As a brand owner, brand guardian, or MARCOM manager, you often manage vast archives. Newspaper clippings from years long past? Yes, these can sometimes be a goldmine for reusable media content. Take, for example, the case of Catena Company, which was recently tasked with making an archive of 16,000 (!) newspaper clippings more accessible.
16000 newspaper clippings
Fortunately, these clippings weren’t haphazardly stuffed into banana boxes; they originated from a time before newspapers were offered digitally. Diligent contributors had scanned all the articles at some point, in what was then called “digitalisation”. They had even made an effort to assign meaningful file names to each PDF, incorporating the publication date and topic according to a set structure.
He who seeks does not find (and stops seeking)
Unfortunately, the digital archive had grown so vast that nothing could be found. This resulted in two major drawbacks. Marketing staff knew finding a relevant article was nearly impossible, so they stopped trying. The extensive archive remained unused - a shame, as it contained valuable content that could have been easily repurposed. On the rare occasions someone attempted to locate a specific article, the search often ended in frustration and wasted time. This couldn’t continue. Yet abandoning the archive wasn’t an option either.
While the marketing team was familiar with OCR technology for recognising text in PDFs, they didn’t know where to start. Rescanning all 16,000 paper clippings manually? Surely not! Thankfully, the team sought and found a solution: Catena Company introduced them to a Digital Asset Management (DAM) system.
Open Sesame… here is DAM
A Digital Asset Management system (DAM) centralises all digital assets and simplifies their management and use. What’s particularly appealing about modern DAM platforms is their accessibility via APIs. These APIs enable seamless integrations with other applications and allow for custom programming of solutions without incurring significant licensing costs. Our tech team knew exactly what to do.
Using an external application, the PDFs were downloaded via the API, processed through Adobe’s online OCR service, and then returned to the DAM as an additional version.
The once-giant archive opened up like Ali Baba’s cave. Suddenly, all articles became searchable – a true treasure chest for content designers, marketers, and storytellers. They now eagerly incorporate these vintage articles into their marketing communications and content supply chains. This approach not only saves the company substantial search time and costs but, more importantly, unlocks greater value through the wealth of digital content.
Eddy Smets
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