Mobile Digital Asset Management Completes the DAM Value Chain

Posted on November 21, 2011 by Nick Van Weerdenburg

At Henry Stewart last week we announced our iPad interface and our mobile digital asset management strategy. You can read more here-  North Plains Puts the Power of an Enterprise DAM Solution on the iPad.

TeleScope iPad

One of the interesting aspects of discussing mobile digital asset management is how it highlights the importance of the digital asset management value chain- who interacts when and where with your digital assets.

Looking at the value chain, it becomes clear that mobile DAM is valuable because it strongly connects your digital asset management processes to critical points of the value chain that are otherwise hard to serve. It fills some of the gaps called out in last weeks blog post, Mind the DAM Gap.

Companies that use DAM to manage large numbers of digital assets across non-trivial value chains- photographers, executives, agencies, marketing partners, field representatives- have been feeling these gaps in their digital asset management systems and are eager for a solution. Many of them even created iPhone solutions before the advent of the iPad- with surprisingly good adoption and success for that small screen.

Some specific areas where mobile makes DAM more successful is improving metadata capture, timely review and approval, and, most significantly, improving the availability of digital assets to those who need them, where they need them.

A photographer can stand on the set and tag just ingested images.

Talent in a shoot can be given a tablet, and with no training do a select of their preferred images.

A sales representative can be asked a question, and immediately bring up the relevant information for his client.

Reviewers, rather than sitting back and commenting on a slide show, can be handed a tablet and asked “can you score these?”. No sending a hyperlink, setting up training, writing training manuals, dealing with lost passwords, and dealing with the high cost of getting a new user on a system for occasional use.

You hand over the tablet, and say “please look these photos over” while in a meeting.

In short, you can think of mobile DAM as impacting the DAM value chain in two ways:

1) By location, extending your DAM processes to places and times where computers aren’t practical.

2) By user, bring informal but important DAM users into the value chain.

For a large number of our customers, both of these increase the value of their DAM system, and ensure that important gaps are minded and overcome. In fact, once the limitations of location and informal users are removed through mobile DAM, there are very few gaps left.

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Digital Asset Management, Mobile, News | Leave a comment

Mind the DAM Gap

Posted on November 15, 2011 by Nick Van Weerdenburg

Business software solutions are known for running into trouble when they try to “boil the ocean”- trying to do too much too soon with inadequate understanding.

However, just as big an issue are the “unadopted” enterprise solutions that tried to impress and engage their users with a solution that didn’t really solve their issues.

This is what we call the DAM gap- the space between a simple photo library and a system that manages true digital assets across their lifecycle, improving time-to-market, reducing effort, and scaling your content across multiple channels.

Some roadblocks encountered in the gap: security, effective metadata, integration to other systems, business rules, usability, effective search, long-term metadata management (librarian services), workflow automation, format support, and creative tool integration.

We do a lot of system replacements at North Plains, and we can see the walls that these companies have hit. That drives our innovation and our passion for our product. It also drives our customer solution philosophy.

Step 1 for a success DAM selection and implementation? Have overarching business and technical visions built with the help of people who have tackled your style of solution.

Then create a meaningful plan that delivers tangible value to users (the people who use and benefit from the system) and stakeholders (the groups and people who aren’t immediate users but who benefit from the solution- e.g. the CIO and his security goals and the CFO and his asset monetization goals).

We recently did a webinar called The Five Value Areas of DAM. Have a look and see if some of the ideas can help you bridge the gap between the simple DAM and the complete DAM that delivers resounding value.

Posted in Digital Asset Management, Digital Publishing, Media Asset Management, Publishing | Tagged , | Leave a comment

A Digital Asset Ecosystem Outlook is Critical to DAM Success

Posted on August 8, 2011 by Nick Van Weerdenburg

A digital asset ecosystem outlook is one where you look at your digital media value chain across all of your creative partners. With so much marketing outsourced, this is an essential consideration for any modern DAM.

