South Suburban Parks and Recreation was formed in 1959 to provide parks and recreation services to over 151,000 residents across Denver, Colorado. The community-driven organization boasts indoor and outdoor amenities, including sports complexes, golf courses, tennis courts, and BMX tracks.
About
South Suburban Parks and Recreation is on a mission to replace standard stock photos with wholesome, real-life visuals from its beautiful parks, trails, facilities, and programs. Communications Manager, Becky Grubb, is at the helm of the project. She relies on Asset Bank to store, search, and share media content from more than 100 miles of trails and 60 parks.
60 parks, and 15 recreation facilities around Denver, Colorado
300 Full-time employees
Uploading location-specific photos
One challenge
Sharing thousands of media assets between locations
INTRODUCTION
South Suburban Parks and Recreation covers a large geographical expanse with hundreds of parks and rec facilities around Colorado. Juggling media assets from multiple locations has always been a challenge, but not with Asset Bank.
The team leans on Asset Bank's external uploader, detailed search system, and quick download feature to generate thousands of images for its outdoor and indoor amenities, share high-quality media assets with different departments, and populate marketing materials with exactly the right image.
“We love Asset Bank. It just helps us integrate every project we do and keeps things centralised and easily accessible to everyone in our entire district—as well as 300 full-time employees. It’s been great for our workflow and our marketing.”
the challenge
Consolidating content from 60+ parks and rec centres
When the South Suburban Parks and Recreation team used to get media enquiries about upcoming events, they’d quickly find themselves in a rabbit hole of shared documents, email threads, and filing cabinets. It could take days to uncover the perfect picture—and, by that point, they might have missed out on potential publicity.
With over 100 miles of trails and 60 parks on the map, there was a lot of content to sift through, and there was about to be a lot more. At the time, a large portion of the company’s media library was made up of outdated stock photos, something the team knew needed to change.
As the organisation made a concerted effort to shoot more real-life photography from each of its parks, trails, facilities, and programs, the number of assets it needed to store began to grow. Local filing cabinets were no longer cutting it, nor were disjointed folders stored on localized devices. That all changed when Communications Manager, Becky Grubb joined the team. Becky had used Asset Bank in her previous job and loved it so much that she couldn’t think of a better solution for SSPRD.
“We had no filing system. Everything was in folders all over the place. And we wanted to start focusing on getting photos of real people, not using stock images—actual people using our parks and rec centers. We really made a push to take more photos, so we knew we needed to find a way to organise and store them.”
THE SOLUTION
Building a core library of assets across hundreds of locations
Storage: bringing together 1000s of park, trail, and rec centre images
Finding a way to store thousands of images across hundreds of locations was the biggest sticking point for the SSPRD team. It was becoming increasingly difficult for Becky and the team to keep track of who had uploaded what and where.
With Asset Bank’s flexible storage options, the team can now store all their media assets in one place without needing individual filing cabinets across Denver.
Searching: Finding the right picture for every occasion
You can imagine how difficult it is to find the exact picture you need when there are thousands to choose from. This is the situation Becky and the team found themselves in when they were contacted by media outlets. Asset Bank’s advanced search function allows anyone with access the ability to carry out filtered, detailed searches to find the perfect media assets.
“To me, the biggest benefit is the search function. Before, we were guessing how someone named a file, but now we can put them in folders with keywords. It’s just a way quicker and more efficient way to find things.”
Sharing: publishing a lightbox to share collections of assets
There are 300 employees across multiple SSPRD locations which, in the past, made it tricky to share photos with external stakeholders or cross-reference assets between different locations.
“Before, we’d have to download the image, then upload it to another platform like Dropbox, then Google Drive, and then send it over. Now we can just send a link with the right photos.”
SSPRD uses lightboxes as an easy way of sharing assets with external sites and cross-referencing assets with other teams internally.
Sharing: An easy way for multi-location teams to share assets
Asset Bank’s External Uploader has been a huge time-saver for the SSPRD team.
Every location has its own facilities and is in charge of taking its own pictures, but not everyone needs access to the DAM. Using the external uploader, the SSPRD team can share a unique link with each location who is then able to drop in the assets and upload them. Becky can then add the metadata, correctly tag the images, put them in the correct folders, and control permissions.
“This saves everyone from having to do all the legwork of tagging and adding permissions—I don’t mind doing that, as long as [each location] takes pictures and uploads them.”
THE RESULTS
Easy cross-location sharing
While the communications and marketing team is the most hands-on with Asset Bank, the ability to store and organise images in one place has made it easier for other departments to find and use assets. But it’s also much easier for the company’s different locations to upload and share images from their own in-house teams.
“The external uploader has been really useful for our facilities that are further away in location,” says Becky. Each location can upload its own assets, which then notifies the communications and marketing team who can tag and file them correctly.
With Asset Bank's flexible permissions and approval workflows, the team can provide users with upload and edit permissions whilst still ensuring an approval process is in place. “We’ve given permissions to a bunch of different departments to upload, but then we approve each image before it goes live.”
High-quality marketing materials in a pinch
Each park and rec centre is responsible for snapping and sharing pictures of its location and events–and Becky and the marketing team need quick access to all “This saves everyone from having to do all the legwork of tagging and adding permissions—I don’t mind doing that, as long as [each location] takes pictures and uploads them.” of these new uploads. They need to source visual material to use for every Instagram post, Facebook update, newsletter, and quarterly catalogue. Asset Bank’s quick download feature has cut the amount of time it takes to pull images into social posts and populate marketing materials with relevant, up-to-date media.
“If someone’s creating a newsletter, they’ll go into Asset Bank and search for the one photo they need and download it in seconds.”
An integral part of the team’s workflow
Becky and her team use Asset Bank every day: “It’s just part of our normal workflow in the marketing department,” she says. Whether it’s finding images for social media, populating the quarterly catalogue with the latest photos, or sourcing fresh material that’s just been created on-site, SSPRD leans on Asset Bank.
The Future
Becky plans to continue embedding Asset Bank into the team’s daily workflows. Uploading, organising, and storing media assets is such an important part of the SSPRD team’s job, that having this central source of truth where everything can just live is a game-changer.
“We add and upgrade new facilities all the time. We add new parks and we update parks. So, we’re just going to continue to keep our visual assets as current as possible with as much content as we can and make sure it’s all tagged properly.”
Becky is looking forward to building a rigorous and robust asset management system that will benefit every single SSPRD location. As the company expands, so too will the number of assets it needs to handle. But, with a tool like Asset Bank on side, the process will continue to be quick and pain-free.
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