Hail State’s High-Speed Content Machine

The creative engine powering Hail State

Mississippi State University, the state’s only public university to grow in 9 of the last 10 years, is home to the Bulldogs—a powerhouse athletics program and founding member of the Southeastern Conference. With a growing national presence and a fanbase spanning multiple sports, their creative team works tirelessly to meet the nonstop content demands of modern college athletics. To keep pace with in-game moments, brand storytelling, and internal requests, the team needed a streamlined solution.

The challenge: Scaling creative ops across multiple teams

As Director of Photography, Mike Mattina oversees a high-output creative team tasked with capturing and delivering content across every sport. He works closely with communications, social, and design staff to feed a hungry content ecosystem. But the workflow wasn’t built to scale. 

Here’s what they were up against:

• Photo requests slowed down production. The team was drowning in demand. “We were getting requests left and right… [the former Director of Photography] spent his entire day sending out photos.” Without a centralized archive, every ask became a manual task.
• No unified storage meant wasted time and lost assets. Images were scattered across Dropbox, local drives, and random folders. “There was no real place where we kept all of our photos,” said Mattina. This made retrieving past assets inefficient and often frustrating.
• In-game delivery was clunky and outdated. Sharing live photos meant hauling laptops into dugouts and juggling card readers mid-game. “It’s a first-to-market-wins mentality, so when we storm the court or something huge happens, you want to be able to immediately get that content out,” Mike said. 

“It was tough sending live in-game photos, and especially being able to use FTP, in the past. It meant having a copy card and a card reader that you would attach to your phone or something like that. You’d have your computer there in the dugout and have to take your time during games to try and send off photos.”

Mike Mattina, Director of Photography, Mississippi State Athletics

The solution: Real-time workflows and smarter access

Before PhotoShelter, the team was reactive, patching together workflows with outdated tools. Now, they operate with speed and clarity, delivering content as fast as the action unfolds.

Here’s how they did it:

• Live FTP uploads mean social content hits instantly. With PhotoShelter FTP, editors receive photos seconds after they’re shot. “We get them out immediately,” said Mattina. It’s changed how they show up online, especially for viral moments like court storms or walk-off wins.
• Parallel FTP folders keep everything organized. Multiple events happening at once? No problem. “We have multiple FTP folders going at once… so Communications and Social Media know exactly where to go.” Even during high-traffic weekends like Super Bulldog Weekend, nothing gets lost.
• Smart tagging turns the archive into a powerful search tool. Every image is tagged with the player’s name, jersey number, and event details. “Anything we would want searchable in PhotoShelter,” Mike said. This makes collaboration across departments quick and easy.

• Mobile access through FileFlow makes the system portable. Whether it’s a graphic designer on the road or Mike posting from his phone, PhotoShelter’s FileFlow app keeps everyone connected. “It’s all really quick,” he said. Fulfilled requests happen in seconds, not hours.
• Slate integration connects photos to social-ready templates. Hail State’s design team uses templates in Slate, and with PhotoShelter integrated directly, assets are one tap away. “It helps streamline the graphic design to the social post timeline,” said Lexi Turner, Assistant Director of Creative Design. “Being able to have direct PhotoShelter access in the Slate app is one of the biggest gamechangers in creative media.”

“We use the FileFlow app to be able to access our library on mobile. So, our graphic designers or social media team can access the photos and share them, no matter where they are. For our personal stuff, too… When I’m on the road and want to create a social media post myself, I can simply download some of my own photos or fulfill different photo requests if someone can’t find a suitable image. It’s all really quick.”

Mike Mattina, Director of Photography, Mississippi State Athletics

Delivering content at game speed with the DAM platform built for sports

Social media is about speed, and with PhotoShelter, Hail State wins the race every time. What used to be a slow, manual grind is now a seamless, high-performance workflow.

“PhotoShelter is really just an all-in-one platform for anything you want to do with your media – with the ability to allow access to however many people or as few people as you want; to be able to open up links, share content externally, and FTP… it just hits everything that we need in the sports industry, whether it’s sharing images fast, or sending externally to as many people as we need to. It just works for everyone.”

Mike Mattina, Director of Photography, Mississippi State Athletics