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Linney builds a 12-hour multimedia campaign timeline for retail brands

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About Linney

U.K. marketing services firm W&J Linney is a family-owned agency that has, over the last five generations, evolved from a newspaper manufacturer into a full-service, multi-channel marketing corporation. With expertise in all communications platforms, Linney is channel-neutral. Its services cover the entire marketing supply chain, from insight and consumer research to design, print, digital signage and film production, events, social media and more.

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The challenge: delivering multi-channel campaigns in extremely short timescales

Maintaining long-term client trust and loyalty for major retail and consumer brands requires constant agility and innovation. As clients’ marketing needs have shifted towards new video and animation styles and integrated social media assets, Linney’s creative department needed its many business units and content systems to sync closely in order to shorten delivery timelines across all media.

“We're at this digital pivot. Campaigns that used to involve 48-sheet billboards now live on modular LED screens. When you're creating things, it's multi-discipline from films and animations to studio and creative. Speed is the name of the game,” explained Luke Dennis, Producer at Linney. “That's what diversification is all about. We're a company not afraid to invest in new things.”

The agency continues to grow its business in this new media landscape by using agility at scale to coordinate its multi-channel services: deploying film crews anywhere in the U.K. in a matter of hours to shoot, immediately producing rough cuts for review and relying on rich analytics to constantly measure campaign success and adjust tactics on the fly.

The agency had been using a legacy proofing system and had tested out a video management platform, but neither offered Linney’s production team the right level of flexibility and collaborative review for storyboards, animation, and video content.

In fact, Luke and his team found themselves spending more and more of their time answering questions about issues with content proofs. Without reassurance that creative content would always be accessible for review at all hours, Linney’s creative team struggled to use their proofing system just for internal collaboration.

Linney began searching for a more comprehensive, reliable proofing system that could expedite review for video and animation while also providing one collaborative solution for hundreds of Linney employees, multiple teams, and clients to use to hit campaign launch deadlines.

We're at this digital pivot. Campaigns that used to involve 48-sheet billboards now live on modular LED screens. When you're creating things, it's multi-discipline from films and animations to studio and creative. That's what diversification is all about. We're a company not afraid to invest in new things.

Luke Dennis, Producer

The solution: integrated creative workflow platform to deliver campaigns faster

As a busy video production team working on tight deadlines, Linney needed a creative collaboration and online proofing solution that could easily replace its legacy system without compromising access to its extensive back catalogue and approval histories for customers.

Linney selected Ziflow largely due to on-demand client support. This enabled rapid deployment of a more flexible approval workflow - and all without the need for content migration and training for Linney’s hundreds of employees using the system.

In just a few weeks, Ziflow’s Customer Success team used the Ziflow API to transfer hundreds of old campaigns, proofs, comments, and changes from the agency’s legacy proofing system into Ziflow for continuous access. As more departments started to use Ziflow, other project managers started to request that their proofs be migrated into the system, too.

"Having that accountability and that two-way dialogue with our online proofing vendor is an absolute deal-breaker for us. Being able to point our employees in the direction of the person that can answer questions quickly, and it not bogging down my day is incredibly important to me. Ziflow support was very attentive," said Dennis.

Because the Ziflow system created more reliable availability, support and content accessibility, the agency felt comfortable extending its proofing process beyond internal review.

Linney’s creative teams embedded onsite with clients like McDonald’s and Royal Mail now use the system to review and approve a range of film, animation, social media, and print assets on very tight timelines.

Video review and approval enables Linney to quickly deliver multimedia projects like this video produced for Royal Mail. 

Using a modern proofing system to quickly move projects forward with clients is the key to Linney’s deliverability edge.

"As soon as it's shot, we're producing it on trains, in the production vehicles and on planes even. By the time we're back to our facility, clients are wanting to see a first cut. All of that content needs to be reviewed, optimized and approved," said Dennis. "It's that 12-hour window that's keeping us in the game really. Ziflow is contributing to keeping us in that window. It's really grown and we're really happy with it.”

It's that 12-hour window that's keeping us in the game really. Ziflow is contributing to keeping us in that window. It's really grown and we're really happy with it.”

Luke Dennis, Producer

Benefits

In addition to implementing a 12-hour turnaround for new campaign content, the agency uses Ziflow to:

  • Ensure comprehensive reporting for clients by migrating hundreds of items in creative back catalogs into a more reliable, accessible proofing system.
  • Demonstrate that confidential work for agencies like the Ministry of Defense are handled properly and meet compliance standards.
  • Create one proofing environment for both internal collaboration and client review and approval across thousands of employees and external users.
  • Offer competitive deadlines across multiple integrated formats for major brands.

Having that accountability and that two-way dialogue with our online proofing vendor is an absolute deal-breaker for us. Being able to point our employees in the direction of the person that can answer questions quickly, and it not bogging down my day is incredibly important to me. Ziflow support was very attentive.

Luke Dennis, Producer

Create More Magic

Don’t let the review and approval process slow you down. Let us show you how to speed it up.

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