Meet Today’s Creative Content Challenge The demand for visual content across all industries is putting a spotlight on creative teams to bear the brunt of supply and demand. Creative content production is increasing as CMOs realize the importance of investing in strategies such as omnichannel and multichannel marketing, visual commerce/shoppable social, and AI customer experience. These strategies call for a vast amount of highly optimized creative content to be produced under a tight turnaround. Technology is key to successfully executing visual content strategies. When it comes to searching for product photo production technology a DAM or Digital Asset Management software may populate in your search results. Although, a Digital Asset Management is about the final approved assets along with usage rights amongst other permissions it should never be confused or substituted with a Creative Asset Management (CAM). A CAM is a creative management workflow platform designed for the processes and workflows of creative and production teams. It’s simple, C comes before D; CAM is necessary at the beginning of a creative asset lifecycle when there is a massive volume of content. In addition to being critical at the start of creative production, a Creative Asset Management can also be used throughout the entire processes and workflows for creative and production teams. The volume of content at the start of an asset lifecycle is vastly different from the amount of content that ends up in a Digital Asset Management. Digital Asset Management technology companies report that their customers store around 39,000 assets in their Digital Asset Management platform. With a Creative Asset Management platform (CAM), the average customer can upload 1M+ visual assets; 39% of the assets stored in a Digital Asset Management on average. It is necessary to have technology specifically designed to manage the volume and processes related to photo and video production at the beginning of the creative process to arrive at your end goal of finalizing creative content faster. Efficiency and effectiveness at the start of the asset lifestyle are critical to deploying highly optimized content across multiple channels and marketing strategies. A CAM will create the efficiency and effectiveness you need.  Get Started with a  CAM. P.S. Stay in tune for our next post to learn exactly how a CAM creates efficiency and accuracy throughout the photo production process.

Homeless World Cup organizes tournaments for the homeless all around the world. The nonprofit has over 450 locations, reaching 100,000 homeless people every year. Each year, their network of street football partners picks more than 500 players to compete in the annual Homeless World Cup tournament.  In addition to inspiring marginalized people around the world, the Homeless World Cup aims to challenge public’s perceptions of homelessness. Images of the players play a large role in subverting pernicious stereotypes surrounding homelessness.  Volunteer photographers from all around the world work to capture empowering photos of the players. With the many photos streaming in from around the world, the Homeless World Cup realized they needed a platform for organization and an improved workflow. Globaledit’s online photo management software allows photographers from all over the world to upload their photos to one central location from anywhere, anytime. The nonprofit can then access and view all the images quickly after international photographers have uploaded them. For an enhanced organization, each photographer creates and maintains their own folder in globaledit. The advanced folder structure in globaledit permits the nonprofit to have a solid understanding of which images are uploaded by which photographer. Globaledit’s metadata schema further provides the nonprofit with valuable asset information such as the date, players, game, background story etc. The ability to search and find photos related to a specific event, such as a game is now simple. This data gold allows the needle in the haystack to be quickly spotted. With gloabledit, the Homeless World Cup can find the precise images they need to push out on their social channels efficiently. Another feature of globaledit that has impacted the organization’s creative production is the star ratings and approval functionality. Globaledit’s star ratings assists the nonprofit in selecting the best images that convey compelling stories and portray the players in a heroic manner. The nonprofit is then able to send their favorite selects securely via a lightbox to the photographers and players, enhancing the production process. With globaledit’s accelerated photo workflow, the nonprofit is then able to share these compelling images of the players via social media shortly after the game.   If you’re also working with internationally-based or dispersed teams or simply interested in creating efficiencies in your photo production, then let’s talk. Photo Credits: Daniel Lipinski

