Customer stories

How Drake Cooper created a visual asset library for the future

Drake Cooper logoDrake Cooper is a full-service agency with offices in Boise and Seattle. We spoke with Engagement Specialist, Britton Hennessy, about social media teamwork, managing Idaho Tourism’s growing photography database and how Hightail became a critical part of their creative process.

Full-service agency with digital emphasis
Headquartered in Boise, Drake Cooper started as a traditional agency in 1978 primarily serving local and regional clients. Today, we’re over 40 people strong and supplement that with specialists, typically on the web development side, as well as photographers and videographers.

Brand ecosystem delivery
Our services span the marketing spectrum and are dialed in depending on client need, budget, target audience and the overall goals we set together. Working with one of our newer clients – a financial services company – our focus will include their online banking services, mobile apps, social presence, email campaigns and overall brand strategy.

Britton Hennessy from Drake Cooper I am an Engagement Specialist
As clients look to grow and enhance their online engagement through social media, digital partnerships and consumer marketing programs, I create strategies and tactics to help propel the brand forward. For some clients, this includes building a system to help them design, launch and manage content distribution. For other clients, we work hand-in-hand with them on seasonal campaigns or annual programs to co-manage the entire communication process.

A team of many
As consumers, we digest digital and social content over multiple points of the day (and night). For each of these posts, blogs, photos and articles, there’s a brand team behind the scenes building and curating calendars, coordinating to-dos and managing resources. In many cases, this team is led by a digital or community manager who collaborates with production specialists. With one of our destination marketing organization clients, Idaho Tourism, we work closely with them to manage a complex network of publishing tools, image platforms and content systems to help grow and enhance Idaho’s travel brand.

Idaho’s asset library of the future
As the state’s official travel marketer, Idaho Tourism is tasked with increasing statewide visitation throughout the year, including leisure daytrips, family vacations, conventions and special events. Central to showcasing the state’s scenic beauty and outdoor adventure is having up-to-date photography, video assets and other digital files at our fingertips. Creating an open source library of materials, the state can now support image requests (and soon video and VR) from publishers worldwide. The system has reduced both staff and file management time, thereby creating new opportunities to publish Idaho content, stories and photo libraries.

Drake Cooper - Visit Idaho photo library

Managing our workflow
Be it a one-use image or full production shoot, managing workflow streams is an essential task to handle upfront before production begins. To help grow our lifestyle image library, we partnered with Huck, the operations of Boise-based Tony Andrew. With shoots ranging from a culinary setting inside a restaurant in downtown Boise to multi-day excursions in the Idaho backcountry, our image deliverables can range from a handful to over 1,000. In working with Huck, the top 10-20% (10-200 shots) are selected and shared for client consideration. Sharing low-resolution files by email was difficult, as was using other web-based file transfer sites.

Huck introduced Hightail
We started using Hightail in December 2015 and liked it right out of the gate. One of the greatest benefits is that we can view all photos in one Space and in clear detail. This is a huge improvement over simply viewing filenames in a folder or scanning through raw thumbnails. With this improved production environment, we can now share and collect client feedback and ultimately launch assets into the marketplace in a fraction of the time.

Drake Cooper Hightail screenshot

Hightail saves time
As photos are ultimately delivered to diverse groups of publishers and media outlets, Hightail acts as the central clearinghouse. We mark initial photos we like as Approved, which makes it much easier to create the edited list for the client. They can then download what they want to use (in full resolution) from the same account. Having images (and staff) using a single platform is incredibly helpful. The bigger the shoot, the more time it saves.

Effective team collaboration
As Hightail does the heavy lifting of managing assets, we work with the client to streamline collaboration and automate production. In using Instagram for example, each Monday we create a Space, add relevant photos and use comments to share messaging suggestions. Idaho Tourism can then approve each one, post comments, etc, thereby making the entire process as real-time as possible. We’ll certainly be recommending Hightail to other clients.

Drake Cooper Hightail screenshot

To learn more about Drake Cooper, visit www.drakecooper.com, watch videos on Vimeo and follow them on Twitter and Instagram. Try Hightail for free at www.hightail.com.

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