Aspiring media and entertainment creatives are constantly on the search for their big break. Fortunately for them, Promax is a global nonprofit association dedicated to career development in the entertainment marketing industry, representing thousands of people who create, market and distribute content in media.
Connecting students with assets
In 2011, Santa Monica College, in collaboration with Promax, designed a one-year, accredited on-air promotions training program called Promo Pathway. The program provides hands-on education in writing, editing, production and design for 20 students each year.
To support Promo Pathway, Promax connects students with formerly retired media files and marketing assets from their community of entertainment professionals. Production companies such as Viacom and NBCUniversal are key donors of assets for the program. Students can then use the high-quality media files to create mock marketing campaigns. This simulates for students what the actual creative process would be for producing marketing collateral for film and entertainment promotions. Furthermore, students get the experience of a formal creative review with their professors.
Large files challenge smooth transfers
Promax realized early on that transferring large files and raw multimedia assets was a challenge. First off, the file size for video assets typically exceeds limits for attaching and sending files via email. Working with different entertainment companies to collect files resulted in downloading files from multiple file-sharing services and then uploading the files to consolidate into one solution for distribution to students.
An easy solution for multimedia content sharing
Since discovering Hightail, Promax has simplified the file-sharing process for the Promo Pathway program. With their Business subscription, they are able to share their custom Uplink URL with entertainment companies that are donating media assets. The entertainment companies can then quickly upload media files sized up to 500GB each – more than enough to support the multimedia content that needs to be shared. “From there, all we need to do is select the specific files that we receive and organize them into Spaces,” said David Tilove, Manager of Strategic Partnerships for Promax.
“The program manager adds an access code to each Space. Then, the professor just needs to share the Space URL and access code with their class. Students are able to preview and download the files and get to work in building their campaigns,” said Tilove. Spaces contain everything from the original campaign for the entertainment client – including the creative brief, brand assets and video footage.
“Coordinating all of these assets so easily for distribution could not happen any other way. The fast upload speeds, high file send limits, unlimited storage and ease of organizing content for sharing are invaluable. Hightail was the solution we needed.”