This is reflected in how DAM has evolved over the last decade from a simple repository to a critical component of day-to-day marketing and publishing processes with six core capabilities:

The Six Core DAM Capabilities

These capabilities make sense for in-house DAM, but if you don’t include your partners you will ultimately have a broken DAM process. Your DAM will be a like a road that ends every mile with an off-road trek to get back on another road.

It’s important to consider what you need for a digital asset ecosystem, and to evaluate each of the core DAM capabilities against their support for one.

Here is a short list of features to consider- features that heavily influenced our recent major TeleScope 9 release.

Essential Features for Creating Digital Asset Ecosystems:

  1. Support solutions for companies of all sizes (often with SaaS).
  2. Support the complete digital asset management lifecycle.
  3. Provide a user interface designed for creative users and users with no training.
  4. Manage workflow across the value chain.
  5. Support Multi-lingual metadata and user interfaces.
  6. Excel at multi-channel publishing and distribution.

Together, these enable a platform for companies of all sizes that will rapidly allow them to connect with partners, clients, service providers, and other participants in their digital asset creative and distribution ecosystems.

Large companies can easily partner with many small companies to get the best value, talent, and time-to-market possible. Smaller companies can easily build partnerships that provide a full-service offering to their clients. Large or small, working with digital asset ecosystems is a critical competency of creative organizations today.

This is what we’ve focused TeleScope Version 9 on- the ability to close the gaps in the value chain inclusive of partners and create a true digital asset management ecosystem.

Posted in Digital Asset Management, Marketing, Publishing, Social Media, Video | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Does Regular Marketing Content Have a Place in Social Media?

Posted on May 20, 2011 by Nick Van Weerdenburg

There is a lot of talk about social media monitoring, and social media participation, but not a lot, if any, talk about social media publishing.

If fact, some would argue that it’s not relevant, and contrary to social media.

But it is relevant. Most business social media is hyperlinked. People post links, follow them, share them, comment on them. In fact, most social media takes place in the context of other media. Think of it as a book discussion club.

So to have a social media strategy without a social media publishing strategy is like having a book club with no books.

But as marketers we have to be careful here and distinguish between appropriate and inappropriate content.

Most marketing content doesn’t work in the context of a conversation because it’s not, to put it bluntly, conversational. This is one reason blogs are more frequently linked to. They have a point of view, a theme, a topic. A personality. Blogs are specifically interesting to the people reading them. They have a natural audience that finds them.

Traditional marketing content, on the other hand, is for captive audiences. It crams all the messages for all the people into one document. It’s not interesting unless you are really motivated on the topic.

Marketing is slowly making this shift. One message is becoming fifty as we speak conversationally to multiple audiences. We are trying to make our content interesting.

This is the type of content that you need to provide the air cover for your social media participation- interesting content that speaks directly to the questions and needs of the other people in the conversation. The content must continue to work once you’ve finished participating in a social media channel, allowing the audience to continue reading and learning with if so inclined.

Social Media Content Styles

Let’s look at how this might work. Consider this post to a forum, possibly on LinkedIn:

“I’m with a small software company. Can anyone recommend suitable agency collaboration software”?

There are a lot of response styles, from overtly plugging commercial products to laid back participation as just another professional.

Here are some examples (warning- none of the example links are real):

LAME

We do that. Go to our home page.

Ouch. I don’t think I need to say anymore.

CONSULTATIVE

What are you looking for exactly? What problem are you trying to solve? I find most companies are fine with FTP unless they need to manage rapid change, complex collaboration, or high volumes.

Nick Van Weerdenburg

Here the name links to the website. This is a pretty good strategy, except most companies don’t provide the content that links into the conversation.

Indeed, if you are trying to get your head around content marketing, this concept of continuing conversations is a good start. Do you have content that can fit into hyperlinked social media conversations about the business problems you solve?

This could be original content, or curated content. A mix is ideal- your original content is more on the mark, but the curated content has 3rd party credibility and the added bonus that you didn’t need to write it.

HOW ABOUT A HYBRID?

What are you looking for exactly? What problem are you trying to solve? I find most companies are fine with ftp unless they need to mange rapid change, complex collaboration, or high volumes.

