Mellifera: No more license or image chaos

1. Tracking image licenses

2. Constantly following up with third-party photographers

Mellifera e.V. relies mainly on traditional press work for its external communications. “But we’re trying to become more and more active on social media as well,” says Nick Leuckhardt. To do so, the organization needs high-quality visuals. Nick is responsible for making sure the right images are available. He also produces his own content and edits it in Canva.

But Mellifera doesn’t just use photos Nick has created himself. Most of the organization’s images come from external hobby photographers. These photographers grant Mellifera varying usage rights—some hand over full rights to their photos, while others allow use only on certain channels. To be sure about usage, Nick initially checked, double-checked, and even triple-checked how and where each photo could be used. As Press and PR Officer, he and his colleague act as the bridge between photographers and the organization. However, all this back-and-forth took up a lot of time.

Even before Nick joined, Mellifera knew they needed to tame their image chaos. Once he came on board, Nick made it his mission to find the right tool and manage its rollout. That’s how he discovered pixx.io.

To ensure everyone used pixx.io consistently, Nick started uploading all images to the platform and stopped storing files on the internal server. He also created an internal usage guide and personally trained staff during onboarding to make sure they understood how to work with pixx.io.

Nick is especially impressed by the Canva integration. It’s made his workflows much easier. When an external photographer uploads a photo through a file request and releases it for social media, Nick can access the image directly in Canva and create a graphic. Once the graphic is finished, it’s uploaded to Hootsuite via the pixx.io integration and the corresponding post is scheduled.

Adopting pixx.io was a win for Mellifera: “The whole team loves it—no one wants to go back,” says Nick. “The move was absolutely worth it!”

pixx.io brings order to Mellifera’s media library, makes licensing clear, and helps advance their mission to save the bees.