Citizen Watch Selects Widen DAM to Organize Their Growing Media Library

MADISON, WI--(Marketwired - Feb 11, 2014) - The Citizen Watch Company, makers of the Citizen Eco-Drive line of wrist watches, has selected the Widen Media Collective for its digital asset management (DAM) needs. Citizen will use Widen's cloud-based DAM solution to manage, organize and distribute all of their digital assets, including all product images and videos, to their national accounts and international dealers.

With over 350 different models of watches for both men and women, Citizen creates multiple finished and high resolution images and videos to help their outlets promote and sell their products. As both the number of digital media files, and the amount of storage space needed to house the files continued to increase, Citizen looked for a solution to help organize the assets, make them searchable and downloadable, in the desired format, from a web browser anywhere in the world. They were also looking to replace a previous system that required a great deal of maintenance and manual intervention.

With the addition of the Widen Media Collective, Citizen expects to have a much better method to distribute image assets that meet their national customer specifications. They also will look for the system to provide self-service access to a subset of these assets for their smaller independent dealers. As a user of WordPress for their web CMS system, Citizen was excited that Widen had an integration with WordPress in the form of a plugin. They also will be using Widen's seamless and slick integration with Dropbox to make delivery of assets within Citizen extremely quick and easy. Finally, Citizen anticipates the system will both simplify and speed up the overall process for their dealers to reuse brand approved images and videos.

"Increasingly, we were receiving requests for very high resolution image and video assets," stated Ellen Seckler, vice president of marketing for Citizen. "We needed a method of delivery which did not rely on outdated methods like FTP or email attachments, which frequently have size and speed limitations."

Citizen also noted the DAM market was very broad and specialized with considerable acquisition activity and numerous vendors. In searching for a proven and reliable DAM supplier, Widen's Media Collective rose to the top because of its Software as a Service (SaaS) based features and service.

"Because of the increasing storage requirements, particularly video, Citizen's IT department was very concerned about having to deal with capacity planning a traditional on-premise solution would require," stated Gen Miake, director of IT and development for Citizen. "In addition, Citizen has subsidiary companies in multiple countries and we wanted to ensure that our DAM would be easily accessible from our other locations."

"Like most deployments that include a current system migration to a new Widen DAM solution, there was meticulous evaluation and testing done by the Citizen Watch team during their selection process," said Craig Bollig senior digital asset management advisor with Widen. "No one wants to introduce a new tool that will complicate a workflow, especially when working with international customers or dealers. The Widen solution not only solves the problems the Citizen Watch team had, but it brought upon further opportunities to impact the brand like CMS integration and video management."

About Citizen Watch
Citizen Eco-Drive is the cornerstone of the entire Citizen Watch brand, demonstrating a demand for high style, technologically advanced, ecologically conscious watches; and proving that advanced design and sustainability can co-exist. The Citizen Eco-Drive, of which more than 10 million have been sold in North America, is a stylish accessory that relies on the renewable energy of light, providing the wearer a lifetime of use while having minimal impact on the environment. Since a Citizen Eco-Drive watch does not require a battery replacement, there is no need to worry about the disposal of batteries which, when improperly discarded, may leach hazardous chemicals into landfills. For more information, visit: http://www.citizenwatch.com

About Widen Enterprises, Inc.
Based in Madison, Wisconsin, Widen has honed its more than 60 years of experience in premedia services and color management specifically for assisting customers with building brand equity and supporting consistent brand representation across print and Web communications. Through its inventive suite of Web-based digital asset management applications, Widen software services provide marketing networks with real-time, Web-based access to clients' digital asset libraries, subsequently eliminating manual search and file preparation time, costs related to replacing images and videos that cannot be located, and added costs for hardware, software and upgrades. For more information, visit: http://www.widen.com.