Nike recently announced that they plan to release new features in their app that will allow consumers to shop the look of mannequins in their stores. Nike’s App at Retail will let shoppers instantly access and shop a “head-to-toe look,” after scanning a QR code at the base of in-store mannequins. For this enriched consumer experience, detailed product information must be associated with photos, so the app can search, retrieve and deliver the right products. It is product information or metadata that informs these recommendation engines to search and find the correct assets. So much of this data gold can be captured during the photo production process. Creative Asset Management (CAM) platforms, such as globaledit, ingest, append, and embed rich product information into the image itself. The entire process of capturing metadata is automated, eliminating manual time-consuming tasks. Those in creative production need to adapt, update workflows, and adopt such technology. Without this technology, countless hours are lost to manually organizing or re-keying that product information in retroactively. This not only creates inefficiency but also makes room for manual error. If brands, like Nike, want to truly deliver unparalleled in-app experiences they need to recognize the value that is being generated in the early stages of an asset’s life-cycle. They must empower their creative teams, via technology, to effectively capture and pass product metadata. If you’re ready to adapt and adopt technology, we should talk.

By David Iscove, Manager of Solution Architecture and Implementation at globaledit The fast-fashion brand first jumped into AI-driven image recognition to make alternative recommendations to customers who were searching for items which were out of stock. Boohoo.com has since gone through seven months of refinement and have advanced their search technology to allow consumers the ability to upload a picture themselves which identifies similar items in Boohoo’s catalog. The backend of this consumer-facing AI tool depends on deep metadata tagging of each product within their inventory to “match” the images uploaded by consumers. As we can see in this and other B2C models, metadata, now more than ever, is playing an invaluable role in the consumer experience. Product information which is associated with eComm photography makes assets smart and identifiable, fueling innovations like AI-driven visual search, image recognition, machine learning, and online recommendations, such as market trends like “shop the look”. The unfortunate truth is that brands are overlooking opportunities to add this valuable metadata during the production process. This is because the process of capturing this data-gold has traditionally been extremely manual and time consuming. However, with the right tools and technology, metadata enrichment can be automated, seamlessly transferring metadata from capture software to work-in-progress creative tools to asset management platforms, and ultimately into your consumer-facing ecommerce platform. Innovative creative professionals are using globaledit in their photography production process to manage the ingest and enrichment of metadata from capture software platforms like Capture One and Lightroom. Globaledit’s automated enrichment process streamlines productivity, providing creatives the ability to scale to meet the increasing demand for content which is optimized for today’s consumption models. When it comes to creating efficiencies in the creative production process, this is just the tip of the iceberg. See for yourself how globaledit is changing the way modern creative professionals collaborate.

It seems all we hear about today is how Amazon is doing everything in retail perfectly. We’re all trying to find ways to be more like Amazon. But what is it that they’re doing so well? The answer: They have created an exceptional customer experience. But it goes beyond Prime and free returns. Amazon is continually investing in new ways to enhance a customer’s interaction with their brand. As reported in the New York Times, Amazon plans to “(…) pour money into photography to give internet shoppers a better representation of garments (…)”. They know that providing more photos will give people more buying information, improving the customer experience, and as a result increase purchases. To this point, brands spend millions on strategies that are aimed at improving the experience one has with their brand. They test websites, optimize purchase paths and deliver personalized experiences across all channels, but rarely think about how to enhance the process that delivers them the valuable assets that empower these strategies: Photo and video content. Think about this like a supply chain. E-comm teams are requesting more shots per SKU, social teams continually need new and fresh content and email teams require unique images for different customer segments. The demand for photos has never been greater, and creatives are running at capacity. They can incrementally increase production by focusing on people and processes, but without technology, they are at a disadvantage. It has become critical for brands to invest in technology that makes production more efficient, allowing creative teams to deliver more assets while also accelerating the process. The ability to create more, faster, in a scalable and repeatable fashion is a competitive advantage that gets a brand to market more quickly. And with more retail brands going bankrupt, or worse out of business, it has become a business imperative to move faster and improve the customer experience. Brands must invest in technology, for their creatives, to remove the obstacles that slow production down. There are unique roadblocks at each stage of the creative process (upload & ingest, review & approve, distribute & share, search & retrieve) so having a comprehensive work-in-progress solution is essential to making production more effective. This technology automates manual, repetitive and time-consuming tasks that creatives are wasting time on when they could be creating. It provides visibility for all stakeholders into where projects are in the process. Collaboration and communication are optimized by consolidating interactions, notes, comments, and markups. Asset histories deliver valuable information into the who, when and why behind a photo. This level of efficiency keeps visual assets moving through the supply chain, getting them to the internal customer (marketing, e-comm, social, brand, store teams) faster. In turn, the external customer has an improved experience with the brand impacting purchases, loyalty, and LTV. Leading brands, like Theory, Lucky Brand, and Smashbox Cosmetics have invested in such platforms, but not all solutions are created equally. To learn why globaledit is the clear choice to accelerate creative production read our blog, “Built for creatives, by creatives”.

