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Laureus Case Study

To help raise awareness of the high profile Laureus World Sports Awards, Laureus turned to Syrox to provide a comprehensive asset management system. The Laureus Archive makes available to the media a wide range of print quality photography relating to the awards and related events, and of the sportspersons, stars and personalities that attend them.

Benefits

• Maximises media exposure of the Laureus World Sports Awards
• Reduces distribution and production costs
• Automatic user access administration reduces manpower costs
• Allows instant access and editorial control via any Internet enabled device
• Provides full usage tracking, statistics and reports
• Allows intelligent event-specific cataloguing of content
• Provides advanced search utilities for finding artwork, images, textual content and video
• Improves productivity through workflow automation of production processes

Features

Efficient Content Distribution

Via specially optimised code, specific hardware configuration and carefully controlled user access the system is able to provide maximum content delivery bandwidth to genuine users while filtering out casual visitors. In addition, for users requiring physical backup or alternate delivery means, the system can generate automated requests for specific content CDs to be produced and sent to them.

Fully Scalable Architecture

The system is designed to scale fully to encompass all events hosted by the Laureus World Sports Awards organisation, whilst still remaining manageable, easily searchable and accessible to users. The user front end can be fully customised without affecting the underlying system structure allowing graphical updating and makeovers as required.

Automated User Access Registration & Control

The registration process is automatically administered by the system allowing near-instant access and removing delays associated with manual registration processing while still ensuring the integrity of the user information and maximising resources available to legitimate users.

Full Statistical Analysis

Full statistical tracking of user and content access allows detailed analysis of what is being used and by whom. This facilitates accurate assessment of penetration across media sectors.

Instant Editorial Control from Multiple Locations

Content can be uploaded and edited from multiple locations allowing strict editorial control without the significant time delays this can otherwise cause. This feature also removes bottlenecks as content can be uploaded at multiple points rather than through a single terminal.

Online WYSIWYG Text Content Editing

What You See Is What You Get text editing provides non-technical users with a familiar word-processor style online interface through a standard web browser. This allows formatted text content to be authored directly without intermediary input from graphic designers or additional processing. This feature does not require any additional software installed on the user's computer.

Image Caption Processing, Editing & Display

All image content can be fully captioned with relevant details such as photographer, time, place, subject, file size, dimensions, accompanying story etc. This facilitates more efficient content distribution as images carry with them all the necessary information for reuse and publication across different media and formats.

IPTC Caption Support

The Laureus Archive can automatically accept and interpret JPEG and TIFF image files containing IPTC captions, the media industry standard for tagging images with caption and usage information. This allows image information to be read automatically as files are imported. These captions may subsequently be edited by archive administrators, and the captions are retained in the image files when downloaded, allowing end-to-end image image clipping and tracking.

Intelligent Content Cataloguing & Display

Content can be catalogued intelligently according to different parameters including event, timescale, keyword tags, and actual content type. This allows for the display of relevant content to specific users and the presentation of targeted content according to user preferences and usage patterns.

Advanced Content Search Facilities

Through intelligent cataloguing and content tagging, plus specifically developed search algorithms, content can be quickly and easily identified.

Background

The Laureus World Sports Awards were established in 2000 by DaimlerChrysler and Richemont (www.richemont.com) to celebrate sporting achievement at the highest level across the globe. They are now recognised as the premier honours on the international sporting calendar and are unique in that they honour the world's best sportsmen and women for their achievements across all disciplines and all countries. The underlying motivation for the awards is the promotion of sport as a force for positive social and individual change across the world, uninhibited by national boundaries, political differences, poverty, or class issues. With this in mind, the Laureus World Sports Awards aim to achieve a high media profile across the world.

Problem

The Laureus Group encompass a range of events and activities, including the annual World Sports Awards, the Sport for Good Foundation and the World Sports Academy. The awards (until recently held in Monaco , now hosted in a different location each year) are the pinnacle of a wide range of high profile events and activities, featuring some of the biggest names in sports and entertainment.

In order to raise awareness of this prestigious event, Laureus set out to provide the media with easy access to high quality photography of the awards and related activities using an image asset distribution website. The photography would be available at no charge, and access would be granted to any media user who registered; within reason.

Although Laureus activities continue all year around, the majority of the press exposure comes around the week of the annual awards in May. The solution would need to be able to handle the increased traffic at this time of year in order to deliver imagery in a timely fashion to the media in order to take advantage of the increased coverage available.

To solve these issues of resource availability and distribution, Syrox was asked to create an online asset and content management system.

Solution

Drawing on its extensive experience of digital asset management gained from projects including the FIFA Digital Archive and Allsport Gallery, Syrox was able to put in place a high quality content management and distribution system within a limited timeframe.

The Laureus Archive is a high performance website for the management and delivery of primarily image based assets. The website presents an easy to use interface for searching and browsing images. Images are organised into catalogues, where each catalogue corresponds to a Laureus event or activity. In addition, users may specify keywords or date ranges in searching for assets.

Content supplied by photographers from Getty Images and other agencies is collated and captioned using the IPTC standard for tagging images with additional information, then imported into the archive. Here the images are automatically processed to read the caption information, generate various sizes of thumbnail, and catalogue the image according to the caption information. Once processed, the images are immediately available to users for download.

Users register online for access to the archive; the process is fast and automatic. In order to ensure the integrity of the user's registration, a valid email address must be supplied. The archive sends an confirmation email to the user after the registration form has been filled in. Once the user clicks a link in the confirmation email, access to the archive is granted.

Apart from searching, browsing and downloading of images, the archive website presents a number of other features. Each user has a virtual 'light box', where a short list of frequently used or favourite images may be stored. The light box images may be downloaded as a group in a zip file. A news page, with formatted content and links to images in the archive, keeps users informed of developments. Users may request specific images not currently on the archive. Users may also manage the personal information recorded about them and delete their account if required.

The solution also provides a fully featured administration section to allow Laureus to manage the archive and its content. Appearing as an extension of the archive website, the administration section is a thin-client application that allows Laureus users to add, edit and delete assets and their associated information, organise assets into catalogues, view and control access for users and users groups, create formatted content for the news pages, view usage statistics and reports and download webserver logs for analysis. The administration section allows the archive to be quickly and effectively controlled from anywhere in the world, allowing changes to be made and new images to be uploaded instantly - a feature that has proved extremely valuable in providing real time photo coverage of the awards ceremonies and other events.

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