Blogs

Marketing,

Product

Agencies in the Age of AI: The ‘Make or Buy’ Dilemma

Global agency networks are facing a strategic crossroads. The rise of AI and automation has not only reshaped the creative process but also forced a critical question to the forefront: Should agencies build their own technology, or buy from best-in-class Independent Software Vendors (ISVs)?

Kevin Goeminne

Jul 11, 2025

Latest articles

Marketing,

Product

Research proves: Multichannel Shopper Marketing Wins Shopper Marketing has one goal: drive conversion at the point of decision. But in today’s fragmented media landscape, relying on a single channel won’t cut it, as a recent scientif . . .

Kees Henniphof

Jul 3, 2025

Marketing,

Product

Why AI-Powered Automation Is the Next Big Leap for Data-Driven Graphics ProductionImagine this. You’re a production manager in the in-house agency of a large retail brand. Every week, you’re tasked with producing a series of promotional folders: region-specific . . .

Bram Verniest

Jun 19, 2025

Brandwidth,

Marketing

Is Autonomous Brand Production the Next Step in IT Integration? Consumer expectations are rapidly evolving in today's competitive brandscape. Shoppers want more of everything: more choices, more personalization, more relevance. For major brand . . .

Kees Henniphof

Jan 28, 2025

Automation,

Smart Templates

GraFx Studio: Your Programmatic Marketing EngineWhat if you never had to start another marketing campaign from scratch? With CHILI GraFx, you can build on-brand, ready-to-use assets for every marketing touchpoint – delivered con . . .

Automation,

Smart Templates

The Secret Sauce of Real Estate MarketingTired of slow and expensive real estate marketing? In this episode of CHILIpulse, Branko Trifunovic and Bram Verniest reveal how smart templates and personalized, data-driven autom . . .

Automation,

Smart Templates

DAM Fast: Keepeek's 2-Day Connector BuildManaging a growing volume of media assets across platforms is a challenge many marketing and creative teams face. But what if your DAM could speak directly to your creative automat . . .

Marketing

How CHILI GraFx Can Make Adobe’s Content Supply Chain Work Let’s talk about content supply chains. Sounds thrilling, doesn’t it? Like something you’d dream about on a particularly wild Tuesday night. But here’s the thing: while “content su . . .

Kees Henniphof

Dec 18, 2024

Marketing,

Product

How CHILI GraFx Outperforms Traditional Direct Mail SoftwareIn a marketing landscape where digital content has dominated, direct mail is resurgent. Both large brands and direct mail providers now recognize the unique power of print to conne . . .

Kees Henniphof

Dec 16, 2024

Marketing,

Product

In-House Direct Mail Software: A Smart Strategy for Modern Brand LeadersIt’s no secret that we’re constantly bombarded with digital marketing content. But here’s a surprising fact: direct mail is making a notable comeback and today, it is more relevant . . .

Kees Henniphof

Nov 20, 2024

Guest Blog,

Marketing,

Brandwidth

Innovating Content Creation by Clair Carter-Ginn: Insights from the Brandwidth 2025 SurveyAs creative operations professionals, we fight the good fight in content creation. We drive innovation and evolution, we implement new technology, on board and optimize processes a . . .

Clair Carter-Ginn

Oct 21, 2024

Marketing,

Brandwidth

Report: Manual Graphic Production on the Brink of ExtinctionThe graphic production world is shifting – fast. AI and automation are rewriting the rules, turning what used to be a manual grind into a high-speed, tech-driven playing field. But . . .

Kevin Goeminne

Oct 15, 2024

Marketing,

Product

Why Move to CHILI GraFx?CHILI publish has been driving change in graphic production technology and automation since 2010. Today, CHILI GraFx is the culmination of our work, and has launched a new era in c . . .

Flora Nkuranga

Dec 18, 2023

Marketing,

Company

CHILI publish nominated for EY Scale Up of the Year 2023 AwardWe are excited and humbled to be selected as 1 of 4 finalists in EY’s Scale Up of the Year 2023 Award in Belgium. . . .

Kees Henniphof

Oct 12, 2023

Marketing,

Company

CREATE '23 US — All-Out Phygital!We are thrilled to announce that our flagship community event – CREATE – is taking place in the US for the very first time on June 28th and 29th in Austin, TX. . . .

Kees Henniphof

Mar 22, 2023

Marketing,

Product

Building the Publisher InterfaceIn March, our dev team released the Publisher Interface. We created it to solve a browser issue faced by our clients using CHILI. Working on the wrapper, we realized that it would . . .

Sean Crowe

Oct 27, 2022

Marketing,

Company,

People

At the Sitecore Symposium CHILI publish was a hit!Last week, the CHILI publish team attended the Sitecore Symposium event to meet with customers and partners to deepen our relationships and spread the Creative Automation word. If . . .

