The Hub is decentralizing the creative process through its two-sided online marketplace that changes the way brands hire creators. The old model of committing all creative resources to one agency of record has proven time-consuming and expensive. Additionally, brands are limited to content that is only as good as the handful of people on that agency’s team.
Instead, The Hub platform offers access to more than 39,000 photographers and videographers, allowing brands to quickly find and hire highly vetted talent in every major U.S. city for their next project. What’s more, the final images and video are created five times faster than traditional agencies and production houses for one-ninth of the price, on average. A brand is more likely to get exactly what they need through a Wisconsin-based photographer in their mid-twenties, for example, who charges a fraction of what a day-rate photographer would in Manhattan.
The Challenge: Burdened Front-End Developers and Manual Image Manipulation
Before a project can begin, photographers and videographers must curate a personal portfolio on The Hub platform. This requires creatives to upload their best photos and videos – which are often enormous files – to showcase their skills. At any given moment, there are more than 2.5 million photos and videos live on The Hub inside of creator portfolios. In order for pages to still load quickly on the website or mobile app, it’s paramount that images be sized down while still looking sharp.
The Cloudinary Solution: Automating Portfolio Management for Brands and Talent
Cloudinary came as a recommendation from a developer directly to founder James Cole, and since implementing the solution, The Hub has seen increased efficiency of the visual workflow. “Cloudinary was exciting to us for two main reasons,” said Cole. “The first was the automatic optimization of smaller file sizes without any negative impact on quality. After all, the visual quality of our creatives’ portfolios is critical to them landing work with today’s leading DTC brands. It’s a non-negotiable, really. The second benefit we were seeking was the efficient resizing for different aspect ratios and device requirements. A photo or video should be just as vivid and eye-catching on an iPhone or tablet as it is on a desktop monitor.”
The Results: Seamless Creative Workflow for Easy and Efficient Portfolio Building
The user experience for photographers and videographers creating and adding to their portfolios is now entirely dynamic. The algorithms behind Cloudinary’s solution resize and optimize assets intelligently, and much more efficiently than a human could, whether community member or The Hub developer. “In terms of size, we’re able to get images and video to be a lot smaller and therefore more performant,” said Cole. “Not only that, but optimized assets are cheaper for us from a storage perspective, too.”
“Content is king for everyone in 2020, but for us at The Hub, it’s our lifeblood. The quality of our work is what we are built on. Outsourcing how we host and serve images speaks volumes – we empower another party to serve the very linchpin of our company – and that third party is Cloudinary.”
–James Cole, founder, The Hub
