Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00 <inaudible> you're listening to the workflow show, Chesapeake systems, media production and technology workflow therapy podcast. I'm your host, Jason Whetstone, senior workflow engineer. If a man is technically a dam and you and your media production team need one, won't any damn do, can't your team edit off the same company file server that everyone else in the company uses for documents and SharePoint? Our VPN should work just fine for you to edit on location, right? We can use the same network switches that we've been using, can't we? Everything's in the cloud now so you can edit off the cloud, right? We can't buy a bespoke system from a vendor that will customize a platform built by a third party software company. So will this less expensive SAS model cloud collaboration tool? Do everything you need out of the box. When you say someone has to enter metadata, can't we just have AI do that?
Speaker 0 01:03 All right. So we know some of these questions have some very cool yes and responses, but if you're working on a lean media production team in a corporate environment, you will most definitely find yourselves wanting to make some very close friends and your it leadership or maybe you yourself are an it leader in your organization, which has its own media production team. Do they really need these crazy workstations, fiber networks, switches over spec storage arrays, and massive internet pipes? Well, today on episode 47 of the workflow show, we have a guest to share in some workflow therapy around the beauty in and the challenges of a great relationship between media production professionals and it professionals. I'd like to welcome Daniel Rosenberg lead creative technologies at PVH Corp. Welcome to the Chestnut church. Dan, thanks so much, Jason. Happy to be here. Cool. And joining me once again, my cohost, senior solutions architect Ben Kilburg. Thanks again my friend. Thank you my friend. All right, so Dan, let's start with PVH. What is PVH?
Speaker 1 02:03 So PVH is Phillips van Heusen, uh, the van Heusen and the van Hughes and clothing brand. Um,
Speaker 0 02:09 So that's the van he was in that we all know that we see, you know, when we walk around on our backs even. Yeah.
Speaker 1 02:15 Know that you will all know and love. Uh, and we own and operate, uh, several other fashion brands. Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger, uh, Aero Izod and several others across the board, um, with licensed partners and agreements. Uh, we are, uh, we are everywhere. We make a lot of shirts, we make a lot of neckwear, we make a lot of pants and just have a great business, uh, all across the globe. Uh, something like 35,000, uh, global corporate associates and retail. And that's a, an it organization that's approaching I think 700 about now.
Speaker 0 02:49 Awesome. And so what about yourself though? So tell us a little bit about your path to creative technologies at PVA.
Speaker 1 02:55 So I always like to tell a story that I started very much in the world. I helped my father for a very long time, uh, manage a VHS personal collection of WWE wrestling special events, which somehow, uh, if you can believe it led me to a career right out of college in the WWE tape library itself. So I kind of written that. So I got a great opportunity there and started moving from analog into digital. Uh, and a lot of the digitization initiatives that were going on at WWE started as the second person in the blooming digital asset management department. So there were two of us at the start, uh, quarterbacking everything from digitization to initial metadata application to uh, rolling out digital playback for some of the events, uh, and you know, feeding the TV trucks on site and was in that position for just about nine years.
Speaker 1 03:52 Uh, it was really just the best possible learning experience I could have ever imagined. Learning a lot of always being on the bleeding edge of all of the newest tech because the, the business really demanded it being both historically focused and its narrative as well as how to, how to push the technology forward and really innovate across everything you could ever think of. So it sounds like it was a very media production focused media production workflow, heavy oriented, uh, organization that you think you are with their, absolutely. I'm creative drives absolutely everything there. And it's, it's the rest of our responsibility to, to keep up, to enable these workflows, these features, whatever they can think of as what we need to be there for them before they had a story to tell. And it was your job to make sure that story was told. Exactly.
Speaker 1 04:41 Right. So like you said, that was a creative driven sort of environment. Contrast that a little bit to your current role. What does that like now, today? Sure. I do feel I should mention the intermediaries, so please do. Yeah. So from WWE, uh, I got a great opportunity at time inc, uh, the magazine company now, former magazine company, which encompassed properties like time and sports illustrated people, fortune and several others. Uh, I got a great opportunity there to build out a video asset management and video ops department with some great partners basically from scratch and really starting to look at how media companies also need to become their own video production shops because it's really important for the turnaround of the news stories, the delivering the content that people who are either looking for hard hitting news or some celebrity gossip or sports or finance.
Speaker 1 05:36 Uh, really just trying to revolutionize that when it comes to a magazine business because people don't read magazines anymore. So really kind of trying to understand in a company of that size where media production can find its place. Right. Okay. So that sounds like a, you know, when you talk about a media company of any sort, there's, there's definitely media there that's not just word documents and you know, an Excel spreadsheets, you know, they're, you're, you're working with creative professionals like you would be in a video or you know, uh, episodic television movie, you know, based workflow. Um, so that sounds like it was a little bit of a, uh, a little bit familiar to you coming from that role that you came from a WWE familiar. Sure. Um, the little bit of the shift I would say is rather than a WWE where creative is very much in the driver's seat, uh, at a place like timing at that moment, it was very much a corporate it in the driver's seat, really, uh, enforced thing.