When creative professionals are evaluating technology, such as a work-in-progress platform (often also referred to as a collaboration platform), one of the questions they need to ask is, “who developed the product?” Was it someone who had a “great” idea one day, a product manager who did a handful of prospect interviews, or was it someone who would actually use the product himself? Was it someone who was feeling actual pain, and found a way to solve it? While each approach can provide value, there are varying degrees of value that tech can provide. Understanding the history behind who developed your solution, and why, can reveal the differences between a tool that just ‘does the job’ versus a tool that you feel was designed for your exact needs. Globaledit’s creative collaboration platform was developed by creatives for creatives. Our history as the pioneers in creative production explains why we’re the right choice for driving efficiencies that accelerate the creative process. We continually strive to provide acceleration tools to increase the capacity of creative teams, ensuring you never miss a deadline. Our History 1991: Impact Digital founded Founder Steve Kalalian and Janet Mayfield start the company under Impact Digital, a two-person graphic design team. 1996: Impact Digital Retouching and Pre-Press launched Impact Digital specializes in retouching and pre-press for high-end photography and fashion. 2001: Industrial Color founded Industrial Color is established to offer the first digital capture packages in the industry, setting the new standard for digital production. 2002: Acquisition of Fast Ashley Studios Industrial Color expands to operate Fast Ashleys Studios, Brooklyn’s premier full-service photo studio and equipment rental center. 2003: globaledit® launched Industrial Color launches globaledit®, a web-based production workflow platform for creative teams. The SaaS platform provides a simple, powerful tool to streamline the creative process from capture to distribution. 2003: Los Angeles offices Industrial Color opens offices in Los Angeles. 2004: Miami offices Industrial Color expands, opening offices in Miami. 2006: globaledit® development brought in-house Globaledit launches its in-house software development and data center to push workflow innovation and hosted services. 2007: CG Division launched Industrial Color and Impact Digital launch a CG division to offer new creative technology for print and video clients. 2008: Motion capture and post-production Industrial Color launches video capture and post-production services. 2010: globaledit® iOS app As Apple launches the first iPad, globaledit® simultaneously releases its globaledit App for iOS, ushering in the first mobile production workflow platform. 2012: Industrial Color Brands created The brand portfolio is consolidated into a new entity: Industrial Color Brands, a family of integrated creative production services. 2015: Smashbox Studios relaunched Industrial Color Brands partners with Smashbox Cosmetics to renovate and operate the legendary Smashbox Studios in LA. 2016: Acquisition of eBay Studios Industrial Color Brands acquired eBay studios in order to expand services for eCommerce clients. The Tribeca office added two new studios to its footprint and with the acquisition, Industrial Color Brands gained studios in Pennsylvania and Kentucky. So as you can see we’re not simply a technology provider, we are your peer. We’ve been first to market across several areas of creative production and have earned our reputation as pioneers. But while we are creatives, we don’t think we know it all. Our customers, over 4,000 users, have been providing us with feedback about their pain points and challenges which have been the drivers of ongoing innovation. That is the value of globaledit®. Technology for creatives designed and built by creatives.

