Challenge: COAT Paints were using a mixture of Google Drive, Dropbox and desktops to store their visual content. For Abi, COAT’s Brand Manager, it was a nightmare to get hold of the assets she needed to do her job.
Solution: Dash’s intuitive search features have allowed the COAT team to launch products faster and ensure everything that goes out into the world is on perfectly on-brand.
About COAT Paints
Ecommerce brand, COAT, sells luxury (but affordable), planet-friendly paint. In fact, they were the first Climate Positive Certified paint company in the world.
Since launching in 2020, sustainability has been at the core of their brand identity. Their paint is made to order so nothing goes out of date and thrown to landfill. They have ambitious plans to grow, and their marketing team needs the right tools to help them reach new audiences and launch new products.
The challenges
For Abi, COAT’s Brand Manager, their ethos must run through everything they do. From the paint they produce, to the emails they send and the posts they put out on social media—Abi’s responsible for ensuring everything aligns with their identity. And that includes their assets. You only have to look at COAT’s website, Instagram or Pinterest channel to see that visual content is vital to everything they do. 😍
The problem is that paint is such a saturated market. COAT needs a way to cut through the noise and launch products quickly. As Abi, the brand’s manager told us,
“Marketing is crucial for us as an online-only business. It's essential to get the messaging spot-on and connect with the right audience. COAT was born to disrupt the industry and cut out the middlemen. We're doing things our way, and making our mark.”
Before finding Dash, Abi and her team were using a mixture of Google Drive, Dropbox and local hard drives to manage their visual content - making it really hard to find on-brand assets and launch products fast. Let’s look at some of the other challenges Drive causes:
It was impossible to find anything in Google Drive
Like many brands who move to Dash, COAT previously used Google Drive to manage their assets. The problem is that Drive is not built for helping you manage your images and videos. That’s because Drive has no way of identifying the contents of your images, so when you upload file names like ‘JPG_877234_project_10’, you have to remember what you called it (or have a guess at what your colleagues called it!) On top of that, some colleagues were using Dropbox and their own hard drives to save images. As Abi told us:
“It was incredibly challenging. We were using Google Drive and Dropbox simultaneously, neither of which are easy to navigate. We needed something that suited the whole team, was efficient and a hub for all things COAT.”
It became difficult to manage external creator content
As a small team, COAT relies on freelancers and content creators to help them produce assets for their campaigns. They work with Toby, a freelance photographer, as well as influencers and user-generated content (UGC). Drive made it really hard to stay on top of all that new content. Abi said:
“Before Dash, we had a lot of great content coming in but lacked an effective system for storing and organising it. With Google Drive, finding files was difficult because it required remembering exactly where each item was saved, and what you'd called it!”
(Btw, Toby wrote a post for Dash on how to take great photos of your products. Check it out!)
A full upheaval seemed daunting
One of the biggest concerns that new customers have when they move to Dash, is the sheer number of assets they’ll have to migrate to the new system. When you’re used to working in a disorganised system like Google Drive or Dropbox, it’s understandable it might seem daunting. Abi said:
“We were definitely concerned, given how disorganised Google Drive and Dropbox had become. We anticipated a significant upheaval, thinking we’d need to rename countless files to make the transition work.”
They didn’t need to worry about any of this with Dash. Let’s look at how our digital asset management (DAM) solution solved their problems. ✨
The solution
Ensuring only the best content is shared to the world
As the brand’s gatekeeper, Abi needs to make sure her team only has access to the best, brand-approved content. Dash has become the final port-of-call for all assets. In other words, if it’s in Dash, it’s good to go out into the world. As a small team, everyone has access to Dash so this process makes it easy for people to get what they need, fast.
“I only upload the best content to Dash since it’s accessible to the entire team. For instance, a team member who handles paid ads needs to ensure that everything they publish aligns perfectly with our brand.”
Launching new products faster
Every time COAT launches a new product colour, the team needs a whole bunch of product imagery. This includes retouched images in different styles, paint finishes and multiple tin sizes. They also collect UGC from customers. As you can imagine, using Google Drive to manage these assets used to be a chore, but Dash has made it all so much easier.
By centralising all product imagery and setting up filters to allow search by colour name, the team can find every image related to that colour in seconds. For example, this product ‘Darlington’ has been grouped into room type and brand (website imagery).
Dash’s Shopify integration also means they don’t have to resize content and upload it manually to the website. Dash allows them to set up custom product sizes which they can drag and drop into their Shopify product pages.
