HIPAA requires that any person, institution, and related service providers (like a digital asset management system) must have policies and practices in place to safeguard patient health information (PHI).
How Does PhotoShelter Help Healthcare Brands Comply with HIPAA Regulations?
PhotoShelter for Brands is designed with security as a top priority. Our flexible permissions capabilities allow you to keep assets locked down for private access so that you can manage your library in a HIPAA-compliant manner. Our healthcare clients trust us with their sensitive data for this very reason.
Here are the ways that PhotoShelter supports supports HIPAA compliance so you can protect your patient data:
User Permission Settings Help You Maintain PHI Confidentiality
Assets stored within PhotoShelter can be set to private viewing that does not allow them to be viewed externally. These detailed permissions allow you to use PhotoShelter in a HIPAA-compliant manner.
PhotoShelter helps you maintain HIPAA compliance by following the required protections of The Security Rule, which establishes standards for the protection of health information that is held or transferred in electronic form, which is known as e-PHI.
PhotoShelter Conducts Risk Analysis and Management to Improve Security Measures
PhotoShelter conducts an annual risk analysis of our systems to:
Evaluate the likelihood and impact of potential risks to data in our system
Implement appropriate security measures to address the risks identified in the risk analysis
Document the chosen security measures and, where required, the rationale for adopting those measures, and
Maintain continuous, reasonable, and appropriate security protections, which are explained in further detail below.
PhotoShelter Maintains Administrative Safeguards to Protect Your Data
Security Management Process: PhotoShelter maintains a security management process. The documentation for our security measures can be found on our proprietary network and security statement.
Security Personnel: PhotoShelter maintains a data security team, led by Kathy Carter, our Chief Technology Officer, who is responsible for developing and implementing our security policies and procedures. These policies and procedures are regularly updated to respond to industry changes and threat management.
Information Access Management: PhotoShelter’s system is built with SSO and detailed usage rights management, ensuring that customers who are covered entities are able to limit the use of any materials stored within PhotoShelter to only those people who require access. We rely on our customers to ensure that the materials they are storing in PhotoShelter are shared with the required privacy settings according to their internal HIPAA policies.
Evaluation: PhotoShelter performs regular assessments of how well our security policies and procedures meet the requirements of the Security Rule. We re-evaluate our controls during company-wide audits with Withum+, as well as annual PCI-DSS audits. Both audits have frameworks with similar requirements to SOC2 type audits.
Physical Safeguards for Data Protection
Facility Access Control: All PhotoShelter Data Storage facilities limit access to only authorized individuals in 24×7 guarded facilities with biometrics, mantraps and video surveillance systems
Workstation and Device Security: PhotoShelter has industry standard or better policies for desktops and mobile devices, as well as a clean-desk policy.
Technical Safeguards for Data Protection
Access Control: PhotoShelter’s single sign-on feature (SSO), centralized user management, and strong sharing, security and reporting tools ensure that only authorized persons access e-PHI. Data at rest in our system is protected via AES256x2 or better encryption. PhotoShelter uses a default Zero Trust security profile to authenticate users, and can be integrated into your organization’s SSO to ensure that access is granted to the correct people. “Zero Trust” is a strategic approach to cyber security that secures data within an organization by requiring verification from users at every stage of a digital interaction.
Audit Controls: PhotoShelter includes activity logs which will allow customers who are covered entities to record and examine access and other activity in any systems that include e-PHI.
Integrity Controls: We recommend that our customers implement a firewall or “air gap” between their PHI systems and marketing tools like PhotoShelter to help ensure that e-PHI is protected in the primary systems where it is housed.
Transmission Security: PhotoShelter guards against unauthorized access to e-PHI that is being transmitted through our network with data encryption. Data in transit is protected via TLS 1.2 or 1.3 encryption.
University of Maryland Medical System Trusts PhotoShelter for HIPAA Compliance
When UMMS Product Manager, Chris Lewkovich, built the system’s media library, security was top of mind.
“The fact that we can completely lock down our site (only we know who’s coming, who’s going), grant access for certain things, and most importantly prevent the outside world from seeing a lot of our assets is crucial because we’re in the healthcare industry. I know I can sleep better at night knowing that those tools are in place.”
Chris Lewkovich, UMMS PRODUCT MANAGER
The creative team works closely with the legal, marketing and media relations teams to ensure they have all necessary rights and permissions from patients before they share their stories.
“Patients dictate how they want their stories to be shared,” explains Mike. “If they have any restrictions we document those.”
The team only shares approved assets across the system, and they remind everyone to reach out if they have any doubt that an image should be included in a campaign. Read UMMS’s full success story with PhotoShelter here.
Learn Why Top Healthcare Brands Trust PhotoShelter
HIPAA-compliant software like PhotoShelter is crucial for healthcare companies to protect patient data, maintain legal compliance, mitigate risks, preserve their reputation, facilitate secure data exchange, ensure business continuity, and avoid hefty fees.
Want to learn more about how PhotoShelter helps your healthcare company protect patient data in a HIPAA-compliant manner? Book a call with us today.
Historically, the ROI of your content has been driven by your ability to put all your content into one central place.
In a perfect world, all of that content would be tagged to perfection. Everyone in your organization would be able to find what they need when they need it.
However, this is not reality. 40% of the 5 billion assets housed on PhotoShelter are not being tagged. That means it would take more than 200 days for people to tag all of the assets uploaded to PhotoShelter each month.
How Digital Content Search Works Today Isn’t Working
We talk to marketing professionals every day about the hurdles they face maximizing the value and the return on investment of their content. These were the biggest challenges we heard about:
Difficulty finding the right image if you didn’t use really specific tags when you uploaded the file
Spending countless hours searching for that perfect image – often coming up empty
Lower ROI on older assets only using the ones that are the most easily accessible, or even worse, wasting money duplicating assets that already exist
Manually plugging in metadata, keywords, and captions just to be able to find and use your images
Additional training required for new employees, external vendors, etc. to know how to search your tags
A Better Way to Search For Digital Assets
Our mission is to make your own content more valuable to you. That’s why we built AI Visual Search. A new feature that is transforming how creative professionals find and make the most out of their content.
