Kent Scouts Launches a National Rebrand With Widen

Challenges

Kent Scouts comprises 17,481 young people and 6,479 adult volunteers across Kent County in England.

Without a centralized storage solution, photos from milestone events were stored on personal desktops or memory cards, which made them difficult to find and easy to misplace. And even if the correct file was located, it was hard to know for certain if it was the most current version. They needed a better way to store, organize, and manage their valuable marketing content.

Kent Scouts' Digital Media Manager, Simon Corrigan, had experience with digital asset management (DAM) and helped Kent Scouts evaluate possible DAM vendors. They implemented the Collective in 2018, in time to support their national rebrand.

Objectives

Organization
Create an image library to centralize and organize all photos, by event, date etc.

Launch rebrand

Replace old branding with the new logo, color palettes, and brand guidelines. 

Content distribution
Streamline content distribution and facilitate version control.

Increase asset value
Increase the lifecycle of each asset

Solution

Robust metadata
Kent Scouts needed a centralized, searchable storage solution. The Collective’s strong and flexible metadata capabilities allowed them to identify fields and values that are tailored to their content needs, and keep their assets organized. “Creating a detailed taxonomy allowed us to think about how the images should be stored and the different ways we were likely to search for items,” said Simon. And now that values are added for each asset, teams are able to search for and find their desired asset with just a few clicks.

Portals for streamlined distribution
With a wide range of staff and volunteers that need access to content, Simon wanted an easy way to share groups of assets with specific audiences. With Portals, he gives teams and volunteers access to the assets they need – without requiring them to log in to the DAM system. “This ability to satisfy both ‘occasional’ and ‘power’ users is key to the effectiveness of the Widen system,” he shared. Two portals in particular helped support their brand relaunch: a brand portal containing logos, guidelines, and marketing templates for internal teams; and a public-facing media library for press, parents, and leaders.

Benefit

Operational efficiency
With a single repository for all of their brand and marketing content, teams and volunteers now know exactly where to find the content they need. And by providing a comprehensive view of all of their available content, the Collective also helps Simon’s team extend the value of their assets through reuse and repurposing. In addition, he said that by “using our account analytics [the Insights app] we can get a feel for the popular downloads and track asset usage. This helps us to focus resources and increase the choice of the assets in line with the demand.”

Brand consistency
When Kent Scouts successfully rebranded in April 2018, they used the Collective to sunset old assets and logos, and direct stakeholders to current, brand-approved assets. The result? Teams have been able to build a cohesive and effective brand experience at every touchpoint. “Our membership of over 5,000 adult volunteers can easily access the files they need when they want them, helping to improve the quality of resources produced and the public perception of Scouting,” Simon added.

"This ability to satisfy both ‘occasional’ and ‘power’ users is key to the effectiveness of the Widen system."

– Simon Corrigan, Director, Digital Media Manager, Kent Scouts