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

Is There "DAM Bleed-Through"?

Posted on October 22, 2010 by Steve Sauder

Do lessons learned in one industry necessarily apply to another? I’ve been doing digital asset management implementations now for 15 years in various market segments including publishing, ad agencies, pharmaceuticals, and entertainment & new media companies. Have I learned anything that applies across ALL of these market sectors?

Sure I have, but they tend to be motherhood things like:

“Go after sure-fire wins first, don’t tackle the toughest department you have until after you’ve gotten an easy-to-prove department under your belt”

“A DAM implementation is most successful when there is constant care & feeding by a group of interested and enabled individuals in your organization who are constantly looking at new ways of using the DAM in the business”

Things like that … but what about “real world” things, like metadata models, or common business rules…? Do these things have application across businesses?

Here’s an example: For a number of our pharmaceutical companies, the FDA requirements for marketing materials are what’s actually driving the move to DAM for these companies. One of the requirements of the FDA is that there be a way of “proving” that something has been approved for use within an ad campaign. This approval must be recorded and obviously must be trusted. In our case, after working through the various sections of the relevant parts of the FDA legislation, it was sufficient for a user in the system to “digitally sign” an approval, using their login and password to the system. So we developed a method in our application to ask the user to enter their user name and password (in a protected dialog box) and to store this and compare it with their system credentials, and fail if the two didn’t match.

Could this be useful in other businesses? I think so! What do you think?

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

Critical Success Factor #2: The Need for DAM Business Support

Posted on August 30, 2010 by Joshua Duhl

When bringing digital asset management (DAM) into and organization, few companies consider the area of “Business Support”. Business Support is defined as the extended organizational infrastructure (people, organizational structures, and technology/systems) that is needed to maintain both the proper functioning of the DAM as it relates to the business (i.e., how the DAM maps to the business, validating proposed changes to the system, adding new capabilities, rolling out to new users, etc.), and the proper governance and communication around the DAM across your extended organization.

Business support is critical to the successful use of DAM in an organization. However most organizations fail to fully comprehend what is required or needs to be put in place to make a DAM deployment successful. Furthermore, when considering the total cost of ownership for a DAM, it is frequently a common unaccounted cost.

Business support is an organizational cost and an organizational concern. While business support is absolutely essential and required 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, it is also essential for small- and medium-sized organizations to establish an appropriate business support infrastructure and business support team for the DAM.

Business support includes the DAM Masters and training roles referred to in the previous blog post. However, it expands beyond those to include the expanded team of people that play a role in supporting the DAM, as it affects a wide swath of an organization – from the creative teams, through marketing and agency partners, to global sales teams, partners, suppliers, and various outlets or consumers.

What tools and infrastructure are required to successfully support the business use of a DAM system in an organization?

First, keep in mind that organizations can use a variety of organizational structures to support a digital asset management system, especially if it is on a global, enterprise-wide or broad basis (e.g., it integrates with one or more external agencies, partners, distributors, retailers, etc.) Here are three approaches. The first two are common. The third one is new:

  1. An organization might employ a structure that uses regional experts who provide business level support in the local language, and serve as contacts between the region’s end users and the DAM Masters, funneling requests inward, and answers and education outward.
  2. The organization establishes a cross-functional team including IT, marketing, agency members, regional experts and others.
  3. Outsource the business support function to a third-party who provides the DAM Masters, training and more back to the entire organization as a managed service.

Your choice will depend on a number of factors:

  1. The structure and size of the business support organization required for your sized organization
  2. The degree to which automation can be employed instead of or in addition to people
  3. Your budget
  4. Your ability to create the DAM Master role internally
  5. Your ability to put in place the necessary internal organizational structure

Different structures work better for different organizations. But regardless of the approach and structure chosen, both people and automation are required. A good communication infrastructure is required, to communicate changes and education outward, and gather requests and needs inward. Presentation and messaging tools, a help desk and online help, as well as best practice techniques will facilitate the training and education requirements. Policies, protocols, survey tools, focus groups, emails and forums or internal blogs will facilitate requirements gathering. All of these are part and parcel of the DAM business support function. And as can be seen from these statements, because of the variance in how organizations may implement business support, its cost can vary widely.