Speaker 1 06:32 Everything from the intellectual property to guidelines and standards around security, how we transmit our assets and really just making sure that everything stays within the lines. Gotcha. Good training for your role today. Yeah. So, uh, bridge the gap here. Let's talk about today. What's, what's going on today. So today I work for, as we mentioned, a very large global fashion company that, uh, has presence in 35 or so countries with offices and associates around the globe. And really any company of that size, whether they know it or not, is a burgeoning media company inside of itself. Or in the case of PVH, several burgeoning media companies inside of itself with the brands, they're, um, each of them within their own regions, within their own business units are working through all of their challenges, trying to meet their deadlines, uh, potentially in very different and disparate ways.
Speaker 1 07:29 And the role today is really trying to understand where are some of those things working, where are they not, where there are efficiencies to be gained? And really scale scale is, is really the, the big buzz word. How can we do this at scale to make sure that from a support perspective, we're only supporting the very fewest possible amount of systems and processes. Um, but also delivering that value that the people who are our end users, our clients need, um, to get what they need to get out the door. So, right, right. So, um, it strikes me that, uh, you know, in your current role, you, you probably are dealing with a lot of, uh, subjects, terms, things that you, that you may not have dealt with, uh, in a, in a more production sort of creative driven environment. Things like intellectual property security, um, I ops maybe things like that.
Speaker 1 08:22 So just to get into our, into our discussion, um, one of the things that is a challenge for you in your role is probably being that translator, being the person that can sort of bridge the gap between the corporate it and the media professionals, the creatives in your organization. So talk a little bit about that. What are you translating? Sure. And I think that it's also important, uh, coming into fashion, which was not certainly something not in my background. Um, but I, I'm very fortunate to be married to a fashion designer. So several years of just the, how was your day? Conversation was exceptionally good prep for an interview. I didn't know it was coming several years later. So I knew some of the lingos, I knew even some of the systems. And processes that are in place that are very specific to the fashion industry,
Speaker 0 09:07 To consumer products. Uh, and, and some of the things, I mean, there's, there's a lot of dovetail in there and it's metadata. It's workflows. Uh, it's just a different kind of asset, um, but it moves at a very different pace with a lot of different requirements to it. Um, so, so in that regard it is, it was also very much like learning a new language, but something that I'd had a little bit of prep for. Okay. So you're dealing with different sorts of backgrounds when we talk about translating between, you know, translating terms or relating terms, um, you've got some people that have this creative media driven background and you've got some other people on the other side of things that have this technical. Maybe it's, uh, uh, you know, maybe it's a background and process management. Maybe it's a background in information technology. Maybe it's, you know, it could be any number of very technical backgrounds. So what's that like sort of getting those two people to talk?
Speaker 1 10:00 Yeah. So the, the amount of layers that you see, um, that you might not be prepared for in smaller companies, certainly within a larger corporate environment like that, uh, certainly took from my perspective a little bit of adjustment to understand that there are really specializations across the board that make a company the size of PVH able to push forward with these gigantic global initiatives. Everything from campaigns and eCommerce and television production for commercials that will air, uh, on the super bowl. The amount that goes into driving that forward for a company the size of PVH is really something to behold. And, and really, you know, my first few months in there, getting myself situated, learning all the players, learning all the moving parts, um, you, you do realize that there are an astounding number of, of cooks in the kitchen that are all required to bring the ingredients to the table.
Speaker 1 10:59 In a lot of creative companies, the fewer cooks the better depending on the, depending on what you're seeing because they really just need to drive forward. Um, but to operate at that scale that we need for PVH, it really is an all hands on deck effort every day of the year. And it's truly something to be hold. So when you're working with people, it's a good mix, right? Of the more analytical leaning people and the more creative leaning people and each of them have a very specific specialty, have a different working style, have different ideas about how to push things forward. As, as someone in my particular role, it's very important to be able to not necessarily understand the nitty gritty of both sides, but to understand why each of their responsibilities, each of their deadlines, each of their budgets are continually important to the overall success of the company.
Speaker 1 11:56 And I think finding the commonalities in that we are all professionals. We are all looking to advance the good of our company, advance our message, advance that brand DNA. Um, really getting people on that same page is the first step because I think it's very easy to be in your day to day grind where you have your deadlines and your management and your supervisors. And it can be, you know, it's a forest through the trees issue there. So to be able to take a step back and see how all of these things weave together and have to weave together for the overall success of the company, um, I think that puts me in those on my team and in a very advantageous position to, to be able to see how all of these things make a larger, better thing.