Fabian Prudhomme

Oct 26, 2022

Marketing,

Product

The Power of Smart Templates – Deep Dive 1In article one of this series, you might remember, we took a 10,000 ft overview of what GraFx Publisher Smart Templates are. We looked at where and how they are created, and some c . . .

Jeroen Cosyn

Sep 29, 2022

Marketing,

Product

The power of Smart TemplatesIf you’ve heard of CHILI GraFx, chances are you’ve heard of Smart Templates. They’re the technology at the very center of our Creative Automation platform. As I write, they are st . . .

Jeroen Cosyn

Aug 24, 2022

Marketing

The future of agencies relies on the strength of their technology stackThis is the first article in a multipart series where thought leaders from CHILI publish consider the seismic changes threatening the traditional agency business model. Why is such . . .

Kevin Goeminne

Jul 27, 2022

Marketing,

Guest Blog

How CHILI publish and ARISTID build better relationships in retail Today, we’re delighted to invite Florian Payri, General Director at ARISTID Retail Technology, to write a guest post about new technology developments between ARISTID and CHILI pub . . .

Florian Payri

May 25, 2022

Marketing,

Product,

Guest Blog

Why move to SaaS when scaling your graphic production in 2022 and beyondSaaSification is a journey—and an exciting one. Immediately on embarking, you’ll begin to see the power of the cloud to offer win/win opportunities that benefit both customers and . . .

Jasper De Craecker

Apr 27, 2022

Marketing

Top 5 Retail Trends for 2022 providing new opportunitiesI have always believed in getting into the mind space of our customers. So lately, I've been interviewing a lot of retail customers and have learned a great deal about the challen . . .

Kevin Goeminne

Mar 1, 2022

Marketing,

Guest Blog

Acheron’s Top 5 Steps to a Successful OpenText Integration with CHILI publisher. OpenText has rapidly established an enviable reputation amongst the big-player Information Management tools. A key element in this success is OpenText’s ability to integrate with o . . .

Nandhakumar Shanmugam

Feb 23, 2022

Marketing

3 Major Retail Trends that will Force Change in Your Content Creation ProcessesThe demands on retail creative production are huge. From web to print, PoS to packaging, social to paid advertising, and more, there are endless pieces of visual content needed to . . .

Laura Baxter

Nov 23, 2021

Marketing,

People,

HR

How creative automation will help you and your designer survive the 2022 seasonal holiday hell It’s that time of year where the days are growing shorter and colder, and your designer grows anxious. That can mean only one thing - seasonal season is in session! From Halloween, . . .

Steve Beernaert

Oct 28, 2021

Marketing,

Product

How the Creative Automation Score (CAS) will help you score off the competition. Creative talent is the key to making your marketing materials, packaging, and other graphical output truly unique. But talent takes time, and time is scarce. Creative automation he . . .

Kevin Goeminne

Jun 30, 2021

Product,

Marketing

How digital brand guidelines in brand portals make everyone create better visuals It’s a fact that many designers and marketers can struggle with the increased demand for visual content creation, with the need to deliver faster and faster results adding even mor . . .

Maya Staels

Apr 28, 2021

Marketing,

Product

Why should you consider Creative Automation?There’s no denying that creativity is the lifeblood that drives marketers to create exciting campaigns and reach customers in new and relevant ways. It’s the reason so many creativ . . .

John Arnsdorf

Mar 31, 2021

Marketing

5 reasons why personalization at scale should not scare you There’s no denying that the medium of visual communication is booming, and as a result it’s driving the importance of utilizing creative automation as part of that process. Adoptin . . .

Kevin Goeminne

Feb 25, 2021

Marketing,

Product

5 answers to the most common web2print customization questionsGranted, life under lockdown came with its fair share of challenges, but it also brought about some interesting opportunities that raised the bar for e-commerce personalization and . . .

Sylvain Westerloppe

Jan 27, 2021

Product,

Marketing,

Company

Why the future of visuals is smart, modular, and dynamic Producing visuals comes with its own set of challenges. Traditionally, this happens in a 5-step process: brief, create, review, approve, and modify for different uses. Next to requ . . .

Ward De Langhe

Dec 15, 2020

Guest Blog,

Marketing

How Precision merges online & offline for COVID-19 e-commerce – a Q&ADigital Transformation has been an ambition for many businesses leading up to the COVID-19 crisis but for most, the route to true transformation has been through baby steps. That i . . .

Gary Howard

Nov 25, 2020

Marketing

Three agency must-do’s you’ll regret not having optimized soonerCan speed, quality, cost really coexist without driving one another down? Most agencies say you must choose which ones are most important, but is that really the case – even in tod . . .

Robert Lugg

Oct 29, 2020

Marketing,

Guest Blog

6 Common Marketing Problems a Customized Brand Portal will fix for you Making marketing assets accessible to all team members in a large company or distributed network of employees across the country (or the world) is key for brand compliance efforts, . . .