AI Visual Search allows you to search your entire library of assets for things that would be relevant in your search results based on visual descriptions, making it easier and faster to find what you need.
The Benefits of AI Visual Search for Content Management
Now AI is doing the hard work for us with extreme specificity whenever you need it. That’s the beauty of machine learning. It has eliminated an extremely time-consuming and human, error-prone task. With AI Visual Search you can:
Find your files easier. Language and image recognition provides you with intelligent matches.
Increase the ROI of every asset. Search your entire library, regardless of how your content is tagged.
Be more productive. Find assets in less time and spend more time on higher ROI work.
Onboard faster and easier. New employees won’t need to learn a complex tagging system to find files.
AI Auto-Tagging vs. AI Visual Search
AI Auto-Tagging and AI Visual Search are two useful tools every creative professional should have to improve their content workflow. However, they aren’t the same thing and are ideal for different use cases:
AI Tagging
AI Visual Search
What it does
Automatically creates metadata tags for objects, specific people, or brands.
Allows you to search for images based on visual descriptions.
Athlete dunking a basketball, three players high fiving, a player scoring a goal
Search terms
Exact match
Exact match and similar matches
Start Using AI Visual Search Today
If you’re a company with a 5 or 10 year history, that could mean hundreds or thousands of photos.
For example, if you want to put together an annual report and pull pictures of staff enjoying themselves at an event or brainstorming at an off-site over the course of the year, how will you find those images today? How long would that process take you?
If you’re not able to find the photos you want, those moments are impossible to recreate, and without them, you may not create the impact you want in the final product.
With AI Visual Search, you can find those images instantly and publish faster – without having to compromise on your vision or on the quality of the final product.
University creatives and higher education marketers… this one’s for you! It doesn’t matter where you work on campus—whether it’s admissions, student life, or athletics, visual storytelling is essential for driving meaningful interaction with staff, alumni, current students, and prospective students.
When your school doesn’t have a long term visual storytelling strategy, content marketing becomes reactive.
To develop a proactive, innovative creative content marketing strategy, we encourage you to develop an editorial calendar that supports both annual campus initiatives and daily news highlights, like a commencement keynote speaker announcement.
For example, environmental sustainability might be a campus-wide campaign initiative which could easily become overwhelming between the research, creative deliverable production, rounds of feedback and collaboration.
A simplified editorial calendar simply lists out the marketing or communications initiatives or campaigns your organization should be focused on promoting on a given day, week, month, or quarter. Whereas a more advanced editorial calendar can help map out the collaborative, interdepartmental initiatives or campaigns subtasks and specific deliverables.
Here’s how to build an editorial calendar that works for your school—let’s go!
Evergreen Content
An editorial calendar serves as a guiding tool that shapes and streamlines your school’s visual storytelling goals. To truly optimize your content strategy, it’s crucial to embrace the power of evergreen content. Evergreen means everlasting, so evergreen content should always remain relevant and valuable regardless of the year or current trends. This type of content creates a sustainable source of audience engagement and a remarkable return-on-investment (ROI).
By strategically incorporating evergreen content into your school’s editorial calendar, you can establish a solid foundation that cultivates lasting connections, maximizes your resources, and strikes a balance between timely updates and timeless storytelling.
While timely news updates are essential for keeping your audience informed, evergreen content adds a layer of depth and consistency to your content strategy. Find the content that works for your school and your community, and add it to your editorial calendar at a regular cadence.
Retelling the Story
Reimagining your stories and capturing the attention of your target audience requires a touch of creativity. It’s time to debunk the myth that your message has already reached its intended destination—it’s like a hidden gem waiting to be discovered.
In today’s content-saturated world, people are drowning in an ocean of information.our posts can get lost in the digital abyss due to complex social media algorithms, but fear not! Breathing new life into your most successful visual content by repurposing what already works is one of the best ways to ensure maximum ROI of your creative assets.
Don’t be shy to change up copy, switch out an image, and hit that “publish” button again and again to make sure your brand content makes an impression on and impacts your audience.t.
As technology tools continue to evolve, higher education teams must optimize the workflow tools that enable campus-wide content marketing and communications teams to do their best work. .
For example, if your school’s ‘About Us’ page features only static images, you might be in need of a visual storytelling refresh! Incorporating contemporary elements like drone footage, embedded TikTok posts from student ambassadors, and sharing authentic student experiences through audio clips add nuance and texture to a school’s narrative. Explore different angles, like the point of view of your institution’s alumni, the multigenerational families that have attended, or even the history of the land your school was founded on..
By adding new visual elements to old stories, or simply updating website text to reflect the inclusive language of the time, your institution’s history can become a living, breathing entity that captivates your audience’s imagination and showcases your school community’s collective persona.
Case Study: Yale Admissions Videos 2001, 2010, 2021
In the ever-evolving landscape of admissions videos, institutions like Yale have recognized the need to adapt and engage their diverse audience, which includes parents and prospective students. Let’s take a look at the evolution of Yale’s admissions videos over the years, starting with a glimpse into their approach in 2001.
The 2001 video followed a traditional formula, featuring a cast of characters representing diverse ethnicities in various campus settings. While it highlighted the Yale name and showcased the architectural beauty, it lacked the distinctiveness that set it apart from other admissions videos.
Fast forward nearly a decade later, and Yale took a bold and innovative step with a student-produced video that captured the attention of prospective students. This video, released around the same time as the popular TV show “Glee,” embraced a quirky approach centered around a prospective student asking a tour guide why he chose Yale.
Leveraging the power of song and dance as a narrative device, the video became a sensation, going viral with nearly 2 million views. It was a groundbreaking departure from the norm and remains the most popular video ever produced by Yale.
Real-Time Storytelling
It’s crazy to think that most of us have a high-definition, broadcast studio in our pocket. Satellite dishes on television vans have given way to iPhones with apps like Instagram, Twitter and TikTok that allow us to reach millions of people in real time.