By David Iscove, Creative Operations Specialist at globaledit Eric Fulmer of ShotFlow One (Capture Integration) is one of the sharpest minds within the fashion photography industry. I recently read an article he wrote that referenced the massive shift that the fashion industry has undergone in recent years, known as the “Zara Effect”. For those not familiar, Zara has set the benchmark in reducing time to market in that they “can design, produce, and deliver a new garment and put it on display in its stores worldwide in a mere 15 days”. This represents a massive acceleration of previous development cycles which once spanned seasons, then months, weeks, and now days. This is the new race that modern brands must run in order to compete and, ultimately, survive. To compete, brands must transform their overall approach to creative production and identify any gaps that have the potential to force delays. And, as Fulmer states, “(…) there really are only three levers available to pull.” People Process Technology The culture must be willing to analyze their processes and systems objectively.  To be blunt, learn to accelerate your creative production, and, in so doing, reduce your time to market, or die. But proper acceleration has two benchmarks – efficiency and effectiveness. People often confuse them, but they are very different. Efficiency is about speed, while effectiveness is about quality. If you accelerate, yet produce low quality visual assets you have not improved your creative production process. How To Create Efficiency And Effectiveness With Technology At present, moving to a cloud-based creative production collaboration platform is the most impactful way to drive both efficiency and effectiveness. It creates an accessible “single source of truth”, for all of your visual assets. But cloud access and redundancy is just the starting point. In-app collaboration tools such as markups, commenting, or @mentions to other stakeholders are essential in reducing  friction by allowing all communication to occur  directly within the same interface used for file access and sharing. And this collaboration strategy must be mobile to respond to the world we live in so that collaboration can happen from anywhere and on any device. Each connected system must inherit any input previously made on an asset, picking up and displaying metadata or ratings made on other systems. This ‘linking’ of asset inheritance provides full business continuity and, picking up on another concept from Fulmer, makes those assets “smart”, whereby they can inform their own process in the creative production process. And during the review process a platform should drive efficiency with fast previews, regardless of the file size or format. This is a key differentiator in the effectiveness between a visual asset management platform and simple online storage.  You should be able to view those images in whatever visually appealing layout you require – one at a time with deep zoom, full screen, contact sheet, list or side-by-side comparison. And as you add markups, annotations and comments the history of that asset becomes compiled, searchable, and forever accessible, providing visibility into the production lifecycle of each image. Technology that provides these guidelines will not only improve a team’s overall efficiency, but ensure the organization’s effectiveness in going from concept to market. Let’s Dive Even Deeper Creative production and operations have forever changed due to the “Zara Effect”. That is why I am very excited to attend the first Creative Operations Exchange in San Francisco on April 10-11, 2017. I will be monitoring a panel discussion “Workflow solutions – Find the tool to boost your team’s creative process!” I hope you’ll register so we can meet face to face to dive even deeper into how technology can accelerate your creative production.

As Vice President Enterprise Solutions for BLR Holdings, Brendon Derr and his team have helped hundreds of Fortune 1000 organizations build, optimize and evolve their “in-house creative agency” operations over the past 15 years. In this interview, Brendon shares some industry insights from the sixth and latest survey benchmark for the in-house creative community from Cella/BOSS and In-Source, along with advice on how to best optimize creative resources. You can see Brendon Derr live at our next Creative Ops Breakfast, on September 22nd in New York City. Q. What common and recurring challenges are your clients facing when it comes to creative services? Operational excellence. Justifying the need for, and orchestrating the necessary people, processes and technology/tools needed in today’s creative production environment poses a huge challenge while most creative leaders are already consumed with producing great creative work. The result is many companies struggle to find the time and resources needed to organize their operations so that creative teams can produce their best work in an organized and timely manner, while maintaining the level of efficiency and cost effectiveness that they are counted upon to deliver. Specifically, the sheer variety of work being produced, along with the need to coordinate creative across many channels, has been a great challenge across the industry, particularly in the larger and more complex companies. Q. What one piece of advice do you have for companies that are looking to optimize their investments in marketing and creative resources? Don’t be a creative kingdom builder, be a value creator. The biggest and most common mistake that I’ve seen in-house creative leaders make over the years, often to the point of them losing their jobs, is to go down the road of building an ever-expanding team and pursuing an ever more sexy body of creative work for the company. To be clear, sometimes this truly is the best thing for the company and the creative team. Often though, it may not be the time for this approach, and is instead rooted in the personal aspirations of the creative team. Focus on creating value for the company first, and the kingdom will come. Focus on the kingdom first, and it may be hard for your company to see the value. Q. What do you think is the “Next Big Thing” for creative services? Near term, I see many companies beginning to nail down their big data management and technological capabilities to a level that starts to enable creative teams to develop strategies more targeted to specific segments of their customer base. Longer-term, virtual and augmented reality has the potential to be huge. It may take a few years yet to really take hold, but when these technologies gain traction with the mainstream consumer, look out! Use cases for design and content, and the associated creative skill sets required for production, will cause a talent and technological shift that may prove to be even more transformational than the advent of the web and Mobile. Brendon Derr was a guest speaker at our monthly Creative Ops Breakfast “Next Generation In-House Creative Services: Living up to the Challenge”, on September 22nd, 2016, in New York City. Watch the recording now.

