Top 5 Not-So-Obvious Backup Tips for Creative Agencies
Everything that makes working at a creative agency exciting also makes it challenging. With each new client, creative teams are working on something different. One day they’re on site, shooting a video for a local business, the next day they’re sifting through last year’s concert footage for highlights to promote this year’s event. When creative flow keeps going, it’s as easy for them to lose track of the files they need as it is for them to lose track of time.
If you’re tasked with making sure a team’s content is protected every day, as well as ensuring that it’s organized and saved for the future, I have some tips to make the job easier. Because I do know the effort of babysitting backups or fetching years-old content from a dusty archive closet. What you want to do instead, is making steady progress.
Since I’m sure you’re not making obvious mistakes — like expecting creatives to manually archive their own content, or not having a 3-2-1 backup strategy (3 copies, 2 media types, 1 offsite) — I’ll focus on the not-so-obvious advices. Many of these come straight from my own agency projects. I stumbled across the problems myself and now want to make life easier for you.
Tip #1 — Save everything when a client’s project is completed
For successful creative agencies, there’s no such thing as “former” clients, only clients that you haven’t worked with lately. That means your job managing client data isn’t over when the project is delivered. You still need to archive everything - properly! Not just the finished videos, images or layouts, but all the individual assets created for the project and all the raw footage.
It’s not unusual for clients to request raw footage, even years after the project is complete. If you only saved master copies and can’t send them all of their source footage, your client may question how you manage their content, which could impact their trust in you for future projects.
The good news is that if you have an organized, accessible content archive, it’s easy to send a drive or even a download link to a client. It may even be possible for you to charge clients to retrieve and deliver their content to them.
Keep in mind that some clients may limit how long you can retain their content on your storage. Since different clients have different requirements, you’ll need to put processes in place to retain or delete content per specific client agreements.
Tip #2 — Stop using external drives for backup or archive
If your agency uses external disk drives to back up or archive your projects, you’re not alone. Creative teams do it because it’s dead simple: you plug the drive in, copy project files to it, unplug the drive, and put it on a shelf or in a drawer. But there are three big problems with this.
- Since external drives are removable, they’re easily misplaced - It’s not unusual for someone to take a drive offsite to work on a project and forget to return it
- Removable drives can fail over time after being damaged by physical impacts, water, magnetic fields, or even “bit rot” from just sitting on a shelf
- Locating client files in a stack of drives can be like finding a needle in a haystack, especially if the editor who worked on the project has left the agency
Tip #3 — Organize your archive for self-service access
Look for software that lets you and your co-workers browse through thumbnails and proxies instead of file names, and allows them to search based on metadata. If avaiable software doesn’t fit your needs, you can just as well set-up your own! I wrote an article about how I created my own little Dropbox spin-off using Large Language Models.
Tip #4 — Schedule regular tests for backup restores and archive retrievals
When you first set up your backup system, I’m sure you checked that the backups were firing off on schedule, and tested restoring files and folders. But have you done it lately? Since the last time you checked, any number of things could have changed that would break your backups. Consider re-testing.
- Maybe you added another file share that wasn’t included in the initial set up?
- Perhaps your backup storage has reached capacity?
- Maybe an OS upgrade introduced breaking changes with your backup software?
- Perhaps the automated bill payment for a backup vendor failed?
Bad things can happen when you’re not looking, so it’s smart to schedule time at least once a month to test your backups and restores. The same applies for testing your archives.
Tip #5 – Optimize your Backup-strategy
When the data-lifecycle grows longer and longer, you get more opportunities to finetune your backup-strategy. Find a solution that works best for you and your agency, and stay eager to try out new things.
Do no see this as a chore. Sometimes it turns into a significant upgrade of your overall infrastructure.
How about implementing WORM (Write Once, Read Many) to secure your data from Ransomware attacks? This Backup strategy adds immutability to your data, making it impossible to alter the data afterwards. Ransomware cannot apply it’s effects on WORM-backups.
How about implementing a P2P as the tertiary layer of your 3-2-1 backup rule? Though P2P does not guarantee longterm existence of your data, P2P can enhance the offsite or distributed part of your backup strategy.
Finally, if you need assistance in the conception, development and deployment of a bullet-proof backup strategy, feel free to ask me. I am planning to create workshops for exactly this - finding the perfect backup-strategy. I’ll stay courious in this regard, and for now all I can say is:
Always Backup. ALWAYS