While there is no “right way” to provide business support for DAM, there are best practices (which is a topic for another post). One best practice, however, is setting up the business support function in the first place. It is essential that it be set up and implemented, and for that matter, budgeted and accounted for as a critical expense, if you want your DAM to be successful. This requires executive sponsorship and at least initial oversight. It then requires ongoing attention, to assure it is being effectively provided. Often the DAM Master(s) performs this function.

One related statement must be made here: Digital asset management is fundamentally different than content or web content management, and it requires a different support structure (and training). This is so frequently misunderstood by people in organizations who think they can apply their Web content management (WCM) knowledge and skill sets to DAM and be successful. In general, they can’t because DAM is distinctly different. What a digital asset management system does, how it functions, what it needs to be successful are all different from that of a Web CMS. Perhaps an existing WCM support infrastructure can be utilized, but it doesn’t substitute for one that is dedicated to the DAM and the workflows, business processes, training, etc. that are required for its success across the extended enterprise.

In summary, DAM Business Support is critical to establish and maintain. It is essential to the success of any DAM, and often the area that kills DAM or media asset management (MAM) efforts if it is not properly addressed and furthermore, supported with senior management sponsorship and ongoing support. Lastly, it’s one of 13 costs for a digital asset management system, and one cost that is frequently unaccounted for in both initial planning or ongoing support.

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

Critical Success Factor #1: The Need for Internal DAM Masters

Posted on August 16, 2010 by Joshua Duhl

Almost every successful digital asset management (DAM) installation (hosted/SaaS DAM or on premise) has a resident DAM expert or “DAM Master”. Depending on the size and breadth of the organization this person or sometimes a team of 2-3 people, provides oversight of the DAM system from a combined business use and technical implementation perspective.

In most organizations, this role is often divided between several people (e.g. technically focused vs. business focused) who work as the DAM Masters or governing council, to make sure the organization has smooth and ongoing system operation.

They are not necessarily IT people, because they need to understand how the DAM is applied to the business and across groups including potentially external agencies, partners, and users. Nor are they strictly marketing folk assigned to babysit the DAM, as they also have to understand, sometimes technically, how the DAM works and how to get things accomplished with it. The DAM Master is thus a core person or team, and needs to be able to understand both the business needs, workflows and processes of the DAM’s various stakeholders, as well as the technical architecture and capabilities of the DAM system. In essence, these people “own the DAM” and are responsible for its proper function, use, maintenance and success within the organization.

Their key responsibilities are:

  • Solicit, vet and resolve all enhancement requests and modifications to the system
  • Expand and update the metadata model and definitions (assuming the system supports the capability to update the metadata model after it has been established)
  • Enforce consistency of metadata (“metadata quality assurance”) – are people using the same terms, controlled vocabulary, keywords, etc. to describe the assets so they can be found later?
  • Implement and update the folder/collection/catalog hierarchy for consistent access
  • Implement new business rules, policies, and in some cases automated workflows within the system to facilitate business processes around the system
  • Function as more than a librarian or governance provider for the assets
  • Potentially manage user organization and access to functionality in the system
  • Potentially provide internal training and problem resolution as well

With this lengthy but essential introduction, the key question is: Do you have the right people in your organization to serve as DAM Masters in the first place? You must ask and assess this critical question. It’s very important, because it directly affects three of the hidden costs of DAM: initial training, ongoing training and business support.

If your organization is like most, you don’t have these key people on staff and instead have to hire them. Or perhaps you do have some people with relevant skill sets, but they’ll need to be “grown” and trained. In some cases organizations outsource these skills/roles from a third-party (e.g., a system integrator), or from the DAM vendor.