Speaker 0 12:46 Right. Yeah. That's great. Um, so getting everybody on the same page with the meaning. This is why we're all here, you know, um, so infrastructure, like how's the infrastructure you, you go into an to an organization, you bring a media production company, a media production group into an organization that that is used to working on, like I mentioned in the intro of file server or uh, using cloud storage for various and sundry activities. Like, uh, how's the infrastructure different in an organization and on a corporate organization versus a media production organization.
Speaker 1 13:16 What I've seen a lot is at a place like WWE where media production is the number one business, everything is built for that. And all of the, what I guess would be considered a WWE more complimentary. Traditional it services have their own path and are really even separate from the media production networks. So everything that lives within file servers like sands and and within the production environment is completely separate from things like email, things like some of the additional corporate documentation processes and workflows. So it's very much two separate worlds and there's not a lot of that cross pollination there, which makes for efficiency on both sides but doesn't really lend itself to any kind of overarching governance because in those cases, often those two sides don't need to talk to each other. Sure.
Speaker 0 14:11 You're, you're working with maybe a smaller group of people that, you know, their primary concern is things like user experience and things like how fast is the storage or how fast can I deliver, how fast can I, uh, can I do a review and approve workflow or something like that.
Speaker 1 14:25 Exactly. And for a company like PVH, which has to support a global operation, uh, with, as I mentioned, 35,000 or so associates they have had to build for scale. So they have built out infrastructure and systems that can keep the lights on and keep pushing forward from a corporate it perspective. And what we have seen, and I've, I've seen this in other companies for sure, is that people on the creative side are given direction from their own creative management, you know, with their own deadlines and their own desire to stay on the cutting edge to be able to give you, you know, the latest and greatest in video tech and you know, for K eight K whatever it is that's going to look great because you're selling a product, you're selling an experience, you're selling what the brand means. So it, it needs to look good and it's the sound good.
Speaker 1 15:18 It needs to feel good. And often we've found that folks in creative have had to, for lack of a better term, go into business for themselves to be able to support those kinds of technologies because they could bring an entire corporate network to a grinding halt trying to manipulate four K video on a traditional workstation or a traditional company computer on that traditional network. As you said, the same systems that we're using for emails and documents storage trying to do full on craft video editing. It just is not longterm workable and that's, that could be brought down by one person, let alone if you have an entire team doing things like this. So we've, we've certainly seen that there is the need for the specialization when it comes to this kind of production because again, people are kind of often the ether and that is not really beneficial for a number of reasons. Right, because they're now storing company assets on removable hard drives. I mean they're in the office, but they can be lost and it can fall behind the desk or stolen.
Speaker 2 16:26 Yeah. I think one thing that I've seen is that a lot of firms start out by using external vendors. Maybe it's a marketing firm, right, that they're doing video with, but eventually there is a desire for more control and some cost savings as well. And so people decided to bring it internal and say, Oh, well we would have more creative control, more efficiency because corporate America loves efficiency and really take control of it ourselves. So I'm sure there was some transition at PVH and that was probably similar to that
Speaker 0 16:59 On that subject of, of efficiency. Like that's uh, that's where we in the, in the media production space start talking about things like automation and how can we automate things that we're doing over and over and over again, just with different files or different resolutions even, or something like that. Uh, so that's a big thing. Of course, that's, that's, you know, one of the things that we here at Chestnut specialize in. So you know, that that strikes me as, as something that, uh, may have a different meaning and the, it sort of corporate it space. We might be talking about like generating a report that we have to generate every week or something like that. Um, so maybe talk about some of the benefits that can be gained for those of us who are wanting to know. When we talk about efficiency in the media production space, what are we talking about?
Speaker 1 17:44 A lot of what you would term automation, uh, in media production is actually something corporate it does very well in that there are, as you mentioned, things like reports, uh, things like repeatable processes, things, things that have to happen in the background every day. That associates that we have across the globe may take for granted because the lights are always on because you know this, the systems are always working, the reports are coming out, the operations are moving smoothly throughout the company and it's not necessarily something that a lot of people would see or even know because there are dedicated it professionals behind the scenes ensuring that this continues to happen. So the business can continue to make money. Um, you know, anytime that you go down for any, you know, any length of time you are putting your own financial wellbeing at risk and you could miss out on things like whether it's black Friday or cyber Monday, um, you know, w we really depend very heavily on corporate it and all of the processes and specializations that they've put into place that can now happen in the background.
Speaker 1 18:48 It's really something to behold, especially at scale when it comes to how these things happen in these media companies within our corporate environment. That's not something that they're really able to do because they are deadline driven and focused on the speed, the efficiency, how to get things out into the market faster, how to cut down on lead times and when they are in their own little islands or when they have come up with makeshift solutions over the years to meet deadlines that have now just become the, and I'm making air quotes the way, um, they can't afford to really think about what all of that means and how to actually support it because they have to be onto the next thing. Onto the next thing to continue to drive forward. And what you're able to do when you marry those two worlds up is to be able to not only support the creative process, but to free them up from some of the administrative burden that either was being completely neglected or it was being done in a very bare bones manner.
