mcgarrybowen Streamlines Assets, Including Video, with WebNative Suite

mcgarrybowen, a Dentsu agency, has been a respected and innovative partner to its clients since 2002. The young agency has grown rapidly in a relatively short amount of time, winning numerous honors such as Advertising Age’s Agency of the Year in 2009. Its roster of clients includes such iconic brands as Verizon, Marriott and Disney, among others. With so much momentum behind the agency, progressive initiatives were put into effect to help increase efficiency and streamline the internal workflow.

Maria Shippee
mcgarrybowen
Director of Digital Systems

“Our success is really dependent on having strong relationships between our IT department and different department heads. Everyone understands what they are trying to accomplish and develops plans for getting their workflow executed in combination with the technology and systems in place. The installation and implementation of Xinet^® WebNative^® Suite is a good example of that,” said mcgarrybowen’s Director of Digital Systems, Maria Shippee.

The Graphic Services department first recognized the need for a digital asset management (DAM) system because of the huge number of files that needed to be managed and the speed at which jobs were being produced, retouched and sent out. WebNative Suite helped reduce redundancies, streamline the workflow, and make things run smoother and faster.

Asset sharing was also increasing among the print, digital and broadcast departments, quickly spreading the use of WebNative Suite across the agency. mcgarrybowen built a custom workflow for the television spots it produces and created a library of all its video files using the WebNative Suite video feature. Now any employee from any department can go into the library and retrieve a required spot.

“The video library is a big linchpin for the video workflow that we are growing at mcgarrybowen. Video assets need to be reviewed and repurposed among departments and before the video library there wasn’t an easy way to do that. You had many departments working on their own, unknowingly using the same file, requesting it multiple times, or doing double the work. Having a central location where everyone can go and see all the files has cut down so much extra work,” said Shippee.

The Video Reel Generator, a WebNative Suite tool, is utilized by the staff to create custom reels rather than having to rely on mcgarrybowen’s video editing suite. If a client needs to see all of their spots from the past month or when the agency presents a new business pitch showcasing a reel of mcgarrybowen’s top 10 spots, the work can all be done directly from the desktop. In the past, reels had to be requested from the video editing suite, creating not only a time constraint but taking away from billable work. With Video Reel Generator, users can arrange the video clips in the order they want, adjust the length of the clips, crop out the slates of the clips, and more.

“WebNative Suite is the tool that bridges all of our departments. It takes the guesswork out of identifying assets and allows people to communicate intelligently and focus on the task at hand,” said Shippee.
She added, “We save so much money in time and definitely in staff. Our business has grown exponentially over the years but our staff has not. We haven’t had to double or triple up because we are able to automate so much and have so many tools that do a lot of the heavy lifting. I can definitely say that WebNative Suite has been a big key in allowing us to keep up with demands without having to hire extra personnel.”