Citizen Watch Streamlines the Distribution of Digital Assets With the Widen Collective^®

Challenges

Citizen Watch has been a trusted name and brand leader in the watch industry for over 100 years. Their marketing team has a history of working with external agencies to produce and manage their creative content.

Whenever the Citizen marketing team needed an asset, they had to call their creative agency and pay for each use. Further, the assets that Citizen stored locally were hard to find and rarely the master file they needed. “It was not cost effective and it was a waste of time for everybody,” said Brenda Abbott, former Art Director at Citizen.

The marketing team was consumed by asset requests from retailers. Responding to each request meant they had to find, load, zip, and send it. They needed a better way. 

Citizen selected the Collective as their digital asset management (DAM) system because of its ease of use and overall fit.

Objectives

Ownership: eliminate dependency on creative agencies to access digital assets

Organization: find assets quickly and easily

Distribution: give retailers self-service access to approved artwork

E-commerce:  improve the digital shopping experience by providing high-quality images

Solution

A one-stop-shop for digital assets

The Collective gives stakeholders self-serve, friction-free access to the creative content they need. “This was a big deal for us, to be able to put [content] somewhere where everyone can access,” said Brenda. Citizen uses roles and permissions to control which assets are available to different groups, including internal teams, retailers, and e-commerce.

And with Widen's Portals application, they can support campaigns and advertising priorities by bundling product-related content. This includes web banners, billboards, commercials, and print ads. Brenda shared, “It’s an easier way to group it all together and make it visually pleasing.”

Further, the Collective helps them control brand quality across their three subsidiaries, with a designated area in the system for each brand. “Three custom URLs — all with a shared back end — help keep each brand’s identity,” Brenda remarked.

Streamlined content operations, from creation to distribution
In recent years, the Citizen marketing team has expanded their in-house creative work to meet demand — the requests for custom art have quadrupled. To support this growth, they use the Collective’s Workflow application to guide and automate their internal review and approval process.

And by connecting the DAM system with other martech tools, they have optimized content sharing and distribution. The integration with their e-commerce platform, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, allows them to share current promotional assets with retailers quickly and easily.

Strong partnership
Before, during, and after the implementation of the Collective, Citizen has relied on Widen’s Support team to get their questions answered quickly. And they partnered with Widen’s Professional Services team to refine the metadata, user roles, and asset groups in one area in their DAM site. At every step of their DAM journey, Widen has been there to help.

Benefits

Empowered retailers and internal teams
The Collective allows over 3,000 independent retailers to access the content they need to promote and sell Citizen watches. This has drastically reduced the time their marketing team spends answering emails and sending images, allowing them to focus on creative work instead. “We go about our day differently,” Brenda emphasized.

An integral part of Citizen's business
With the Collective at the center of the content operations, the marketing team has more time to work, retailers have self-service access to the artwork they need to sell watches, and their e-commerce platform is populated with assets directly from the DAM system. As Citizen’s marketing strategy continually evolves, the Collective will scale to support their business needs and goals. “We have made the DAM such an integral part of our business that there’s no way we can do without it,” Brenda said.

“We have made the DAM such an integral part of our business that there’s no way we can do without it.”

– Brenda Abbott, Art Director at Citizen Watch Company