McLaren Racing takes the fast lane in content delivery with Smartsheet and Brandfolder

With racing cars clocking up to 350 km/h during a Formula 1 race, an eye blink may cost a photographer a missed shot. That’s why thousands of pictures are taken at each event, allowing fans to relive key moments and evoke excitement after the engines cool down. 

To get captivating images to F1 fans as fast as possible, McLaren Racing’s content team constantly uploads, catalogues, and distributes footage from each race. However, until recently, all asset management tasks were manual, which slowed down marketing operations and affected partner initiatives, especially considering the huge size of McLaren’s image archives. “We had content archives, more than 90 terabytes of data with no live cataloguing of assets,” reveals Ed Green, Head of Commercial Technology at McLaren Racing. 

Manually reviewing, sorting, and uploading images into partner folders for specific stakeholders would sometimes take several days. “And delays with content delivery on our end would make it very difficult for partners to distribute the assets on their websites and social media to get the outcome they’re looking for,” says Ed Green, Head of Commercial Technology at McLaren Racing. 

Shifting gears to automation

McLaren Racing required a centralised solution to accelerate content delivery to more than 50 partners across four racing series. To achieve this, the team partnered with Smartsheet to implement Brandfolder, a digital asset management platform. “We have moved all the existing data to Brandfolder,” says Green. “New assets can now be uploaded directly by photographers as the solution sits in the cloud.”

Besides offering end-to-end image storage, Brandfolder uses artificial intelligence-based image recognition techniques, making way for more efficient content tagging. “It automatically tags partners in each image and assigns assets to specific partner collections,” explains Green. Since assets are grouped and labelled faster, partners can access them quickly and share them wherever needed.

“Let’s say the content creator  uploads the race footage on Monday morning. By afternoon, it will already be available to our partners,” Green adds. “Whereas before, it could have taken up to a week for some assets to become available.”

Kick-starting asset management transformation

The AI-based automation helps McLaren Racing’s content team save hours of work each week The marketing team members also use Brandfolder as a  source of truth for content, capturing images on their phones and uploading and sharing them with the rest of their team in real time. “In one week, the social team has uploaded about one terabyte of content,” says Green.

By upgrading to a digital asset management system, McLaren’s management has gained unprecedented visibility. “With Smartsheet and Brandfolder, I can get a high-level view of all our marketing and creative work. To me, this visibility is game-changing. It means my teams are better aligned and focused on reaching our larger organisational goals,” confirms Brown.

A driving force behind fan engagement

Overall, McLaren has entirely transformed its day-to-day operations by implementing this single platform to manage the team’s entire content lifecycle. “Our partnership with Smartsheet and Brandfolder has completely revolutionised how we store, track, analyse, and manage our digital assets across our campaigns, projects, and programs,” says Green. 

Making content readily available keeps all the stakeholders aligned and empowers them to act independently, unlocking faster outcomes.

“Finding assets has never been easier. From our communications and marketing departments to our events team—everyone has access to everything they need to get their jobs done,” he adds.

Team alignment, partner empowerment, and management insights aside, the new system helps McLaren keep up with those whose experience matters the most—the  fans. “Because Brandfolder is used across different departments, it empowers us to knock down silos and drive collaboration across teams. This way, we can move faster and deliver better outcomes for our fans and our partners ,” says Brown. “Its nearly real-time content delivery helps our fans feel like they’re on track with us on race weekends.”