market assets, ensuring all materials, from product renders to videos to retail guidelines, are centrally stored and updated, and more importantly – easy to access. Basically, everything that can even relate to one asset or a seasonal campaign is hosted in the library. MediaValet has been instrumental in helping us transition from an inefficient system to a centralized, secure, and highly functional DAM solution.” It’s enabled the organization in multiple ways: Archiving outdated assets: With the old system in place the team was grappling with constant duplications leading to a bloated library that was incredibly difficult to search. Of the 20,000 assets migrated to MediaValet, 80% were archived. Splitting the library into hot and cold storage has enabled the team to save a LOT of time finding what they actually need. Now, we have access to older renders for older products – we literally would not have been able to do this before. We would have likely had to pay somebody at our previous platforms to do that work because it would have taken hours.” Enhancing collaboration between internal and external stakeholders: SONOS currently has 5,000 users on their MediaValet DAM, and despite being a huge operation, the platform has facilitated collaboration across different teams and external partners. With controlled access to the necessary assets the team has maintained visibility and security without compromising on distribution and collaboration with the numerous external partners, and agencies they work with. Amplifying brand consistency: SONOS is a global brand and with that comes high pressure to ensure true consistency. The MediaValet DAM is an essential tool in ensuring up-to-date, approved assets go live, across the company’s wide-spread markets. The team at SONOS uses the DAM to control access and permissions, version control, and can prevent unauthorized access to or publishing of sensitive or unready materials. The Key Features Fueling SONOS’ Success Expiry dates for brand protection: The team has incorporated licensing, expiration dates, use terms directly into the metadata of their assets, facilitating detailed tracking of asset usage, which is crucial for compliance and cost management. With their DAM taxonomy set up, an expired asset can’t even be downloaded so it cannot be distributed. This saves the organization from inadvertently breaking licensing agreements or contracts. Being able to incorporate licensing directly into thousands of files is incredibly efficient and [has enabled] huge cost savings!” User groups for global access: SONOS has a lot of regional products and campaigns across North America, the EU region, Southeast Asia and newer growth markets. By locally applying custom user groups and permissions they have enabled different partners and agencies without losing the bird’s eye view of their operations. It’s really helped us gather a lot of insight into how we produce our work and how complicated and, complex these processes can be when you’re working with people all around the world in all these different languages.” Lightboxes for project organization: Lightboxes within the DAM enable teams around the world to organize, share, and manipulate assets and projects in their own way, without affecting the main asset library. Working in smaller spaces, teams can access everything they need and collaborate on projects however suits them best. Given the complexity of our global operations, the Lightbox feature has been a game-changer for our project management, allowing our teams to organize assets flexibly without altering the main library.” The Results True Asset Control Since moving away from traditional file sharing systems like Box and Google Drive, SONOS has been able to wrangle their asset library into something incredibly accessible yet secure. As a retail giant, ensuring their brand remains protected yet amplified is a fine line to tread but with MediaValet, they’ve managed to achieve true asset control. Their MediaValet DAM has enabled: Streamlined asset access and sharing: The implementation of MediaValet has significantly simplified the process of sharing digital assets among teams and with external partners, reducing dependency on manual sharing methods like email. Self-serve on a global scale: The DAM has enabled teams outside of the US continue their work without relying on teams based in different time zones. Improved operational efficiency: With better asset tracking, intuitive metadata and attributes, and a central system, Sonos has enhanced its ability to manage and utilize digital assets effectively, leading to more streamlined operations and better control over asset distribution. Stronger brand protections: As the organization really began to prioritize security, MediaValet has helped to support their needs. Single sign-on integration with Okta means internal employees have secure access, and custom user group permissions mean that external stakeholders can only access required assets. With MediaValet, we’ve been able to sleep a lot better at night. Now that we have that tighter control, we’ve been able to make much more efficient and streamlined workflows when it comes to producing products.” Interested in how a MediaValet DAM could help your organization? Reach out to a rep today to learn more! Ready to see what the DAM hype’s about? Meet with one of our product experts Book a demo
