When your brand relies heavily on visual storytelling to convey its brand promise, hundreds of thousands of images can accumulate in service to a robust network of stakeholders, both internal and external.
We frequently hear from organizations that are struggling to find an efficient way to get their brand assets into the hands of their key stakeholders. More often than not, one person or team becomes the go-to for graphic and image requests. This creates process and cost inefficiencies. Projects become bottlenecked, and resources are wasted on low-value tasks.
Extensis customer, American Cruise Lines, faced this exact problem. Their creative team of 10 once served as the hub for all image and visual requests. This posed many challenges for the organization. On a daily basis, the creative team was inundated with image requests received from marketing, corporate, PR, and travel agents. Designers frequently found themselves sifting through out-of-date and duplicate assets trying to find exactly what was needed to fulfill a department’s requirements.
These recurring one-off requests were depleting the creative team’s strategic design time and slowing down workflows across the organization. A solution was needed to increase time for strategic design work, accelerate workflows across the organization, and eliminate out-of-date and unapproved images.
By centralizing approved assets in Extensis Portfolio™ and opening them up to the broader organization, demand on the creative team has been reduced by more than 65%. This has freed up time for strategic design work and accelerated workflows across the organization.
Moreover, they can rest assured that assets in circulation are the most up-to-date versions so their brand will not be compromised. Brett Wingate, Creative Director at American Cruise Lines, notes: “Extensis has helped make the creative department more efficient by streamlining the image request and search process. This has freed up a substantial amount of time that can be better spent on actual design work, and we are very happy about that.”
And American Cruise Lines is not alone in recognizing such productivity gains with Extensis Portfolio™. Brands such as 800Flowers, Nickelodeon Animation and The World Bank have seen significant reduction in requests of specific individuals or teams, and overall reduced time spent trying to locate images. Gardens Alive! experienced an impressive 95% reduction in requests of images from their photography team, allowing them to stay focused on creating new photography.
