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Inside Canto

How 5 educational institutions step up their marketing with Canto

by Catherine Chiang  |  December 2, 2019

5 min. read

Whether they’re educating the next generation of leaders or inspiring students of all ages to deepen their learning, educational organizations help shape our society and culture in meaningful ways.

Here’s how five education marketing and communications teams use Canto to centralize their content and elevate collaboration.

University of South Carolina – Upstate

The sign of the University of South Caroline (USC) Upstate.

USC Upstate has been named the top public university in the South, thanks in part to the hard work of the University Marketing & Communications (UMC) team. The UMC team needed a more efficient way to access and share their content, so that they could streamline their creative process and increase meaningful collaboration.

“When we got an image request, we would have to go through all the hard drives to find photos, and we couldn’t access the photos off campus. It was so time-consuming,” says Les Duggins, photographer at USC Upstate.

With Canto, the team has a home for all of their finished visual assets in Canto, including photography, videos and artwork. Having a central location for all visual assets keeps the team focused and in sync. It also enables collaboration across departments by simplifying how the team shares content.

“With Canto, we have a much easier way of sharing content between campus departments and even team members,” says Jav Rivera, multimedia producer at USC Upstate.

Read the full USC Upstate story.

Furman University

Furman university library

South Carolina’s Furman University was named one of 2019’s top 50 liberal arts colleges in the U.S. The communications team contributes to Furman’s rise in prominence through compelling marketing materials.

The communications team chose Canto to replace their scattered system of local servers, external hard drives, Box folders and discs containing thousands of unorganized photos. Now, they have a central hub for all photography in Canto.

“Canto rose to the top of our list of candidates for its intuitive interface, tagging and searchability, functionality and price point,” says Kaylee.

Canto has made a key difference in the team’s content workflows, helping team members find the best imagery to tell impactful stories in less time and collaborate with different teams across campus.

“Our Canto instance is organized and efficient, making locating assets a breeze. It has saved us so much time and provided access to the most current photography, which helps our work – whether print or digital – stand out in a crowd,” says Kaylee.

Read the full Furman University story.

Seattle Aquarium

A child looking on in astonishment at the Seattle Aquarium.

Seattle Aquarium inspires people of all ages to learn about and care for our oceans. Their digital marketing team needed a DAM solution that could manage content permission rights and centralize and organize assets.

“We’re producing more and more content, so being able to properly organize it and assess the content created without wasting money was something that we really needed in place. The file system on our servers just wasn’t working anymore,” says Pam Lamon, digital marketing manager at Seattle Aquarium.

With Canto, the aquarium has an organized content library and can easily share assets. The aquarium set up a public portal to share approved photos and videos with press and the public, cutting out the tedious task of finding and attaching assets via email. Another reason the aquarium chose Canto was to manage their group of volunteer content contributors, which helps the digital marketing team meet their growing needs for photos and videos.

“Canto has really helped us in terms of search functionality and metadata. A big thing for me was understanding permission rights for those assets,” says Pam. “Compared to Dropbox, it’s easier to use Canto to collaborate and share assets with people outside the organization.”

Read the full Seattle Aquarium story.

Mathnasium

Image of a child learning at Mathnasium.

Mathnasium helps kids make sense of math with customized learning plans that address each student’s specific needs. The company needed a user-friendly and powerful DAM to house and organize all its marketing collateral for its franchisees to access.

All Mathnasium campaign-related assets such as print and digital ads, email headers, social media art, video and even audio tracks, are organized into Canto. Their 900+ franchisees simply access these assets from the various portals they’ve set up in Canto. They set up separate portals with localized content for US and Canada – with appropriate cultural and spelling nuances, all while being centrally managed in a main library.

“Canto’s user-friendly interface allows our franchisees to quickly search for and download the marketing material they need,” commented Danny James, marketing and accounts manager at Mathnasium. “The robust reporting provides information that our marketing team never had before, which provides valuable insights into which assets are being searched, downloaded and shared and which ones are not.”

Read the full Mathnasium story.

Liberty Science Center

Image from the Liberty Science center.

Liberty Science Center is a museum in New Jersey dedicated to inspiring the next generation of scientists and engineers. As the museum approached its 25th anniversary, the marketing team needed a fast and easy way to find photos and videos dating back to the 1980’s that were spread out across Google Drives and local folders.

The science center chose Canto for its simplicity and intuitive interface that allows non-tech users and the graphic design team to easily find content. The marketing and design teams can easily find the assets they need in one convenient location.

“Canto is a fabulous product! We’re very happy with its ease of use. When I think about all the hours I’ve wasted searching for files over the years… we should have done this a long time ago!” says Elizabeth Romanaux, head of advertising and promotions at Liberty Science Center.

Read the full Liberty Science Center story.