Real-time storytelling is largely unfiltered and “authentic.” It informs and engages. It satisfies FOMO (fear of missing out). It often replaces traditional storytelling and provides your audience with access to behind-the-scenes moments they might never see broadcasted. Sports are an obvious real-time storytelling opportunity, but so are art performances, student rallies, commencement speeches, and even live streamed lectures. Real-time storytelling isn’t just about streaming content in the moment. It also includes capturing and sharing exclusive, live content as events unfold, and quickly transmitting photos directly to social media (FTP for the win!).
Case Study: UCLA Quidditch Team
For UCLA, this popular video deviated from the expected focus on traditional Division I sports teams. Instead, it showcased their Quidditch team – yes, the fictional sport from Harry Potter. Surprisingly, Quidditch has become a nationwide club sport, and UCLA found a compelling way to highlight a quirkier side of the extracurricular experience, captivating their audience’s imagination.
This video demonstrates the importance of embracing creativity and finding unique ways to engage prospective students and parents in the admissions process. By breaking free from conventional approaches and tapping into pop culture or showcasing unexpected aspects of campus life, institutions have successfully captured the attention of their audience, leaving a lasting impression and setting themselves apart in the competitive world of college admissions.
Your Turn: Tips for Developing An Editorial Calendar!
Here are some pro tips to help you get started with developing your school’s editorial calendar:
Your first step is to build a calendar of key school community events and milestones that happen every year like homecoming, graduation, or alumni reunions. These should be your Evergreen Content tentpoles. By strategically building content plans around these annual events, you can build anticipation and create engaging, timely content that resonates with your audience’s sense of school pride and tradition. Plus, by building the campaign once, you can update the look and feel of graphics year-over-year to retell the same story in a better way!
Create fun teaser content to generate excitement and anticipation around major initiatives or campaigns you have planned. This could involve releasing short videos, behind-the-scenes sneak peeks, or intriguing teasers that offer a glimpse into the upcoming content. Teasers not only build anticipation but also serve as a powerful tool for generating buzz and ensuring that your larger content receives maximum engagement and impact.
Don’t limit your storytelling to a single iteration. Explore different perspectives, angles, or formats that can breathe new life into existing stories. For example, you could retell a founding story from the perspective of a current student, highlight the impact of a long-standing program through alumni testimonials, or transform a written article into an engaging video. By reimagining and retelling stories in fresh and captivating ways, you can reach new audiences and maintain a sense of excitement and relevance around familiar narratives.
Embrace the power of real-time storytelling and share live campus news updates as they unfold. This could involve setting up live streaming broadcasts of sports matches, performances, guest lectures, or even sharing social media updates during campus events. By creating an efficient, streamlined workflow to help your entire campus document and share real-time content with ease, you can create a sense of urgency (the good kind of FOMO!), foster audience engagement, and showcase the dynamism of your school’s activities.
Elevate your school’s visual storytelling by implementing the valuable evergreen tips and insights from our guide! Take your content strategy to new heights and captivate your audience with compelling visuals and engaging narratives.
As spring’s warm weather invites us outside to enjoy nature’s new blooms, infinite new possibilities awaken around and within us. Waking up to warmer mornings reminds us that soaking up the summer sun on the weekends simply isn’t enough. Everyone deserves a vacation, including you!
There are so many beautiful cultures around the world to experience and witness, so where does your wanderlust take you first? A secluded, tropical island? A desert safari? A cool, mountainous countryside? A bustling metro city?
As you begin to plan for your dream vacation, besides picking a date, setting a budget, and choosing a companion (if you’re not going solo ✌️,) how and where does your travel research begin?
For us, breathtakingly beautiful images featuring a sprawling, natural landscape, animals in their natural habitat, and videos that show visitors having the time of their lives make us want to click ‘Book Trip’ ASAP!
Destination Marketing Organizations (or DMOs) are state-recognized non-profit agencies—and they all share the same mission: to grow the economic development of their respective cities, towns, and communities by attracting tourists and promoting the culture and experiences that make their locations unique.
Though nothing quite matches the awe-inspiring feeling of experiencing a new place like traveling somewhere for the first time, DMOs are some of the biggest and most innovative enthusiasts of using visual content to fill in the gaps.
Ready to plan for the best road trip of your life? Let’s GO!
Check out the list below to see how 10 domestic destinations use captivating content to remind visitors that their dreams of traveling can become a reality.
First stop? Spokane, Washington
Let’s start on the West Coast (as some say, the best coast!)
As the most Northern West state in America, Washington State is one of the best places to visit if you want to experience the varying terrain, weather, food, nature, and cultures of the Pacific Northwest. Spokane was originally inhabited by the Spokane people, the Native American tribe the city is named after, which means ‘children of the sun.’
Visit Spokane, the local DMO responsible for attracting visitors and promoting tourism to the city, beautifully balances sharing digital content that informs locals and visitors of the impact of the city’s economic development on the native peoples while also highlighting the PNW’s ecological wonders and new safe spaces.
The Visit Spokane website puts key city landmarks like Riverfront Park and Spokane Falls front and center. And, to make it easy on visitors who want an itinerary of must-visit spots to follow—they curate lists of seasonal activities and activities accessible for specific travel groups, like families. Browse Visit Spokane’s PhotoShelter Library to see the full range of landscapes, spaces, and activities you can explore when visiting
Fun facts to know about the city of Spokane, Washington:
While the city of Bend, Oregon might not be on your radar, once you check out Visit Bend’s website and social feeds, you’ll definitely add it to your Travel Bucket List!
How does the Visit Bend team use visual content to feed a traveler’s appetite for getting to know a city before they visit?
Justin Keyes Bundy, Visit Bend’s Digital Content Manager wrote and told us:
“We strive to amplify the experiences of those exploring Bend, Oregon daily. By using PhotoShelter, our local content contributors can submit their assets to our digital team at a moment’s notice. This workflow has led to more diverse, creative, and engaging content across our various publishing channels. At the end of the day, we all want to easily share and celebrate the wonderful outdoor recreational activities the area has to offer.”