Once you identify who is going to be your DAM Master(s), you can identify this hidden cost – whether it will be new headcount, outsourced headcount or service, or purely training fees for those few key people in your organization. Establishing the DAM Master role is critical success factor for your organization’s use of a DAM – without it, it is highly likely your DAM project will wither and die, because no-one “owns” the DAM along with the requisite skills to manage and expand its use.

For more on calculating the total cost of DAM and finding out more about some of the hidden costs of DAM, download the North Plains’ white paper “The 13 Cost Areas for a Digital Asset Management System”.

Posted in Digital Asset Management, SaaS | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Amazon: eBooks Outselling Hardcovers

Posted on July 22, 2010 by Joshua Duhl

Another data point for the growth of the eBook market comes from data released from Amazon.com:

“Amazon.com customers now purchase more Kindle books than hardcover books–astonishing when you consider that we’ve been selling hardcover books for 15 years, and Kindle books for 33 months,” according to Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos.

And Kindle eBook sales are accelerating:

  • Over the past 3 months Amazon has sold 143 Kindle eBooks for every 100 hardcover books
  • Over the past month, Amazon has sold 180 Kindle eBooks for every 100 hardcover books
  • Amazon sold more than three times as many Kindle eBooks in the first half of 2010 as in the first half of 2009
  • The Association of American Publishers’ (AAP) latest data reports that e-book sales grew 163 percent in the month of May and 207 percent year-to-date through May. Kindle book sales in May and year-to-date through May exceeded those growth rates.

This is across Amazon.com’s entire U.S. book business and includes sales of hardcover books where there is no Kindle edition. Free Kindle books are excluded and if included would make the numbers even higher. What’s interesting is that this is with a relatively modest book inventory: 630,000 eBooks, with an additional 1.8 million out-of-copyright e-books made available for free. It also clearly coincides with the growth in sales of the Kindle itself — device unit sales accelerated each month in the second quarter–both on a sequential month-over-month basis and on a year-over-year basis. (Unlike Apple, Amazon still won’t disclose exactly how many Kindles have been sold. Isn’t it about time they did?) It stands to reason, more people with the device… more eBook sales. However it is outpacing hardcovers. And one would think there are many more people available to buy hardcovers than eBooks. It hasn’t yet outsold paperbacks, which may be the larger of the three types of books.

Publishers are still highly selective in publishing eBook titles because they still lack the infrastructure to quickly and easily put out all books as both hardcover and eBooks. There are many more books that could potentially be e-published, especially if they had better eBook publishing and distribution processes. It illustrates both just how far the industry has come, and just how fare it is from getting to “long-tail” eBook publishing.

The continued rapid growth of eBooks is further underscored by the AAPs year-to-date data for eBooks sales: The 13 submitting publishers to that category currently comprise 8.48 % of the total trade books market, compared to 2.89% percent for the same period last year — triple the growth of last year and nearing double digits — a marker for the industry that there is real money to be made in eBook, and companies that lack an eBook strategy could miss out on this increasingly significant revenue stream.

It is interesting to note that, compared to last year, people are purchasing more books, period. Perhaps it is a sign of the improving economy, or perhaps it is an indication that people (especially adults) are reading more in general. The data is unclear on the reason. What is clear is that eBooks continue to grow in popularity, and are unquestionably here to stay.

Posted in Book Publishing, Digital Publishing, ebooks, News, Publishing, Statistics, Trends | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Using Digital Asset Management as a Tool for Social Media Brand Consistency

Posted on July 12, 2010 by Peggy Dau

One of the biggest challenges facing brands as social media platforms continue to evolve is that of brand consistency. In the “old” world, marketers defined messaging and images they felt were most representative of their brand. On the social internet, the community defines the message and may begin to define the images. How do Digital Asset Management (DAM) systems fit into this?They are the central repository for a company’s digital media assets.

