Instacart-logo-dam

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Organization
Instacart
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Industry
Grocery Technology Company

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Headquarters
San Francisco, USA

Creative Director & DAM Manager
Robert Paige

Designing for a phenomenon

Instacart got its start in the San Francisco Bay area over 10 years ago. Today Instacart partners with more than 1,000 retail banners to facilitate online shopping, delivery, and pickup services from over 75,000 locations across the U.S. and Canada. The Instacart Platform also offers retailers a suite of enterprise-grade technology products and services to power their ecommerce experiences, fulfill orders, digitize brick-and-mortar stores, provide advertising services and glean insights. 

Instacart's Creative Studio, including Creative Director and DAM advocate, Robert Paige is responsible for designing the artwork, animations and video that bring that brand to life. His team of photographers, retouchers, production artists, video editors, and motion designers create Instacart’s immediately recognizable branding and make it available to the rest of the company.

 

The goal

The Creative Studio needed a digital asset management (DAM) system that could scale to match its creative workflows and brand management needs.

Instacart’s Creative Team had three basic goals in mind for their enterprise DAM platfrom:

1. A more streamlined DAM workflow for creatives that would speed up production time.

2. A way to empower Instacart employees in other departments to find the content they needed in the DAM platfrom without help.

3. A brand portal that looked like it came from Instacart, with on-brand colors, fonts, and styling, built into their DAM platfrom.

The team also wanted a digital asset management software that could grow and change with them. For instance, they wanted to add templates so that their partners could customize Instagram content for their stores.

Instacart image grocery drop off
Image housed in Instacart’s digital asset management system, courtesy of Instacart
 

The challenge

Before Orange DAM, Instacart experienced some silos that could lead to segmentation. This meant other teams often had to come to the Creative Studio team whenever they needed assets, since they couldn’t find what they wanted on their own. 

“We had requests from teams across the company,” Robert said. 

Workflows could also occasionally become disjointed, with users uploading and downloading assets through several programs. Instacart’s Creative Studio wanted a better solution.

“Orange Logic fit all of our needs for permissions and safeguarding our work, while also providing the necessary capabilities and an easy-to-use interface.”

Robert Paige
Creative Director, Instacart

The solution

After implementing Orange Logic, Instacart rolled out a central source of truth to house brand assets. That in turn gave them:

Simplified workflows

Rather than uploading and downloading assets dozens of times during a workflow, assets are now housed in Instacart’s Orange DAM system. Assets can be viewed from the digital asset management software, and comments and annotations can be added directly from the system. Plugins with the Adobe Creative Suite allows the team to pull assets right from the DAM. The team can even handle video timeline subclipping with the Adobe Premiere plugin, creating subclips as related assets attached to the original video. 

A self-service system

By offering an easy-to-use central location for all their assets, Instacart’s Orange DAM cut back on the number of times users came to Robert and his team to find content, saving both the team time — and the time of those outside of his team as well. 

Brand portal

At Instacart, Robert’s team reviews brand guidelines regularly. Orange DAM gave them access to a brand portal that they could easily update and personalize with their own brand colors and fonts. All the content in the brand portal also exists in the DAM system, allowing the team to ensure only the most up-to-date content is visible.

The results

Having a central source of truth and cutting down on the constant uploading and downloading was a big help in optimizing the team’s workflows.

The team also spends less time fulfilling requests, since other teams can find what they need in Orange DAM. “We’re opening doors and giving access to various departments with different needs,” Robert said. “Teams can now use the portal as their source of truth and find the assets that are more beneficial. When you’re working with multiple productions and art — it gets very complicated. This makes it a streamlined process.”

Key brand assets are available on Instacart’s brand portal, which display’s Instacart’s own fonts and uses their specific color palette.

Robert shared, “Orange Logic has helped create operational efficiency around our brand assets and ensure they are used across channels and departments.” 

But most of all, the Creative Studio has room to grow, so as their needs change, they can adjust or expand.

Screenshot of Instacart Brand Portal
Screenshot of Instacart Brand Portal, courtesy of Instacart.
 

Lessons learned

  • Centralized workflows save time: Creative Studio lost time moving assets between different systems. With assets in a single location, the team moves faster, assets stay secure, and versioning is simplified.
  • Users come back to easy-to-use systems: Since the previous digital asset management system was nuanced and complicated, many users instead relied on other siloed processes to access assets. This new straightforward system is user-friendly and conducive to differing department needs.
  • Not all integrations are created equal: One of the differentiating features for Robert and his team were Orange DAM’s Adobe integrations. Robert shared, “With Orange Logic, you can open that file just by opening it in Photoshop. It doesn’t take up space, and it gives me a version history.” His team also likes that Orange Logic’s Adobe Premiere integration supports timeline subclipping — a feature they struggled to find elsewhere.

What does this mean for your enterprise?

Orange DAM offered Instacart better efficiency, allowing users to streamline their workflows through improved collaboration and automations. The DAM system has a proven track record of simplifying and speeding up workflows, and our team can show you the best way to save time for your teams.

It also gave Instacart users best-in-class integrations that worked seamlessly with their enterprise DAM system. Orange DAM is API-first, so even if an integration isn’t currently part of our offering, you can connect to the systems you need using APIs.

Finally, Orange DAM software gave Instacart room to grow. With thousands of configurations available, Orange DAM lets Instacart change when they need to. It offers you the same ability to quickly adapt as your organization changes and adapt the DAM system to any department that needs it. To learn more about how Orange Logic can help you with your video workflow needs or any MAM/DAM features, schedule a call today!