Follow Visit Bend on Twitter and Facebook to see the city through a local’s eyes, and check out the Reels on their Instagram account to see all the coastal fronts and mountain peaks you can explore!
When most people think of traveling to Nevada, they envision a wild weekend in Las Vegas or a breezy getaway in Reno or Lake Tahoe. As the capital of Nevada since 1864, Carson City’s rich history and vast natural landscapes are two of the main city features that the Visit Carson City team focuses on highlighting in their website and digital content.
The Visit Carson City website homepage features a captivating video montage that showcases the region’s beautiful coastal views, vintage railway trains, and sensational eateries. If you love exploring your surroundings on foot or by bike, you can use Carson City’s trail system map to plan excursions. (Plus, check out the free interactive pass they created so visitors on a tight budget can explore more!) Fun fact: You can even visit the inventor of the Ferris Wheel’s home in Carson City!
How has using a digital asset management platform like PhotoShelter impacted this creative storytelling team?
“PhotoShelter has been essential for our team—not only for keeping our assets organized, but it’s also helped us get assets out quickly to partners to showcase Carson City as a beautiful place to visit.”
Lydia Beck, Visit Carson City’s Marketing and Public Relations Manager
P.S. Carson City just hosted the first-ever Mark Twain Days Festival, honoring the literary hero who spent time in and loved Nevada. Lydia said they didn’t have any new assets created to promote it ahead of time because it was their first time hosting and producing this event.
Instead, Lydia said that they were able to “search for photos in our old PhotoShelter galleries that matched the current event promotion needs, instead of spending time and money we didn’t have to create new assets. It was really helpful and saved us a lot of time because it was super easy to search for relevant assets using metadata and keywords.” Check out this beautifully produced Instagram reel to see how they used archived video assets to create a promotional video before the event!
Follow Visit Carson City on Twitter and Facebook, and check out their Instagram Reels to explore the city’s mountain peaks, city streets, and Trailways! We’re excited to see how the Visit Carson City team continues to innovatively use visual storytelling to promote their special city—and we can’t wait to visit Carson City soon!
Going to California? Please be sure to Visit Big Bear!
Picture this: You’re watching dawn break over the San Bernardino Mountains and the rock of tiny waves lapping against the lakeside dock underneath you shakes you out of a vacation daydream. With a map in one hand and warm tea in the other, you think: “What a life! What should I explore today?”
Big Bear, California is a small inland California city that sits along the shore of a manmade lake and right between the San Bernardino National Forest. The city’s high elevation and ideal year round weather conditions make it a perfect destination for travelers that want to experience the thrill of a snowsport getaway and for those who want to stroll and explore the leisurely lakeside community.
In fact, throughout the years, Big Bear has been a hot spot and host to Hollywood celebrities, famous film productions, and an annual Oktoberfest festival. The city also hosted the first Winter X games in 1997 and has since gained popularity with professional athletes as a training destination.
Their website homepage features sensational seasonal imagery to draw visitors in, and right now they’re featuring gorgeous mountain blooms you’d see if you were hiking around Big Bear.
According to a recently published Forbes.com article, travel experts say that Phoenix, Arizona is one of the best places to visit in the United States in 2023. If you want to know why you should visit, just head to their website homepage to see a stunning video montage of the incredible cultural experiences available to you.
To invite visitors to explore the city through their website first, Visit Phoenix also curates lists of seasonal activities, accommodation and restaurant deals, and local events. The website also features the city’s mission statement which acknowledges the native people who originally inhabited the land, and how the modern locals honor and celebrate their tribal traditions
It reads: “The story of Phoenix’s innovation began with the Hohokam people, who created canals through the Sonoran Desert that fed a civilization for over a thousand years. Today, this spirit inspires ideas that shape our future. An unbreakable brightness and vitality have brought an entire city to heights others never dreamed possible.
Phoenix’s culture impresses upon the locals and visitors beyond the boundaries of the city’s limits. If you want to see what lies beyond the city limits at a glance, look no further than the Visit Phoenix website and you’ll scroll down to see a beautifully designed map that highlights must-visit landmarks and cultural centers. Sports fans can also get their fix by checking out an NBA game. Go Phoenix Suns! NBA season!
How does Visit Phoenix like using PhotoShelter to speed up the content marketing team’s workflow? Kim Goins, Visit Phoenix’s Marketing Projects Manager said, “We love working with the PhotoShelter product and I’ve been singing its praises to other DMOs!”
Although Conde Nast Traveler listed Park City, Utah as one of 2023’s top domestic destinations to visit, we think Salt Lake City (or SLC as the locals call it,) should also be on your travel bucket list. Situated just 30 miles Southeast of Park City, Salt Lake City was originally founded and inhabited by the Ute Indians, then the Mormons, and now, according to a 2022 Realtor.com report, Salt Lake City has become a popular destination with tech startup companies, young professionals, and new retirees who are all looking to plant roots in an affordable, walkable city.
The first settlers and locals today still believe the lake is inhabited by a monster!
The Great Salt Lake is actually 3 to 10 times saltier than the ocean, and you can actually float (and eat the salt) in the Great Salt Lake! One of Morton Salt’s biggest plants is near SLC.
This popular Utah valley is known for The Greatest Snow on Earth, but the region is pleasant to visit during any season, making it popular with outdoor enthusiasts. That’s why the Visit Salt Lake City team mainly focuses its content on highlighting the natural beauty of the valley and the people who bring the community to life.
The city’s religious history also attracts thousands of faith-based visitors every day of the year. But interestingly enough, SLC is known to be one of the Gayest Cities in America! Can’t believe it? It’s true–and after reading this relatable statement, we know safe spaces and experiences are within reach in SLC.
