How Marketing Agency, Prattify, Enhanced Operations with PhotoShelter’s Digital Asset Management

A Growing Marketing Agency Outgrowing Their Digital Tools

Prattify is a marketing agency focused on photo and video content for small to medium-sized businesses. As the agency grew, their old digital asset management system, SmugMug, couldn’t keep up. Technical glitches, workflow slowdowns, and inefficiencies across the board led Prattify to look for a new solution that could grow with the company. 

The Challenge: Limited Tools, Limited Growth

Stacey Steiner, the Director of Brand Activation at Prattify, manages the agency’s  large collection of photos and videos. She was experiencing a number of challenges with the team’s old digital asset management system that was causing headaches across her team. 

• Tagging limits. Prattify could only use a certain number of tags in SmugMug – and that limit was low. This restriction made it hard to organize and find images quickly, especially as the library grew. Stacey recalls, “With SmugMug, we were limited to only so many tags, so we were quickly running out of custom tags.” 
• Outdated tech. Stacey explained, “We have a rolling list of projects or products in motion that we go and take pictures of…We needed a way once the pictures were taken that [clients] could easily share.” However, this wasn’t possible with Prattify’s old system. These limitations continued to disrupt the team’s workflow and reduced productivity. 
• Disconnected workflows. Without advanced features to support their workflows, Stacey’s team couldn’t take a day off without clients suffering: “We used to have clients texting us or emailing us pictures. And if one of us was on vacation, we would get a text that the pictures didn’t make it to where they needed to go.”

“We had just kind of built a system for [SmugMug] and then quickly outgrew it.”

Stacey Steiner, Director of Brand Activation

The Solution: A Modern Platform for Digital Asset Management

Transitioning to PhotoShelter, Prattify found a powerful tool that addressed their immediate challenges and enhanced their capability to manage digital assets effectively.

• Advanced tagging. PhotoShelter’s advanced tagging capabilities allow Prattify to efficiently organize digital assets for quick and easy access. Stacey recounts, “We’re managing multiple clients at the same time. Being able to tag their photos helps us a lot. If I need something for social media, I can just easily search and find it. PhotoShelter also helps me identify where we have gaps. If I know I’m going to promote something on social media and I don’t have any visuals for it, I can schedule photographers or videographers to create the content.”
• Modern features. PhotoShelter’s modern features like advanced permissions and Smart Galleries were a huge departure from what Prattify had before. Advanced permissions “are huge” for Stacey’s team, and ensure only clients can access their own assets. Additionally, Stacey appreciates that, “We can download our galleries from you at any given time, and the photos are still tagged with what they need.”
• AI-powered search features. PhotoShelter’s AI Visual Search tool has proven particularly useful for engaging social media posts. Stacey details, “One time I was trying to create a social post for 4th of July for a structural engineering client. I used PhotoShelter’s AI Visual Search to search for ‘flag’ and to find a house of theirs that we took a picture of. I was able to post it for our clients and it was a more authentic post than something generic I could have made.”
• PR pitches & media coverage. Stacey explains, “[PhotoShelter] also helps with my PR pitches to the media. We have our albums all saved with passwords. I can send them out and say, ‘Hey, we did this field day at a school. Here are pictures of our clients. Here are photos you can use, with photo credit, etc.’ Then, they can download the pictures with the password. Maybe the media couldn’t show up to our event, but later that day I can send pictures out, and they might still cover it.”

“PhotoShelter is really important to us. We’re such a strong photo and video based company that having a system to keep all these assets organized is crucial. It also helps us streamline our operations. We don’t have to pay for extra storage in Google Drive or Dropbox, and the time saved is immense.”

Stacey Steiner, Director of Brand Activation

Securing Prattify’s Success with Strategic Digital Asset Management

Prattify now has a dependable and effective digital asset management tool built to grow with their agency. 

PhotoShelter has played an integral role in Prattify’s digital transformation and helps make sure nothing slows the agency down. Prattify can now tackle new challenges and seize client opportunities with confidence.

“I definitely think PhotoShelter helps us, especially with how many contractors we’re using. Everything’s in one place, it’s easy to keep track. It’s not an email to one person or the other in our company. Everything is streamlined, and it helps us set a process in place for all of the different contractors. And to make sure that everybody’s uploading the pictures in the same way, tagging them in the same way.”

Stacey Steiner, Director of Brand Activation