ProofHQ is used by hundreds of retailers, including Walmart, Tesco, Walgreens and Home Depot, to manage feedback and approval on marketing and design projects
ProofHQ is used by a large number of leading retailers to deliver marketing projects more efficiently, accelerate speed-to-market and manage approvals by distributed review teams. We wanted to find out what is driving such rapid uptake of ProofHQ in retail.
In a recent survey of ProofHQ customers** we found a number of common factors:
We would like to welcome a number of new customers to ProofHQ! Our online proofing solution is used by organizations in nearly every sector ranging from small private businesses to Fortune 500 companies around the globe. ProofHQ enables customers to deliver projects faster and more accurately than ever before. Here are some recent customers who have joined the ProofHQ community.
Clarks, an international shoe retailer with outlets across the globe, chose ProofHQ as their proofing solution to manage the re-touching of thousands of product images to speed up time-to-market, improve artwork turnaround times and to increase efficiency.
Following the acquisition of the Bostonian Shoe Company, Clarks and the Retail Division came together to form a single organization, The Clarks Companies, North America as we know it today.
With 250+ retail stores across the USA and Puerto Rico and distribution channels including QVC, independent retailers, online and catalogs, there was a great demand for marketing collateral, and in particular, photography of merchandise.
Janssen Cilag, a global research-based pharmaceutical company, contacted ProofHQ with several common workflow problems that they wished to resolve and work to streamline the proofing process inhouse.
At the time they were struggling with emailing proofs around the team and struggling to keep track of everyone’s feedback at any one time with emails crossing over, comments not being visible to everyone and finding it hard to track down who was yet to give a decision.
Large attachments also slowed down the emailing process, if not stopping it completely due to attachments being too large to email and forcing them to find other means to share a proof, thus slowing down the online proofing process even more.
Check out the video that one of our customers, Switch Video, produced that shows the process they use when working with their own customers, and the role that ProofHQ plays in that process.
ProofHQ fits right into the Switch Video production workflow, right along side tools like Google Docs and one of our integration partners, Basecamp.
Tokii came to Switch Video looking for something that would showcase their product — relationship management software — at the Tokii launch at the 2011 South by Southwest (SXSW) music, arts and technology festival which starts tomorrow in Austin, Texas. You’ve heard of client relationship management (CRM) software, right? Well, Tokii is a fresh solution for young couples to manage their romantic relationships so they can stay connected. Switch Video took a really fun approach to engage the potential Tokii user base at SXSW.
When they approached Switch Video, Tokii had a really tight timeline — 10 days to complete the video! Luckily, Switch Video relies on ProofHQ, a collaborative tool that manages proofs and approvals. Switch Video uses ProofHQ for all their clients, but with Tokii, Switch Video were really able to see how streamlined their video production process had become!
Karla Stephens-Tolstoy, CEO and co-founder of Tokii.com, told Switch Video, ”We had the most aggressive timeline to get our video ready for SXSW. The team at Switch Video said, ‘It will be tight, but we can do it because we use software called ProofHQ’. When I started using the software, I was super impressed, and this is the truth: I sent an email out saying, ‘love the video and really love how easy the process is. This software you use is so easy and gives me all the tools I need to provide feedback’.”
And by the way, the Tokii launch video is really kick-ass, just like Tokii is. ☺
This week, we spoke to Harry Roussos, the Marketing Manager at Leverage Global to find out more about their business and how they use ProofHQ.
In a continued effort to highlight our users and how they use ProofHQ, this week we shine our spotlight on Werkshop Marketing – a marketing agency based in the States. Covering every aspect of marketing, from strategy, branding, advertising and creative to social media, these guys work on helping good ideas become great brands.
So without further ado, let’s delve…
We help companies small and large find their visions refined, rejuvenated and realized. From the foundation of thorough research and strategy to the finishing touches of top-notch creative execution, Werkshop Marketing is a place that builds success for each and every client. Werkshop Marketing boasts four distinct disciplines — brand development, marketing planning, creative execution and marketing education — under one roof, with a comprehensive offering of services within each. Our clients vary widely and include entreprenuers, celebrities, University athletic programs and small businesses as well as established local and regional brands.
We were formed in October of 2009 after merging Fresh Dirt Marketing out of Nashville, TN and Earnhart + Friends Advertising out of Bowling Green, KY.