The Visit SLC website reads: “We get it. When most people think of Salt Lake, a progressive queer scene probably isn’t the first… or second… or, um, even third thing that comes to mind. But almost any LGBTQ visitor who’s been here before, and nearly every LGBTQ local who calls the city home, will tell you, it’s an inclusive urban destination with tons of super gay stuff going on. In fact, Advocate magazine listed us as one of the Ten Queerest Cities in America. (Even gayer than L.A.!)”
If you’re into snow sports, Jackson Hole, Wyoming is probably already on your Travel Bucket List. If you’re not, it might not be—but Visit Jackson Hole’s digital content highlights a few reasons why it should be.
The mountain town of Jackson Hole sits between two mountain ranges and borders the state of Idaho, so the wintery terrain creates a thriving ecosystem for mountain animals (and ski bums!) to thrive in. In addition to sharing content that highlights nature’s beauty, Visit Jackson Hole’s content team also shares content that teaches sustainable lifestyle and traveling practices to visitors to ensure Jackson Hole Stays Wild, a motto they promote on the website’s homepage.
Not a skier or snowboarder? No worries! There are plenty of other ways to explore the city and Visit Jackson Hole’s website makes it easy to see all the options in one place. Click ‘ACTIVITIES’–the first navigation menu item on their website homepage. Once you’re there, you can filter by activities by appropriateness for certain age groups, the date range of your visit, or by the season you hope to travel in!
Also, it’s one of the richest counties in the United States (thanks to an influx of celebrities who have moved there due to beneficial tax policies,) but right now their website features a $400 flight promotion. Is a good deal enough to entice you to book without knowing more about a destination? Take the chance and do it now!
It’s not a city, it’s a state! It’s MI-SS-I-SS-I-PP-I!
Mississippi is a special southern state. From the very first moment you visit their website, you’ll feel the warm welcome of belonging. As you scroll and watch a 30-second video showing a young family exploring the great outdoors, the music-filled nightlife, and the cultural centers of the state, a designed text graphic lays over the video and reads: ‘Let’s Wander.’
This soft reminder to any person on a journey simply confirms that not all who wander, are lost, and as you keep scrolling, the next statement reads: “Mississippi is a state for all those who are wanderers at heart.” Honey, I’m home! ✈️
The Visit Mississippi marketing team invests heavily in developing narrative-based visual stories because the people and organizations that invest in communities better are the folks visitors really should meet. Watch the Wanderers Welcome YouTube Series to see how they created short, but impactful promotional videos to showcase landmarks, culturally important spaces, and the people that make the state of Mississippi the rich place it is.
Katie Hunter, Visit Myrtle Beach’s Content Manager wrote, “The VMB team uses PhotoShelter to share and collaborate with other teams and creators so that the best photo assets can be used to tell the story of The Beach. PhotoShelter makes it easy for us all to share large files, download images for our own projects, and upload new files from our team of content creators.”
What type of images does the Visit Myrtle Beach marketing team choose and use to tell and sell the story of Myrtle Beach? Let’s take a look!
The waterfront awaits your arrival in Myrtle Beach!
A mouthwatering bowl of comfort: Jambalaya Stew at the Sea Captain’s House in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina!
Cheers, to the best adventures being with friends!
Myrtle Beach is known to travelers for two things, mainly: Beaches and golf. With over 90 courses to tee up at, Myrtle Beach is a golfer’s paradise! The 60-mile-long beach known as The Grand Strand (click the link to watch a YouTube video showing the 60-mile stretch in under 60 seconds,) also offers visitors of all abilities tons of recreational options besides sunbathing. And the wide variety of bustling nightlife and restaurant options will satisfy all the good-time travelers!
This little slice of North Carolina is nicknamed ‘The Southern Part of Heaven.’ After finding out that 1950s writer, William Meade Prince coined the phrase in his memoir about growing up there, it all makes sense. Some other interesting facts about Chapel Hill: Since 1996, Chapel Hill’s fire engines have been painted blue. It’s home to America’s oldest public university, and the first planetarium that was built in the south—The Morehead Planetarium.
Their website’s homepage features a sliding carousel of images and simple one-word questions overlaid on top–that any visitor probably would emphatically answer, ‘YES!’ to like: ‘Thirsty? Hungry? Art-lover?’ And the mouth-watering images that accompany them feature southern barbecue plates, beer flights, local talent, botanical gardens, public parks, lively sporting arenas, and artwork—the main city attractions any new traveler wouldn’t want to miss.
Beyond the quaint reputation Chapel Hill is known for, how does the Visit Chapel Hill marketing team use visual storytelling to attract visitors?
“PhotoShelter has been a tremendous asset for sharing photos and video with our marketing agency of record and other stakeholders in our industry. Our photos are available to them at their convenience which frees up time for our team to think more creatively.”
Tina Fuller, Visit Chapel Hill’s Website and Social Media Coordinator
As Zach Kitschke, CMO of Canva recently said, “This is the era of the visual economy. Thriving in it requires organizations and their employees to think and work differently.”
By splashing captivating video montages and stunning landscape images across their websites and social feeds, these domestic Destination Marketing Organizations (DMOs) flood our minds with stories that show us that planning a quick escape can be within our reach!
Use this map we made for you to visualize what a road trip to all of the places in this list would look like!
Want to learn more about how travel marketers create award-winning visual stories that entice more visitors to visit their destinations every year?
March has always been a month of transition for me. The most obvious is the change of seasons from Winter to Spring. The days get longer, and the sunshine gets warmer. Green shoots begin to push through the soil. Winter’s dark clothes start to show signs of color and life. Al fresco dining becomes a real possibility. I start to get my fishing tackle ready for the upcoming season. And while March may not be everyone’s favorite month, for me, this transition is one I genuinely enjoy.
Transition and transformation share the same root – and if you are a marketer, Digital Transformation is a very hot topic. Every brand, team, and organization is looking for innovative ways to make creative magic happen, with digital leading the way. Creating deeper engagement with more reach and measurable results is the challenge we’re all facing.
At PhotoShelter, we set a high goal for our Digital Asset Management (DAM) software – to “Transform the Way Creative People Work.” And as we enter March, we’re bringing you a month of creative inspiration to do just that. We call it #DAMMonth, and our fifth annual installment is designed to help you thrive!
