Why is a consolidated video marketing archive important?

Let’s start by comparing the situation today with that 15 years ago.

Traditional agency processes no longer apply

Once upon a time, in the pre-digital production era, agencies had a job bag and a tape library. Those made up the agency’s single source of truth for productions. All the elements, all the information about them, all the masters, visible and touchable on one shelf.

Now, elements go one way and masters go another. You have different versions for TV and online. Local and international. You use a range of production companies. Plus some campaigns you produced entirely in-house. When you need to re-version an old ad in a hurry, what do you do? Where do you look?

Brands and advertisers have more content suppliers

Back in the Mad Men days, you had a single agency who shot and edited all your content.

But times have changed. Even if you’re still using the same agency, they’re unlikely to be the only people making content for you. You might have a digital agency, a PR agency, an experiential agency, all recording video which you can use and re-use. You may even have someone in-house as well.

Your first challenge as a brand is to get all your original content into one place as a single source of truth. So everyone knows where to look.

For agencies, things aren’t quite as complex. But with more footage (digital storage is far cheaper than film or tape ever was, so you can shoot as much as you like), the amount of video content you have to store and organise is always growing.

Distribution has fragmented

15 years ago (as some but not all of us can remember):

  • YouTube didn’t exist.
  • Facebook didn’t exist.
  • And the fastest residential internet was just breaking through 1.5 mbps!

No surprise that moving images in advertising were limited to TV and cinema. But things changed fast.

Now, everyone posts video on social media. Yes, we mean everyone. 100% of respondents to the Moving Images Moving Landscape survey rated social media in their top 3 marketing channels.

Out-of-home’s massive too – it competes with TV advertising for second place. Then there’s other online advertising networks, plus of course cinema is still an option.

All these channels mean different technical formats and aspect ratios. And creative variations too. Differing ad lengths. What about content which isn’t advertising, but is marketing? Things like how-to videos, webinars and presentations. Once again, increased complexity.

The hungry content machine needs more

Consumers are always hungry for more video. That’s driving a need to re-use. 2 in 3 survey respondents are re-using content. And half of them have problems finding what they need.

A consolidated archive helps you find what you want, when you need it

You might be an agency re-versioning an ad to roll out across new media channels. Or maybe you’re a brand repurposing existing material for social media or to tie in with breaking news. Whatever the scenario, it makes sense to have a single source of truth. Somewhere you can find all your finished content, plus all the rushes and spare footage you might need for this project.

Our Preferred Connection digital services offer a single source of truth – for all your content.

What’s special about our systems is that we can handle the most data-hungry video file you throw at us. Our tech eats 8K rushes for breakfast and size is never a problem. So you have the option to keep all the rushes, audio, artwork, sub-masters and masters – in one place.

  • Easily accessible and safe in the cloud.
  • For as long as you want.

We are a dedicated Client Service team who do all the heavy lifting for you. Review and sort your files. Manage the ingest process. We’ll even develop a custom archive policy for you and make sure all your content complies.

Don’t want to chase different suppliers every time you need an asset? You don’t have to. Just keep everything with us.

When you need something, simply call Client Service and we’ll sort it out for you.