The objective of Slate was to build a social media content creation platform that is completely customizable to a brand’s identity. And that is what we built, Slate is the only 100% customizable web & mobile content creation platform that doesn’t incorporate off-brand assets when creating social media content.
Other content creation platforms lack either an exclusive focus on social media content creation or lack a completely customizable creation experience tailored to the brand. It's common to see content creation platforms filled with stock (off brand) assets - stock colors, fonts, filters, graphics, gifs, photo repositories - that are irrelevant to brand social media managers that have a specific brand look they are trying to achieve across social.
The Slate platform was built because the social media landscape has evolved, social teams are now being asked to do more than ever. They need to create more social content, create it quickly, consistently, have it be as engaging as possible, and all while having their content match their brand identity. They also need to deliver across more social platforms year over year.
Slate was born out of a team of social media experts, former marketers and content creators at the NFL, 49ers, and Chiefs who saw a need in their own daily work lives for a tool that would make their content creation more streamlined and on-brand.
In the Slate platform, a brand manager can customize their social media creation experience to fit their brand identity by adding their brand’s colors, fonts, stickers, gifs, filters & templates to the platform. If desired, they can also integrate their own brand's licensed photo repositories - whether through Getty or Photoshelter, or a shared internal Slack channel. This gives the social media manager the peace of mind knowing that they are not only using on brand creative assets for their social but also using creative assets unique to their brand. It's impossible for social media manager through Slate to create off brand content as only brand approved assets are in the platform.
Part of our approach was to build a user experience that brand social media managers would understand. The Slate platform has a user experience similar to social media apps like TikTok & Instagram stories but with their own custom band assets. Social media managers are able to tap-to-type with their own brand fonts, swipe their own brand filters on, and tap on their own stickers & gifs as they like. This departure from traditional content creation experiences that have heavy editing flows and complicated graphical editing allows for social media managers to create content in seconds, rather than minutes. Hiren Joshi, the Houston Rockets Director of Social Media, said “Slate has been a game-changer in terms of workflow and the speed with which we can customize our social media posts across platforms.”
Our primary goal was to allow brands to achieve brand consistency on social media for the first time. Throughout 2021 Slate was used by over 100 top brands in social media across sports, entertainment, media, & more.
Instead of using stock fonts, stickers and filters provided by Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, etc, all social media managers using the Slate platform were able to easily upload their own custom creative (unique fonts, backgrounds, filters, frames, and stickers) to the customizable Slate content creator and create unique social media content that tied to their brand identity! Their brand guidelines for the first time became actionable on social media, regardless of the content being created.
The Houston Rockets used Slate this previous year to create over 95% of all IG Stories content, and more than 50% of all the posts across social media.
Our other goal was to minimize the time & resources to create social content. Brands estimate it takes them 20 seconds to create a piece of branded content rather than minutes. Caroline Deisley, Social Media Engagement Coordinator at the Denver Broncos, said “Slate is the equivalent of having another person on staff for me. It's made my workflow so much more efficient, and it's become a crucial part of how we're able to achieve departmental goals."
