Brandwidth is an integrated marketing agency that fuses strategic marketing with the latest technology to deliver outstanding results for their clients. One of those clients, Toyota, employed Brandwidth three years ago, and since then the body of work produced for Toyota has steadily grown.

Initially the creative artwork was held in a neatly organised filing system, so that when clients requested images they could be found easily and sent off quickly. When there were a handful of images this was fine, though even then it needed to be manually dealt with, and file transfers for 400MB image files were an issue. The library rapidly expanded, and three years later they were managing as many as 5,000 images.

Debbie Sermon, Account Director at Brandwidth said, "Using the old system even simple requests could be time consuming. Clients had to be very specific about their requests, they had to know exactly what they wanted. Then we needed to manually find the file, and often resize and resample it, for example if it was needed for the Web. It was clear that something had to change."

The search for another solution began in earnest, and Brandwidth looked at a number of options. Systems like Corbis would have fit the bill, it seems robust, user friendly and configurable just like Cumulus. However the six figure starting costs were way beyond what was feasible for Toyota. It would have been impossible for Brandwidth to deliver value for money at that price.

When Canto Cumulus was considered, it was already a familiar product to a couple of the team, having used earlier versions of Cumulus. The product ticked all the boxes, being robust, easy to use, and customisable.

The fact that Cumulus had client software as well as Web access, rather than a browser-only interface, was also a positive factor.

Of paramount importance though was the price, low enough to make the project not just possible, but profitable. If offers Toyota outstanding value for money, while relieving the pressure Brandwidth was facing with the manual filing system.

Once the software was installed, and with a little training, Brandwidth went about customising the Cumulus system specifically for Toyota. The system was branded as Mediabox, and clients were soon able to login and serve themselves with the images and files that they need.

Debbie Sermon noted, "Once Mediabox was up and running we noticed a change in the way people used our services. In the past we would deal with three or four requests per day, each for single files. Now we have the same number of client requests, but they are more likely to take ten images, which is great."

The visual search means clients can scan through until they see an image that fits the bill, instead of having to submit a detailed description of what was needed. Now clients find what they want quickly, then find more supporting images.

Ed Herbert, Group technology and Project Manager said "The benefit of using Cumulus isn't merely a financial one, though that is important, it's a matter of strategically using resources in the most efficient way. The team can now spend its time producing great work, rather than getting bogged down with graphical admin stuff. From Toyota's point of view they now get a faster and easier to use system, so everyone is happy"

Much of the content was originated for glossy brochures, but more often now the content is required for Web use. So instead of sending a 400MB tiff across the Internet, or spending time resizing, the system does it all automatically. A librarian, who works just one day a week, manages the whole archive. The rest is handled by the Cumulus system, which can deliver images to the required resolution and file-format as required.

"The team can now spend its time producing great work, rather than getting bogged down with graphical admin stuff. From Toyota's point of view they now get a faster and easier to use system, so everyone is happy."

Ed Herbert, Group technology and Project Manager

Chris Goodwin, Senior Account Executive at Brandwidth said, "When you count the work hours that Cumulus has saved, and measure that against the price we paid for the system, it's been a huge success. The system paid for itself in a matter of months, rather than years, and there are still ways we can expand its use."

Now that Mediabox is in place, and handling around 5,000 images it is possible to expand and grow. Brandwidth can add media, such as video, page layout documents, or PDFs. Also, now that the software is installed, Brandwidth can build new custom portals for other clients.