As companies intentionally reach out to their communities for input, this input will come in many formats. Brands may invite consumers to create new tag lines. It may come as pictures of users with the product. It may come in the form of home video extolling product benefits. Consumer brands are actively seeking user generated content, partly to attract attention to the brand, partly to gain low/no cost re-usable content and partly to test the waters.

Platforms such as YouTube, Flickr and Vimeo are growing outlets for company created content but also for brand requested user generated content. This user generated content may not comply with corporate defined brand image. How do brands address this? Or by “crowd sourcing” content, do brands give up control of brand identity? The goal for many marketing teams is to create content that can be repurposed across multiple distribution channels and create tighter bonds with their customers. Regardless of their intent, how do companies manage and repurpose user generated assets?

DAM systems can help companies manage these assets. Any DAM solution provides the ability to define the ontology and taxonomy of digital assets. It is possible to create additional categories which identify the assets as user generated, associated with a specific campaign or of certain image quality. DAM systems may also begin to incorporate social concepts such as the tag cloud, which shows the tags associated with specific assets. They could also incorporate features such as reviews & comments, helping marketing departments identify the most popular or useful content.

A digital asset management system cannot control a company’s brand, but it can help that company manage the digital media assets related to the brand. The system provides the company with a tool to review, assess, edit and manage assets with the intent to determine the asset’s alignment with brand image. It then enables companies to extend their brand across multiple channels (i.e., mobile, internet, print, TV, etc.) through re-use and re-purpose of the selected asset(s). Bottom line, digital asset management systems will have to integrate and manage professionally produced assets as well as those imported from social platforms.

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The Social DAM

Posted on July 6, 2010 by Peggy Dau

In this world of all things social, there is a lot of focus on making existing platforms social. As an example, there have been many discussions about social CRM. While salesforce.com is considered to be social, traditional systems (i.e., Oracle) are not. A simple definition of social CRM is “having a discussion when, where and how the customer wants it.”  Coming from a world of digital media, should we be talking about Social Digital Asset Management systems? Should users be able to access or provide digital assets when, where and how they want? Is this an oxymoron or redundant? Let’s review what functions a DAM system performs.

DAM systems evolved to address the challenges facing organizations who manage a variety of digital assets. In an enterprise business, these assets would traditionally be managed by the marketing department. They would include corporate logos & images. If anyone outside of the marketing department needed these images, for any reason, they needed to go through the marketing department to gain access to these assets. This could be a slow process with many bottlenecks.

Digital Asset Management systems evolved to provide a central repository for digital assets. As these assets have evolved beyond static images into rich media assets incorporating audio and video, DAM systems became more elegant in how they addressed issues of tagging, metadata, taxonomy, ontology and overall semantics. DAM systems, by necessity, must be easily integrated with other systems such as editing, transcoding, storage, digital rights and distribution.

Today, DAM systems are accessible by users across the enterprise, whenever they want. Marketing may own the responsibility for establishing a corporate wide policy for tagging, metadata, etc., but groups such as sales, engineering, product management have access to the company’s digital media assets. There is still separation between producers and consumers. Does providing access make the system social? Or does it become social when those same groups can become producers and contribute their own content and assets?

Perhaps a DAM system with the ability to annotate, rank and comment on these assets makes it social within the enterprise. Or, perhaps it’s the option for online, interactive communication that facilitates effective collaboration. System features now enable uses to rank assets or for managers to understand how many times an asset is viewed partly or in full, DAM systems provide intelligence and elements of social platforms. DAM systems continue to evolve and incorporate features that feel social. Perhaps they are as these capabilities are core components of many social sites and platforms.

The ability for a DAM system to accept and manage user generated content (UGC) is increasingly important. If companies recognize the social web as a relevant content distribution outlet, they may also need to consider it as a source of content input. The DAM system can become more social by enabling content upload and the assignment of relevant tags, metadata by establishing and automating a standard taxonomy and ontology. Thus the DAM enables users to access all digital media assets for the company, when, where and how they like.