  Mai Nozoe is the Vice President of Creative Services for alice + olivia, a contemporary women’s lifestyle brand founded by Stacey Bendet in 2002. Mai joined the company in 2013 to develop their first in-house creative team. Her 8-people team handles all creative branding and global image direction including photography, video, art direction, casting, styling, advertising, design, and production of brand collateral and website. Prior to her current role, Mai served as the first Vice President of Creative Operations for Moda Operandi, and developed the first in house creative department at Michael Kors. In this interview, Mai shares her past experience, some of the insights and best practices she learned along the way. You can see her live at our next Creative Ops Breakfast on Thursday, September 22, in our TriBeCa office. Q. You’ve developed the first in-house creative department at Michael Kors and currently at alice + olivia. What recurring challenges have you faced in both jobs? Developing the first in-house teams requires being nimble and adaptable to business needs. Being able to change direction is key, while simultaneously developing a consistent aesthetic that represents the brand so the customer becomes familiar with and identifies with the brand over time. In addition, I have also experienced:   Adapting brands to overseas markets especially in the Middle East and Asia, which have been a consistent challenge and opportunity. The ever-evolving online world, which requires that we adapt and speak to the customer in new ways through different channels but with an omni strategy. The constant need for content in social media, which challenges traditional methods and processes for developing creative.   Q. What are the biggest challenges and opportunities for creative teams today? The greatest challenge is the constant need for more content with restricted resources. Creative services and its tie to social media as one of the greatest communication tools will continue to grow, and companies must focus on keeping up with developing the content by providing as many resources as possible in this area. What’s exciting is that there is now a greater need for in-house creative departments than ever. Q. Any tools or applications that are “must-have” or “can’t live without”? With the volume of content that is needed today, it becomes critical to have an organized workflow. In every company I have worked in, I require a creative brief for all projects. Asset management systems and archival systems should be implemented as quickly as possible. Q. What one piece of advice do you have for those just getting started in a creative leader role? It’s important to have thick skin and endurance. The glamour of the job fades quickly. Never get attached to one creative campaign and be ready to tackle the next project with consistent drive and passion. The most successful people put in hard work and are committed to developing a beautiful product. Mai Nozoe was a guest speaker at our monthly Creative Ops Breakfast “Next Generation In-House Creative Services: Living up to the Challenge”, on September 22nd, 2016, in New York City. Watch the recording now.

If you’re looking to transform your company’s creative operations, the single largest impact you can have on your organization’s creative operations productivity is the establishment of a single, centralized (ideally cloud-based) digital asset repository. This one change completely alters the way your team stores, manipulates, collaborates, searches, retrieves, tracks, secures, and shares photos, videos, PDFs and other files.  (Note: many of globaledit’s customers have already taken this step and have made globaledit that digital asset repository.) When you move to a central repository, the first impact your entire organization will notice is the sense of clarity that will emerge. The constant questions and uncertainty about “where the latest version is” and “where those files are” will be gone. A simple browse or search becomes the path to find any and all files – from anywhere and at any time. In this new world everything anyone needs to access is always just a search or a click away. It will make things easier when someone needs to grab the approved final version of an image, when someone needs to quickly browse through every shot taken on an old shoot, or when you need to check the metadata on a certain photo or video. The largest benefit may be in time saved. It will no longer take hours or even days to figure out where a file is, or on what hard drive it was stored. Projects finally move along and deadlines get hit rather than missed. Another potential win is mobility. You can now access years of archives right from your phone or tablet, and send it along to anyone with just a click. This kind of always-at-your-fingertips access to your library transforms the value of your entire photo and video library. Many companies find that the number of mistakes throughout the creative production process drops when a central archive is created. First because it is much easier to find the exact right version of any image when it’s needed. Secondly because many of these platforms offer some form of digital rights management — to enforce important rules or contractual obligations. There are other benefits too: Avoid mistakes, gain universal access, save time, and simplify the life of everyone touching your creative operations. It’s easy to understand why establishing a centralized digital asset repository should be considered your first step towards better productivity.

