Ventura County Community College District Improves Their Brand Strength With Widen

Challenges

VCCCD is responsible for producing brand and marketing materials for an entire school district. Without an easy way to find and share photos, videos, and other creative files, VCCCD was constantly being pulled away from content production to track down digital assets. This was not only an inefficient use of designers’ time, but it brought creativity to a standstill.

“When I’m interrupted … that takes me off of my task,” says Janeene Nagaoka, Graphic Designer at VCCCD. “I have to take the time to get back into my job and remember where I was, and the creative juices have just stopped. 

In an attempt to gain efficiencies, VCCCD often relied on the same old digital assets, rather than spending time looking for new, fresh options. This lack of variety meant district teams and partners didn’t have access to the most effective and powerful digital assets. VCCCD needed a better way — or their marketing and branding efforts would begin to slip.

Objectives

Efficiency
Reduce time spent searching for and sharing digital assets. 

Access
Make it easy for anyone to find what they need without help.

Brand protection
Ensure only approved, high-quality digital assets are used.

Discoverability
Reduce reliance on the same go-to content by making it easier to find the right options.

Solution

Searchable, shareable asset library
After evaluating digital asset management (DAM) vendors, VCCCD selected Widen. Their DAM solution, The Collective, now stores all of the district’s images, photos, logos, videos, and other brand assets. Users can easily search the library using filters and keywords and find the digital assets they are looking for or discover fresh, new options they never knew existed. 

Personalized asset collections
VCCCD uses Portals to give partners, college contacts, and other stakeholders instant access to the exact digital assets they need — and only what they need. Portals allow VCCCD to easily curate and share a group of digital assets with a particular audience. “It’s amazing,” says Janeene. “They can be in there, and they can help themselves, and they can get the pieces that they need.”

Built-in brand control
If teams don’t have access to the digital assets they need, they may create their own or rely on poor-quality alternatives. The Collective combats this by preventing unapproved, potentially brand-damaging photos, images, and other brand assets from finding their way into sales and marketing materials. “I can ensure that everything is going to be hi-res and it’s going to look good,” says Janeene.

Benefits

More time for creative work
With an efficient and easy way to manage their digital assets, VCCCD has eliminated unnecessary interruptions to the creative process. This ensures their teams have more time to produce powerful, creative marketing materials that help their colleges connect and communicate more effectively with audiences.

Higher success rate
VCCCD wasted a lot of time looking for digital assets that, at the end of the day, didn’t meet the needs and expectations of the contact that requested them. The Collective gives VCCCD a robust tool to discover or locate the best digital assets for a campaign, event, or college initiative. Now VCCCD can distribute a variety of asset options, and their teams are satisfied. “Everybody in our department, even the people that aren’t really savvy, anybody can get it and they can see it right away,” says Janeene. “And, that’s great.” 

A trusted partner
VCCCD has found a true partner in Widen. “One of the reasons we chose Widen was customer service, says Janeene. “We could tell right away that customer service was up there.” Thanks to an organized and empowering onboarding process, helpful online resources, and one-to-one support, VCCCD is confident that they’ve made the right decision with Widen. “It was an awesome experience,” says Janeene.

“Everything is really clean. So easy to use. I just love it.”

Janeene Nagaoka,
Graphic Designer for Ventura County Community College District