Nick Van Weerdenburg

This has an overt link, but the content is bang on-topic- a blog post When FTP Is No Longer Enough for Agency Collaboration. It is very unlikely anyone will anything but appreciate your comment. You’ve added the most value, in the most efficient way. This is social media marketing AND content marketing at its best.

What’s Your Social Media Content Publishing Strategy?

The thing about the Internet is that conversation continues even when you aren’t there.

People tweet your posts, read your comments in archives, visit other social media channels to do research, and get interested in your offering and start reading your website or blog archives.

You need a content strategy that provides relevant content to the continuing conversation at hand.

There are few social media conversations that don’t have links. The problem is not that companies link to content, but rather they link to the wrong content.

Companies are complex places, and you can’t answer all questions in 140 characters. Video, graphics, web content, and blog posts all play a part. If they don’t that raises the important point of who exactly is your marketing content for anyway? If it doesn’t fit into your social interactions, what does it fit into in?

Marketing content has a key place in social media conversation…if it is relevant.

The bottom line is that for a company involved in social media there is the entire company’s content library sitting there, ready to participate in the conversation. Some people will argue that it’s not appropriate, since it’s corporate content, and not authentic, social and conversational. I’d argue in response that it’s relevant, and just because it’s poorly done, doesn’t mean it’s not important. Just not usable, and that’s a problem.

In the online world content largely defines a company- how could it not be important to a social media conversation?

So, the obvious solution is to create marketing content that fits the conversation. And, to be honest, most good marketing content does. It’s specific to a persona and a problem, and not a vague generic hand-waving exercise. It’s relevant and adds value. This type of content belongs in social media.

In the business world, social media conversations are, at their heart, hypermedia conversations- a linked web of conversations, videos, user generated content, and business content. I’ll say it again- the problem is that most companies don’t have good content- or content in the right format- to link to.

This I think raises a critical missing pillar of most company’s social media strategy- a content strategy and a content platform to execute it on. Companies need to add social media publishing tools in addition to social media listening tools and approach social media as a hypermedia conversation.

 

Posted in Digital Asset Management, Digital Publishing, Marketing, Social Media | Leave a comment

The 13 Areas of Cost for a DAM System

Posted on May 12, 2011 by Joshua Duhl

I was recently asked: Can you tell me how to build a good first order estimate for the total IT implementation costs?

This inquiry came from a large company, so this response is tailored primarily to buyers in large companies. However, the general areas of cost apply.

Having been around digital asset management for over 15 years on both the vendor and buyer sides, as well as an industry analyst, I can provide some insight into the areas of cost commonly identified. These are typical for most organizations, regardless of your end choices of installed / hosted / SaaS / Open Source or not…

There are 13 areas of cost for a DAM system:

1. Software. An obvious cost area. Of course this varies from vendor to vendor, and hosted/SaaS v. Installed (and no cost for open source DAM system software… but other costs still apply). Depends largely on scale of system and features required.

2. Technical Infrastructure (Computers, Networking, Storage). Again an obvious cost. You will pay for it in one form or another even in SaaS or more so in the cloud. Also varies from vendor to vendor, and depends largely on scale of system, number & size of assets (storage), type of assets (bandwidth — e.g., video and large graphics files will be expensive to move around), and processing required (e.g., doing a lot of video file format conversions? It will require more compute power for transcoding).

3. Installation and configuration. Vendors usually charge for this, and may include initial metadata definition, user interface (UI) branding / configuration, and other configuration costs. There may also be costs for building out support for your specific workflows if the system supports automated workflows or rules. Not included here, but a cost nonetheless, is the metadata definition work that MUST be done prior to implementation or configuration at this point. That may involve brining in external consultants who can help you discover, determine and structure a metadata model appropriate for your use cases. This is money well spent, but keep in mind that you’ll need a system that can evolve the metadata model — as it is a living structure that changes over time as your business and use of the DAM changes.

