The Challenge
“We had 12 different marketing teams commissioning photography and designing materials independently,” recalls Jennifer Torres, Global Head of Brand and Creative at GlobalFinance. “Teams in Asia would reshoot product photography that our London office had already commissioned six months earlier. We were spending $4.2 million annually on duplicate asset creation simply because people couldn’t find what already existed.”
The company’s Digital Asset Management (DAM) system contained decades of brand photography, product shots, lifestyle imagery, web banners, brochures, infographics, and presentation templates. But the metadata was inconsistent—some assets were tagged manually with vague descriptions like “business meeting” or “office,” while thousands more had no metadata beyond a filename.
Regional teams spoke different languages, used different terminology, and had varying interpretations of brand guidelines. A search for “diverse team collaboration” might return 40 relevant results and miss 200 others tagged as “meeting,” “teamwork,” “office culture,” or nothing at all.
The Solution
GlobalFinance partnered with [Your Company] to design a custom AI-powered metadata solution that understood both their brand ecosystem and the nuanced needs of global marketing teams. The tailored system included:
∙ Intelligent visual recognition trained on GlobalFinance’s specific brand elements, including logo variations, color palettes, product lines, and approved photography styles
∙ Custom taxonomy architecture aligned with their brand guidelines, covering diversity representation, emotional tone, use cases (web, print, social), and regional compliance requirements
∙ Multi-language metadata generation supporting search in 12 languages while maintaining consistency across regions
∙ Automated brand compliance tagging identifying which assets met current brand standards versus legacy materials
∙ Smart categorization by asset type (photography, web banners, brochures, social graphics, presentation templates) and intended use case
∙ Seamless integration with their existing Bynder DAM platform and Adobe Creative Cloud workflows
The implementation included reprocessing their entire 280,000-asset library and establishing automated metadata generation for all new uploads.
The Results
Operational Efficiency:
∙ Asset search time reduced by 89% (from average 23 minutes to 2.5 minutes)
∙ Creative teams now find appropriate existing assets 67% of the time versus creating new ones
∙ Cross-regional asset sharing increased by 430%
Cost Savings:
∙ $2.8 million annual reduction in duplicate asset creation
∙ Photography budget optimized by 34% through better asset reuse
∙ Design team capacity freed up by 28%, redirected to strategic creative work
Brand Consistency:
∙ 94% of marketing materials now use on-brand, approved assets (up from 61%)
∙ Regional brand guideline violations decreased by 76%
∙ Legal review time for marketing materials reduced by 40% due to better compliance metadata
Team Impact:
“Before, I’d spend half my morning digging through folders hoping to find a hero image that fit our campaign,” explains Michael Okafor, Senior Marketing Manager for EMEA. “Now I can search ‘confident professional woman, financial planning, warm lighting, approved for web’ and immediately get exactly what I need. It’s transformed how efficiently we can execute campaigns.”
The Creative Difference
The solution’s understanding of visual nuance proved particularly valuable. The AI could distinguish between:
∙ “Formal business handshake” versus “casual collaborative meeting”
∙ “Diverse team of 4-6 people” versus “large corporate gathering”
∙ “Product photography, clean background” versus “lifestyle context shot”
∙ “Aspirational luxury tone” versus “accessible everyday banking”
This granularity allowed GlobalFinance’s teams to find assets that matched not just the subject matter, but the emotional tone and brand positioning required for each campaign.
Looking Forward
Following success in marketing operations, GlobalFinance is expanding the system to their internal communications, HR recruitment materials, and investor relations assets. They’re also exploring AI-powered asset recommendations that suggest complementary images and designs during campaign development.
“This solution gave us back something invaluable: institutional memory,” Torres reflects. “Every photoshoot, every design iteration, every piece of creative work we’ve invested in is now accessible and usable. We’re finally operating like the global brand we are.”