Following the merge of the companies, we were immediately faced with the challenge of having two offices over an hour apart with Creatives housed at both locations. The traditional “printing a proof and passing it around for approval” method would clearly have to change.
We already used Basecamp as our project management tool and were thrilled to find ProofHQ as an add-on to the Basecamp work flow.
Having the ability to collaborate on Proofs electronically has made our continued long distance efforts a success. The integration with Basecamp specifically has eliminated the need to sift through countless emails to find the latest proof on a project. Everything is organized and at our fingertips at all times from anywhere. In addition, the ability to “draw” on a proof has made the transition from paper to digital proofs a non-issue.
ProofHQ not only allows us to communicate and collaborate in real time, but it makes the effort seamless. Our Creative Director, Strategists, Account staff and Designers are all able to keep each other accountable and in turn deliver the best creative with the most effective message in a timely fashion to our clients.
Thanks to Werkshop Marketing for their continued loyalty to us and for wanting to be featured. If you’d like to be featured as a user spotlight, please drop a note to mel [at] proofhq [dot] com.
What makes ProofHQ a success is our users, we love each and every one of you. The thing that makes us stand out from the crowd is not only the functionality (which are developers spend hours slaving over!) but also the fact that we know each and every one of our users, how they use the service and are on-hand to always provide support.
We’ve decided that it would be helpful to turn the spotlight onto you, our users, featuring different companies each week and how they’re using ProofHQ. Hopefully from this, you may get ideas as to how you could possibly use the service in different ways and get the best possible value for money. As always, we’d love to hear your thoughts, so feel free to use the comments below.
Kicking off our user spotlight this week is Artisan Creative - a design agency based in Stamford, Lincolnshire. The agency employs 22 people and has an in-house digital photographic studio. The have a whole host of local, national and international clients including:-
Indesit Company ( Hotpoint, Indesit, Cannon)
Pentland Group (Brasher, Speedo)
Burton McCall( Maglite, Victorinox, Felco)
Mira Showers
So without further ado, let’s set about asking them the questions!
We had been looking into more robust and reliable ways of getting images reviewed by clients and signed off, then read an article on TechCrunch about ProofHQ on 26th August 2008. Signed up for a trial straight away. It was clear from day one that it was the solution that we had been looking for.
We had a very ad hoc approach to image approvals, usually just e-mailing jpegs to the client, or if an account handler was visiting the client they would take print outs.
Neither approach were very satisfactory, comments sent back by email were hard to follow and usually required a phone call to the client to clarify their comments, which led to delays, and sending emails backwards and forwards is hard to track and just not very slick.
With printouts there is a lot of time wasted travelling to the client, leaving them to work through the prints and then collecting them again, and although you should be able to see more clearly what they want changing, you do tend to end up with amass of un-readable scribbles pointing all over an image, not to mention the time it takes to physically find the right printout that you are working on.
Probably the best thing about ProofHQ is the people behind ProofHQ, the support service is probably the best we have ever encountered, fast friendly and always open to new ideas.
The ProofHQ system itself is a pleasure to use, both from ours and the clients perspective. It may have taken some of our clients a few goes to break the habit of years of emails, but in no time and with very little, if any training they are soon very at home on ProofHQ. From our point of view having a searchable proofing system has been invaluable, we can tell within seconds who requested changes to an image and when.
Version tracking has also been an unexpected bonus, we often have to photograph prototype products for Hotpoint while the real products are still being manufactured (or in some cases still being designed!) and so the images will need a lot of photoshop work after they have been shot, giving the client the ability to view different versions of an image side by side makes it much easier to see what changes have been made over a long period of time.
Being a fully online system gives us the flexibility to upload shots where ever we are, and even if the clients are away from their offices they can log onto any computer and give us feedback. And with the comments appearing in real time, we can get clients discussing the same proof at the same time no matter where they are in the world.
The overall benefit of using ProofHQ is having one central system that we can refer to whenever we need it, where ever we are. It provides all our answers to what work has been done ?, who signed it off ?, when? and has allowed the management of our image workflow to be accurate, more professional and much faster.
Thanks to Artisan Creative for sharing their way of working with us, if you’d like to be featured as a user spotlight, please drop a note to mel [at] proofhq [dot] com.
Ok, so we are into helping streamline client review, but sometimes things can go a little too far.