Every day, more than 150 million people buy a product from Unilever, one of the world’s leading consumer goods companies. Understandably, the company has a vast global archive of commercials spanning many decades and a diversity of leading brands in food, home and personal care products.
The TV commercials archive currently resides on many thousands of Umatic tapes stored at Port Sunlight and Unilever’s Global Media department in Blackfriars, London, has started digitising the entire library of its tape-based assets. After extensive evaluation ContentAgent was selected for this ambitious task.
Phase one of the operation will see the entire tape library transferred to DVD with additional multi-format encoding of selected material for online access.
“It’s important to appreciate that we are not foremost a technical operation,” explains the Global Media department’s Stacey Miller. “So we were looking for an encoding and management system that would remove the potential hassle. What we liked about ContentAgent was its simple and straightforward user interface with step-by-step processes, and the ability to create job templates which automate commonly performed tasks.”
The job templates were created for Unilever by root6 who also provided training and support. With the bulk of the current activity involving the replacement of the Umatic tape archive by DVD, the system is working round the clock. The process is considerably simplified by the fact that ContentAgent incorporates an integral DVD burner, and creation, including simple chapter point navigation is achievable at the click of a button, with no need for any authoring experience.
The second task for which ContentAgent was acquired was the encoding of tape-based material for online access by internal marketing staff or external agencies. Templates define and automate the individual processes. The required clips are captured from tape and encoded (in this case to MPEG2 and QuickTime) to the specified file formats. ContentAgent will then automatically deliver and distribute files via email or ftp as required.
The encoded clips are made available for online access by Unilever staff via ‘Unibeam’ – an internal review and archive service provided by Beam.TV. External agencies with authorised access may also use Beam.TV to view archived material – and create reels for presentations.
Digitising this enormous library will create significant savings both in delivery time and in the costs of tape and couriers. Having proven its worth in the first phase of the project, ContentAgent will also be used to import associated clip metadata from the Global Media database. This will enable agencies and internal staff to search archives using pre-defined criteria. Such versatility is enabled by an advanced scripting system which facilitates custom programming for bespoke applications.
Ultimately, Unilever plans to extend its digital archive to include radio and print media. Stacey Miller concludes. ‘Large corporations are all working towards digitising assets in order to make them more readily available and cost effective. ContentAgent has met our expectations in helping us towards this goal.”