Creatives are producing more content than ever. How will your team adapt?

Demand for content has hit the roof

My team and I work with some of the largest and most influential companies around the world looking to understand how people are using our products and the business challenges they’re facing. The pattern is clear: for the modern enterprise, content and design is the new currency and demand is higher than ever. But this goes beyond just anecdotes – it’s confirmed by research as well.

In 2015, the analysts IDC found that 71% of creatives now produce 10 times more content than they did just five years ago and that 85% of that increase was driven by the demand for personalisation. Content that provides a consistent experience across all devices.

The good news is that we now have the data and capability to deliver that level of personalisation at scale. But to fully achieve it we need to transform the way we work.

What if your team could be 700% more productive?

Ask any creative about their favourite part of the job and it’s unlikely someone will answer ‘the mundane tasks’. Things like adapting a single element across hundreds (if not thousands) of assets or going through the pains of re-working a stock photo after attaining the license. And yet, those same tasks are an integral part of what creatives do – and something we’ve worked to streamline through the capabilities in or in the tight integration of CC Libraries and Adobe Stock.

In a recent report we commissioned to Pfeiffer Consultancy, we discovered that applying a brand-approved colour swatch using CC Libraries takes about 16 seconds (instead of our benchmark of over 2 minutes). That may not sound like a lot, but it soon adds up and effectively represents a productivity increase of 700%.

As a result, we see more and more companies using CC Libraries to manage their creative workflows and replace static style guides or production bibles. Everything is kept and updated in real-time via the Creative Cloud – better collaboration, less mistakes and less time spent on mundane tasks, more time to do the work. This is how Swedish fashion giant Gant manages their style guides in Europe. It’s also how ridesharing company Uber, one of the most innovative companies in the world, collaborates with their design teams on a global scale to ensure brand consistency. When teams fully embrace it, CC Libraries just work and before long people don’t notice it’s there. That’s how it should be done.

Increasing team productivity tenfold is the new normal

According to the Pfeiffer report, Adobe Stock makes teams up to 10 times more productive, and a process like image licensing (which typically takes 3 minutes) is done in as quickly as 16 seconds. This not only offers time saving, but encourages creativity. Working with stock images just becomes easier.

Look at online fashion shop Spree, who on an average day will deal with huge volumes of editorial content around fashion events and pretty aggressive deadlines. By using stock images connected to their CC libraries, they’re now doing more in less time, or as their Art Director Ryk Benade recently shared at Adobe Summit:

“Creative Cloud for Enterprise, CC Libraries and Adobe Stock have improved the workflows so that we now have extra time back and can finally enjoy a beer on Friday!”

Or, take for example video games developers EA Sports, who year on year need to update up to 1,500 user interfaces with adapted versions of a logo and a new look and feel. Typically, this manual process would take them about two months – by using linked assets with Creative Cloud Libraries, they’ve reduced it to a couple of days (and most of it is used for reviews). A single upload ripples through to thousands of asset variations. Talk about personalised content at scale!

So what’s the future of creativity?

It’s a great time to be a creative because you can apply your trade to so many different areas, but it’s also true that creativity and business are more closely aligned than ever before. As the speed of delivery continues to accelerate, the answer doesn’t have to rely on working harder – but instead on working better. Therefore, the ability to produce content at scale, whilst maintaining fidelity, will become the defining business advantage of creative departments in the enterprise.

Download the Pfeiffer reports ‘Adobe Stock: Boosting design efficiency through integration’ and ‘Adobe Creative Cloud Libraries: The Productivity Impact of Shared Assets and Settings‘ to find out more about how Stock and CC Libraries are making enterprise businesses more effective with their creative work.