Latinstock Digital, the asset-management subsidiary of the Latinstock photographic cooperative, has entered into a joint venture agreement with KIT Digital, a provider of on-demand video-management software. The two companies have agreed to cross-market services, thus expanding the range of the total offering, to each other’s and potential new clients. For Latinstock, the agreement means a stronger foothold in the video and European markets and an expansion of its service roster.
The two companies will focus initial efforts on Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico, though they plan to widen the scope of the joint venture early on. KIT Digital will serve Latinstock’s enterprise-level clients that require on-demand hosted video-asset management. Latinstock will offer KIT clients still and motion stock alongside services such as video production and post-production, encoding, transmission and decoding.
The combined roster of services will also be marketed to prospects. KIT Digital and Latinstock will use a common salesforce and collateral materials to support the marketing effort.
Latinstock’s evolution—from a specialist stock coop into a broader-scope content and service provider—is indicative of the current industry trend toward diversification. As traditional still stock business declines, agencies increasingly look to offer clients new products and value-added services.
For Latinstock, which was founded in 1986 and maintains offices in 10 Latin American cities and in Madrid, diversifying included expanding to video and digital asset management. President and founder Marcelo Brodsky said: “Over the last few years, Latinstock Digital has developed from a well-known provider of editorial and advertising assets to a true content and asset management partner for our clients. A large and increasing portion of that content is video, so by partnering with KIT digital we are now able to offer a much broader range of IP video and digital asset management solutions.”
Latinstock’s geographic niche puts it into an excellent position to partner with larger companies that need access to Latin America—such as the publicly traded KIT Digital, which maintains multiple offices in Europe and North America and one each in Australia and the United Arab Emirates. The company’s client roster lists more than 600 enterprise customers, including the Associated Press, Disney-ABC, Google, IMG Worldwide, Intel, News Corp. and the U.S. Department of Defense.
“We found the right match partnering with Corbis many years ago as the image management market was transforming, and we are confident we are matching up in the right way with KIT as well, as the video management market is going through its own transformation,” said Brodsky.