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The Difference in Printer’s vs. Publisher’s Use of Digital Asset Management

Posted on June 24, 2010 by Joshua Duhl

I was recently asked:

Is there anything you can share about how the file management needs differ from the way a publisher use a DAM? I would think there would be a lot more transfers of very files (i.e. high resolution print-ready PDFs) and much, much less internal activity involving small files (i.e. photos, production files, etc.)

In general, yes, printers are working with and transferring large print-ready files. Some of these can be hundreds of megabytes in size and so there can be significant concern in working with clients around bandwidth and the time it takes to send and upload the file. However, internally on a local network, the size of the file is less of an issue. But in general they tend to work with whole files and less frequently with the individual pieces — unless they’re doing specific touch up and color correction work on individual assets contained in the final work.

However, in some cases, printers provide DAM as a service to their clients. They manage the assets on behalf of the client, providing browser-based access to not just the final print ready files, but in some cases the QuarkXPress or Adobe InDesign layouts, and both the hi- and low-res components (e.g., photos, graphics, images, fonts, etc.). In this way, DAM allows them to offer additional or “value-added” services to their clients.

Publishers are a bit different. They generally use DAM as an internal repository to maintain all of the elements in the publication (e.g., magazine or book), as well as the layout file, and the finished work. So they are often working with both the large and the smaller files. However it can vary across publishers. In some cases, a DAM is used as an integral part of the editorial process – where work in progress, all the individual components as well as the layouts and versions of both are kept. Others may use DAM primarily for storage and distribution management of finished works. Some use it for both.

Note that “Publishers” may also be either magazine or book publishers. Magazine publishers typically have a broader range of content than book publishers (so far… but this is changing too) as they often have both print and Web versions of their content, have needs to support both workflows (which are different), and may have exclusive content for the web or mobile devices (e.g., video, audio, and other rich media hanging around) that is updated more frequently. The DAM provides a common repository for feeding both kinds of workflows, for grouping and categorizing related content, for finding other relevant assets that could be used in a developing story, and for distributing to both a web content management system (Web CMS) as well as to individuals, partners, channels, video streaming servers or mobile distribution platforms.

As well, for magazines in particular, they may be working with purchased or rights-controlled images, so managing the expiration and use of them in a publication or publications is critical. Using an image out of its purchased rights can be extremely costly. So the DAM helps in a way that printers typically don’t use it. In summary, publishing use is potentially a broader set of use cases, media types, workflows and file sizes (e.g. working with large video files… at least the initial master versions before they’re reformatted or transcoded for distribution).

Book publishers are typically working with a more limited range of content — photos, images, graphics, and fonts. Now, as eBooks begin to incorporate more interactivity, the book publishing workflows and asset management challenges move towards those of magazine, web publishing and potentially “interactive applications”, and will require working with and managing a broader range of file types, components and workflows.

Lastly, note that print and publishing workflows vary a bit as well. Print may use the assets in touchup, color correction and other pre-press workflows, perhaps with some limited review and approval with the client. Publishers often use it in creative as well as review and approval workflows, and distribution workflows — which may embargo information until a set date and release it directly to particular people, partners or distribution channels (including to web sites and direct mobile devices). It can be used this way too for print and eBooks books, where the distribution processes may include direct to the consumer and more frequent updates.

Feel free to keep the questions coming.

Posted in Book Publishing, Digital Asset Management, Digital Publishing, ebooks, Magazine Publishing, Printing, Publishing | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Why Digital Asset Management (DAM) is Valuable for Global Marketing

Posted on June 22, 2010 by Joshua Duhl

Global marketing is a challenge, regardless of the size of the company. In order to communicate with your customers and prospect you have to have the right content, in the right format, where the customer or prospect wants to consume it. The “right content” means that the pictures, text, videos, audio, messaging and more are appropriate for each region, geography, demographic or culture, and device. In regulated industries, like pharmaceutical and medical devices, it also has to comply with various regulations. Even within a country such as here in the US, how do you make sure that you’re marketing snow shovels in winter in New England while you’re marketing swimsuits and golf clubs in Florida and Arizona?

