Rijk Zwaan
Creating a custom-built collaborative workspace for vegetable breeding specialists Rijk Zwaan and their 31 global subsidiaries
1500+
users
66,000+
assets
5024GB
total storage size
Rijk Zwaan is a family-owned vegetable breeding and seed production company. Combining market expertise, modern technology, and the rich diversity offered by nature, Rijk Zwaan develops new plant varieties and sells their seeds to vegetable growers worldwide.
With a global market share of 9%, Rijk Zwaan is the fourth biggest vegetable breeding company in the world. From cabbage to cucumbers, the Dutch company sells their industry-leading vegetable seeds through 31 local subsidiaries spread across the globe.
The last two years we’ve repurposed Bynder to be more than just a photography DAM - it’s a central marketing tool that has not only changed how we organize our content, but also create it too.Tjipke Meijer
Photography & Video Creator, Rijk Zwaan
Situation
Researching and developing new vegetable varieties is the primary focus at Rijk Zwaan—40% of their 3,600+ employees are dedicated to R&D. New seed strains are produced and distributed regularly to be sold by local subsidiaries, requiring high volumes of high-quality, brand-consistent imagery and videos to promote new products in local markets.
With ambitious growth plans in an increasingly global (and digital) market, Rijk Zwaan needed a way to not only centralize their huge numbers of visual assets, but also to improve how the marketing department collaborated with R&D-focused crop specialists and local subsidiaries.
Challenges
Rijk Zwaan is truly a global entity with 3600+ employees worldwide, selling its products primarily through the 31 subsidiaries in their respective markets.
The main challenge? Building a global brand while centralizing marketing operations—and enabling subsidiaries to create marketing content tailored to specific regions.
Ultimately, Rijk Zwaan found it difficult to:
- Centralize the creation and approval of key marketing and producing assets in one platform
- Empower local marketers to create localized content while also maintaining brand consistency
- Ensure all imagery and videos were consistently accurate and reflective of their diverse range of seeds and vegetables
Solution
Initially using Bynder to centralize photos, Rijk Zwaan wanted to expand the use case to cover not only storage, but also the content approval process with Creative Workflow—as well as the creation of branded (yet localized) images and videos with Digital Brand Templates and Studio respectively.
Working with a Bynder expert to create a custom-built solution, Bynder now operates as the go-to platform for Rijk Zwaan’s marketing communications.
Whether it’s collaborating with crop specialists to approve product images for their webshop, or centralizing the production of local marketing assets with brand-approved templates—Rijk Zwaan have 1500+ employees using Bynder as their ‘single source of truth’.
Key benefits
By centralizing all digital assets in one platform, collaboration between markets has improved drastically. With a standardized process for approving and using imagery and videos, there’s much less chance of publishing the wrong assets—a common problem in the past.
Although they’ve only been using Digital Brand Templates and Studio for a few months, it’s already reaping rewards, with subsidiaries now having the freedom to create localized marketing images and videos with pre-approved branded templates. That way, they have the resources to accurately reflect subtle local differences in crops in every market (and save a lot of time in doing it).
The image and video templates created in Bynder are really welcomed by our subsidiaries in the Asian and South American regions, as they can be more independent in quickly creating branded images and videos in their own languages.Joeri van Tongeren
Digital Commerce Specialist, Rijk Zwaan
