Fy! maximizes content inspiration with Canto

Visual content is an essential element of Fy!’s business. Fy! acts as a content production facility for their network of independent artists and suppliers. Through their content creator network, they gather photos and videos for products they sell.

Fy! engages with hundreds if not thousands of content creators chosen for their photography prowess. The influencer team manages these relationships, sending out products for creators to use in photos and videos. This inspiring imagery drives promotion, social media presence and the e-commerce site. Using stand-out visual content makes it easier for customers to achieve the looks they desire.

Before Canto, Fy! saved media to Google Drive. While the files were organized, only a few people knew where they were. Fy! was rapidly outgrowing a system that relied on one or two gatekeepers.

“It’s all very well producing this content, but where are we going to put it? If you don’t know where it is and you can’t get access to it, then it’s basically worthless,” says Richard.

Fy! needed a solution to store, search and share their expanding library of images and videos.

“Our requirements from Canto were very straightforward. We want to be able to put the images somewhere. We want to be able to tag them. We want to be able to find the images and share them with people who need them,” says Richard.

Richard found that Canto met all their requirements in a way that was accessible for all. Now the team saves pre-approved images and videos in a central, searchable location.

The creators send their images and videos to their Fy! contact. The influencer team checks for quality and uploads the best assets into their Canto library. This team adds metadata identifying the product, category, style and setting. They also add image rights data so the marketing team can identify which images are available for use in paid advertising.

“For instance, we’re going to do an advert about rugs. I can go, show me all the ads, show me all the rug images that we’ve got rights to use in paid advertising. Straight away we are good to go,” explains Richard.

An accessible and searchable library

“Now you don’t have to click 15 places to upload an image. If you want a picture of a chair you just type in ‘chair’ and it shows you all the chairs,” says Richard.

Different departments can find, crop and share or download the images they need for ads, PR campaigns and the website in a few clicks. Their network of brands and artists also use the content Fy! generates on their own websites.

“The big thing for me was getting people to use it. Canto seemed the one that everyone would actually use and not sit there moaning about. If it doesn’t make any sense to anyone, then there’s no point,” says Richard.

Beyond the basics of storing and sharing, Richard likes how Canto’s Smart Tags add extra metadata to help the Fy! team and their partners find media assets.

“The way I see it, the more metadata you can get, the better,” Richard points out.

Their customized library, portals and style guides help the Fy! team collaborate with agencies and freelancers – all while staying on brand.

Speed up a variety of workflows

Canto speeds up a variety of workflows for the Fy! team. Requests take minutes, not hours to complete. Even better, colleagues and partners can find images for themselves.

“If someone asked for 10 images of prints in living rooms, that was once a morning’s work to find, crop and share. Now I can do that in 10 minutes!” comments Richard. “Before Canto, if someone asked me to for the best performing image of a project in a bedroom, there might be one person who could answer that question. Now someone can go into Canto find the image using the tags themself.”

The marketing team also has better visibility of what assets are being used. “We use tags to indicate what’s live on the website or not, so we can see what percentage of the content we’ve got in the last six weeks is live on site,” Richard explains.

Fy! now has one source of truth that Richard was looking for.

“Canto is a central pot in the middle of us all. We’re all looking at the same thing, which is really useful. It doesn’t matter where you are in the world, wherever you look at it it’s the same thing,” comments Richard.

Fy!’s media assets are highly visible in Canto. This helps inspire the marketing team and maximize the value from their hard-earned visual content.

“I love that you can just scroll. You see everything really easily in one place. It’s made everything a lot quicker and helped us share more. We were collecting content that wasn’t being used, it wasn’t going anywhere. Now we know that it’s in use,” says Richard.

Richard sees Canto’s ongoing feature development as a great added bonus that gives him confidence that Canto will continue to add value for Fy!.

“The thing that I’ve noticed and enjoyed, which I wasn’t expecting, is that Canto puts out new features quite often,” says Richard. “That stuff really makes a difference.”