  Scot Safon, brand consultant and media executive, and former CMO of The Weather Channel, CNN, and TNT, was our Creative Ops Breakfast guest speaker in February 2016. In this short interview, Scot talks about why brands need to be storytellers, and the impact of storytelling on company culture.  

What should brands focus on when creating visual content? Jim Zdancewicz, Head of Creative & Content Production for eBay Enterprise, identifies three key principles for creating efficient and relevant visual content for your brand: 1. Define a clear brand message. 2. Determine your key objectives – and measure the results to optimize your creative assets. 3. Pick the channels that expose your brand in the right way, optimize for these channels – and expand from there. Watch Jim Zdancewicz’s full answer:

When getting creative assets out the door becomes too painful, and complaints and frustrations start to pile up, now might be a good time to review your organization’s processes and inefficiencies. Revisiting a workflow is an arduous task that requires months of planning and adjustment. But doing so can bring tremendous value to your organization and business: It increases predictability and reduces variance, it expands your creative team’s capacity and productivity, and ultimately, saves your team frustrations and your company money. Where to start and how to convince the top management of the ultimate return on investment? During our monthly Creative Ops Breakfast on October 22, 2015, three creative operations professionals join us to share their experience and advice on how to (re)build an efficient creative production workflow: Stephen Hunking, Director of Studio Services and Asset Management at Showtime Wiesia Mancewicz, Principal at High Touch Studio Lauren Philson, Digital Assets Manager at The Rockefeller Foundation We’ve turned their thoughts and insights into a guide to help you initiate a workflow overhaul. Step 1: Identify the problems “If you had no complains, then you probably have a very amazing system. I’ve never had zero complaints.” – Stephen Hunking, Director of Studio Services and Asset Management at Showtime. Clearly your team’s feedback should already provide you with great insights on what’s working or not. Start your petition by listing the main pain points and recurring complaints that people raise. Down the road you should measure quantitatively or qualitatively how these bottlenecks impact your team’s productivity, and ultimately your business. Step 2: Build a task force Time to involve your team /organization. On the one hand you need to convince your top management that investing in a creative production workflow overhaul will bring value to the organization. On the other hand, you need to empower your teammates so that they implement, drive, and embrace the change. Your task force will be composed of two groups: C-level and decision-makers: The initial group that you bring together will most likely be a mix of executive, senior manager, or director levels. They come to the table and bring the business purpose and the business use cases for each department/teams that would be affected by the project. This core group go through your petition, prioritize, help inform the phasing of the actual project, and most importantly, assign a budget and internal resources to it. Ambassadors & end-users: The second group that you will bring together is what Lauren Philson, Digital Assets Manager at The Rockefeller Foundation, calls the “ambassadors”: “These are going to be your power users, the folks that are embedded within each of the departments“. In the long run, the ambassadors will inform you when there are issues with the system itself, or with adoption. Once everybody has adopted the system, you make them the trainers. Involving different part of the business, different teams, and end users early in the process is key to succeed. As Hunking reminded: “It is very easy to lose sight of the end-user. If you don’t involve them earlier and throughout the process, you might end up overwhelming them with features that they don’t really need, while neglecting features that they really do need”. Also, you don’t want to be the person that dictates how the process is going to work and what they are going to do – without consulting the team actually implementing it. Practice an open door policy: Allow your team to come back to you with questions. They should have ownership over their workflow, you’re just here to empower them to use the system for themselves and make it their own. Stay tuned to our blog for Part II: How to Document Your Workflow

