Case Study: Enterprise Dunedin
_{Telling Dunedin's Story with Brandkit}

About Enterprise Dunedin

Enterprise Dunedin (ED) is the destination marketing arm of the Dunedin City Council (DCC) and is responsible for the marketing and economic development of the city; its primary goal is to attract new residents, students, business and visitors.

Dunedin is one of New Zealand's southern-most cities, located on the lower east coast of the South Island. Its idyllic peninsula was once a hot spot for international tourists. Enterprise Dunedin — like many other RTOs (regional tourism organisations) in 2020 — needed to pivot tourism campaigns quickly to attract more domestic tourists to the city.

In 2019, Enterprise Dunedin and the greater DCC organisation had implemented Brandkit to manage and control their digital assets. When the magnitude of the COVID-19 pandemic was fully realised, Enterprise Dunedin had full control over their assets, allowing them to pivot quickly and produce a domestic tourism campaign (Dunedin – A Pretty Good Plan D) with a unique edge.

Costly distribution bottlenecks caused by digital asset challenges

Prior to implementing Brandkit, the ED team faced challenges around how to efficiently manage and distribute their digital assets. As a small marketing team within a much larger organisation, the team struggled to find, distribute and deliver the appropriate licensing to the right people; with internal and external stakeholders requesting multiple assets at a time, content bottlenecks were a constant problem.

With no structured and accessible Digital Asset Management (DAM) system, the team were constantly challenged to delivered collateral and assets — a problem that resulted in additional costs for the department. Additionally, the cost of manual management processes meant that the operational components of managing Dunedin city's digital assets were beginning to add up.

Hayden Parsons, Digital Content Coordinator at Enterprise Dunedin explains, "Digital asset management is so important these days, it’s like a currency. It became clear that we were spending too much time finding and distributing our digital assets; we needed a better process to safeguard and control them to keep operating costs down."

Enterprise Dunedin jumped on the Brandkit DAM bandwagon

Looking for an industry leader, Enterprise Dunedin came across Brandkit. Our well-known, tourism-focussed DAM solution was generating hype amongst other RTOs (Regional Tourism Organisations) in New Zealand.

"We did investigate other solutions," says Hayden. "But Brandkit gave us the specific functionality we needed, so we went with that, as it appeared to meet the demands of the industry."

When migrating to the Brandkit platform, ED decided to start from scratch. "We sort of wiped the slate clean and started again,” Hayden explains. “We wanted to take hold of our assets. They were a bit all over the place previously. Using Brandkit to start fresh gave us the opportunity to organise and control our assets the way we wanted, and needed to."

Before migrating, the ED team began organising their current assets into popular RTO themes used on Brandkit, such as attractions, events and activities, scenic and wildlife, conference and venues, business events and study.

The Brandkit team helped Enterprise Dunedin when needed, to organise and facilitate this; both teams had a very hands-on approach to the project.

A great response internally, externally and internationally

Internally, the entire DCC organisation have found the system to be accessible and very easy to use.

"Brandkit is really good because you can set it up in a million different ways," says Hayden. "We've got staff-only licensed content which is only visible with a council email address. This is great because external stakeholders won't mistakenly use internal assets that they don't have the licenses for. It's really helped to tighten up the Dunedin brand."

When word spread that Dunedin City had such controlled and accessible digital content available, external stakeholder use soared. "Because of the control Brandkit has given us we’ve been able to organise our content like never before,” Hayden says. “It's opened up a lot of marketing opportunities for us."

“It's opened up a lot of marketing opportunities for us."

To date, ED's digital assets have been picked up by a number of domestic and international media entitles we wouldn’t have otherwise got, including; a well-known Australian publication and a UK TV show. Hayden says, "It's opened up a lot of opportunities for Dunedin and we've had some great feedback. It's just such a great tool."

Screenshot of the Brandkit powered DunedinNZ Visual Library"

Enterprise Dunedin confesses they've only scratched the surface of Brandkit

Hayden admits that while Enterprise Dunedin has seen great results from implementing Brandkit, they've only just scratched the surface of its functionality.

"We're using it at a really basic level," he says. "We use Brandkit predominantly for licensing, and that's really it. But there's a lot more we could be doing within the system to manage our assets more effectively."

One feature Hayden says ED is starting to use is the asset weighting feature, which allows brands to control what assets appear highest for users in search.

"It's given us a way to remove barriers and has really made it easier to manage our digital assets. We've got tighter control of our brand, licensing and distribution and it has created opportunities for the city we may have never got."

To other RTO's and DMO's looking to gain control over their digital assets using a DAM platform, Hayden says, "It's given us a way to remove barriers and has really made it easier to manage our digital assets. We've got tighter control of our brand, licensing and distribution and it has created opportunities for the city we may have never got."

Digital Asset Management software is paramount to controlling a destination brand's image. If you're interested in learning more about how Brandkit could help your organisation, get in touch or request a demo.