To meet their content needs, Zippy’s relies on both in-house creative specialists and a large number of freelancers. Their freelancers take photos and design visuals for promotions, social media and more, while their in-house team takes care of print materials. Making sure that the freelancers create work that’s consistent with the brand is a key part of Jacquie’s job.
“We use a widespread network of creators to make content for us, so we need to make sure everything they create is on brand. We decided to get a DAM to centralize our assets so that they’re all in one place to send to freelancers,” says Jacquie.
Before, Zippy’s was using a shared drive to store all of their assets, which made it difficult to share with people outside the company. The team chose Canto to simplify how they share content.
“If we wanted to send something to a freelancer, we couldn’t give them access to our shared drive. With Canto, it’s easier to share and it’s all in one place, all online,” says Jacquie.
Zippy’s stores all of their brand assets, food photography and other creative content in Canto. The marketing team uses these assets for social media, promotions and digital menus. For Jacquie, having Canto in her toolkit has been a boon for managing the company’s extensive network of freelancers.
“Canto is super user-friendly and accessible. It was very easy to pick up and learn the mechanics; even with all the new features they’re adding, it’s still easy to use,” says Jacquie.
Getting organized
The Zippy’s Canto library is organized into folders for each corporate entity, and one for marketing. Jacquie primarily uploads content and uses keywords and tags liberally to make everything easy to find.
“If it’s a photo that’s going to be used for social, we tag ‘social’; if it’s for the bakery, we tag ‘bakery,’ and so on. We also use common tags, such as ‘lifestyle photography’ or ‘food photography’ to make it easy for people to find images,” says Jacquie.
“The biggest thing that we have in Canto is our food photos. After a photo shoot, we make sure the photos are put in the right folders because they’re our biggest asset that we use in our month-to-month promotional materials and the menu. In Canto, we can see what food photos we have and easily find the ones we need.”
When freelancers submit their work, Jacquie uploads it into Canto with the appropriate metadata to keep it all organized. The team has created custom drop-down fields with the names of the freelancers they most frequently work with and the type of content.
Simple content sharing
It’s easier and faster for everyone, including both internal and external stakeholders, to get the assets they need to do their work and stay on brand. The Zippy’s internal team can self-serve, and Jacquie is able to easily send freelancers links to assets in Canto.
“Our in-house creative specialists have access to all our photos with Canto. They’re able to search key terms and find assets at their own leisure. We also have other teams within the company that have access, like our Education and Development group. They use Canto for food photos to share with the rest of our stores to demonstrate how food should be plated. Our administration team also uses some assets in Canto, such as letterheads or community event photos,” says Jacquie.
“With freelancers, I will send them a Canto link with what they need. I have a folder containing all the assets I usually send to freelancers so I can do that pretty quickly.”
Canto has also come in handy for bigger projects, such as website and brand redesigns. Having all their assets in one place helps their external agency partners self-serve and get the work done more quickly without taking up more of the internal team’s time.
“With longer-term projects, we’ll grant the agency or freelancers temporary access to Canto with an expiration date. For example, we’re working with an agency to help us with a brand redesign, and they can just pull what they need directly from Canto,” says Jacquie.
To further streamline the process, Jacquie is using the Style Guide and Portals feature in Canto to create a one-stop shop for brand assets to send to freelancers and other external partners.
“We’re in the process of setting up a style guide and a portal within Canto so that we can just send that one link, rather than pulling directly from Canto each time. Media outlets or the community partner that we’re working with for the month may need our logo and brand colors, so we’re making a portal to share those assets with them. The portal will be more generic and the style guide will be directed towards freelancers with more of the assets they will need, such as our fonts and badges,” says Jacquie.
Dedicated customer support
With how user-friendly Canto is, the Zippy’s team hasn’t had many issues with the platform, but they appreciate that their dedicated customer success team is proactive in reaching out to share new features and tips for optimizing Canto.
“We haven’t had very many issues, but the customer support team has been extremely helpful with keeping us up-to-date with new features and how to properly utilize them, and helping us learn how to use Canto more efficiently,” says Jacquie.
