New Customer Announcement: McKinley County

McKinley County, in Western New Mexico, is full of art, culture, and outdoor recreation. To highlight all it has to offer and uplift the community, the county launched its brand, “Find Your Joy”, shining a light on McKinley County as a place that lifts your spirit.

Led by Brand Manager Brian Leddy, a one-man team within the County Manager’s Office, the brand was created both to invite visitors and to build pride among local residents. Brian says, “My mission is to tell the story of McKinley County. We live in an incredibly beautiful place that is very rural and I want to get those positive stories out there for the community.”

Bringing that brand to life meant managing a growing library of visuals and a need for one reliable media hub.

The challenge: Big mission, one-person team

Telling the story of a vast, rural county single-handedly comes with its challenges. With so many programs and community initiatives to cover, keeping files organized and accessible is critical to keeping their marketing efforts moving smoothly.

Without a dedicated digital asset management system in place for the county, staying organized and quickly fulfilling requests for media, local partners, and community organizations presented a constant bottleneck.

Brian needed a tool built for speed and simplicity so he could spend less time digging through files and more time sharing McKinley County’s story with the world.

Partnering with a platform built for creatives

The decision to bring PhotoShelter to McKinley County was an easy one for Brian, who brings years of firsthand experience with the platform from his background as a photographer and newspaper professional. Having previously used PhotoShelter in a newsroom setting to save time and organize their archives, he knew the tool was tailored to the needs of creative workflows.

“In a past position at a newspaper, I also implemented a system using PhotoShelter for archiving and print sales, which saved us a ton of time and more than paid for itself. It is a great tool that was built by people who understand the needs of creatives.”

Brian Leddy, Brand Manager for McKinley County

“I saw the potential for its use in county government, especially in a small organization and me being the only person doing branding/marketing in my organization,” Brian explains. “The main things I’m trying to solve initially are organization and efficiency. Staying organized and having quick access to images means it’s so much easier to get content to people and organizations quickly.”

By adopting PhotoShelter, McKinley County is building a central, organized home for the “Find Your Joy” brand. As the brand expands, the county plans to use more PhotoShelter features to collaborate with outside content creators and media partners.

“This is a great opportunity to spread the word about everything McKinley County has to offer through strong visual branding,” says PhotoShelter CMO, Christina Kyriazi. “We’re here to help Brian so it’s easy for the one-man team to work like a fully staffed DMO.”

Founded in 2005, PhotoShelter is a leading AI-powered digital asset management (DAM) platform for marketers and creatives, simplifying how teams collect, organize, and distribute content. PhotoShelter has been building AI into content workflows since 2023, when it launched AI Visual Search and established a formal AI Ethics Board to govern how those features are built. Those features now process 50 million images and videos a year. Trusted by global brands like the NFL, MLB, Purdue University, and Wendy’s, PhotoShelter securely manages more than 6.7 billion assets and supports nearly 100 million annual downloads.