30 Jan DEG Welcomes The Sherlock Company as a New Member | Meet Simon Clark, President
January 30, 2023 | DEG recently welcomed The Sherlock Company as a new member. The Sherlock Company translates, localizes and delivers creative and marketing assets anywhere, on time and brand-compliant, in any spec or language. Trusted by leading brands in media, tech and healthcare, Sherlock streamlines localization workflows with data-driven precision, using creative-specific automation and metadata tools to do more in less time. Sherlock meticulously localizes more than 100,000 assets monthly, including digital artwork, app screens, 360 advertising campaigns, social video, CRM, educational materials and more.
DEG recently connected with Simon Clark, The Sherlock Company’s President, to discuss the nuances of content localization and its challenges and potential.
DEG: For Members who aren’t familiar with Sherlock, give us the “elevator pitch” – how is what you do in localization different than other services?
Simon Clark
SC: Two main things set us apart from other localization companies. First, while most focus on localization of content, we specialize in title, marketing and other creative assets. In other words, anything used to market or sell entertainment — key art, app screens, digital ads, social media video, CRM, training materials — and the like. Secondly, we’ve developed our own technology over the past 10 years that helps us localize, track and deliver high volumes of assets accurately and efficiently. My co-founder and I are from very different backgrounds. I’m from the creative space, and Bogdan (Mitic) is a software engineer, so together we’ve come up with some very interesting solutions for using technology in the creative process.
DEG: The demand for content localization services has grown like wildfire in the last couple of years. How has Sherlock experienced that?
SC: In a few ways. First, the size of our team has more than doubled from about 40 just two years ago to almost 100 today. We’re now in every region worldwide, giving us 24/7 coverage. Big brand companies are realizing they want the same efficiency in their marketing and creative asset localization that they get from their content workflows. As a result, we often output more than 100,000 localized assets every month and we’re often asked by our clients to coordinate the efforts of their other creative vendors.
DEG: What are the unique challenges in localizing marketing and merchandising assets, separate from localizing content?
SC: The goal is the same – to retain the meaning and impact of the original while being locally accurate and culturally appropriate. But for us we do it in a way that adheres to and maximizes marketing and creative best practices. Like keeping on top of digital platform specs, safe spaces on artwork, local dating and currency formats – we’re fanatical about that detail. To the point of obsession.
DEG: Can you share a specific example of work you are proud of?
SC: We’re especially proud of our collaboration with other vendors on the streaming channel launches of Disney+ and HBO Max. We used our creative workflow tool Sherlock Pipeline to streamline everything. It was a challenge at first, but we all pulled together and it worked out great. We’re in a rapidly changing workspace so we have to think of new ways of getting things done – no matter how counter-intuitive – and this was a great example.
DEG: Strictly as a consumer, what’s your favorite non-English language content?
SC: I like some of the darker European TV series. Two favorites are The Bridge, a murder mystery/thriller from Scandinavia, and The Lives of Others, which is set in East Germany before the unification.
For more information, visit thesherlockcompany.com