Our weekly series will focus on four key themes – “Get Smart” (DAM basics and innovation), “Workflow Wonders” (how to revolutionize your creative process), “DAM Around the World” (how DAM is empowering global brands), and Trendsetters (inspiration from cutting-edge creatives). You will see this content flow across our digital channels over the coming month so we can help make your “Digital Transformation” a reality!
We’re excited to bring you the #DAMMonth content experience and wanted to share a few key points that set the stage for what we see happening in the creative marketplace.
Creative Marketers Share the Same Struggles.
Delivering innovative, visual storytelling while managing an increasing volume of media assets and driving to do it faster than ever is a consistent challenge. Jeff Bezos built Amazon around the answers to an important question few ask, “what’s not going to change in the next ten years?” The challenges marketers face with managing complex media libraries and creating more efficient workflows will be here for many years to come. The good news is that there are a lot of tools, techniques, and technologies to help alleviate this challenge (hint, connect with us to find out how!)
“Doing More with Less” is Not a Negative. It’s Reality!
We’re all doing more with less and stretching dollars/resources more than ever. Every budget has gone through a massive re-think over the past three years, often with ruthless efficiency. But quality investments always make it past the hard decisions, especially when they save time, drive efficiency, and, ultimately, strong ROI. And when those investments do make it into “the plan,” those of us who manage budgets make sure they deliver! It’s an exercise in addition by reduction. With less to work with (CFO asks, “maybe we don’t need this?”), we find a way to be more efficient and creative – and deliver outsized results. That’s how creative people roll.
The “Experience Economy” is a Real Thing.
People love “things,” but what they love more are their memories. As we’ve come out of the critical phase of the pandemic and are out in the real world again, live events, sports, concerts, conferences, entertainment, and networking have come back in full force. Great brands, teams, and organizations figure out how to make the experience a three-part journey – before, during, and after. And the best way to do that is with visuals, the “assets” people remember, hold on to, and share more than any other media. If you connect your vision with the experience in a way that the fan/consumer can make their own, they will engage and amplify in ways that create true, lasting value for your brand.
Sports is the Creative Laboratory for Marketing.
Nearly every trend we consider “marketing today” has been piloted in the sports area. Influencer Marketing, Brand Collaborations, UGC, Artificial Intelligence, Community, Philanthropy, Collectibles, Analytics, Monetization, Podcasts, Brand Ambassadors – if you know them now (and are looking at deploying any of these for your brand), it has already permeated the sports marketplace. Keeping your eyes open to what’s happening in the sports world is a great way to get inspired and bring those tactics into your brand strategy.
Innovation Can Happen No Matter the Size of Your Organization.
Related to the point above, there are no rules in marketing. We have witnessed small non-profit organizations blow our minds with their creativity and impact, small colleges take storytelling to new heights (and bring tears to the eye), upstart brands jump past an incumbent through sheer force of creativity, and small teams delivering impact that’s 10X a bigger team because they committed to breaking the rules and making magic happen. It’s demanding but gratifying. Isn’t that why we got into marketing in the first place?
Come follow me over on LinkedIn if you have any insights you want to share, like to connect, or to have a conversation about your Digital Transformation needs.
Follow along throughout this month as the team at PhotoShelter shares a handful of excellent resources, free guides, tips from industry experts, live programs and more to help you along the way. Happy #DAMMonth!
Craving a getaway? ✈️ Stop creating dream vacation vision boards and join us for a 20-minute on-demand webinar session to see the world from the global seas!
In this PhotoShelter Summit Session, Barry Pickthall, a UK-based Senior Sports Reporter with 50 years of professional experience and the owner of his own photography agency, PPL Media, shared his strategy for building a robust historical asset archive. Plus, he outlined how investing in a digital asset management library has skyrocketed their profit potential and media engagement.
“How do we achieve this much money and all this publicity from a marketing budget of $50,000? Online we had $111 million dollars worth of coverage: $17 million of editorial, $9.8 million in video coverage, and 46 million for pre-event stories.”
“PPL Media has been the official photographer and media distributor for Olympic yachting regattas, America’s cup, Bermuda race, and various world races—the latest being the Golden Globe Nonstop solo round the world race…The lessons we’ve gained in maximizing coverage to the tune of 183 million [assets] from a very small budget could be useful to other organizers of events like inter-college football, soccer, car racing, cycling, and adventure expeditions looking to make the biggest bang with their marketing buck.”
Barry Pickthall, Owner of PPL Media and Senior Yachting Correspondent for The London Times
What is your workflow from taking the photos to curating and uploading and how do you curate what to share from the millions of photos that your contributors take?
Barry: “The photos come live from the camera to us in PhotoShelter. We caption them and they go straight online. That’s it! There are others [content contributors] who are out at sea and unable to transmit pictures so they come back ashore every night to transfer the images to our PhotoShelter library.We now use the PPL Media Portal to distribute hi-res images from the Golden Globe Race to the media worldwide and the GGR organizers use their own PhotoShelter account to supply web and social media with rights-free pictures and video clips.”
Meet the Speaker: Barry Pickthall
Barry Pickthall began sailing at age 12, was a naval architect by trade originally, and then eventually went into journalism. He has been The Times of London’s Senior Sports Reporter for the past 50 years and the yachting correspondent for the past 25 years. So, to say he could row laps around any professional sports reporter would be an understatement.
Recently, his photo agency–PPL Media began building its massive archive of videos and images in the PhotoShelter for Brands digital asset management platform, so watch the full session below to hear how frictionless asset access through PhotoShelter helped his agency generate $185 million in global media coverage during the 2022 Golden Globe race.
Artificial intelligence is the extra boost brands need to take their visual assets to the next level. Employing tech that recognizes and harnesses the power of each individual asset in your brand’s arsenal is an easy way to get ahead—and stay ahead—of your competition.