Speaker 1 19:55 So, and I talk about things like media ingest, media archiving, media metadata, tagging. You know, the company has spent tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions of dollars to produce spots to produce footage, you know, with celebrities, um, you know, or an exotic locations which are, you know, some of these things can be really hard or impossible to recreate if there are not processes and frankly people in place to use the automated potential of some of these workflow systems like a ma'am or a dam to really increase the efficiency of the humans. Then you start to see where the rubber meets the road, right? So, um, you know, I'm a producer who has to ingest in tag, you know, a hundred hours of content. If there's some automations available to me, if, if we are putting a lot of these processes into the background, designing workflows, designing transcode engines, designing the archive processes in conjunction with corporate it, then they don't have to worry about those things that may have been keeping them up at night before. And they don't have to put a copy of a million dollar shoot to two hard drives and put one on a plane and hold the other one close as you go to sleep, you know, on the West coast. Absolutely.
Speaker 0 21:10 So that gets into a, I guess that's really gets into the next topic I think is, which is the journey of getting these two potentially, I don't want to say disagreeing, but they have different, uh, different priorities in mind. Maybe. Yeah. How do we get those folks or those teams to talk to each other? So how do we prepare and align? How do we prepare for the journey? So expectations and what are some challenges and maybe successes around expectations. How long is it going to take to implement, let's say a ma'am or a Sam or a new network that's going to be needed for a media production workflow, who's gotta be involved? So talk about that a little.
Speaker 1 21:46 Yeah, and I think as you said, the journey and getting to that alignment is potentially very difficult. Um, because as I mentioned earlier, everybody is really concerned about what they have in front of them and their own day to day, their own strategic goals, their own budgets, their own leadership. Yes. You know, the things that they or their teams are responsible for that, you know, they're frankly evaluated on when it comes to success. Um, and I think that that can often put these two at odds, whereas folks on the creative side may thing, you know, while it is just coming to put a stop to what I'm doing or they're going to slow us down and we can't afford that. And then folks on the it side are understandably upset for being either kept out of the loop or their systems put into practice for something that they really aren't built to do. Um, so to really bridge that gap I think is firmly within that creative ops world that I've landed. So nice.
Speaker 0 22:47 Yeah. It's, it sounds like that, uh, the success really depends upon that sort of stakeholder role that can bridge that gap and get those people talking to each other.
Speaker 1 22:58 Exactly. And I, and I think that we're able, you know, w with the team that we have at PVH, we were able to do a really good job of, of taking it through a different lens, really for both sides of that equation. Because I think that we have that unique perspective to really understand that the place you really want to get to is where both of those things meet. Because that's when you actually can see a lot of really cool magic happen. And we took an approach that really involved actually marrying up those two things ourselves, just in our own pitches. So we went on a little bit of a tour ourselves. We took videos of people giving testimonials on the creative side about their workflow, challenges, about what they're trying to do to drive the business forward. Uh, and really tried to lay out essentially all of the business cases we could potentially find and where there are values to be had there and where there are initiatives that can really bridge that gap.
Speaker 1 23:50 And I think that bringing those to our leadership, both on the it and on the creative side and showing them this is what we are seeing, you know, this is where there are gaps and this is where we think we can get these two sides to really come together and you know, have several initiatives kind of in the pipeline that will make it possible not only for our media production folks to hit those deadlines to drive forward, to be able to be on the latest and greatest tech but also in an intelligent, scalable cost effective way that corporate, it has to be those stewards of, I really, I've been mulling over this analogy a lot over especially the last month and I think it's appropriate specifically in this industry because it's like a dam, not a digital asset management platform. Although the analogy works there too.
Speaker 1 24:45 But it very much is, you know, if you think of the creative side as you know, the rushing river, the water, um, you know, it's wild that it breaks boundaries. You, you need it to move forward and corporate, it becomes like a dam. You find that point, that advantageous strategic point and you harness it and you channel it and you push it forward into something that generates power, generates innovation and it generates revenue. Absolutely. Sometimes you create a data Lake. I had to, sorry, sorry listeners. So buy-in, like who's got a buy in? We've got media professionals, we've got maybe the media asset manager, we've got a security network. Like what are some of the parties involved in buying into the journey? Yeah. And, and, and certainly, uh, at a place like PVH, it's everybody. It's very much top down. You know, you, you need the buy in across the board from, from your finance people to your security people, to your server teams, to your network, to, to your desktop and operational support teams to design and sales, marketing, e-commerce, uh, you know, licensing.
Speaker 1 25:55 It goes on and on where you need that buy in and I think that as I mentioned, doing these sorts of road shows and opening ourselves up to feedback on all sides. I think that that's something that really differentiates the current team I'm on from a lot of other teams that I've seen is that not only are we open to feedback, we desire it, we crave it, we need it to really keep everything that we know fresh and accurate because the requirements are always going to change. Whether it's on the technology side, whether it's on the creative side, it changes day to day, week to week, so we need to make sure that all the information that we have that we are planning against stays accurate and that everybody understands that what we are working with is also what you working with and some of those readouts.
