Introducing: Tagboard Graphics

Via Adweek: Tagboard Rolls Out Cloud-Based Graphics System Put to the Test by the NFL Draft

What’s Happening? Today we are launching Tagboard Graphics, a new product that empowers producers to create, edit, and incorporate broadcast-quality graphics into their stories while working from home, anywhere in the world.

Why does this matter? It was always a matter of time until broadcast organizations started to shift their productions from less hardware, into cost-effective and flexible cloud-based solutions. But as the COVID-19 pandemic hit, this evolution in operational efficiency accelerated into a necessity as our partners across the news, sports, and entertainment landscape grappled with unprecedented challenges in storytelling. From the channels (no venues?) to the subject matter (no sports?!?!) to the uncertainty of tackling remote production environments (no studio access), media professionals have been forced to innovate at a rapid pace, with billions of advertising dollars at stake. 

How is Tagboard helping: Complete with cloud-based graphics, Tagboard has evolved to become a simple production platform for complex live programming. From the NFL Draft to CNN Town Halls, to remote graduation ceremonies- our platform is enabling partners to evolve their operational approach saving time and money producing in remote environments, innovating on new formats, and doing so without having to sacrifice quality. ?? Sneak peek in the video below!

But I thought Tagboard was... The “social wall”? “The Social Search Engine”? We’ve heard that. And to be fair, in the last year we did help media outlets source over 20 million pieces of social media content, in real-time, for their stories. But as our drag and drop workflows became more popular for producers, we started to get and more requests for non-social content capabilities and found ourselves manually building graphics for broadcasters.

So what’s the back story? About a year ago I traveled to Las Vegas for our annual trip to NAB with our VP of Production, Christine Chalk, our Sr. Product Designer, Sean Thompson, and a few more of Tagboard’s key industry experts. We challenged each other to spend as much time as possible talking to clients and social network partners, asking key questions, and learning their needs for the coming years. Within the first day, “graphics workflows” were bubbling to the top of the list of needs. Sean walked the floor a few times (probably 20k steps a day at that conference) and when we met up to talk about the findings, he simply said “Most of the graphics systems require massive hardware. Given how long a lot of these systems have been around, they are overengineered and look like you would need a Ph.D. to learn to use them” And thus the adventure began. Sean and Christine brought notes back to the rest of the Team Tagboard, where our amazing product development team embarked on a journey to create a graphics engine, in the cloud, with the same ease of use and drag and drop workflows as Tagboard is now known for. 

Fast forward to late February (10 months later), after trials, tests, and feedback from a number of our key media partners, Christine, Sean, and I had a meeting with our clients at NFL Media Group to target a test date for our first “go-live”. Within a few weeks of that meeting, COVID-19 went from a light news subject to a full-blown pandemic and the product we had in final beta stages, was not just ready for the spotlight, it was needed for the show to begin.

Gaining momentum: In the last month alone, NFL Media, CNN and dozens of additional media partners have leveraged the new graphics functionality in our platform to produce live shows remotely and integrate critical sources of real-time content from social channels, garnering strong viewership and engagement, all while keeping their teams safe.

NFL Media helped BETA Tagboard Graphics and was the first to go-live with the new product platform. Without it being public knowledge that our product even existed, the news spread fast and the calls we've received from our partners have been energizing in a time that has been anything but easy for everyone. We've seen a +48% increase in usage of the platform across broadcast (linear + livestream) production in the last month and feel humbled to be a part of some of the world's most impactful news and entertainment programming.

Here are a few examples and comments from the early users of Tagboard Graphics:

NFL Media Group, which worked closely with Tagboard on the development of its graphics product as an early beta tester, was able to take advantage of the product to produce entire digital and social shows remotely while retaining the high-quality standards of their content. Tagboard has been utilized for social integration on NFL Network for the past three years, but this year’s unique production circumstances gave the team at NFL Media Group a chance to innovate with Tagboard Graphics to accomplish seamless coverage for shows including The Checkdown, Draft Tonight Live and the NFL Draft-A-Thon LIVE. Tagboard’s platform allowed the production team to edit graphic elements on the fly and source trending social content to weave into the stories with talent, all in a somewhat unpredictable environment. As reported, the live broadcast of the 2020 NFL Draft achieved its largest viewership in history across ABC, ESPN, ESPN Deportes, NFL Network, and its digital channels.

In addition to NFL Media’s draft coverage across its digital and social channels, ten NFL teams produced their “NFL Draft Watch Parties” using Tagboard’s platform including the Minnesota Vikings, Tennessee Titans, and San Francisco 49ers.

“Producing a live show remotely presents its challenges technically, but Tagboard helped mitigate those challenges by consolidating graphical and interactive elements into one place for our team,” shares Robert Alberino, VP and Executive Director, San Francisco 49ers. “The ability to build and update graphics collaboratively on the fly while harnessing real-time content off of social media helped us maximize our resources and produce a high-quality, engaging show for our fans.

 “Running our #VikingsDraft Virtual Happy Hour certainly had its challenges technically, but Tagboard Producer and the new graphics system was extremely easy to use. We were able to produce the show 100% remotely with multiple guests joining throughout the show. We featured fan questions and comments, polls and a scrolling ticker with fan tweets, as well as custom graphics each time a pick was announced. Tagboard consolidated our workflow and allowed for a more seamless integration with our broadcast software.” --Scott Kegley, Executive Director, Digital Media & Innovation, Minnesota Vikings

"It was an incredibly unique experience using Tagboard Producer to run our draft show,” shares Michael Deuel, Manager of Video Content, Tennessee Titans. “I was skeptical at first, but the cloud-based graphics system was very easy to use. Having the capability for our fans to interact with the show was a big addition. We were able to incorporate our social media channels right into the show and host live polls for our fans to interact with."

Lastly, CNN’s COVID-19 Global Town Hall series, hosted by Anderson Cooper and Dr. Sanjay Gupta, focuses on sourcing questions from social media channels as a means to help global communities better understand the health and economic issues surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic. Though the series started with an in-studio show, the production needs shifted as the stay at home orders hit and the production team supporting the show needed to find alternative ways to deliver critical information to their global audience. Tagboard was already the platform of choice to deliver access to sources of questions to the CNN hosts, via public social media channels, but when the need for remote production became apparent, CNN was able to quickly adopt the new cloud graphics engine as well.

This team and our amazing partners are working together to change the way stories are told. Thank you to everyone involved in the creation, testing, feedback, that brought this product to life!

If you are interested to learn more, shoot me a DM or check out our website here!