Speeding up content creation
A big selling point for COAT was Dash’s integration with Canva. For those of you not in the know, Canva is the design tool for non-designers. It makes it really easy for marketers to whip up designs without any knowledge.
“Canva is widely loved by the team. Whether it's creating moodboards, board decks, social content or a place to brainstorm, having access to all your imagery at a click of a button is a game changer.”
The integration with Dash means you don’t have to leave Canva in order to download images and videos to use in your designs. Simply connect to Dash and browse through your assets. There’s also a search bar in the Canva integration which means you can type in a keyword and find specific assets quickly. Abi says:
“I use Canva all the time, it's incredibly convenient—especially when it comes to keeping my downloads folder on my laptop organised!”
Giving their freelance photographer creative freedom
The COAT team works with a freelance photographer, Toby Lamborn. Dash makes it super easy for him to upload content. This is how the process works:
- Toby shoots product photos for a new campaign. From this he creates a ‘contact sheet’.
- Abi reviews all the imagery on the contact sheet, and picks the ones she’s happy to use in their marketing campaigns and on their website
- Toby can then upload that approved content, along with any retouched photography directly into Dash
This cuts down on a lot of back and forth over email and means they can get those new product images out to their website faster. ⚡
💡If you work with freelancer photographers, but don’t want them to have full access to your Dash, you can assign different levels of permissions. For example, a contributor can upload content to an approval area where you’ll be able to accept or reject new assets before it goes live in your Dash. Alternatively, you can provide a guest upload link for external contributors who don’t need access to your Dash.
Making it easier to serve customers
COAT sells loads of different paint colours, but not all of them can be showcased on the website due to limited space. So people often reach out to the customer service team asking to see specific colours in different spaces like a living room or bathroom.
By using Dash, the customer service team can quickly search for a colour and location. For example, someone wants an image of a kitchen painted in ‘Ghosted’. They can simply type these keywords into the search bar and they can find relevant assets in seconds.
From here, they can create a collection and share this unique link with the customer. They can set the collection to expire or leave it open forever.
It means COAT's customer service team can focus on what matters most: helping customers find the perfect paint for their space. 🖌️
COAT also uses this feature when working with the press. Say they’re working on a new collaboration (like their recent campaign with Stacey Dooley 🤩), they can quickly collect all relevant images into a collection ready to share with publishers.
Generating ideas and planning content fast
As you know, the work of a marketer is never over. You’re constantly needing to think of new creative ideas to promote products and drive brand awareness. With Dash’s search feature, Abi is able to spark new ideas in a few clicks.
“The searchability in Dash has been a game changer for us. It’s my favourite feature. It helps spark new ideas—especially since we have so much content, it’s easy to forget what’s available. Being able to dive into these little rabbit holes and discover things we didn’t even know we had is incredibly useful.”
But how does this search function work?
Whenever you upload a new image, Dash scans the content and adds relevant tags using AI. Take this image as an example.
You can see the tags on the right-hand side match all the objects in the image. Dash will do this automatically, but you can also manually add tags and adjust the sensitivity of the AI.
This means that whenever you search a keyword related to these tags, it will pull up the relevant results.
Easy onboarding with an A+ customer service team
As many brands know, your library of assets stacks up fast. Just think about all the images and videos you need for just one product campaign. Luckily moving all of COAT’s content from Google Drive and Dropbox over to Dash was really simple.
First off, you can integrate with Google Drive or Dropbox directly, which means you can drag and drop all of your content into Dash fast. We also offer free onboarding and migration support - so if you’re struggling to organise your images ready for the big move, we can do it for you. You can also contact the team any time via our in-app support. This has been a huge help for Abi and her team.
“The Dash team is incredibly responsive to any queries and always quick to find a solution. In my experience, no other platform has matched the level of customer service that Dash provides.”
Abi’s recommendation to other DTC brands
Abi has one message for other DTC brands: switch to Dash! As she told us, the tool has transformed how COAT Paints organises and uses their visual content, simplifying everything.
“Dash has completely transformed the way we organise and structure our imagery, making everything else so much more efficient. That’s why I’ve recommended it to so many people. I’ve worked with colleagues and friends in the same industry who constantly complain about their image libraries, and I know Dash would solve all those issues for them.”
Abi’s story shows just how Dash can help brands launch products faster, ensure all content is on brand and make it easier to serve your customers.
If you want to transform how your brand works for the better, you can take out a 14-day free trial and try it for yourself.
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