Speaker 1 26:45 Making sure that we're always going back to our it leadership and our business stakeholders to show like these are the things that we are thinking of that we have heard from you and your stakeholders and whether it's playing a video of someone in Europe or Asia, talking about their challenges and showing how the challenges are similar here in the U S um, the, those sorts of things can be really, really powerful in order to create that alignment. So really getting that buy in and making people understand that we are going to work together to work on this solution and it's going to be something that provides a lot of value for our creative process as well as efficiency within our own budgets. So it's not only are we generating revenue, but we are going to save untold amounts that may be going on corporate credit cards to procure these removable hard drives.
Speaker 1 27:35 You know, sometimes in duplicate or triplicate. And we're going to cut down on the amount of time that our creative professionals have to spend performing admin tasks, performing disaster recovery tasks, searching for assets, you know, that is just huge. You know, when people spend hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours a year creating these things, where are you storing them so you can find them again. And I think that especially in a company like PVH, but certainly what I've seen, you know, in my other stops at time and at WWE, those assets are your historical record. They are what differentiates your company from every other company and you've spent untold amounts of capital to produce them. So we have to be the stewards of that. We have to enable our asset managers are librarians and archivists with the right tools. We have to be the evangelists for bringing in people of those professions because a lot of companies don't have one at WWE that I think the team of people within that realm was about 20 when I left.
Speaker 1 28:35 And that's out of a company of about 600, which is the size of my current it department. So, um, really being the, those evangelists, those champions for those who actually have to get in and do that nitty gritty work to preserve the historical record, to ensure that we can go back. We can see the things we've done and we can frankly monetize those things right there. Americans specifically are certainly always nostalgic. And I think that that is something that is also very global. You know, one of the things that one of our brands likes to talk about globally is classic American. Cool. Um, and we always, we always look to repurpose. Um, some of the old ad campaigns, some of those iconic images that everybody thinks of, you know, certainly with Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger or the historical presence of, of brands like van Houston that have been around for over 150 years.
Speaker 1 29:26 You know, there is always an opportunity to show somebody that that history matters and to use that to generate excitement about what you're doing today. You can see what worked in the past and only with systems that operate at scale with professionals that are skilled in making them go, making sure the metadata is there, making sure that you can find these things without having to literally dig through some boxes or maybe never find it at all. You know, I think that making those cases up our own leadership chain, I think a lot of those things show that they do pay for themselves because you know, you could have somebody who, whether it's a freelancer or whether it's some sort of creative director, you know, making a six figure salary. Do you want them digging in a box or do you want them combing through a few thousand files on a file server making more new cool things for you to sell?
Speaker 1 30:18 Absolutely. Yeah. It strikes me that um, one of the big benefits too is the more you have good collaboration between the creatives and the corporation, the better the corporation both understands what they're doing and also can start to plan and help them plan. Right. Cause like you said, understanding what budgets are needed in order to create this media and planned year over year. It's good for both sides of the street to understand that. Along those lines, in your role, what kind of documentation have you had to like walk through the process? Let's talk a little bit about some of the hurdles that most people might face when kind of tasked with coordinating with a corporate it infrastructure and making sure that everybody has what they need to know to feel good about what the creatives are doing. Right. And I think you also touched on something good in there in that I think what often causes some of those divides between corporate it and creative is a lack of transparency perceived on, on either side, where some maybe creative doesn't feel like they're being communicated with and it the same.
Speaker 1 31:25 Uh, and that's how people dig themselves into their own holes and they say, you know what? I've got my space right here. It's my space. I can do whatever I want. I'm just going to stay here. And I think part of the role that my team finds ourselves in is really opening up that culture of transparency. And I think when you can get people communicating across professional lines about what they're doing and what their goals are and what is required to be successful, I think that that just generates a better environment where people feel supported, they feel kept in the loop because nobody likes to be kept out of the loop. Like nobody likes, nobody likes surprises, whatever they say. Nobody likes to be surprised. Certainly at work. Um, you don't want to have urgent things come up or you don't want to have a surprise of my files are lost.
Speaker 1 32:16 Or Hey, you know, we're, we're going to throw a hundred a hundred terabytes on your company server right now. Surprise. Right. Um, and we just brought everybody to a halt. So sorry, we're using it right now for a very important deliverable. Right? And those surprises are what would cause those divides. So I think that, you know, with communications plans, getting the documentation in a place where it needs to be, you know, documenting what the business is doing and putting that into a form that corporate it can visualize that they can see what's going on, that they can actually put some numbers and some metrics to the creative needs to the bandwidth needs to, the storage needs to performance indicators. And exactly, those things can be very illuminating. And I find that that really helps the overall communication when you're able to be very concrete and clear about what's going on.