Having the right content for the right region is one challenge. Having the processes in place to assure that you’ve got the content in the first place, and you’re using it correctly where it’s needed, and can review and approve it, is another challenge. So much of marketing is communicating with images, graphics, video etc. but often we don’t know, or can’t find or feel we have to create or re-create this content for each project. In many organizations this marketing content is not under management. It’s strewn about various people’s laptop hard drives and email systems. Think for yourself, can you find what you need when you need it? In one place? And in the format that you need? And further, how do you conduct your review and approval processes — by email and perhaps PDF? Are you sure you have the right, most current version of the file? How do you know? Are your processes efficient or time consuming? Could they be streamlined — making sure that everyone who needs to be involved, IS involved, regardless of where they are in the world, and is working on the right version of the file, and that some tool is monitoring that process so you don’t have to? Most global or regional marketing review processes involve many people, often across time zones and typically one person is tasked with “herding the cats” across regions, making sure the review, approval, revision process continues and stays on track.

A third challenge is the broadening set of devices and “channels” on which or from which your audience wishes to consume the content. How do you maintain brand consistency, not only across regions, but across devices, web sites, print, and broadcast/cable/web video? What tools do you have in place to help you manage the consistency of your communication, images, brand, logos across your distribution channels — your regional sales teams, partners, circulars/flyers/inserts/corporate web site/and in-store promotions, or affiliated or branded web sites?

These 3 challenges are where Digital Asset Management (DAM) can really help and provide great value. Companies like Ford Motor Company, who want to launch a consistent global campaign for a new car in 122 countries simultaneously are turning to DAM to provide the collaborative and file management infrastructure to enable their global teams to communicate, share media, and drive not only brand consistency, but streamline collaborative global review & approval processes leading to faster time-to-market in 122 markets.

A DAM provides a common repository for rapidly locating files, and for automating content format changes into common Web, print, video and other intermediate or dynamic formats — saving the team time and reducing resourcing and cost on repetitive format conversion services. As well DAM systems can assist with review/approval cycles by supporting these file- or “asset-centric” workflows. It can allow teams to efficiently collaborate and work on the right version of a file in the right sequence across regions, eliminating file version confusion (a great and common point of pain), and some DAMs can monitor the full process, keeping status and notifying people about the task at hand.

Internet brands and advertising agencies which advertise across a variety of media — web sites with different requirements for ad sizes, ad formats (e.g., still vs. animated), or demographic/psycho graphics and perhaps even print (yes, still, it’s not dead yet) — are turning to DAM to facilitate the management and distribution of the related brand files and media. It provides value to them in the form of greater reuse of content across sites as well as managing and limiting content over-use. It can enable automated “embargo” and “expiration” workflows — releasing and distributing the right files to people in specific regions at the right time. Or when working with rights-managed assets, it aids them in identifying, notifying and restricting access to rights-managed images and other material which may expire and need to be pulled before substantial financial penalties are incurred or outdated communication occurs.

Retail stores, chains, and franchises which need to manage overall brand consistency but with significant regional differences and often have the challenge of maintaining consistency across web, print and in-store advertising and promotions, are finding that DAM provides a backbone infrastructure for enabling these complex, interrelated content creation and delivery processes.

DAM provides a tool or in some cases a platform for marketing teams to much more easily collaborate on content, to find what they need in one place (or identify accurately that they don’t have it and it must be created as new), to identify those pieces that need to be changed regionally — and change only those so as to reduce the cost and time of getting to market more quickly. It enables a degree of marketing agility, which can result in not only lower costs, but faster market entry, and more adaptive responses — especially when it can get tied into traditional email marketing systems, and up and coming, high value, automated “web-to-print” collateral creation tools that enable self-service, template-based localization of advertising and promotions. These kinds of tools work well with DAM systems to enable marketers to integrate the right images and video into targeted promotions while allowing for regional differences.