4. Customization. Most organizations, particularly larger ones, have specific customization needs — or the software out of the box is missing certain capabilities and the vendor will add them at a cost to win the deal. This is not only for installed software, but can often be for SaaS as well. It is common for larger organizations that opt for SaaS will want some kind of integration with a corporate system — typically a security system like LDAP, Active Directory or a single sign-on (SSO) service or possibly other ERP or marketing automation systems. I’ll add here that one consideration is that customization potentially has a hidden cost — who will maintain the customization and at what cost? Does it get rolled into the base product or not? What happens with upgrades to the base product — do you have to pay to move it forward and keep it compatible? This is a fair question for both SaaS and installed versions, and another item to keep in mind.

5. Integration. Does the system need to integrate with any other systems you have or is it another silo? :-) Many DAM implementations have to talk to a variety of other software — from creative tools and video editing suites to security/authentication systems, to Web CMSs, to ERP and billing systems. Can the system integrate? What is the cost to integrate? What is the ongoing cost to maintain the integration(s)? Who will do the initial integration and who will maintain it?

6. Migration. Are you moving from an existing system or systems? Or what is the cost to convert, prepare or otherwise ready content for movement into the new DAM system? This is a one time cost and varies depending on the complexity of the existing and desired metadata models and the volume of existing assets or files. Video can take a lot of time to prepare and may need to be staged over a period of time.

7. Initial Product Training. There are several elements to training. What will it cost to get a few key people in your organization fully up to speed on the system so you have resident experts? Do you have the right people in the first place – I mention this because in some cases, you don’t have these people on staff and have to hire them, or train them, or possibly buy these skills/roles from a 3rd party or even the vendor. In almost every successful DAM installation (hosted or not) that I am aware of has 1-3 people (depending on the size and breadth of the organization) who is/are the DAM “master(s)” – more than a librarian or governance provider for the assets, this role(s) oversees the DAM from a combined business use and technical perspective. It expands and updates the metadata model (assuming the system supports that after it’s initially established :-) , enforces consistency, updates the folder/collection hierarchy for consistent access, and is usually involved in the soliciting, vetting and resolving all modifications to the system. They may provide internal training and problem resolution as well (see 10. Business Support below). Secondly, what will it cost to roll it out and train end users on their workflows? Their training needs are different than the core DAM managers, and you will have different roles with different workflows requiring different focus on the training — e.g. a “search and download” user vs. a librarian/metadata manager.

8. Ongoing Product Training. This is often a hidden cost. It is needed every time the vendor updates the core DAM features or you purchase additional capabilities. It also is needed as you roll out new capabilities, changes to the metadata model or existing workflows, or roll out to new parts of the organization (e.g., a new geographic region with language issues).

9. Maintenance. Usually an annual cost related to the software. Often rolled into the pricing in a SaaS model. Typically Ranges from 18%-25% and provides for software fixes and product upgrades over the course of a year.

10. Business Support. This is commonly overlooked. This is an organizational cost, and companies that are successful at DAM use a variety of organizational structures to support a digital asset management system, especially if it on a global, company wide, broad basis (e.g., integrates with external agencies). This includes the role referred to in Product Training above, and goes beyond that to include the extended organizational infrastructure (people, systems, etc.) that need to be put in place to maintain both the business support around the DAM (i.e., how the DAM maps to the business, validating proposed changes to the system, etc.), and the proper governance across your organization. It is particularly important in global companies with multiple regional users (e.g. a global product or services company, manufacturer, consumer product provider or media/entertainment company) – or for that matter any company that works with Ad agencies on a global basis! Costs vary widely and depend on the size of this organization and degree to which automation can be used instead of people. Both are required and different structures work for different organizations. I’ll state it here because it too is overlooked – digital asset management is different than content or web content management and requires a different support structure (and training). It is an important cost – to establish and maintain this organizational infrastructure that is largely specific to the DAM. This is critical to the success of any DAM and often the area that most companies fail to fund and it ends up killing the digital asset management efforts. It must be addressed and supported with senior management support and organizational backing.

