About the MRBTA:
The Margaret River Busselton Tourism Association (MRBTA) is a not-for-profit organisation, with more than 700 members and 150 staff across the City of Busselton and Shire of Augusta Margaret River. The MRBTA operates seven tourist attractions – Lake Cave, Mammoth Cave, Jewel Cave, Ngilgi Cave, Cape Leeuwin Lighthouse, Cape Naturaliste Lighthouse and Forest Adventures South West – and manages ground handling at the Busselton Margaret River Airport.
The funds generated from its commercial operations allows MRBTA to:
- Market the region to intrastate, interstate and international visitors;
- Undertake visitor servicing through its website, app and visitor centres;
- Provide high quality attractions;
- Invest in the conservation of its natural and heritage assets, and help sustain the cultural and environmental values of the region; and
- Provide employment, support tourism and contribute to the economy of the region.
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MRBTA approached HIVO to store and manage brand assets for it’s Your Margaret River Region consumer facing brand, which is known for being creative, adventurous, laid-back and sociable and is distributed across MRBTA’s digital channels.
Why MRBTA needed HIVO to manage it’s digital assets:
For all organisations involved in the travel and tourism industry (including not-for-profit tourism associations such as the MRBTA), images, video, audio and user generated content are crucial components which serve to engage consumers and ultimately drive business.
Content plays this vital role as it is very closely related (and often directly leads to) revenue generating activities such as ticket sales, accommodation, food, entertainment, membership, entry fees and other travel related purchases. With the logic being that end consumers buy based on the real and perceived experiences of other consumers, as portrayed in a photo, video, marketing brochure, design, article or other medium of communication.
For anyone involved in creating travel-related content, they are faced with and endless hunt to discover or create great contextual media with appropriate usage rights. Ranging from tourism officers, digital marketers, bloggers, journalists, writers and advertising agencies, all of these job functions are heavily dependant on visual media to accompany their travel articles and other written content.
On top of this, and when you layer in working with multiple stakeholders who are often located across vast geographical distances, locating the highest quality and procurable assets in a timely manner can be an enormous challenge to say the least.
In addition to the finding or sourcing of high quality visual content, these same people are often content creators themselves, or work closely with content creators, who invest significantly in ‘supply side’ production related activities such as production equipment, talent, locational access permits and production suppliers.
Teams at these production organisation are then tasked with transcoding content into appropriate formats, sizes, file types and device derivatives, and finally, with management and distribution of the approved files, including broadcast agreements and publishing licenses.
MRBTA’s key digital asset management challenges:
Margaret River Busselton Tourism Association digital asset management challenges were centered around three key areas:
- Media transcoding branded assets for the appropriate device, format, and medium. This will then allow internal staff to easily manage original source media and create associated versions on a self service basis, without having to go to external suppliers.
- Web based “discoverability” of all digital assets, with intuitive and granular search functionality. The team needed to create a taxonomy to enable “findability” for their broad user base, while at the same time presenting options for multiple asset formats from a single-search result. MRBTA had allocated a large investment into creating these assets, and needed to ensure quality and control over derivatives utilised by their constituent.
- Powerful user management, including media request and approval systems, usage tracking, and detailed access control options. Granular control of user permissions was key in ensuring the right assets were utilised for the right projects, in accordance with MRBTA’s standards and brand guidelines.
Digital asset versions or ‘derivatives’:
Automation of media transcoding and derivatives allows the MRBTA staff to designate files, such as logos and videos, to have multiple versions that are “stacked” or linked to the main file. For example, logos may have different colour variations and brand commercials have variations for broadcast in different markets. These variations are generated from within the system, and are linked to the parent file while being hidden from general search results. This scenario allows searchers a clean view of all available media, with a single step to preview and download explicit asset versions.
It was important to ensure the preservation of parent assets, regardless of repurposing, and also systematically link each version to it’s original. HIVO was able to help create specific permissions around each user group, to ensure everyone involved has access to the assets and repurposing actions they need.
Searching for and finding digital assets:
MRBTA’s was also very focused on “discoverability.” The new MRBTA system created an environment where the internal staff could easily deploy metadata and “batch tag” assets quickly. The ease of use in deploying this taxonomy resulted in a highly intuitive search and browse experience for users. In addition, search results are presented with multiple browse/preview options, including video previews, and video keyframe galleries.
That means that each child asset can have a specific thumbnail to alert users to a specific asset. The system also pulls keyframes at set intervals and turns them into thumbnails, which allows users to preview the entire clip at a glance.
Granular user and digital asset permissions:
Lastly, MRBTA’s DAM had to address user access control and video trimming. With a large member base of more than 700 members, it’s imperative that MRBTA’s DAM administrators are able to quickly and easily create specific permissions and roles. Users are required to fill out a quick ‘request for access’ form to access HIVO. Administrators can then also track and monitor where and how digital assets are used and what type of repurposing actions the user would be allowed to conduct. The admin receives an email notifying them of the request to access assets, and can approve or deny the request via the email.
Based on usage-justification forms submitted within the system, some users levels are allowed to repurpose assets according to what type of media it will be used for (transcoding). The user will receive an email to notify them whether their request to download and/or repurpose assets was approved. Videos are easily trimmed within the system interface and formatted prior to download, and photos are easily formatted and sized for print or use on a web site.
The result of implementing HIVO for digital asset management:
After deploying HIVO, MRBTA team members have seen significant uptake in media distribution and are utilising tracking reports to gain insight into the media usage and preferences of their user base. Team members, journalists, and agencies have controlled access to all assets created by MRBTA, with none of the risks that comes with granting access to high-resolution files and formats.
This allows MRBTA to take on the role that it does best, be the central hub for anyone needing professional images and other visual materials used in marketing campaigns, articles, or projects promoting the Margaret River, Dunsborough, Busselton and Augusta regions. Being that HIVO is a cloud based web application, it provides round the clock access to assets with no waiting times.
Some example use cases of how HIVO is used in the tourism industry:
Chinese journalist given access to MRBTA’s image library stored in HIVO:
After an Chinese journalist wrote an article about traveling in the Margaret River region, she contacted MRBTA for some photos to accompany his piece. The journalist was given a HIVO account with light permissions that allowed him to view and download relevant photos. She was able to quickly search for specific topics based on keywords, date range, file type and view each asset, create a collection of images she liked, and finally download in the format required.
There were no unsuccessful emails bounced due to the size of the photos being too large for email and no downtime waiting for the images. It was a simple search, select, and download. She was able to browse through thousands of photos and access them at full resolution, web resolution, or as thumbnails as required. In the end, the Chinese journalist had a seamless experience working with MRBTA and easily found a number of suitable high-quality, high-resolution photos.
Influencers production team being provided with video footage:
The media and production staff of an internationally renowned tennis player (and influencer with millions of followers) were recently given access to MRBTA’s HIVO account prior to a recent TV series that was filmed featuring the star on tour throughout the Margaret River, Dunsborough, Busselton and Augusta regions.
The marketing staff were able to access a wide variety of appropriately licensed footage and ran MRBTA bumpers into and out of commercials played during the TV series and across online channels. In addition, the production team was able to quickly search, preview and download selected high resolution clips for use during the show itself.
The wide variety of repurposing options, combined with quick ways to search, preview and find the right formats, allowed the team of producers to easily deploy captivating video. This helped to extend the reach of MRBTA’s brand to the tennis stars millions of viewers and followers.
By giving third party media producers full access to visually browse through a beautiful curated collection of photo and video assets, MRBTA is able to gain brand exposure by giving back to producers something they constantly battle with - lack of time and too many choices.
Get in touch with our team today to request a demonstration and see HIVO in action.