How to Foster Collaboration in the Creative Universe
Charlotte Cole from Farfetch sat down with Katrine Rasmussen, Pixelz, to discuss building a collaborative team. They covered how to communicate across borders and time zones, how to be a diverse and inclusive team, and much more. Here are our key takeaways from Charlotte’s session:
- The right team makes all the difference. Strong middle management keeps the communication chain alive. And whether you are a data analyst or creative, a collaborative mindset is important!
- Getting everyone in the same mindset is important - and in the case of content production, it's important that the creativity serves the customer. From there, all the creative efforts will be valuable.
- Localization Is crucial. The world is diverse - if you have the opportunity to use local talent - do it!
Empowering Your Team to Challenge the Status Quo
Javier Ordax from Mango how he builds a culture that encourages his team to constantly push for improvement and challenge the status quo. Here are our key takeaways:
- Listen to your team! What topics or issues are being repeated in conversation regularly? Those are your mental models to start helping your team improve.
- To start pushing the status quo - think of every day as 'half-baked' how can an idea be improved? Don't stop your team from asking those questions.
- What do you need to be a good creative leader? "Passion, curiosity, drive to improve every day, and be there for your team."
Roundtable: Making the Shot Happen
This roundtable brought together Cristina Planelles a Fashion Editor and Art Director, Marysol García Gruben from El Corte Inglés, David Hice from Aritzia, Faye Garland from THG studios and moderated by Daniel Jester from Creative Force. Each panelist represented a different area in making the shot happen and they discussed the importance of communication and collaboration in content production. Here are our key takeaways:
- Think like a criminal. If you were planning a heist would you leave your getaway driver out of the planning?
- Things will go wrong eventually. Be prepared, know your network but always walk into the shoot with confidence.
- Have an air-tight brief and build a team that will fit the needs of that shoot. And don’t forget to include everyone in the conversation.
Creativity at Scale with Flow
Thomas Ladefoged from Pixelz shared the case study of our own company. He explained the differences in batching versus one-piece flow production and how we implemented it at Pixelz. Here are a few of the key takeaways:
- TCreativity can scale and grow with you with principles of Flow instead of batching. Flow can increase efficiency, improve quality and ensure consistency.
- To start to Flow - you have to identify the areas where extra time is being spent or where space isn't being utilized properly.
- Technology can help you automate some of the steps in your process to help you gain efficiency.
Going Agile: Do's and Don'ts Of Technology, Product & Photos
In this unique session, Jonathan Adler from Boardriders, walked the entire audience through Agile processes and scrum. Jonathan explained the agile framework giving concrete tools to bring it into the studio. Here are our key takeaways:
- Everyone wants the perfect product but begin with an MVP - minimum viable product or the prototype / and build from there.
- What is your end goal? Then focus on mapping out the journey that would get you to success. This map is where to start on your journey to success.
- A key to reaching success is setting a deadline. It doesn't need to be 5 days but there does need to be a timeline to reach success.
Roundtable: Mastering Video in E-commerce: Challenges and Opportunities
This roundtable featured Adrian Sandu from Zalando, Kat Santus from Boohoo, Matthew Miller from Saks Fifth Ave. and was moderated by Jakob Østerby from Pixelz. This stellar panel discussed how they approached video production at their respective companies and tips for how to start creating video content for your own PDP. Here are our key takeaways from their panel:
- Start small and utilize the team and resources you already have. Then expand slowly.
- Test - find out which categories perform well with video. Test runway vs studio vs. lifestyle videos. And let the data help guide your video strategy.
- Don’t do video for the sake of doing video. Tailor your PDP to your customer's needs and interests. Who will video serve best?
AI, Humans, and Magic: The New Formula for Image Editing
Sébastien Eskenazi from Pixelz shared how we are using AI and automation for image editing including for masking and ghost mannequin. He also dived into what AI means for the industry. Don’t miss the key takeaways from his session:
- Not everything can or should be done through automation or with the help of AI. Although it's pretty cool (and magical).
- To start automating - start very, very (very) simple. Find a small simple task before trying to automate an entire process.
- What can be gained from automation? In terms of image editing, there are 2 big ones - minimize lead times and consistent image quality.
The Ever-Evolving Role of the Photographer in Fashion E-commerce
We ended the day with Elisa Carnicer, Fashion Photographer, who as a freelance fashion photographer works consistently with different brands and creative teams. She shared her experience in her ever-changing role and how to approach collaboration. Learn more from our key takeaways:
- "Every shoot is like your first day at work"
- With more types of being made - video, campaign, e-com - think about how the vision should be shared across these teams.
- good brief should have as much info as possible without being a novel. Including the collection, reference images and where the images will end up - and the list goes on…