11. Technical support. There are two kinds: vendor provided and internal (i.e., help desk). Cost depends on the size of your organization and complexity of the technical implementation. On the vendor side, it is included in the maintenance but there are often levels of support and quality of service agreements (e.g., basic; 24x7x365; on site, etc.). Internal cannot be over looked. Large organizations typically have a help desk that handles a range of application questions. With DAM this service can be augmented by both an online help system that is often included in the DAM product, or instructional assets such as video, audio, PowerPoint presentations and Flash animations, that are developed and deliberately stored in the DAM to facilitate training and ongoing learning/help. This is a best practice of many successful digital asset management implementations.

12. Hosting. This applies to both SaaS, Cloud and to managed services approaches to the system. The difference is with a managed service, you own the hardware and software licenses, but you pay for it as either an external 3rd party service or internal shared service (e.g. provided by IT or a marketing operations group via a line of business or departmental chargeback).

13. Project Management. This is often overlooked, and is especially important in larger implementations. Someone, either you or the vendor, is providing this during discovery, implementation, testing, and rollout phases. Make sure you account for it.

Note that all of these costs are the financial costs. There are others in terms of risk, time, and effort, and need to be balanced and traded off. For example, if customization or additional features are required, what is the risk that it/these will be completed on time and fit the needs of your organization? This cost needs to be weighed from a risk perspective, and may lead you to trade off functionality or other areas of cost or approach other vendors who provide lower risk. Note that these costs vary from vendor to vendor and it’s important in your selection process to get as close to an apples to apples comparison, and then discuss/weigh/tradeoff the costs/risks/rewards in your decision making process.

That starts to cover it. It is a great and deep question and it deserved a full answer.

Posted in Digital Asset Management | Leave a comment

Can Rich Media Make a Toaster Cool?

Posted on January 13, 2011 by Nick Van Weerdenburg

A lot of companies, particularly in traditional manufacturing, look at online marketing, content marketing, and social media marketing and wonder if it applies to them. They don’t want to waste time and effort following unsubstantiated trends, and they are carefully considering when and how much they need to engage in these channels.

What’s important to consider is that online marketing is not a replacement for traditional marketing communications with its focus on awareness and demand generation. Online marketing is different because it reaches customers across the entire buying and customer lifecycle. It is new communication that otherwise wouldn’t happen.

And it’s amazing how much interesting content can be created even for the simplest of items. For example, let’s look at a simple, ubiquitous and somewhat commoditized appliance- the toaster- and answer the question, Can Rich Media Make a Toaster Cool?

The Toasting Journey- What Interests Your Customer?

If I want to buy a toaster, I want to evaluate it.
How does it look? Why was it designed that way? What results do the fancy features ensure (proof of marketing claims)? Is it easy to repair? What do other people think of it?

If I have bought a toaster, I want to learn how to use it.
How to get the results desired? Why and how to keep it clean.

If I have a problem with my toaster, I want to to learn how to fix it.
Can it be taken apart easily? Are parts available?

If I have a toaster, and am happy with it, I want to see cool funny things, or see category generic topics that apply to my “toasting journey”.
There are some unanswered questions that aren’t pressing but interesting- is there a difference between frozen and fresh bread for toasting? Is there anything to be gained by “double toasting”. Do bagel modes really work? Is it really dangerous to stick a fork in a toaster?

So let’s look at some of the content that we might generate to support our customer in their toasting endeavours…

Can-Rich-Media-Make-a-Toaster-Cool.jpg

Yes, Rich Media Can Make a Toaster Cool

Top Chefs Discuss Toasting Secrets, How Different Breads Toast, The Science of Toasting- if you were at all disappointed that any of the above topics weren’t real hyperlinks, then you understand why you need to manage your rich media publishing to cost-effectively increase the volume and value of the content you produce.

There are a lot of interesting questions and conversations you can have about toasters when you think about the using or selection of a toaster. The expanded scope of online marketing stretches across all aspects of product awareness, evaluation and ownership. This means vastly increased prospect conversation opportunities, and rich media is the content that fuels that conversation.

