Interview with Digital Goodie’s content team

This time we sat down with Aurora Raumolin, Jenna Kurvinen and Reetta Leskinen from Digital Foodie’s content team responsible for product information and images in our customers’ services. Find out what happens behind the scenes, what goes on in creating valuable content and why this team thinks they have the best team spirit of them all.

Hi Aurora, Jenna and Reetta. Can you tell us a little bit about yourselves?

Aurora: I’ve worked at Foodie for five years now, from the start I’ve done content work and worked with details for our service. Search words, product information, photography projects where we produce images for both our own service and the customer. We do both grocery and consumer goods, but especially consumer goods. As a person I’m open-minded, vivacious and straight-forward. My way of getting to know new people is by testing them. I value cooperation and stay away from drama. I’m determined and highly goal-oriented.

Jenna: I started at Foodie two years ago, I’ve advanced from product data assistant to photo shoot assistant to my current position as content coordinator/content team lead. Together with my team, I’m responsible for all product information and images in our customers’ services. In my free time I love to photograph all sorts of things which is why my work on many occasions doesn’t feel like work at all. Travelling is another big passion of mine, I’ve especially enjoyed our recent road trips across Europe which should tell you it is virtually impossible for me to stay put in one place! One of my biggest dreams is to live abroad at some point.

Reetta: I’ve worked here for close to two years as a content assistant. I’m a business college graduate and have a media assistant degree as well. I find this a perfect match for my job here at Foodie and was happy to start here shortly after my graduation. In the beginning I assisted in photo shoots, nowadays I also take care of editing and maintaining our product data. Some of my work time is allocated to administrative duties at the office, this provides a nice way of getting to interact more with the people at our office.

What is your team responsible for at Foodie?
Our team is responsible for completing and enriching product information for our customers. This information includes images, prices, product description, categories, search words, food ingredients, allergens and everything else you can imagine seeing when you’re shopping for a product online. We work together with developers to make sure all information in our customers’ services is up to date and meeting the standards.

Can you describe your typical work day?

Our typical work days are divided into shooting days and ‘normal’ days at the office. The shooting days we spend at the customer premises, usually as a team of two where the other one collects the items and the other one photographs. For collecting products, we use Foodie’s own Shopkeeper tool. This is the same tool store associates use for picking items for home delivery. For us it enables a highly efficient work flow that speeds up the collecting process significantly.
For the shooting we have two studios in our use, a smaller space for grocery and other small items and a bigger room where we shoot clothing and other items that require more space. The day lasts eight hours and is rather physical, we walk around a lot and move constantly when setting up the products. This is actually good contrast to the office days. To get the best results, sometimes a bit of creativity is needed. We like to come up with innovative solutions.

Our normal office day contains updating product information, adding search words, item descriptions and other details through the Foodie admin panel. We get information from several different databases used by our customers so there’s a lot of coordinating and monitoring involved. We like to think of ourselves as sort of investigators; there’s not a problem we can’t solve. We also co-operate closely with team leads to locate and fix any errors or missing information, mostly they are handled with our Admin data team.

Reetta, what do like about your job?
First of all, I feel lucky to get to make full use of my education, I’ve studied media so it’s nice to get to work with photography and editing, something a bit more creative. I also like that our work is so independent, that kind of freedom is very motivating cause it tells about trust. As long as the projects get done well and on time, it is up to us to decide the rest. Everyone gets to use their imagination and creativity to reach the best results.

Jenna, you’ve done some customer projects in the US. Can you tell us a little bit about them?
My first project was in Florida, we did a photograph project for two of our customers there together with our project manager Onur. We shot for two and a half weeks and took more than 5000 pictures. We brought the whole shooting set with us to the store and the store associates took care of collecting the items for us, following the list we had prepared before the trip. The second US trip was to Idaho and that one I did by myself, our US project manager was there to meet me on the location. We shot for 6 days straight, it was an intensive week but we got great photos (2300 of them) and I was very happy with the results. Before the trip we had generated lists of the products that were missing images and provided it to the store so they knew exactly which items to collect. I really enjoy these customer projects, it’s great to get to see new places and get to meet our customers.

Aurora, for someone wanting to work in your team, what do you see as the most important qualities or skills?
When I started in this team I didn’t have previous experience from content work, so ability to learn and adapt new information has been essential for me. You need strong communication skills to interact with customers and other teams, as well as flexibility and a tolerance for quickly changing circumstances and continuous deadlines. We are all self-starters here, you need to be active and ask.

How would you all describe Digital Foodie as a work place?
‘Land of opportunities!’. The general spirit here is very laid back – you don’t often see a company where you get to talk to the CEO every day if you like. The atmosphere is rarely “uptight”. Things get done and people are professional, but the ambience stays relaxed. This has a lot to do with the fact that no one here is isolated or above others, so to speak. This is a joint venture where no one gets lifted on a pedestal. We are encouraged to learn and keep on moving forward which makes for great growth and career opportunities within the company. Achieving your goals and managing your own performance are highly valued here.

What is your team like as a group?
We don’t want to brag or anything, but our team has the best time together! It’s nice to get to laugh at work, we never seem to run out of topics to talk about. Our communication is really strong; we stay closely in touch both in and outside of work and know each other really well. As a small team we also need to ensure we can always cover one another if needed.
As a group we’re organized, systematic and solution oriented, but do not like to work straight-laced. As for hierarchy, high level alignments come from our Services team lead, but on a daily basis it is up to us to organize our work and stay in touch with the customers.

Bonus question: What are your favourite items to photograph and why?
Jenna: Mine are definitely fruit and vegetables, they make for such delicious-looking, colorful images!
Aurora: I myself love to work with clothing. I get to decide how to present them and use a little bit of that artistic freedom. We use mannequins, pins and other little tricks to make sure the item looks as good in the picture as it would when actually worn, and finally edit them to make the details and colors really pop.
Reetta: Clothing is my favourite product group to shoot and edit as well. I enjoy having the ability to use my own judgement in order to flatter each item as well as possible and make them come alive.

Thank you for the interview, Content team!