Lauren Philson, Digital Assets Manager at The Rockefeller Foundation, specializes in enterprise system deployments in both the private and public sectors. Lauren views Digital Asset Management (DAM) as a dynamic keystone in any organization’s technology suite and has driven strategic integration projects with PIM and ECM platforms. Championing efficiency and overall effectiveness, she emphasizes process and change management alongside technical considerations in order to craft the best possible user experience. Lauren is currently rolling out a new DAM for The Rockefeller Foundation as part of a larger digital enhancement to evolve the esteemed philanthropy’s message through storytelling and compelling media. Previously, she implemented DAM and a suite of creative tools for e-commerce leader Gilt.com. Lauren recently shared with us tips and advices on how to seamlessly implement a new digital asset management system in an organization. Watch the full interview:

What are the key visual assets that your brand should focus on?  Vanessa Holden, independent consultant and former SVP, Creative Director at West Elm, shared with us the main creative assets that every brand should always have available. First and foremost, before even thinking about producing visual content, brands need to know and understand who they are, with Holden reminding us that “The core of communicating any brand is being very clear on what the heart of your brand is.” This clarity in the message you want to deliver to the public and to consumers will guide you first set of brand visuals: Create visual assets that are directly related to your brand’s core and that showcase your brand’s key differentiator on the market. These assets will seek to “bring to life your story the most”. Only then can you turn your attention (and budget) to more experimental visuals and content pieces. Burberry is a great example of this creative production strategy, according to Holden: “They identify their heritage, as an inclusive and exclusive brand, then boldly step forward to a very different media landscape”. Watch Vanessa Holden’s full answer:

Many brands have spent the past few years rushing to every new channel that pops up, without a clear purpose or goals. Today, brands are refocusing on their core message and looking at the channels strategically in terms of the audience and message they want to get across. Jim Zdancewicz, Head of Creative & Content Production for eBay Enterprise, recommends that brands “pick the channels they feel have the best chance of exposing their brand in the right way and expand that from there”. For Zdancewicz, there is a risk in thinking that every single channel is relevant. “Don’t go too broad too early, you risk watering down your message or losing control of your message”. Watch Zdancewicz explains the importance of choosing the right channel(s) for your brand:

Omnichannel marketing is reshaping creative operations teams, noticed Vanessa Holden, Independent Consultant and former SVP, Creative Director at West Elm. Vanessa was part of a panel discussion titled “The impact of omnichannel on creative operations” presented by globaledit, on September 22nd, 2015. She shared with us her thoughts and insights on the evolving role of creative and production teams on set. 1. Integrated production: the new normal Today, creative teams are becoming more integrated to produce and serve every channel of the marketing mix. The multiplicity of channels forces production teams to leverage every photo shoot to produce a large variety of visual content (photos, behind-the-scene photos and videos, etc.) in a minimum amount of time and budget. Typically, the main photo shoot with models for print and catalog becomes an opportunity for brands and organizations to create low-budget visual content, such as behind-the-scenes photos and videos, which can be leveraged on a multitude of channels. 2. Building hybrid creative and operations teams This new integrated approach requires creative production teams to develop a new skill set: “An art director mindset in a creative ops space”. Creative teams become hybrid as they need to understand all the moving and visual parts involved in the campaign creation, the connection, continuity, and complementarity of each piece. 3. Mastering the visual vocabulary of a brand “The fluency and confidence in the visual vocabulary of a brand throughout the [creative production] team is going to be more of a differentiator”, said Vanessa Holden. With reduced teams on set and shrinking budgets, everybody on set needs to know the brand’s values and objectives, and identify in real-time the perfect moment, image, video, format that will best convey the brand’s story. A successful brand will be able to get the right tuning of the visuals it needs and it creates on set, especially with distributed creative teams. Watch what Vanessa has to say about the new creative production team in an omnichannel world:

