Established
Adobe puts content at the centre of everything.
Adobe’s content hub taps advanced digital features and a robust metadata framework to unleash creativity at scale.
1 source of truth
for 12 Adobe offices and 150 external teams
Objectives
Expedite connection to the content supply chain so marketers can work faster and better.
Eliminate silos and consolidate the need to perform work in various products.
Oversee a quickly growing repository of creative assets.
Streamline creative asset management.
Results
50% reduction in the time it takes to upload and tag final assets to Adobe’s brand portal, designed with Adobe Experience Manager and Workfront.
Adobe introduced a single platform: one point of intake and a single source of truth.
Teams are better able to manage assets despite a 300% increase in asset volume in the last year alone.
50% reduction in time to map project level information with the native integration between Adobe Experience Manager and Workfront.
Creatives, marketers, project managers and others can access desired content and assets with only a few clicks across 12 Adobe offices and 150 external teams.
As organisations wade deeper into the digital age, the ability to put creative content into motion is at the centre of success. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the marketing arena, where delivering the right message at the right time is critical.
It’s a concept that’s at the core of Adobe’s corporate marketing philosophy. With hundreds of thousands of assets on hand—photos, logos, banners, videos and much more—finding the right item and managing complex projects is a challenge. The rapid growth in demand for content isn’t making things any easier. From 2020 to 2021 alone, Adobe creative assets grew by 300%.
As a result, Adobe has tapped Adobe Experience Manager Assets and Adobe Workfront to construct a world-class corporate marketing content hub and brand repository. Twelve global teams within the company—as well as 150 agencies, vendors and partners outside Adobe—rely on these assets to create and manage campaigns but also to produce corporate presentations and other materials.
With powerful search features and embedded workflows, the content hub delivers an advanced digital framework. “It’s the de facto place where content lives. Asset downloading and uploading is nearly effortless,” says Austin Haycock, Senior Studio Manager at Adobe.
Making Every Connection Count
A brand should always live up to its values. “Producing beautiful content is table stakes at Adobe,” Haycock says. “Nothing less can be expected.” The challenge, of course, is generating outstanding content at scale. With hundreds of projects in motion at any given moment, ensuring that creatives, marketers and project managers can all easily find the right asset is essential.
“Producing beautiful content is table stakes at Adobe. Nothing less can be expected.”
Austin Haycock
Senior Studio Manager, Adobe
For Adobe, the answer lies in metadata. A sophisticated schema supports the vast number of project use cases and search requirements creatives require. “We have to ensure that every piece of content is tracked, available, distributable and that it can be repurpose by marketers around the globe,” Haycock notes.
The metadata framework, which incorporates 15 to 20 fields, allows creative and operational groups to pull up specific content quickly and effortlessly. For creatives, Photoshop or Illustrator or other Adobe creative tools may serve as the interface of choice. For operational staff, it may be Workfront. As Haycock explains: “There’s no need to adapt to the system. The system adapts to them.”
The framework also supports partner and agency connections without modifications to the hub. A connector lets users publish assets directly to Experience Manager Assets from Workfront. The embedded metadata ensures that all images are appropriately licensed and valid. The result is a creative platform that’s highly agile, flexible and scalable—and one that the Studio team can use to manage the entire content and asset ecosystem.
This level of visibility and transparency has proven transformative. There’s no need for file sharing services or extra links. “Publishing assets in a single place removes any confusion marketers and others might have around where they can find their content,” Haycock says.
Making Creativity an Asset
As organisations look to ratchet up their creative IQ, people, processes and technologies are at the centre of the equation. Workfront serves as the glue that holds everything together. It provides a single place to plan, intake, connect and view all the work in progress.
For example, when Adobe acquired Marketo in 2016 and Magento in 2018, creative teams from these organisations brought specific applications and processes with them. By consolidating teams on Workfront as a front-end tool for connecting to Experience Manager Assets and authoring content, Adobe has made it possible for everyone to work within a single platform. With a few clicks, content creators can enter Experience Manager Assets, where they can publish and distribute materials.
What’s more, the metadata automatically adapts to the specific programme a Marketer is driving. Since the metadata is marketer owned, it’s possible to identify specific values as they make creative requests and attach them to assets as they move through their project lifecycle.
Smart automation capabilities make it possible to capture programme, project and metadata at every phase of the process. This data is continually appended to the metadata in the digital asset management (DAM) platform.
“This makes publishing remarkably seamless for studio managers because the right descriptors and metadata have already been provided by the marketer,” Haycock explains. The result is a framework that takes advantage of digital tools and technologies but also frees humans to work in more intuitive and productive ways.
A Foundation for the Future
Adobe’s brand portal, named Adobe Marketing Hub, ensures that marketing groups are always working with the best possible assets. Teams are able to develop personalised campaigns faster and better. They’re also able to track the status of projects and understand assets in a broader context, including when and where they’ve been used in the past. Meanwhile, project managers can track performance and solicit feedback that leads to improved service level agreements (SLAs), delivery times and other key performance indicators (KPIs).
“The goal is to introduce automation and efficiencies that allow people to do their jobs in the most creative and efficient way possible. ”
Austin Haycock
Senior Studio Manager, Adobe
Adobe will continue to add and improve features in the Experience Manager Assets and Workfront platforms. This includes establishing deeper connection points within solutions. Haycock says that the goal is to further cement the notion that the content hub is the single source of truth for Adobe and its brand.
“It’s not a place for content to go and die,” Haycock concludes. “It’s a place to make it available and consumable from within other marketing tools. The goal is to introduce automation and efficiencies that allow people to do their jobs in the most creative and efficient way possible.”