If your marketing team hasn’t yet considered DAM, perhaps it’s time. As marketing operations become increasingly complex and the demand to have the content, brand and product information available consistently across regions in a timely manner, digital asset management can provide significant value and help to global marketing teams.

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

The Elephant in the Living Room: It’s About "Video Management AND…"

Posted on April 26, 2010 by Joshua Duhl

After spending a week in Las Vegas at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) Show it’s clear that the demand for managing video – often referred to as “Media Asset Management” (MAM) and for managing all kinds of digital files “Digital Asset Management” (DAM) — has grown substantially in the past year.

NAB historically has been the show for media & entertainment companies to meet with technology vendors, see what’s new and plan their future. And while the crowd still has a large proportion of broadcasters, cable operators, media and entertainment executives, advertising agencies and the expected military/intelligence government agencies, NAB has, over the past 5 years, become much broader, more diverse, and now includes companies and organizations outside of these typical media & entertainment fields. Increasingly its attendees include consumer brands, manufacturers, publishers, financial & insurance companies, religious organizations and healthcare/medical companies as well. What’s behind this expansion?

Digital video. Lots of it.

Over the past few years, companies have been rapidly accumulating digital video. And in many cases, they’ve been growing that on top the base of archived analog video (tapes, and other forms) they’ve accumulated over the years.

But, while the major theme (hype) at this year’s NAB was “3D”, two others trends seemed more applicable and concrete:

1. “Video everywhere” – Open support for providing video on across all kinds of devices — mobile, smart, handheld, and the new iPad class of devices. From educational tracks as part of the NAB conference to vendor’s products on the exhibit floor, this appeared as increasingly real, and important, with money starting to flow towards technologies across the ecosystem that enable people to distributed and consume video everywhere.

2. “Media Asset Management … NOW!” — This trend grew out of several hundred conversations with visitors. When speaking with people from these kinds of companies, all of them instantly stated in one way or another “I have a video management problem.” That was to be expected. But, surprisingly, it didn’t end there. As the conversations went on, a majority of them would state something along the lines of: “Well, it’s actually more than that. You see, we have video AND…” followed by other types of file types or media including images, photographs, cover art, scripts, transcripts, shot lists, related documents, advertising layouts or designs, audio files, cover art, graphics…. “that we need to manage, share, work with and distribute.”

In the course of these conversations, what many of them began to realize is that they didn’t have just a video management problem… They had a digital asset management problem. Either they had archives of video and other files they needed to manage better, or in most cases, they had all these files lying around unmanaged that were related to the video, or were needed by other groups in their organization or outside their organization (e.g., an ad agency, distributor, or partner). So while it was important to be able to work with video – to preview it, clip it, make a rough cut for output to Final Cut Pro (FCP) or Avid, and do all of this via a browser (from anywhere in their extended organization) — it was equally as important to be able to do the same thing with all of their “other” media – preview their brochures, cover art, images, pictures, graphics, audio files, PDFs, InDesign and Quark layouts, package them up, or share, distribute, or make them available in the right format for specific people to work with.

And it went beyond “management” of these digital files — that’s always the first step. The need was mostly concerned with supporting or enabling creative, production and distribution “workflows” or business processes that would save them time, speed their process up, save them money, or make them more nimble and agile in the use of thier digital media, their digital files.

This was honestly refreshing to hear. For years, most companies have ignored the quiet stockpiling of digital files. While the digital media elephant in the living room ate and grew, and grew and ate, no one seemed to take much notice of it’s presence. Now they are. And it’s an immediate concern. Companies that can more quickly and easily manage their video AND all the other related files, can more quickly and easily reach their customers, constituents or followers wherever they are. They can adjust their message or tailor it for each audience more easily, across geographies and devices. Doing so, means increased loyalty, increased opportunities — for engagement, brand awareness, sales and revenue. While “content is king”, “agility is queen”. Being able to manipulate, manage and move that media … will be a competitive advantage.

It makes me wonder: What are you doing about the elephant in your living room?

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