Building and maintaining brand consistency across every single marketing channel is incredibly challenging. How do you provide the best brand experience everywhere your customer is? During a recent Creative Ops Breakfast at globaledit, Vanessa Holden, Independent Consultant and former SVP, Creative Director at West Elm, and Jim Zdancewicz, Head of Creative & Content Production for eBay Enterprise, shared their insights into building a successful brand platform in today’s complicated omnichannel world. 1. Define a clear brand identity & message Marketing 101: At the foundation of any successful company is a clear brand identity and message, attached to a compelling story. “The core of communicating any brand is being very clear on what the heart of your brand is”, says Vanessa Holden. Identify your key differentiator and what makes your brand unique and relevant in today’s competitive marketplace. 2. Let the creative follow from there The brand message should always come first, then creative assets can follow the brand’s story. What visuals should a brand generate? For Vanessa, the key is to create “A balance of content”. First and foremost, brands should create a visual storytelling that relates directly to their core message and values. As Jim Zdancewicz reminds us: “The most important thing is to be on message and on brand, and make sure you stay true to that”. For Jim, the message dictates how you produce these assets – an iPhone to shoot a behind-the-scenes video, a drone, etc. A brand should experiment in new formats or new emerging media only once mastering the core visuals. For Vanessa Holden, that means being “super flexible and responsive in surprising ways”. Burberry is a typical example of successful brand that have been able to identify its heritage, and then boldly step forward to a very different media landscape. 3. Stay true to your brand Be honest: Not every single channel will be relevant for your brand. Pick carefully those channels that bring your brand story to life and resonate the most with your audience. “The most successful brands are the ones that have figured out their core values, and their core channels”, explains Vanessa Holden. After selecting those core channels, make sure you optimize them constantly to be “relevant and vibrant”. Once you’ve learned the best practices, you can start propagating them to new channels. As Jim Zdancewicz advises: “Don’t go too broad too early, you risk watering down your message or losing control of your message”. 4. Know what success looks like before you start Everyone on your creative production team should be very clear about the business objectives and calls to action: Should customers watch, share, or buy? Agreeing on the goals and then measuring the results will help you tune your message and get the best results out of your creative efforts. 5. Master your brand’s visual fluency Whether on set or in the office, your creative production team needs to understand the brand’s message, objectives, and master the brand’s visual vocabulary. Why? Vanessa Holden explains: “while the brand is in motion, [they can] identify those great moments that are going to become parts of a bigger brand ecosystem”. On set, behind-the-scenes, literally anywhere, anyone on the creative team should be able to spot the photo, video, GIF, etc., that should be created for a channel, while reinforcing the brand’s story. “An art director mindset in a creative ops space” could make all the difference between creating just another visual and creating a compelling piece of content that successfully reaches your audience. Watch the full recording of our breakfast on “The Impact of Omnichannel on Creative Operations”:

Vanessa Holden is a creative leader with an established track record of creating, launching, extending, and growing global brands. As the former SVP, Creative Director of American lifestyle brand West Elm, Vanessa oversaw the creation of a completely integrated omnichannel brand experience, leading the teams who created all facets of the customers’ brand experience. Vanessa has focused on the art of storytelling through images and words throughout her diverse career in publishing and design. As Senior Vice President and Editor-in-Chief of Martha Stewart Living, Vanessa oversaw the creative and editorial direction of the award-winning magazine and married its visual style with the brand’s media and retail segments. Vanessa recently sat down with us to discuss content consumption, successful and impactful visual storytelling, and changes that affect today’s creative operations teams. Watch the full interview.

Jim Zdancewicz is the Head of Creative & Content Production for eBay Enterprise, and contributes his over 25 years of content production expertise, operational management, and creative producing to the eBay Enterprise team. Jim has grown the eBay Enterprise studio business with an ever-expanding roster of top fashion and eCommerce clients. His passion for creative imagery, video, and technology is a key driver in eBay Enterprise’s delivery of multichannel content across all customer touch points. Jim recently sat with us to discuss content creation strategy, omnichannel marketing, and measuring success. Watch the full interview: