Ready to start your DAM journey?
Recently, our team joined Patrick Gipson from Ravinia Festival and Craig Bollig from Orange Logic in a webinar to discuss the importance of successful digital asset management (DAM) implementation and best practices for ensuring long-term DAM success. If you’re interested in hearing directly from us or learning more about our recommendations for DAM scalability, click the link below to watch the recording! In this article, we’ll outline Ravinia’s digital asset management journey and how their partnership with Stacks and OrangeLogic helped them avoid mistakes and launch with confidence.
Check out our conversation with Ravinia and OrangeLogic
If you want to learn more about how Ravinia partnered with Stacks and OrangeLogic to ensure long-term DAM success and a seamless DAM implementation, click the link below!
Background
The Ravinia Festival, America’s oldest outdoor music festival, has been a center for world-class performances since 1904. Situated just north of Chicago, it hosts over 100 performances annually, ranging from classical symphonies to contemporary artists. With many decades of performance-related assets, including photos and promotional materials, Ravinia recognized the need for a modern solution to organize and manage its growing digital archive. They also required efficient workflows for moving and sharing assets across teams and partners.
Challenges
As the festival has evolved, so has the volume of digital content it generates. This meant that Ravinia faced several challenges:
Massive Volume of Assets
Ravinia had accumulated thousands of photos, videos, and audio files over decades of performances, promotional campaigns, and artist collaborations.
Inefficient Storage
Most of Ravinia's digital assets were stored across different platforms, with limited search capabilities and no central organization.
Access and Collaboration Issues
Departments often struggled to find specific assets, and sharing files between teams was cumbersome.
Preservation of History
With Ravinia's long history, it was essential to protect and preserve valuable digital assets for future use and historical documentation.
Solutions
After developing a vision for its DAM program and how it would ideally serve its users, Ravinia chose OrangeLogic’s Digital Asset Management (DAM) platform to manage its assets. The organization’s decision to implement a DAM system was a key turning point in its digital transformation. With the platform, Ravinia was able to:
Centralize Assets
OrangeLogic's DAM allowed Ravinia to centralize its vast archive of media in one easily searchable and organized repository.
Customize Metadata
By applying customized metadata to its assets, Ravinia improved their discoverability, ensuring that all teams could easily locate specific files—from photos of past performances to marketing materials.
Control User Access
The platform enabled Ravinia to set permissions controls, ensuring that specific teams or individuals could access only the assets they needed, thus reducing the risk of unauthorized access or accidental deletions.
Integrate the DAM System With Existing Workflows
OrangeLogic seamlessly integrated with Ravinia's existing tools, allowing teams to continue using their preferred software while benefiting from the improved asset management system.
In addition to needing a DAM platform, Ravinia also recognized the necessity for guidance and expertise in digital asset management. No one on the Ravinia team had experience leading a DAM implementation or the bandwidth to manage it from start to finish. With this in mind, Ravinia partnered with Stacks, a team of DAM experts, to serve as their DAM team as they built the foundation of their DAM program. Stacks helped Ravinia to:
Define a Clear Vision
Stacks helped Ravinia define a clear vision for the future of their DAM program, starting by asking key questions about their objectives. From there, they made both short and long-term recommendations for how Ravinia could navigate DAM internally.
Establish a Clear Governance Strategy
With Stacks' guidance, Ravinia established strong governance protocols, ensuring that their DAM program stayed healthy, users could buy-into a new set of workflows, and they realized the return on investment they sought.
Lay the Foundation
Stacks supported the initial setup of the DAM program, providing expertise on structuring digital assets and training Ravinia staff on best practices for maintaining and expanding it.
Benefits
During the webinar, Patrick provided insights into the reasons that DAM was important to the Ravinia team and shared feedback they’ve received from end users in the months following the initial launch.
We operated on a kind of tribal knowledge. Over time, we lost that knowledge of how to access certain assets. That’s where DAM has helped us out. Users have thanked our team and told us how much easier it is to find what they need and put it to use.
Patrick Gipson, Associate Creative Director, Ravinia Festival
He also provided insights into what their team was looking for from their DAM platform and why OrangeLogic’s platform is such a great fit.
Our team knew we needed better integration with Adobe. Our video editor and graphic design team have to collaborate in a seamless way and those features were a huge reason we went with OrangeLogic. We really like the collections folders where you can add collaborators directly to join in the work.
Patrick Gipson, Associate Creative Manager, Ravinia Festival
Finally, Patrick spoke about why Ravinia chose to work with Stacks to get them started on the right track.
We are happy that we worked with a consultant like Stacks during the transition. We moved about 700,000 assets, and that’s something you don’t want to have to do twice. We relied heavily on their team to help our team, guide us, and ask the right questions during this period of change.
Patrick Gipson, Associate Creative Director, Ravinia Festival
Conclusion
Ravinia Festival’s partnership with OrangeLogic and Stacks allowed them to transform their digital asset management process, making their vast archive more accessible, organized, and secure. The Festival is now better equipped to manage its digital history and meet the demands of its evolving operations. Ravinia’s experience serves as a testament to the power of a well-executed DAM strategy and strong partnerships in preserving legacy while enhancing day-to-day efficiency.
Are you looking to get started in DAM or grow your existing DAM program? If so, our team of dedicated DAM professionals would love to help you achieve DAM success just as we did with Ravinia Festival. Contact us today to speak with one of our team members about your unique needs!
