Creative Workflow Management at Today’s Cult-Favorite Brands
Creatives and marketers know that any high-growth brand with a strong visual identity and a consistent marketing cadence needs a ton of content behind it—and if there’s any industry that’s characterized by a never-ending appetite for fresh content, it’s beauty. To fuel their campaigns and drive sales, beauty brands need a creative workflow that’s both streamlined and robust. Let’s explore what creative workflow management looks like at brands like MERIT and r.e.m. beauty that are defining the next big thing in beauty.
The Creative Workflow in 2024
A well-managed creative workflow supports the entire lifecycle of a creative asset, ensuring faster time-to-market. It should enhance:
- Visibility: users should be able to track project progress, provide clear status updates, and understand dependencies.
- Collaboration: users should be able to give real-time feedback, edits, and approval, share the right assets with the right people, and seamlessly hand off tasks.
- Productivity: an effective workflow tool should reduce platform-switching, centralize and organize files, and automate manual tasks.
The Benefits of Effective Creative Workflow Management
If your company operates like many fast-growing beauty and fashion brands, then you likely communicate via Slack, host e-comm on a platform like Shopify or Adobe Commerce, and launch marketing campaigns on email, SMS, social, and search; your creative and marketing teams are tasked with producing channel-specific content with quick turnarounds to meet consumer demands and stay on top of cultural moments. Having managed marketing and e-commerce at a seed-stage skincare brand myself, I’ve seen firsthand the importance of keeping everyone on the same page, especially when teams are navigating cross-departmental communication and a complex tech stack—or even worse, spreadsheets and manual processes. So, what does an optimal creative workflow look like in practice?
Creative Workflow Management in Action
Standardizing a brand’s creative workflow within a central location is essential to connecting teams and accelerating content production. A platform like Globaledit drives the creative production process while keeping everyone in the loop:
Automated syncing and metadata tagging
Instant content uploads and automatic metadata enrichment allow users to start editing while a shoot is still underway, saving time and resources and enabling collaboration across teams and locations.
Easily view libraries of assets
Globaledit is a platform built for visual content; it makes it simple for users to preview thumbnails of all assets in a collection and click into selects to review details, compare versions, draw markups, and share.
AI face & object recognition
Globaledit’s AI model automatically identifies and tags objects, scenes, and celebrities, and can be trained to recognize any face, such as your favorite or frequently-used talent. This feature allows brands like NYX Professional Makeup to instantly search their (vast!) asset library and optimize campaign creative based on what—or who—is performing well at any time.
Smart collections & approval galleries
Assets often get stuck in review cycles as art directors, retouchers, and creative directors wait for feedback. With dynamic galleries and always-on content collections, users can gather feedback directly in Globaledit and seamlessly share assets for rating and approval from key stakeholders. Kiehl’s, for example, uses smart collections to automatically pass assets to senior leadership for final approval as soon as their photo production team signs off on them. Other teams use collections to share brand assets and new content with external talent, agencies, and retail partners.
App integrations
Seamless integrations with essential apps like Slack, Adobe, and Asana streamline communication and free up teams to focus on what they do best. For instance, the e-comm team at Skims uses our Shopify integration to instantly pass approved assets from Globaledit to their online storefront, avoiding the risk of sharing WIP files publicly and eliminating the need for manual downloads and uploads.
Up next: the UGC, freelance & influencer marketing workflow
A study found that 75% of all content at brands with highly engaged and loyal customers is completely user-generated. As UGC, influencer, and community marketing continues to grow in scope and impact, workflow platforms must evolve accordingly to keep brands relevant and engaged with their audience.
Similarly, emerging brands frequently collaborate with up-and-coming photographers and freelance talent to maintain a fresh point of view and relevant creative. Evolving brand collaborations prompt the need for open workspaces to easily share and collaborate on content.
The Globaledit product team is currently rolling out a suite of features to support these new, mobile-first workflows, including an intuitive approvals process for influencers, social media managers, and PR, and an enhanced mobile app for easy uploads straight from your phone.
In today’s fast-paced, content-forward beauty landscape, effective creative workflow management is non-negotiable. Creative production platforms like Globaledit empower brands to streamline their workflow processes, connect their teams, and ultimately, get content to market more efficiently than ever.