Maeghan Nicholson

Sep 22, 2020

Guest Blog,

Marketing

12 web-to-print pitfalls to avoid in 2021 The growing digitalization has propelled e-commerce into the most rewarding business venture in 2021 for web-to-printers everywhere. Ludovic Martin is a renowned European expert i . . .

Ludovic Martin

Jul 16, 2020

Marketing,

Product,

Company

If R&D, then CC – how the backend of customer-centricity worksYou know those moments when life gets you thinking about business? The SpaceX Dragon mission got me thinking about the link between customer-centricity and product development. . . .

Ward De Langhe

Jun 23, 2020

Marketing

How the dynamics of crisis sparks creativityNothing lasts forever. “Friends” didn’t. Yesterday’s great hair day didn’t. And neither will the lockdown. Up, down, dynamic flows keep markets, economies, and people on their toes . . .

Cindy Van Luyck

May 18, 2020

Marketing,

Product

[2021 Marketing] How Adidas tackled the internal vs. external creative challengeDo you have all your graphic design work taken care of in-house? Or do you outsource to external agencies? And are you still wondering if you made the right choice? Trust me – yo . . .

Flora Nkuranga

Mar 24, 2020

Marketing

#APS2020 – how good PIM makes for a hoppy CHILI publish We were fortunate enough to join Akeneo for its annual PIM Summit at the Espace Clacquesin brewery in Paris, France. On the site of this historic distillery, our innovative product . . .

Fabian Prudhomme

Feb 21, 2020

Marketing

Why it no longer makes sense to create packaging artwork manually

Piet Saegeman

Jan 14, 2020

Marketing

10 Insightful Takeaways from the Smart Template CommunityEvery year we bring together some of the most forward-thinking companies in the world to discuss how they’re transforming their use of graphic design with smart templatization. The . . .

Cindy Van Luyck

Dec 4, 2019

Marketing,

Product,

Guest Blog

What bpost learned about printed in-home advertising and marketing automationThe Belgian Post operator, bpost, has recently done extensive research on how brands can improve the relationship with their customers. The research identifies the behaviors that m . . .

Pierre Demarets

Oct 31, 2019

Marketing

The Designer of the futureFor graphics professionals nowadays the actual creation of original artwork and documents only accounts for a small portion of their work. A significant amount of time, sadly, is s . . .

Piet Saegeman

Oct 18, 2019

Marketing

Today’s (in-house) agency challenges and how to tackle them.Since the dawn of marketing time, agencies have been considered the go-to resource for in-depth brand knowledge. Clients, both internal and external, have looked to agencies not on . . .

Piet Saegeman

Sep 6, 2019

Marketing,

Product,

HR

The right frame of mind - making a disruptive impact with lateral thinking We all face challenges in our everyday lives, but it’s often far too easy to fall back into the same problem-solving behaviors. We tackle those tasks head on, trying to think verti . . .

Piet Saegeman

Sep 6, 2019

Marketing

Are your products sold online? You need optimized pack shots.How GS1 Mobile Ready Hero Images transform mobile eCommerce . . .

Piet Saegeman

Aug 16, 2019

Marketing,

Product

Going Postal: The most overlooked touchpoint in your customer journey How Postal Organizations drive brand appreciation with in-home advertising. . . .

Piet Saegeman

Aug 8, 2019

Marketing

No DAM is an islandDo you know the one thing all brands have in common when it comes to DAM? From soft drink giant to aircraft titan - their static assets limit their brand outreach efforts. Here’s . . .

Piet Saegeman

Sep 7, 2018

Marketing,

Company

“If printers would think like ad agencies, they’d be billionaires.”Digital disruption, marketing automation, omnichannel innovation - all of us get constantly remarketed, retargeted and confronted with this communication matrix buzzword bingo. Dig . . .

Kevin Goeminne

Mar 1, 2018

Marketing,

Product

The #DAMNY learnings? SSOT it - expand your DAM.I’m convinced online editing will be the next big thing disrupting the DAM market. There are synergies to be explored and monetized. And as it turns out - the DAM crowd seems to ag . . .

Kevin Goeminne

Jun 1, 2017

Marketing

Planning with a dash of welcomed chaos – the #SPICYtalks17 secretWe just wrapped up two days of #SPICYtalks17, and I dare say it’s been our best edition to date. Hats off to our team, the professional support at our venue Studio Le Cyclone and t . . .

Cindy Van Luyck

May 4, 2017

Marketing,

Product

Hasten slowlySetting goals and achieving them does not happen overnight. Like the tortoise in Aesop’s tale, it requires zeal, focus, and perseverance. Quitting before reaching the finish line i . . .

Fabian Prudhomme

Sep 13, 2016

Marketing,

Product

Well, I’ll be Henry Stewart DAMned…Content comes in all shapes and sizes. Managing that content is vital. Downloading, renaming, backing up, rating, grouping, archiving, optimizing, maintaining, thinning, and export . . .

Kevin Goeminne

Aug 4, 2016