An adhesive DAM for 3M product photos

We all know the famous Post-it® Notes, Scotch® adhesive tapes and other products of the 3M brand. These products are used every day as a professional or individual and are distributed in many shops: Leclerc, Auchan, Système U, Office Depot, ...To promote the 3M products, the photograph is a communication medium that has the greatest importance. 3M has, therefore, appealed to Kalista solutions to industrialize the management of its product pictures, in close partnership with Keepeek. Among the product ranges integrated into the base, stationery and household maintenance are the two key ranges to be represented.Françoise Neel, Marketing Manager, Virginie Lavaud and Hélène Perez, Commercial Managers - Products for the general public and offices, explain the fundamentals of the project according to two approaches: the administration of a database by the Marketing Department and the use made by sales force.

The administration of Keepeek base by 3M Marketing Department

Hello Françoise, could you tell us what are the positions of the persons who supply Keepeek and what are the main objectives?

Keepeek base is powered by the Marketing Department composed of 2 people who wear the Administrators cap. One of them manages the "Stationery" range and the other one the "Housekeeping" range. All the visuals for these two ranges are provided on Keepeek base to allow the sales force to use all the creations required for the development of product catalogs, press announcements, visuals used on displays, etc. The vocation of our product pictures is to serve multiple communication media and it was necessary for us to provide a tool that centralizes all this valuable data.

Is the solution easy to use and is it an important criterion for you?

As administrator of the base, I find it very simple and quick. Before, we used CDs at the employees disposal and it was really not practical. Now, with the new media addition feature, everything changed in the way we work internally. It provides real-time quality visual to our sales force who use it externally with our end customers.

Do your customers or sales force connect directly to the base?

Yes, they all have the ability to connect. Everyone has an account to access the database. We count around thirty database users.

Is the volume of your product pictures important? How many product pictures do you handle?

This is our "Stationery" range that has the most important pictures volume, there are 1600 pictures. In total, including the "Housekeeping" range, we arrive at a total of 1730 product videos.

What are the features you use the most? And what are those that allow you to save time in processing and sending pictures?

Selecting photos to make baskets and export pictures are for me the two features we use the most. The rapid creation of baskets and their export are particularly appreciated by our sales force.

Does the service provided by Kalista seem satisfactory to you? Consulting, training, coaching?

Yes, a very big work has been done from the start with Kalista. We worked together on developing a clear tree structure and then all tutorials and training was beneficial to us. When new people join the company, they do quite well with the tutorial alone. Everything is very instinctive.

The use of Keepeek by 3M sales force

Hello Virginie and Hélène. You are both business managers and users of the photolibrary. Could you tell us what is your principal use of it?

We send our customers in the retail field visuals of our products in high and low resolution. Thanks to shared baskets of Keepeek tool, we transmitt very quickly all the visuals they need to illustrate the sales of 3M products. This feature is a real time saver that facilitates our relationship with them. We also create product catalogs using these baskets. It takes an average of 6 or 7 catalogs per customer for seasonal operations or related operations, back to school, etc.

What are the features you use most and those that allow you to save time in processing and sending pictures?

The baskets are widely used to share pictures, that's really our flagship feature. We also appreciate the ongoing backup system baskets. This allows us, in the event that a customer loses the elements provided, to send them again expressly. In line with the sharing feature baskets, downloading video is also very convenient. Finally, we’ll add the search mode, which is really at the top!

Have you noticed an increase in productivity in the processing and distribution of images, whether for Kalista or Keepeek?

The time savings is undeniably the strength of the tool. Before, all our visuals were stored on a shared disk and we did not really know where to look. It took us a long time to respond to incoming requests. Now we are able to share immediately, either internally or externally with our customers, visuals backed up in the baskets with the format of our choice.--

About Kalista

Based on a recognized merchandising expertise, Kalista accompanies since 2005 retail players in the design, validation and deployment of the best shopping experience.Kalista’s customers are both brands and retailers in the sectors of retail, DIY, textile or even pharmacy.To accelerate its development, Kalista became in July 2015 a subsidiary of Visiativ group, with 49.7 million euros in turnover in 2016 and launched in the UK market.