In a world where we’re all consuming content faster than ever before, getting the most out of each and every creative asset is crucial to staying relevant, nurturing and growing your audience, raising awareness for key issues and celebrating exciting achievements.
One exciting way PhotoShelter can help your team access content fast and leverage it like never before? Our highly accurate Artificial Intelligence (AI) product suite. PhotoShelter AI squeezes every last drop out of your photos to maximize their value. (Now just imagine that for each file in your media library. You’d be unstoppable.)
To date, PhotoShelter AI has analyzed, recognized and tagged 20 million objects, 480,000 logos and identified over 3 million athletes across 9 different sports.
And we’re just getting started.
Understanding AI’s potential and its far-reaching benefits provide the necessary context for how and why you should be using it — and how PhotoShelter can help.
Who AI is For
Brands and organizations that center their identity around a commitment to visual storytelling are particularly well suited for exploring artificial intelligence solutions because they already recognize the power of visual assets.
AI is for brands looking to push the envelope both visually and technologically. It’s for teams that want to get the most out of their photos now and in the future. It’s for creators looking to be trailblazers and disruptors in their space, and for stakeholders dedicated to finding quality visuals with speed and ease.
Put simply, metadata helps you organize your visual media library by attaching meaning to your photos. It enables anyone to easily search through your visual assets and find exactly what they need with precision and accuracy.
Having keywords associated with your visual assets allows colleagues and stakeholders to search, find and share faster and more easily. Once photos and videos are tagged, finding what you’re looking for becomes much less of a headache because there’s no need for flipping through various folders to locate your files. A simple search is all you need!
The AI recognition of our photos will help us save hundreds of hours tagging and organizing photos, enabling us to share content with our partners, players, and fans faster than ever before.
We’ve been helping professional photographers and creative teams for over fifteen years and there’s one thing we hear often: manually applying keywords is a cumbersome process that relies on individuals and free time. Plus, it’s inherently subjective. What sticks out in an image to one person may be completely different to someone else. We’ve seen it time and time again. This subjectivity can cause confusion (and frustration), slows teams down and, more often than not, keywords that have the potential to be useful in the future are completely left out inadvertently.
At PhotoShelter, we talk a lot about creating a metadata policy whereby leaders provide a written document that serves as a guide for everyone interacting with their media library. The policy outlines how your team will tag images when they add them to the library, and how internal and external stakeholders will search for visual assets when they need to find and use them. But just like manual tagging can be daunting, creating a metadata policy takes time and effort. So why not simplify things? That’s where automation comes in.
PhotoShelter’s custom algorithms use machine learning to scan images, automatically identifying and adding tags for objects, text, people and brand marks. This allows anyone to upload files into their PhotoShelter for Brands media library and have them instantly tagged with general keywords, player and faculty names, jersey numbers, sponsors and more.
Imagine this: your team photographer uploads photos from the game and within seconds, each photo is tagged with players’ names and jersey numbers, important sponsors are noted in the metadata, and useful tags like “crowd” and “cheering” are already associated with the right images. Or maybe you’re a college or university looking to easily identify important staff and faculty so you can update your website or share information about recent awards they’ve won. PhotoShelter AI does that too.
Gone are the days where names are misspelled, sponsors are left out and crucial identifying factors are missing in action. Everything is automatically tagged upon upload, so you’ll be finding and sharing what you need faster than ever before.
These days, one of the most important business relationships is the relationship between brands and sponsors. How and when sponsors want to link their name to your brand can tell you a lot about which content strategies are working for you (and which ones maybe aren’t).
Once partnership paperwork is signed, it’s imperative you create a system to monitor how the partnership is going — examples of where logos are showing up in your photos, records of how sponsors are interacting with your social media posts, etc.
Managing to get a sponsor’s logo (in this case Nike and Qatar Airways) in an emotional action shot like this one of Millie Bright, a star defender for the England national team during the UEFA Women’s EURO 2022 games, is pure partnership gold.
Incorporating PhotoShelter’s artificial intelligence (AI) suite into your content strategy is a great way to get ahead—and stay ahead—of your competition. AI saves you and your team energy, creates consistency around tags, helps you scale your visual media library, and ensures you get a better return on investment for each photo in your archive.
Here’s how our sponsor-focused workhorse BrandID equips brands with the necessary data they need to keep tabs on important partnerships.
Keep Track of Sponsors and Logos with BrandID
BrandID works to help brands of every kind establish asset ROI for any image where a logo is present, be it yours or a partner’s. Want to be able to find, organize and deliver live event images to specific sponsors within minutes, rather than hours or even days? With BrandID, that’s a no-brainer.
Have a new sponsor? Bring it on!
It also gets smarter over time. BrandID can be trained to identify new logos in a matter of days. Just upload a catalog of logos and/or brand marks, upload the photos you want it to search and label, and watch the automatic tags appear in no time. Our system is getting smarter every day and the more variety it can learn from, the better it becomes.
With BrandID, you’ll have an effortless way to identify logos in your images. This turns demonstrating sponsorship ROI into a simple image search.
Justify Sponsor Relationships with Data
You can even use AI data to justify sponsor relationships. Imagine being able to demonstrate value to your sponsor by showing that their branding has been featured in 10,000 of your team’s photos in the last year. Not only does AI help you find more photos instantly, but it’s also enabling brands to quantify brand exposure to key sponsors.
No more scrolling through to try and get the numbers yourself. Just do a quick search in your media library for your sponsors name and watch the results roll in.
For venues, sports teams, or media organizations that usually have multiple brand partners across industries, having a tool that instantly tags logos in images with impressive accuracy helps teams knock gameday or live event media coverage out of the park.
Ready to improve your workflow?
While any one AI solution works brilliantly on its own, when you knit our AI capabilities together, you’ll get the most accurate, automatically-tagged media library of your company’s dreams.
ObjectID finds objects in your images and delivers the best and most accurate general metadata tags for your brand’s images.
PeopleID uses facial recognition to find and tag the most important people to your organization in your image assets automatically, making the search for photos of faculty or influencers hassle-free.