Speaker 1 33:14 And you know, have essentially, um, you have, you have MasterCard rails, I mean, said that before. Yeah. Um, I guess the only really way to phrase it is you have those Bibles, you have documentation that is understood and agreed to, um, throughout the company that this is what's going on and this is what we need to be successful. And it forces people who are maybe more creative brains to be more analytical. And it forces people who are a little more analytical to turn on that creative side of their brain because you have to understand where both of those things meet. And that helps further that culture of transparency where everybody's goals are kind of surfaced up, out in the open, and it just makes for a much more copacetic, less surprising Workday. Right. Because I, you know, we're very clear about, you know, there's a global architecture to consider here. You know, as I mentioned, when people get into their own little holes, they don't think about the 30,000 foot view. And it's really important to do that when you're coming from a place of need to scale and bring everybody into a tent because that's really where the maximum efficiency is for their creative needs, whether they know it or not.
Speaker 2 34:28 Right? And it's, you know, we talked about transparency a little bit before in communication and obviously in media, things shift on a regular basis, right? A few years ago, everything was still broadcast over a TV. Now broadcast is of very different beast, right? It's files over the internet. Sometimes we still do terrestrial broadcast, but even that is changing. There's new specs that are tying into five G where instead of the digital broadcast over the air, we're going to start to seeing stuff more on our phones. So like keeping it abreast of all of that stuff as well as managing how you are dealing with that stuff and documenting those processes so everybody understands like, Oh, this is the way the game is played today. We need to shift and making sure both the creatives understand what it needs and what it understands that the creative needs is really paramount.
Speaker 1 35:20 Right. And I think that in an organization, the size of PVH and the analogy is, is often made to a boat. Right? You know, sometimes larger boats take longer to steer. Whereas if you're a smaller boat, you can change direction quite a bit more quickly. That said, I do feel that we do a pretty decent job of effecting that change in a manner and pace that is amenable to, uh, you know, to the, the two sides of our coin here. And I think that one thing that we have really tried to bring in from my team's perspective is the idea that incremental change is okay. And, and on the creative side, they, they may think that less so. Um, but you may have had nothing and now you have a little bit of something right. You know, it may not be everything you're looking for.
Speaker 1 36:09 Um, and one of the analogies we like to use, you know, when it comes to our processes, uh, is uh, a skateboard, a bike and a car. You might need the Lamborghini to go fast, but if you need to get down the street, a skateboard, we'll get you going while we're working on the Lamborghini and incrementally, like as we keep our communication open and as we keep abreast of priorities on all sides of the aisle, we can understand like, okay, like we've got your skateboard, you're going a little bit now. What would really make this thing most valuable for you next week, next month, in three months. You know, we can get you to a bike continually iterating, continually laying the foundation and building until we can get you that Lambert a little farther and a little faster. Right?
Speaker 2 36:51 Yeah. So from what I've seen from dealing with the corporate world, those cycles of requesting specific technology or the funds to acquire a specific technology, sometimes they take a long time and you need champions within the organization that really understand the technology and like you said, you're documenting the creative needs and moving those forward and communicating back and forth. For somebody who's maybe a creative, struggling in an organization to make their needs known, what kind of general advice might you have for somebody like that to kind of, uh, help the corporate side understand what their needs are? Well,
Speaker 1 37:32 Uh, as I mentioned, you know, some of the things that we did in terms of road showing it, um, the voices make a big difference. Seeing people's faces and people who are media production professionals go out and make some media. You know, even if it, even if you're just shooting on an iPhone, which is something that we did shoot on an iPhone, put together, you know, a few different meaningful people within the organization, speaking about some of the challenges and the desires. Uh, and, and talking about some of the solutions that, you know, maybe you're proposing you can get them to talk about. You know, if we were to give you this kind of system, tell us how that will affect your work, how it will affect your day to day, how it will free people up within your organization to do that. That's actually what creatives do really well is tell a story. So tell a story about it and how do your stories
Speaker 2 38:20 Make the corporation more money.
Speaker 1 38:22 Exactly. And that's what it's all about. You know, if you, if you can talk about, you know, speed to market, shorter turnaround times, um, you know, cost savings and opening up those people within the creative space to do more creating, you know, to, to keep their brains, you know, turning on creative ideas instead of where did I put that hard drive? People said they can spend hours and hours a day searching for files. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I, you know, it's something I, I think I hear some of our clients talking about on a regular basis is like, we're, we're here and we're doing okay, but, um, we've just been told we need to be here. Um, my hand is going up much higher. So, uh, that's, that's great. We feel great about that. But how do we get there? And that sort of storytelling and that consulting, that's, that's where that can get us into that.
