Enhancing Creative Workflows for ITV. The Phoenix Rises from the Ashes

May 2, 2022
Consumers are spoilt for choice when it comes to the range of video content now available to them. Whether they enjoy a one-off, true crime documentary or prefer to binge watch a comedy series, viewers can access their favourite content as and when they need, on whichever device or platform they wish to use. The increasing demand for video content has resulted in broadcasters having to manage more media assets for a wider range of use cases than ever before. This has led creative teams to rethink their workflows, opting to reduce the laborious, time-consuming tasks with streamlined, automated processes instead.

As part of a dynamic studio that creates, produces, and distributes content globally, the ITV Creative Team sits at the heart of Group Marketing. Responsible for creating and producing on and off-air advertising and brand communications, the ITV Creative Team focuses on driving up viewing figures and maximising engagement across ITV and its partners’ services. The team collaborates across the business and works with Viewer Marketing, ITV Studios Marketing, and Commercial Marketing, as well as Media, Audiences, Commissioning, ITV Experiences, ITV Studios, ITV Commercial, Broadcast Operations, Scheduling, and SignPost.

Opportunities for Renewal

The ITV Studios creative team is responsible for making over 1000 on-air promos every month for its catalogue of programmes. The promo creation process can be complex, involving content processing activity, such as versioning, localization, and approval from multiple departments. These workflows require communication between the creative, marketing, media planning, and compliance teams, with all parties involved needing access to emails, spreadsheets, and many other processes and tools to get the job done.

The fragmented and largely manual nature of the existing workflow made it expensive, time-consuming, error-prone, and stressful for the teams involved. With the goal of replacing its legacy system with an automated and efficient solution, ITV evaluated various off-the-shelf products but failed to find one which could tick all the boxes.

“By reducing manual processes, productivity can increase. By improving communication between departments, errors are reduced and time is saved. The need to bring in extra resources during peak periods is also mitigated, resulting in cost savings. It’s a win-win situation for both the users and organisation.”

Neil Anderson, CRO, Codemill

The Genesis of a New System

To create an optimum campaign management workflow, ITV chose to work with Codemill to devise a solution that was unique in its abilities to tackle ITV Studios’ specific requirements and structure. Providing custom development work, Codemill offered a mix of UX-design, front-end, and back-end development services throughout the project. Vidispine and Cantemo provided the base product for Media Asset Management (MAM).

All work was planned in stages following an agile development process. The solution combined a custom-built media planning application for broadcast and digital media, alongside an agile MAM-system to keep track of all video assets produced.

New Beginnings

Codemill's bespoke campaign management system ultimately contributed to the creation of ITV Phoenix. A system developed and implemented to streamline the production and delivery of on-air and digital marketing campaigns to tens of millions of monthly ITV viewers. With ITV Phoenix, users can focus purely on campaign content rather than having to juggle the hundreds of versions of each campaign produced and prepared for playout.

“The deployment of ITV Phoenix means the ITV Creative Team can efficiently manage their media within a modern, future-proof system. It is a pleasure to support ITV - this has been a great project to be a part of.”

Neil Anderson, CRO, Codemill

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