Aqualung Group deep dives into Chorus for brand management

29th November 2021

Over 70 years ago Aqualung Group pioneered the creation of modern diving equipment when Captain Jacques-Yves Cousteau teamed with Émile Gagnan to develop the first “aqua-lung” that made underwater exploration possible. Today, the brand continues to be the leading global designer and manufacturer of dive and water sports gear for ocean lovers around the world. It supports 7 primary sub-brands, each with a unique set of assets and internal brand teams to create and manage them.

With an increasing volume of media generated to create digital and print materials, the marketing team at Aqualung Group realized they needed a more efficient way to streamline their content production workflows. In 2018, they embarked on a search for a digital asset management solution to manage their brand across their dealership network.

A lifestyle picture by Aqualung

After an extensive search demoing many possible solutions, Chorus was chosen as it offered all the modern tools their marketing team was looking for, in addition to the ability for internal teams to manage and share their own content.

“The Chorus experience supports our worldwide network of dealers that need our marketing assets for their local sales initiatives,” explains Robert Larkins, Marketing Technologies Manager for Aqualung Group. “Other digital asset management solutions we tried didn’t have the architecture to support anything beyond a single set of asset files with a single admin login.”

Brand direction and consistency

Aqualung Group has two primary groups of users: a worldwide dealers’ network; and their internal international marketing teams. All original assets belong to and are developed by the marketing team before they are shared as collections to their dealers’ group. Segmenting this way gives their international teams the ability to communicate and finalize assets ahead of campaign or product launches, as well as giving them the controls to establish embargo and expiry dates.

Aqualung diving equipment

As the primary distribution point for marketing campaign assets, including video, product, and lifestyle images, as well as brand style guide direction, Chorus has helped ensure Aqualung Group’s network of dealers is well supported and stays on-brand with their global initiatives and brand direction.

"The Chorus experience supports our worldwide network of dealers that need our marketing assets for their local sales initiatives.”
Robert Larkins, Marketing Technologies Manager

Efficient collaboration of distributed teams

With Marketing teams in France, UK, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the US, now it’s much easier for each region to think and work independently while sidestepping silo working. Chorus is used as the single point of truth, giving the teams complete control of their assets to their brand managers.

Robert Larkins continues, “Nothing off brand or unapproved can be added to the Chorus digital asset management tool without proper approval. This ensures our global brand messaging remains accurate and in sync.”

A picture of Aqualung

Simple image editing tools that empower users

As part of their content workflows, Aqualung Group’s teams often need to be able to quickly create different versions of a file for multiple print and digital applications, to support their many marketing and sales initiatives. Bulk editing using Chorus’s derivatives tool empowers their users to customize the download specs to match their specific needs, making preparing multiple assets for a campaign or promotional activity very quick and easy.

“No two users will use an asset the same way and not all have the ability or knowledge to use image-editing software to manipulate an asset to the specs they need, says Robert. Our system of hosting a larger 'master image' allows dealers to use the custom crop option to download from a single master image asset, for example, at 5cm in CMYK for a printed brochure, or 2000px in RGB for digital use on a website. This function gives power to our dealers to create their assets at will and has saved our marketing teams countless hours of image resizing in a dedicated image editing app such as Photoshop.”

Quality content for brand success

The success of your brand is directly connected to the quality of the content you produce to tell your brand story and Aqualung Group’s brand success is a great example of this. By empowering their teams to leverage a collaboration tool like Chorus, they have not only ensured brand consistency across their large dealership network but saved time and given control to the people managing their brand story.

“Having a digital asset management tool not only supports its end users with assets they’ll use for their personal success but also helps support the internal teams’ framework by providing a tool that ensures the brands’ success through consistent, quality brand communication.”

“We’ll continue to use our master image system, Chorus, to support the widest range of possible project spec needs and expand the use of creating shared custom asset sets for customers.”

"It has saved our marketing teams countless hours of image resizing in a dedicated image editing app such as Photoshop.”
Robert Larkins, Marketing Technologies Manager

Chorus is the digital asset management solution of choice for many brands around the world who need to capture and tell numerous stories at once. It doesn't just control and centralize your valuable media – it also gives your teams the smart tools to turn it into a steady flow of content, too.

If you'd like to find out more about how we can help you tell your story, we're looking forward to learning more about your needs and showing you the smart solutions Chorus offers – get in touch for a chat or a live demo.

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