RosterID combines jersey data and facial recognition for powerful athlete recognition.
BrandID recognizes key sponsors and brands, with the capability to deliver relevant assets to your partners and stakeholders in real-time.
Former BYU cross-country runner Makenna Myler went viral after a grueling year of training to become a professional athlete in the summer of 2021.
In a TikTok made by her husband that featured footage of superhuman runs while pregnant, the process of qualifying for the Olympic trials and landing a professional partnership with shoe reatiler ASICS, he writes, “I turned in my resignation papers and will be living vicariously through my wife and daughter going forward.” We’re right there with him.
If you’re BYU, you want to be able to find pictures of Makenna quickly and easily to put on your website or post on your Instagram feed. That’s where automated metadata tagging comes in.
Under the umbrella of PhotoShelter AI, we offer technology for every use case — ObjectID, RosterID, BrandID and PeopleID. Using machine learning to scan images and automatically add tags for objects, people, players, important brand marks and jersey numbers, PhotoShelter AI can do it all.
How RosterID Can Help
Our sports-obsessed solution, RosterID, allows anyone to identify your full lineup of athletes in real time, helping you stay organized while speeding up your team’s photo workflow. This means facial and jersey recognition can be synced up with your entire roster ahead of time to accelerate the tagging process and get photos out the door faster and more precisely.
Finding pictures of Makenna during her BYU days can now happen in seconds, not hours or days.
No matter whether the image is a close-up of a single player, the team during a huddle or an action shot, RosterID can identify and tag everyone. The accuracy is unbeatable.
From Viral Moments to Winning Championships
Some of your favorite teams, leagues and leading sports organizations are already using RosterID to automate their facial and jersey recognition so tagging images during March Madness and the Superbowl can be a simple and seamless process. No more delays due to manual tagging. No more names misspelled or just outright missing in the metadata. No more current or former players lost in your archive. No more digging through folders to find the perfect photo on or after game day.
“It’s important to keep up with new technology like PhotoShelter AI. It can help speed up your workflow so you have more time.”
With RosterID on your side, it’s easy for your team to find images of your star players when they need them, quickly grab scroll-stopping content to contribute to a relevant trending topic on social media like Makenna’s, or even cull together a series of photos that highlight how your team’s visual identity has evolved over the years.
Ready to improve your workflow?
ObjectID finds objects in your images and delivers the best and most accurate general metadata tags for your brand’s images.
PeopleID uses facial recognition to find and tag the most important people to your organization in your image assets automatically, making the search for photos of faculty or influencers hassle-free.
RosterID combines jersey data and facial recognition for powerful athlete recognition.
BrandID recognizes key sponsors and brands, with the capability to deliver relevant assets to your partners and stakeholders in real-time.
Here at PhotoShelter, helping you get and stay organized is our main focus. That’s because we believe it’s the key to being able to find and share scroll-stopping visuals effectively.
One way we’re committed to making it easier for your team to access your brand’s best content quickly, no matter where you are, is through our highly accurate Artificial Intelligence (AI) product suite.
PhotoShelter’s proprietary AI feature set is adaptable and flexible. It was designed to solve common pain points for all types of organizations, each characterized by their own unique priorities and challenges.
Under the umbrella of PhotoShelter AI, we have ObjectID, RosterID, BrandID and PeopleID. They all work by utilizing machine learning to scan images and automatically add tags for objects, people, players, important brand marks and jersey numbers. No matter your specific needs, we’ve got a solution.
But today, it’s all about ObjectID.
If PhotoShelter AI had senior superlatives, ObjectID would win Most Well-Rounded.
Our most versatile offering, ObjectID recognizes objects in images. It embodies the phrase “simple but effective.”
ObjectID provides the most general, well-rounded keyword tagging all organizations need to effectively search and find images for instant organizing and sharing.
It’s also smart enough to understand that the combination of individual tags—like “sand”, “water” and “palm tree”—represents something broader—like “beach.”
Imagine you’re the content manager for a tourism organization. Your visuals are no doubt vast and varied. Since you work with content from staff photographers, agency partners and social contacts, you need a fast and easy way to search your assets by location or season. This ensures you can access and publish the right content at the right time.
No need to flip through gallery after gallery while visually scanning your options for the right images. That’s a thing of the past when you have AI on your side.
With ObjectID enabled, our automation will identify your images and tag general words like mountains, sunsets, snow, clouds, waterfalls, sailboats, trees, people, animals, food and other helpful characteristics to describe the setting and subjects in the image.
Use ObjectID to Create Consistency Around Tags And Combat Subjectivity
We’ve been helping professional photographers and creative teams for over fifteen years and there’s one thing we hear often: applying tags manuallyrequires free time and often feels daunting or tiresome. Plus, it’s inherently subjective.
What sticks out in an image to one person may be completely different to someone else. This subjectivity can cause confusion (and frustration), slows teams down and, more often than not, keywords that have the potential to be useful in the future are completely left out inadvertently.
ObjectID: The Secret Weapon to Reclaiming Your Time
If your team produces thousands of images daily but has no dedicated person manually managing your metadata, you needObjectID. Not only will it save you and your team tons of time and people-power, but it will also help you regain creative control.
With the help of automated tagging, you’re ensuring all of your images have high-value keywords attached to them —and right away. No more waiting for the ok to hire an intern or back-and-forth emails with your team to ask when they plan to get to it.
Plus, by eliminating the need for manual tagging, your team is freed up for more brainstorming, campaign refinement sessions and collaboration opportunities. Everyone’s attention stays focused on the most important matter at hand: sharing your brand’s story.
Ready to improve your workflow?
ObjectID finds objects in your images and delivers the best and most accurate general metadata tags for your brand’s images.
PeopleID uses facial recognition to find and tag the most important people to your organization in your image assets automatically, making the search for photos of faculty or influencers hassle-free.
RosterID combines jersey data and facial recognition for powerful athlete recognition.
BrandID recognizes key sponsors and brands, with the capability to deliver relevant assets to your partners and stakeholders in real-time.
