Matt Flowerday
Global Head of Photography, NIQ
About NIQ
NielsenIQ Brandbank is the leading provider of digital product content solutions, they enable brands and retailers to deliver the best shopping experience by providing the ability to capture and share rich digital product content on all channels seamlessly.
NielsenIQ Brandbank’s end-to-end solutions connect shoppers to the most up-to-date and relevant digital product content, making consumer goods more discoverable and engaging.
Introduction
When Matt Flowerday joined the company straight out of university, he was part of a team of three handling all photography and post-production in-house. Almost 18 years later, he heads up over a hundred photographers and studio people at fifteen locations across Europe and Asia, producing thousands of high-quality product images daily. At some point in that rapid growth process, post-production outsourcing became inevitable. “Because of the explosive growth, we needed a scalable solution to deliver the same quality we produced in-house. Post-production makes up 50% of our entire process, so choosing a partner for such a key part of our business needed to tick some boxes. Bright River did just that and has been a trusted partner for more than ten years now.”
A vital part of day-to-day operations
Each day physical products come into the various warehouses, where the products are scanned, weighed, and measured according to GS1 standards and entered into the system. From there, they are transported to the photography studios. The bulk of the imagery is standard packshots (90%). Once captured, the packshots are automatically transferred to Bright River through API integration with STREAM – Bright River’s post-production platform. Finally, the edited images are pushed automatically back to the in-house team at Nielsen Brandbank IQ.
“We used to check the quality of the edited images extensively, but now we barely check at all, as the quality of Bright River’s work is so consistently high. This is a huge time-saver for us.” The in-house team then adds the finishing touch to the images as the specs are very client-specific, so it is more efficient for us to do those last few percent in-house.
“If we had to expand our in-house editing team to handle the work at the scale and level of quality Bright River provides, it would take us years.“
The importance of a solid CSR policy
Nielsen Brandbank IQ is about people. “As a company, we value our people and the people we work with. We look for those values in our partners as well. So when deciding on choosing a partner, it is the first thing we look at. And we were very pleased to find Bright River upholds the same values we do.”
Full integration
STREAM – Bright River’s post-production platform – plays a crucial part in the workflow. Through API, STREAM is integrated into Nielsen Brandbanks IQ’s tech stack, enabling the images to run smoothly through the process. “Having STREAM has proven to be a valuable addition. We as a business have been able to effectively fulfill obligations in an agile and professional manner and saved vast amounts of time and resources.”
Smooth implementation
When you deal with substantial daily image volumes, going back and forth, any drag on the system results in a loss of productivity on both sides. Matt believes investing time and energy in the early implementation stage is critical. “What struck me most when we started working with Bright River was their willingness to invest time and resources into setting up a smooth-running workflow. We have high standards for quality and expect our partners to uphold those same standards. But we also realized that we needed to help Bright River understand us and our needs to achieve that quality standard.
You can’t expect to dump your images on an FTP server and have them edited perfectly from the start. Instead, at the onboarding stage, both teams took the time to understand each other and worked together to build the workflow that runs as smooth as it does.”
“We used to check the quality of the edited images extensively, but now we barely check at all, as the quality of Bright River’s work is so consistently high.“
Great results
“Working with Bright River has been very beneficial for us. We can rely on the work’s consistency, which can be scaled effortlessly when needed.
It has resulted in a highly efficient workflow that saves us time and resources. We highly recommend their services. In my role, I get approached daily by competitors offering similar services. The fact that I don’t even consider them an alternative probably best illustrates how happy we are with Bright River.”
Jeroen Gerretsen
Visual Content (3D, Image, Video) Production & Optimisation Expert
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