Posted in Digital Asset Management, Digital Publishing, Manufacturing, Media Asset Management, Publishing | Leave a comment

Digital Asset Management: The History Channel for Your Company

Posted on December 31, 2010 by Nick Van Weerdenburg

Digital asset management systems are many things, but one thing that isn’t discussed much is the historical value of DAM to an organization. We usually think of DAMs value in immediate ROI – capturing and distributing our rich media assets for marketing execution over a time frame of a few years. Reduce duplicate work, reduce time searching for assets, build content for multiple channels faster, track the distribution of content and the impact it has.

But what about going back 10 years? 20 years? What value is there in having a digital archive readily accessible by your creative teams?

I think most would agree that for a successful company, that history is significant intellectual property. It is the visual and audio history and representation of their products, their ideas, their goals, and their marketing efforts.

In addition to capturing the spirit and history of your company, this has a lot of direct revenue-influencing value as well.

As companies realize the value of brand journalism – communicating to the market more about who they really are as a company – this kind of content is becoming increasingly valuable.

And for companies searching for inspiration for new products and designs, the past can be a rich source of ideas- especially for fashion, footwear, apparel and consumer goods companies.

For many companies, there would be great value in finding the content that launched well known and successful brands and analyzing what worked so well.

And for famous brands, there is value in the images themselves. Aerospace and automotive companies can earn both direct compensation and brand enhancement value by making images of classic planes and cars available to publishers and collectors.

Think about what value you could find if you had a time machine that could bring up your rich media content from 10, 20 or 30 years ago.

Ultimately, your DAM system is the bank vault for your digital intellection property. The sooner you have a full-fledged, business-wide digital asset management solution and strategy in place, the sooner you can start filling that vault.

Posted in Digital Asset Management, Marketing, Trends | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Ghost of Greeting Cards Past: Marketing Lessons Learned from this Year’s Seasons Greetings Cards

Posted on December 23, 2010 by Nick Van Weerdenburg

As I’ve been working the last two weeks I’ve been impressed by the wide variety of holiday greeting cards companies are sending around.

It used to be that paper cards were the more thoughtful ones but the production value going into some of these Flash and other rich media cards is impressive.

In fact, as shocked as I am to admit it, I’m enjoying the corporate rich media cards much more than the friends and family ones I get at home (which interestingly are rich media driven self-published cards with pictures of the sending family on them).

As an example of a rich media corporate card, here is the card one of our internal rich media wizards at Norths Plains created and not without some serious effort. Click the presents and watch the fun begin (and continue as you click the presents again and again).

http://www.northplains.com/seasons-greetings-2010

It’s fun. It’s pretty. And it’s different. The feedback and suggestions we got from people were great as well- “make the colours spell ‘Happy Holidays’” (from sales), and “turn the colors into a Tron light cycles game” (from development). Our rich media wizard said “maybe next year”.

I’ve probably watched 20 or so of these types of cards over the last two weeks, and I’m always excited to receive a new one. But more interestingly, I’m also more disappointed now when I receive on that isn’t compelling and interesting.

There are two lessons to draw from this:

1. rich media works.

2. rich media is changing people’s expectations.

You can’t be making silent films in black and white when color talkies dominate the landscape. I think that is the type of risk marketing organizations face if they don’t get their rich media communications up to speed. And it is not about being pretty or flashy- it’s about deeper communication and engagement.

There is another funny (and embarrassing for us) lesson to be learned here as well. Our rich media wizard forgot to put last years card in our DAM, and almost didn’t find it. That card had two days of work that she wanted to leverage for this year’s card. If she hadn’t found it, the results would have been:

1) two days of lost productivity redoing previous work.

OR

2) a substantially less delightful card for our customers and partners.

Here is an exercise for the motivated reader- try to find all your company’s digital seasonal greeting cards from the last ten years. See how hard they are to find, and once (if) found, look at how they have evolved over the years. Can you see how expectations have changed?

Rich media is important, expensive, and hard to find- lessons amply illustrated by a simple greeting card. Now image a full-blown multi-channel, multi-device, global, high-intensity rich media marketing campaign.

