How Yamaha Motor Europe optimized its marketing and PR with Elvis DAM
Results & Benefits
- Significantly reduced time to market
- Full control of distribution of mission-critical assets
- Easy sharing of content in a self-service approach
About the customer
Founded in 1968, Yamaha Motor Europe N.V. (YME) is the regional headquarters of the Yamaha Motor Company in Europe. YME markets motorcycles and scooters, marine outboard engines, water vehicles, 4-wheel all terrain vehicles (ATVs), and more in Europe. YME is responsible for the visibility of Yamaha in Europe and provides marketing support for 3,000 distributors and dealers in 26 countries.
Elvis DAM has rescued us – before the most important motorcycle show in Europe, the system has ensured the embargo on press images of the new models. Using the old system, we would never have made it – Elvis has rescued us.
Challenges
The wide product range and the country-specific differences in the vehicles lead to a very large number of images that must be managed with caution to avoid incorrect usage. Yamaha's legacy DAM system was not able to meet increasing demands, the metadata workflow and asset handling was cumbersome. The collaboration with dedicated partners, including a creative agency and a pool of photographers, was too time-consuming.
Evaluation
The new DAM system had to enable the marketing and PR team to easily collect, manage, find and share assets, including critical images of not yet released products. Another essential requirement was the ability to define a detailed metadata strategy and to embed the metadata into the assets. Studio-Online, a Haarlem-based image editing and layout agency working for YME, recommended Elvis DAM as a future-proof replacement of the legacy system. The team at Yamaha was impressed by the feature set and the ease of use of the system.
The implementation of WoodWing Elvis DAM at Yamaha Motor Europe proves, how international companies can optimize their marketing and time-to-market with digital asset management.

Implementation / Integration
The implementation was executed by WoodWing's partner Graphit and took only three months. The resource-efficient system runs entirely on multiple Mac Minis as servers. The internal team uses the Elvis DAM desktop client. External partners, including agencies and photographers, access the system via its Web client. Elvis DAM is integrated with the Web CMS SDL Tridion as well as a localization platform and a press kit site at the external PR agency.
Results & Benefits
Elvis DAM significantly improved collaboration both internally as well as with creative agencies involved in the localization of brochures and other documents in more than 20 languages.
- From shooting to final use, the metadata now travels with the image files, enabling the team to find all pictures in a snap.
- The system ensures 24/7 availability of press materials for PR agencies across Europe and guarantees accurate management of country-specific images.
- The DAM helps distributors with the creation of brochures and Web sites, enabling them to access the files they need in a self-service approach in seconds.
- 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. Last images came in from photographers just one hour before.
Partner
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