Visual asset management helps teams find, share and reuse approved photos and videos from one central library. As part of a digital asset management (DAM) system, it supports consistent branding, faster content delivery and easier collaboration.
In PhotoShelter’s research, 66% of marketing and creative professionals who use a DAM said it helps them organize their work.
The 10 case studies below show these benefits in practice. They describe specific projects and results reported at the time, from sharing event photos with the press to giving archived footage a new purpose.
A Unified Brand Experience
An organized photo and video library gives teams a shared source of approved assets. That makes it easier to keep visuals consistent across websites, social media, public relations and partner communications.
Visit Greenland: Improved Branding
Visit Greenland shared high-quality photos with partners, including tour operators in Greenland and abroad, to support a fresh, diverse representation of the country. But when the organization used a combination of Flickr and Dropbox to share photos, partners found the system too tedious to use. The team moved to a cloud-based digital asset management system where they could store high-resolution photos in an easily searchable archive.
The Outcome: Streamlined Workflow and Consistent Messaging. After the move to PhotoShelter, more stakeholders adopted the system. Partners could find and share photos more easily, helping Visit Greenland tell a broader story about the country.
Read more: Visit Greenland case study.
Global Heritage Fund: Website Overhaul
The nonprofit Global Heritage Fund relied on donations to restore heritage sites around the world, but its website was filled with text and difficult to navigate. It failed to show donors the impact of its work. The team overhauled the website to put images in the spotlight, using its image library on PhotoShelter.
The Outcome: Centralization and Engagement. The case study reported that monthly website visits roughly doubled, from 4,000–5,000 to 8,000–10,000 following the visual overhaul. A searchable image library helped the team find imagery to show donors the impact of its work.
Read more: Global Heritage Fund case study.
LEGOLAND Florida: Faster Public Relations
When LEGOLAND Florida held a grand opening for its hotel, three photographers worked together to capture the ten-minute event. The team uploaded photos to a PhotoShelter gallery, and lead photographer Chip Litherland narrowed them down to 80 selects for the public relations team. The PR team chose 10 photos and sent the press a download link within minutes.
The Outcome: Speed and Message Consistency. LEGOLAND shared its selected images before the news outlets covering the event, giving the team an opportunity to shape the visual story.
Read more: LEGOLAND’s PR workflow.
PhotoShelter: Efficient Review and Delivery
When our team at PhotoShelter produced an in-house video ad for social media, we shared the first version with the review team through PhotoShelter. Once the final version was approved, we granted high-resolution download access to the person publishing the ad.
The Outcome: Collaboration and Efficiency. Visual asset management made review and file delivery easier for our team, especially when working with large, high-resolution video files.
A Centralized Repository
A cloud-based DAM system brings an organization’s photos and videos into one searchable library. With access permissions in place, teams can share content with the people who need it and find older assets for new projects.
Adventure Travel Trade Association: Post-Event Engagement
After an Adventure Travel World Summit, the photographers and videographers who covered the event uploaded their content to a PhotoShelter collection. The Adventure Travel Trade Association (ATTA) sent the link to the 700 delegates who attended, inviting them to find and share their favorite moments.
The Outcome: Distribution and Engagement. The original case study reported more than 12,000 gallery pageviews. Sharing the collection gave delegates a way to relive the event and provided content they could use to promote the destination.
Read more: ATTA case study.
Chick-fil-A: Breaking Down Silos
When Chick-fil-A opened its first New York City location, teams across the organization wanted photos. Photographer and visual asset manager Stanley Leary uploaded the images to PhotoShelter to make them available across the franchise network.
The Outcome: Centralization and Distribution. By using digital asset management to organize and share images internally, Chick-fil-A was able to break down the silos often found in large organizations.
University of Tennessee: Generating Revenue
Tennessee Volunteers fans wanted more than photos in their social feeds: they wanted prints for their walls. The university responded by launching the Vol Photo Store with PhotoShelter, offering game photos and special-edition prints.
The Outcome: Organization and Revenue. The store gave fans a way to buy university imagery and created a revenue stream that could help offset the cost of managing the photo library.
Read more: Vol Photo Store case study.
Clean Cooking Alliance: Repurposing Content
When the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, now the Clean Cooking Alliance, produced television public service announcements in partnership with Shell, the team used its archive to find video footage that demonstrated its impact. Footage shot for another project years earlier became part of the new campaign.
The Outcome: Searchability and Content Reuse. By finding and repurposing existing footage, the organization gave valuable content a second life and supported a new campaign without starting from scratch.
Read more: Clean Cooking Alliance video case study.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Using an Archive to Engage Readers
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette used its photo archive for a feature called “The Digs,” pairing historical images with stories about the city. When a popular Steelers player retired, the team used its PhotoShelter library to pull together career highlights for news stories and social media.
The Outcome: Centralization, Easy Access and Engagement. A searchable archive helped the newsroom find historical imagery quickly and add context to its coverage.
Read more: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette archive case study.
Catholic University: Preserving a Historic Moment
When Pope Francis visited the Catholic University of America in 2015, 25,000 people gathered on campus. The university’s communications team wanted to document the event from a distinctly “Catholic U” perspective. Four photographers captured the day, then uploaded their photos to PhotoShelter to share with the university community.
The Outcome: Archiving and Engagement. The collection created a record that staff, students, alumni and community members could revisit. Keeping those images organized also made them easier to find for future stories about the university’s history.
Read more: Catholic University case study.
Explore more PhotoShelter customer stories to see how teams manage their visual content.
