The transition to an all-digital tapeless workflow has transformed how we do business. Production companies are realizing the cost benefits, flexibility and efficiencies of moving everything from tape to digital, and agency broadcast departments are implementing all-digital production environments.
At Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, I deal with massive amounts of digital media files for our client Sprint. So I appreciate that gone are the days of rifling through floor-to-ceiling vaults of director reels, worldwide traveling for casting, or running off dubs and shipping them internationally to vendors and clients for review and approval,. Today, all that can be done online.
To manage Sprint, we recently transitioned from an FTP system to Wiredrive, and it’s become our virtual vault and digital meeting room. We launched a campaign for the new Instinct phone from Sprint/Nextel, and used Wiredrive to share media across multiple platforms, showing the huge advantages of tapeless workflows.
Just a few months ago, our department’s producers would receive approximately 30 director reels a day. Eventually, pulling something off the vault shelf meant risking being buried alive under an avalanche of reels. And to share the reel with a colleague in L.A. or Buenos Aires meant packaging it, shipping it overnight, then receiving a hefty bill for shipping fees–not to mention it possibly not arriving on time. Now, when we get DVDs in the mail, we put one copy in the reel library (for those who still rummage through it) and request a digital link or Wiredrive reel from the sender.
With online systems, reels are circulated with the click of a mouse, so my client or creative team shooting in South America sees what I need them to see, practically in real time.
And adopting an all-digital workflow is a step in the green business practices direction. Data workflows generate no waste. There’s no removable media, jewel cases, paper covers or bulky shipping packaging to throw away. Working with an online media management system has hugely reduced our delivery expenses, and it’s more sustainable.
We who work in the deadline-crazed world of advertising need information–whether it’s a script, storyboard or approval on the latest edit–immediately. Sprint’s newly adopted tagline. “Only On The Now Network” is all about how Sprint gets what you want now, through faster networking, connections and Internet, and Live TV and real time GPS.
That tagline also communicates what’s expected of us and our creative vendors today. We’re working with shorter timetables and shrinking production budgets, yet client expectations to deliver great creative, on time, is as salient as ever. If you’re an advertising professional not tapping the benefits of online digital workflows, interactive creative collaboration, real-time sharing of files and ability to review and update reels and spot revisions on the fly, you’re experiencing a lag in information delivery. By the time your client in Sao Paolo receives that DVD to review, your competitor may already be wrapping the job for his guy in Mumbai.
Josh Reynolds is executive producer at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners in San Francisco.