Speaker 1 39:12 Right. And I think that keeping the professionals doing the job that they are most skilled in doing will not only increase your overall productivity, but it will give those people increase job satisfaction because they're doing the things that they want to do. You know, the Joe Joe producer doesn't want to spend time trying to figure out which hard drive to put a shoot on or where did I leave this or, um, this is moving so slow. I'm just staring at my computer while I'm trying to edit video, giving them the tools they need to do the job they want to do. It makes people happier and it causes a lot less frustration on all sides of the aisle because things are meant to be used for a certain purpose. And if you use them for that, it just lends itself to better overall success and good companies retain good employees for longer when they're happier.
Speaker 1 40:04 Exactly. Exactly. That's something that's really important I think for everyone to remember is that we want to keep our talent. It is very costly to bring on new talent, to advertise, to train when a frustrated person leaves because they found a job somewhere else that gives them the tools they need to do the job in the way they want to do it. And I'll always, um, you know, I'll always evangelize, you know, the asset managers, the archivists librarians that I've worked with as the folks who, who really can give that extra layer that a lot of companies weren't necessarily thinking about before. Because if you think of the admin time or the time that somebody who, this is not their primary job, will need to spend just to keep some semblance of the lights on and some semblance of organization. Um, you know, how much, what percentage of the day are they going to spend on that 25, 30, 40, maybe 50.
Speaker 1 40:52 Um, whereas if you bring in people who are specialized to that task, to that job, who really know how to do it in a way that somebody who's doing it as a side job would not. Right. Um, you know, the efficiency you gain beyond giving three people 20% of their day back, um, is really a more buttoned up and comprehensive structure within the company and how it manages its digital assets. I mean, it sounds like that's 60% of someone's day back. That's, that's a pretty significant number there. Right, right. And not only that, I have found that, you know, these people, the librarians and archivists that we speak of become so beloved in their departments because it's like shining a light that creatives didn't necessarily even know was there. It's like you don't have to be stumbling around in the dark looking for what you want because somebody is a steward of your content, of your brand DNA and is making sure that it is not only all well taken care of, but you can find it at the drop of a hat because the metadata is good and the systems around it are well constructed with workflows and automations that really make it sing so you know you can pull back that footage in seconds where it may have taken you days to find it before, like how do you even measure something like that.
Speaker 1 42:05 Dan Rosenberg, you are speaking my language. Thank you. Yeah. This is something that we talk about a lot here on our show, which is just the importance of having those people in place that do exactly what you're saying, that you know the people who can really dive in and find that content very quickly. The industry needs people like that. And it's not something that, that we see put up on a pedestal quite very often. So people don't tend to get into the media production industry to, to do those kinds of things as a profession. We, again, we've talked about it with some of our guests in the past side, they're getting into it to be the, the photographer or the shooter, maybe the actor, right? And they end up doing these jobs that, that we now know are very important, right? Everybody wants to be the person who makes the cool thing, right?
Speaker 1 42:49 Not necessarily the person who archives the cool thing, but the people who archive the cool thing are the true champions because they know where the bodies are buried and can monetize those bodies in the future when we talking about cyborgs now. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But, but I think that, you know, first of all, I'd like to say that I think the librarians are all very cool and attend your local digital asset management conference. Um, because you'll hear a lot of great stories, um, of, you know, the treasure troves that have been uncovered that were just, Oh, previously, totally unknown or, or in a, in a closet somewhere. You know, somebody found a stack of tapes and they actually were able to go through them and then there's some gold on there and it's things that would have potentially been lost forever, thrown through it, the gals or in a garbage or something like that.
Speaker 1 43:44 In a previous episode, we were talking about preservation and there was a specific example about a conversation between George Lucas and Kira Kurosawa, and I think it was Francis Ford Coppola that was just on a random tape that was labeled. It was mislabeled, it was mislabeled, and everybody thought it was gone forever and God, because somebody said, Hey, let's digitize this stuff and find out what, what's on these tapes. Yep. Right. Or reals. Right. So I don't expect everybody's procedures to be as buttoned up as the way my dad and I labeled the spines of those VHS is back in the day. But we never lost anything good. That's awesome. Uh, awesome. But we are humans and we make mistakes. We do, we do. But if there's a process in place and there's good governance around that process,
Speaker 2 44:32 It's really important for the creatives to understand why that process is there. Because maybe it's going to save your awesome work 20 years down the line and somebody will see it again. Right. And know that you did a cool thing.
Speaker 1 44:43 I find celebrating, I find the creatives tend to be very meaningful focused. They need to see where they fit in the, in the big picture. And our, I should say we, because I consider myself to be one of those indeed very much need to see where we fit into the big picture and why what we are doing is so important. So that seems to be a very big thing that we need to keep in mind when we bridge the gap here. And I think that, uh, as we talked about a little bit earlier, the transparency that's needed, removing some of the mystery and the blockers that could be involved when everybody is, you know, just kind of up on their own. I think that as humans, we crave structure and process that will help us, you know, the, that repetition, the routine. So when you have these things in place, people always know where to go and what to do.
