Overview: An English Institution with Top-Flight Dreams
Formed in 1882, Burnley Football Club was one of the founding members of the English Football League and has been a national institution for nearly a century and a half. After the men’s team was relegated to the Football League Championship in 2021, it enjoyed a successful following season with Burnley returning to the premier League for the 2023-2024 season, competing against some of the most prominent clubs in world football.
The Challenge: Finding the Right Tools to Meet the Club’s Goals
Rob Porteous, Burnley’s Media and Marketing Director, manages a team of 12 employees responsible for various types of digital content, from videos to social media. As his team moved from the Championship to the Premier League, which has a global audience of 4.7 billion people, top-quality content became even more important.
With more attention on Burnley — and the opportunity for bigger brand partnerships — Rob and his team needed to streamline their internal processes. He started by evaluating the team’s digital tools, and he found several major issues:
- Too many tools. The team was using a cumbersome combination of tools including Google Drive, WeTransfer, WhatsApp, and email. With content everywhere, the team couldn’t easily find anything. There were files in too many places, and no one knew who uploaded what, when, or where.
- Manual uploads slowed the team down. Manual tasks were making workflows inefficient. The team required an employee to dig through match day photos, find the ones with each player, and bundle them to send. Doing this for every single player took hours.
- Missed opportunities for fan engagement. With a disorganized and disjointed photo library, Rob’s team struggled to track down the best images that would engage fans online. The move to the Premier League would come with pressure to operate at a higher caliber than ever before.
“I was overhearing conversations in the office where people were saying, ‘Where’s this? Where’s that? Who’s got this? Have you uploaded that?’ It wasn’t a seamless process where our photographers upload assets into one place and everybody knows where they are straight away. I like nice, clean processes and everybody knowing where everything is.”
Rob Porteous, Media and Marketing Director, Burnley FC
The Solution: A Content Distribution Workflow That Actually Works
Burnley chose PhotoShelter to help take its team from a national brand to the global stage. Here’s how PhotoShelter helped Burnley take on the challenges of scaling their marketing efforts:
- An all-in-one solution. PhotoShelter is now Burnley’s centralized visual content hub where all photographers upload and organize their photos during match weeks. Plus, with easier access to their library of photos, Rob and his team can make better — and more frequent — use of their assets across content channels.
- Faster content distribution. PhotoShelter AI, BrandID, and PeopleID features help quickly identify sponsors and players in every image, saving countless hours compared to manual tagging. Now, Burnley can automate the process of distributing photos to athletes and other stakeholders.
- Maximum content ROI. Rob and his team are now able to get the most out of their content library and ensure that they can quickly source the best image for every post.
“The use of images now is extensive, from YouTube thumbnails to social media posts. PhotoShelter helps make sure everyone within the team is using the best available images we’ve got and that they’re easy to find and source — ensuring that our content is the best it possibly can be.”
Rob Porteous, Media and Marketing Director, Burnley FC
The ROI of Driving Engagement at the Right Time
Putting the club’s content out to the right people at the right time helps increase brand and fan engagement, expand reach to a much wider audience, sell merchandise, secure greater sponsorship deals, and boost the overall status of the players. Now, Burnley is ready to scale its marketing globally — and it can do so effortlessly with PhotoShelter.
“The biggest thing for me is that we can actually find what we need, and the speed and efficiency of employee workflows is significantly better than it was before we used PhotoShelter.”
Rob Porteous, Media and Marketing Director, Burnley FC