Which, by the way, two of the greeting cards I received were.

Happy Holidays from all of us at North Plains!

Posted in Marketing, Publishing, Trends | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Your Brand is Now Mostly Digital

Posted on December 10, 2010 by Nick Van Weerdenburg

All commerce is now e-commerce. Customers may purchase a product in-store, but the chances are that the purchase has an online history behind it. Three of four hours researching a new tire purchase, a couple of weeks reading up on new car models- these are the staples of the modern consumer buying process.

E-commerce is no longer a variation of traditional commerce. Rather, traditional commerce is now a variation of e-commerce.

The implication of this is that your brand is now mostly digital, defined and elaborated by your digital assets- the images, graphics, videos and layouts your customers interact with throughout most of their buying process.

This is very different then a few years ago- it used to be that your digital assets were your print and broadcast advertising- early, strong messages to your potential customers to raise awareness of your brand and maybe induce a visit to the store to browse, evaluate and buy your product. The interaction with the product, the comments of the sales people and feedback they’d received back, and the comments and feedback from friends were the core brand defining elements of the customer experience.

Today, this is no longer the case. The next step after advertising isn’t in-store evaluation. It’s online evaluation. Your prospect doesn’t go to the store, he goes online and starts researching your product, both on your website and other sites. Your prospect’s brand experience is evolving significantly through this evaluation and branding is no longer about clever messages broadcast to the world at large- it’s about managing the entire user experience through the entire, largely online, purchasing cycle.

Your digital assets have gotten a much bigger workload as a result. They are how your prospect will first experience your product- the images, videos and conversations surrounding your product. They are how your prospect will largely evaluate your product. He or she will touch your product many times digitally before even thinking about going to the store and inspecting it in person. So the bulk of the branding experience of your prospect will be through your digital assets- your ads, product images, videos and other materials used to communicate to the market.

This has profoundly effected most marketing areas, including branding, demand generation, evaluation, and support and retention.

Branding

Traditionally branding leveraged broadcast media such as print, radio and television. Messages were broadcast, and there was a time lapse between the branding message and in-store evaluation of product.  The Internet has changed the branding process in 5 significant ways.

1. Branding has shifted from being a message to being an experience. The self-serve nature of the Internet means that consumers can engage with your brand on demand when ever they want. Your online content needs to support this.

2. You can segment and target your audience, creating messages more specific to their interests. Rather then a singular brand, you can create “brand channels” which will interest and attract different segments of your customer base. Put another way, online brands can be multi-faceted.

3. You can test the response of the audience to your messages, leading to revisions and incremental improvements in your message.

4. Your prospect can “browse your message”. If you catch your prospect in the evaluation stage, he is more then likely to spend more time with your content- whether it be more advertisements or materials to support the buying decision.

5. Your customer may do post-purchase research in usage of your product, further shaping the branding experience.

Each interaction with your customer is a brand definition point, and it’s important to recognize this and create content to support a positive brand experience.

Demand Generation

Demand generation now leads to online evaluation, rather then a store visit. So demand generation advertising needs to be supported by a deep online experience to facilitate that online evaluation process. Demand generation without support for online evaluation is a lost opportunity.

Also, as with branding, you can now segment and target your audience. This applies even more to demand generation where speaking to a consumer’s specific interest and need can make all the difference in catching his interest.

But, as with branding, demand generation now requires significant extra content to target the different needs in your various customer segments.

Evaluation

As exciting as the changes to branding and demand generation are, as brought about by the online world, the area where things have radically changed is in the evaluation phase.

As mentioned several times already, evaluation is now done online before it is done in person (if it even is done in person). It’s not uncommon for prospects walking into stores to know more then the sales people working there. Digital assets becomes especially critical in creating and managing the significant extra volume of content related to the online evaluation phase of the modern purchasing lifecycle.

And again, its per segment, per need, and per usage. Much more content is needed to create a seamless purchasing journey from branding, through demand generation and to evaluation.

