If you are a marketer in a big brand, with distributed teams producing collaterals in multiple markets, products, and languages, you often face challenges around speed, consistency, and collaboration.
For an example, imagine managing the production of brochures and promotional material for 26 languages and multiple products. You have a large number of stakeholders; product managers, distributors, dealers, design agencies, photographers, copywriters, translation agencies and printers. You also have sensitive assets of new products that cannot be made public.
While critical, managing stakeholders is only a part of the challenge. You also have sensitive assets of new products that cannot be made public. And while you may work with some robust individual solutions and tools, photos, design, copy, and other collaterals may be stored or worked on in different, unconnected systems, leading to lost time in finding assets and creating content.
This type of situation is what we at WoodWing call Content Spaghetti - workflows and tooling that have a number of loose ends, lack of structure and visibility, and an elevated risk of assets or approval flows getting lost in the mess.
This was the situation at Yamaha Motor Europe (YME).
Content Orchestration with Graphit and WoodWing
At WoodWing, we define Content Orchestration as a state in which tools are seamlessly integrated, and working with one another, combined with strong workflow management, training, and organization. YME selected WoodWing partner Graphit - which has extensive experience in this field - to help it build an integrated editorial workflow system as it worked towards Content Orchestration.
Working together, YME and Graphit ran a detailed analysis of the interest groups, working methods, and marketing materials involved in its content processes. Based on this, Graphit designed an integrated solution that included:
- WoodWing Assets (formerly known as Elvis) - WoodWing's digital asset management product, and WoodWing Studio, (formerly known as Enterprise) - WoodWing's workflow management product.
- A page planning module.
- A content exchange module.
- EasyCatalog Server for pagination.
In addition, integrations with two key solutions used by YME also helped the organization take another step towards Content Orchestration:
InRiver PIM: The solution is integrated with the InRiver PIM system, in which multilingual product content is managed. This integration means that users of the WoodWing editorial system have access to all the content they need for both online and offline channels.
Adobe InDesign: With Adobe InDesign automation, the brochures are created automatically, and previews are shown in the web browser. If changes in the layout are required, they can be requested from the designer and approved by the marketing team via the workflow in WoodWing Studio.
Advantages of WoodWing Assets for Yamaha
WoodWing Assets offers a number of advantages that solve YME's particular situation. Two of these are:
- Extensive control over who can see, edit, or use assets - meaning that the chance someone internal or external would use the wrong image was minimized. Permissions can be applied on a general folder level, and more specifically on metadata fields like status, copyright, date or a geographical restriction.
- A robust metadata workflow. WoodWing software automatically extracts technical information, such as filename, date created, file size, file format, and so on. It also allows users to choose keywords from a taxonomy or add your own metadata. In addition, you can create an unlimited number of custom metadata fields to help you store non-standard information.
Advantages of WoodWing Studio for Yamaha
Asset management was a key part of the puzzle. But also critical was how to manage the workflow and approval process. At this scale, running publications for a brand has many parallels with a magazine or similar type of publisher. A few of the challenges that brands such as YME may face include:
- A complex approval process.
- Versioning - keeping old versions backed up in case you want to revert, and knowing which version you have.
- Creating content for different channels - in print this could mean brochures versus magazines, or different languages. It can also mean for online and print.
A peek behind the scenes of YME's DAM setup
Saved by WoodWing… an hour before the world's biggest trade fair
Within the system designed and assembled by Graphit, YME users work in a single, central environment in WoodWing Studio, where they know exactly what is expected from them and when, based on their role and workflow. Via the platform, YME arranges the automatic production of 26 different language versions of the brochures. These are sent via the workflow to over 3,000 distributors, who are able to:
- Adjust copy and images online.
- Choose pre-selected images per page based on the online editor.
- Automatically send to head office for approval, or otherwise, of the 'localized brochures.'
WoodWing Assets significantly improved collaboration both internally as well as with creative agencies. From shooting to final use, the metadata now travels with the image files, enabling the team to find all pictures immediately, and the system ensures 24/7 availability of press materials for PR agencies across Europe.
Just a month after the launch of the system, the team was able to provide all images across Europe exactly at the specified embargo time for EICMA - the world's most important trade fair for two-wheel vehicles - with the last images came in from photographers just one hour before deadline.