Speaker 1 45:28 Like when I'm finished with the shoot, I know exactly what to do with it, who to hand it to, where it needs to go, how long it's going to be before I'm able to work with it. Like you really manage those expectations, remove that level of guesswork, um, because you have put into place a great process that is repeatable globally. Um, and in our case. So, and, and we really try to do that as much as possible. So our creatives always know what to expect and are never guessing anymore. And it's incremental. Right. You know, we try to make little changes again, you know, as we go. Right. Um, but it makes everybody on both sides of the aisle feel like they're not alone anymore.
Speaker 2 46:06 Yeah. We're such fantastic pattern recognition machines that we've got this instinct for survival. And sometimes it's interesting to see how that instinct can make us feel safe, right? If we add those guard rails to our processes, even though sometimes it feels like homework, at least we know what's expected of us and it can help us get through the day because you know, Oh, I've got to do the thing. I can do the thing tomorrow. Okay. We'll do the thing.
Speaker 1 46:37 I want to wrap up our discussion with maybe some do's and don'ts. So I'm thinking we have a good relationship with our it team. We have a good relationship with our media production team. Give me some do's and don'ts on both sides. What should we in, shouldn't we be doing on a regular basis to keep this relationship positive? So I, I, I think that we, we've hit on it a lot and is that it's that culture of communication and transparency, um, and, and keeping the surprises limited as much as possible. We know they're going to happen. Um, but surfacing these concerns early and often doing regular checkpoints with business partners and it partners, you know, keeping everybody in the loop as to what's going on today, what do you expect to be going on in six months? And really just continuing to, to bridge any gaps that may be happening.
Speaker 1 47:23 You know, hopefully, you know, as you've moved down your journey, you've gotten into a more regular cadence of some of these, you know, keeping tabs on your initiatives, you know, checking in with business partners, how's it going? What do you love? What do you hate? Um, you know, and I think that's one of the advantages in the styles of working that are now seeping their way into the corporate culture. Um, you know, what is it that you're doing today that you love and what could you really do without? Um, and I think that that keeps your creative side looped in and engaged and they will want to continue to communicate with you. And then from an it side, uh, it's really the same thing. You know, we know that the latest and greatest video codec is coming out soon. You know, we know we're going to get asked for these things.
Speaker 1 48:06 You know, this is what we perceive to be the impact to the storage, to the network, to our ops teams. You know, again, the transparency and the communication will always be King because I think that nobody likes giving bad news, um, or receiving it for nobody. Yeah. And it's a, it's tough to do both of those things, right? Like, so you want to figure out things on your own. Often I find like you really feel like I could just solve this. I can just solve it, but um, you'll never do it as well on your own as you do with an engaged team that cares about what they're doing. Um, and the earlier you can bring these things to the surface, generally speaking, the less impactful they are because people can adequately prepare for them. You know, whether it's, you know, needing to maybe hire some additional freelance staff or temporarily up your network bandwidth for a special event or something like that.
Speaker 1 49:01 These are all options that you have. And I think that when those of us who have our heads down in our own worlds every day might not necessarily know all of the solutions that could be there to your problems. Having these extremely talented and well-versed folks on the it side who understand their own tech very well and how to problem solve with it. You know, I can't tell you anything about how to problem solve with the sand, but I know people that can and I think a lot of that is being comfortable admitting that you don't know everything, but you don't have to know everything because somebody does. And it's really just being humble enough to ask for help when you need it as soon as you need it. And understanding that for the most part if you communicate with people well, they will be appreciative even if you're giving them bad news.
Speaker 1 49:50 And that brings people to the table to collaborate and problem solve, I think in a really fun way because I think in a lot of ways a lot of us have gotten into this type of work because we like collaborative problem solving with people. We like getting people to the table and figuring out, you know, challenges and how to get through them, around them, over them, under them. However we need to get there to get the work done. Um, the more ideas that you have at the table, generally the more successful you're going to be. Yup. Awesome. Well, Daniel Rosenberg lead creative technologies that PVH Corp, thanks for coming down to Baltimore and joining us at the Chester church. Absolutely, guys, thanks for having me. Yeah, and
Speaker 0 50:28 I'd also like to thank my cohost Ben Kilburg, senior solutions architect for Chesa. Thank you Ben. Thank you Jason. The workflow show is produced at the Chestnut church, our home office in Baltimore, Maryland. My cohost Ben Kilburg and Chessa sales operations manager, Jessica Amantha co produced the show. Thank you again for listening to the workflow show. We love producing this podcast and we hope you enjoy it. Let us know what you think. If you have any stories about media, asset management, media storage, media, infrastructure, integrations, et cetera, or just need some workflow therapy, get in touch with us, email us at podcast at <inaudible> dot com and as always, you can visit <inaudible> dot com anytime. Thanks for listening. I'm Jason Wetstone.