Support/Retention

Users of your product often go to the Internet for support before calling you. Any reduction in support calls is a significant cost savings, so the efficient creation and publication of self-help support material has a high value- both to you and your customers. This is a particularly effective area to use short form video, capturing specific answers to some of the more complex post-purchase questions a consumer might have. Post-purchase support/retention marketing, like the other classic marketing areas, is a significant brand building area, further highlighting that in the online world brand is a continuos experience that needs to be effective managed.

Conclusion

Traditional marketing such as branding, demand generation and evaluation has been radically changed by the online world. Marketing has shifted from discrete communication points to seamless, on-demand consumer experience management. This is turn demands much higher volumes of digital content, created much faster, and targeted more specifically to each unique audience need.

Brands are now mostly digital. Companies that don’t scale up rich media content creation and reuse to build and defend their brands are going to lag and ultimate languish.

Posted in Digital Asset Management, Marketing | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

How to Overcome the Content Barrier in Marketing Operations

Posted on November 1, 2010 by Nick Van Weerdenburg

In the online world, marketing is about the conversations visitors have with your content while you aren’t there.

At some point in the last five years we crossed a line where all of our customers were online and actively looking to self-educate themselves on their buying options. The Internet became the dominant communication medium between companies and their prospects, and as a result marketing became interactive and measurable, moving from a broadcast paradigm to a conversational one.

In this new online world, there is only one valid response to marketing measurement- more content. Marketing measurement is the voice of your customer speaking back to your content- they click for more, they register and ask for more, or they go away. As a result, the boom in marketing analytics and operations technology will only payoff for companies if they match that effort with an equivalent effort in their content creation processes.

However, good content includes strong visuals- rich media like diagrams, photos and video. And this rich digital media is expensive and slow to create, creating a significant barrier in marketing operations.

Unfortunately, prior-generation content management solutions only support text content effectively. They fail miserably when it comes to rich media such as images, graphics and video: content can’t be found, or it can’t be viewed once found, or it can’t be edited once viewed. If you are lucky enough to find, view and edit something, you still can’t use it because you can’t figure out if you are allowed to use it due to rights and contractual issues.

You can’t win the marketing game with issues like that.

If you are serious about marketing operations, you need to be serious about the processes that generate and manage your rich media assets- they are your most expensive content asset and your biggest execution bottleneck.

Rich media assets such as images, graphics and videos don’t lend themselves to search very easily. Intelligent management of meta-data is thus critical to being able to search for and find these.

Rich media assets are also extremely expensive to make, and to change, compared to text content.

Finally, rich media takes much longer to create. To create new images, diagrams or videos for each new communication is unsustainable for both speed and cost reasons. In the new marketing-as-a-conversation era you need to generate 5-10x more content than previously, and repurposing existing assets is essential to successfully doing so.

Digital Asset Management (or DAM) is the intentional management of rich media content as assets, and is critical to ensuring that your ability to have marketing conversations with your prospects is not paralyzed by a lack of accessible and cost-effective digital content.

Digital asset management can be a strategy, such as an asset list tracked in an Excel spreadsheet, or a specialized solution from a DAM vendor. Specialized solutions become a necessity for larger marketing departments as they learn how hard a “paper based” strategy is to maintain due to the number of assets, formats, and classifications that need to be managed, and the knowledge management challenges of categorizing assets for future findability.

Traditional content management systems aren’t a solution either. They don’t speak digital media, failing to ingest, categorize, convert, or find assets in a meaningful way. In comparison, DAM solutions are designed to provide the capabilities critical to the capture and management of rich media content — specifically those features to ingest, categorize, find, convert, collaborate on and distribute your assets no matter where they are stored in your company. In other words, DAM solutions turn digital rich media content into digital assets.

Whether your goals are branding, demand generation, lead generation, lead nurturing, cultural relevance, or industry thought leadership, a competitive marketing operations strategy needs an effective digital asset management strategy. To not have one leaves an otherwise stellar marketing operations strategy limited by the rich media content barrier.

Posted in Digital Asset Management, Marketing, Media Asset Management | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments