Wendy’s Serves Up Crave-Worthy Content Faster with PhotoShelter

Feeding the Eyes with Captivating Visuals

Wendy’s, a global fast-food giant, uses striking visuals to drive its marketing and communications. With a vast library of photos and videos highlighting its restaurants, events, and more, the restaurant chain needs an efficient system to manage and distribute content efficiently and effectively.

The Challenge: Unblocking Access to Assets

Chelci Fauss-Johnson, Manager of Digital Media & Event Communications at Wendy’s, oversees the company’s creative content and distribution. The team handles visuals for events, crew-customer shoots, and restaurants, as well as assets for powerpoints and internal/external communication. With a fast-paced and demanding workflow, Chelci’s team needed a solution that could keep up.

The challenges included:

• Reliance on a single shared drive. Users needed to be on the company network with the drive installed locally, making remote access and collaboration difficult. Relying on a single shared drive caused issues with access, storage, and sharing.
• Constant questions and asset requests. The team lacked a clear and efficient way to locate specific files, leading to frustration and wasted time. As the main creative arm for their department, Chelci was faced with a barrage of questions and requests, such as, “Where does this live?” or “Chelci, can you find this for us?”
• No sharing tools or secure permissions. Sharing content with external partners and media outlets was a challenge, with no easy way to control access or ensure proper usage. Chelci highlights the need for a tool that could handle “quick delivery” and “secure permissions for the right people.”

“There was a shared server in the building where we used to house most photography content. You had to be accepted into the shared drive and you had to have the drive on your local computer. We knew back in 2015 that we needed a digital asset management system.”

Chelci Fauss-Johnson, Manager of Digital Media & Event Communications

The Solution: Fresh Content, Served Faster

Wendy’s found the perfect recipe for success with PhotoShelter DAM. The user-friendly interface, robust search capabilities, and seamless sharing options have transformed the way the company manages its digital assets.

• PhotoShelter as the central hub for all digital assets. Single cloud storage eliminated files everywhere and endless email searches. Teams across the organization can find the assets they need, building self-sufficiency and reducing the burden on Chelci’s team. As Chelci puts it, “We’re starting with PhotoShelter, instead of starting with an email. So, increased productivity for me really means that we have everything at our fingertips ready to send to our clients throughout the business, without having to wait or try to search everybody’s different stashes of folders.”

• Intuitive permission controls and easy sharing. Better controls make it easy to share specific content with external partners and media outlets while maintaining brand control. Chelci notes, “We send photos to reporters. We send photos to outside companies. We really needed something that was in that online realm versus that shared drive realm we used to have.” These intuitive controls also make it easy for members of the Communications team to access files needed for powerpoint presentations and other projects.
• Powerful search and organization. PhotoShelter dramatically improved the team’s efficiency, eliminating time-consuming searches and bottlenecks. Chelci highlights the importance of “ease of access” and having a “commonplace” for assets, especially in a fast-paced comms environment where “interviews with authors of magazines or articles come up very suddenly and you have a short window to get them content.” She further emphasizes the platform’s impact on productivity, stating, “PhotoShelter just makes for a more streamlined process in our Communications function.”

“PhotoShelter is a great product. There’s a reason we’ve been with them for 7+ years now and haven’t really had a desire to look anywhere else. It fulfills our needs and it really does what we want it to do, so I think they should be really proud of that platform. Especially this platform at a reasonable price. When you see something this powerful and at that price point, it’s really really great.”

Chelci Fauss-Johnson, Manager of Digital Media & Event Communications

PhotoShelter Helps Wendy’s Satisfy the Content Cravings

PhotoShelter has proven to be the perfect ingredient for Wendy’s media management needs. By providing a centralized, user-friendly, and cost-effective solution, PhotoShelter has empowered the Wendy’s Communications team to streamline their workflow, improve collaboration, and deliver fresh content to both internal stakeholders and external partners without headaches or confusion.

“When we found PhotoShelter, it was the right price and the right user functionality for us, which is definitely why we went for them.”

Chelci Fauss-Johnson, Manager of Digital Media & Event Communications