Corporate Branding

As the Brand Development Manager here at Widen I’m constantly looking forward. Where are the markets going? What are the latest trends? What is the next Big Thing in rich media management that we need to be a part of?


So it was kind of a fun “looking back at looking forward” exercise I went through when Newsweek re-published an article that they had originally published in 1995 titled The Internet? Bah!.

In it, Clifford Stoll, the journalist who is unfortunately linked to his couldn’t-be-more-wrong predictions for life, laments against the value of the internet and how it will never be a big life-changer everyone wants it to be.

While I could pick nearly any sentence out of the article and show how Clifford was wrong (e.g. “The truth in no online database will replace your daily newspaper” – tell that to the newspapers of today!) the more interesting aspect was what Clifford got right by getting it all wrong. You see he came to those conclusions by considering the tools that were available at the time and to illustrate that he started it off with “Consider today’s online world.” That was his first mistake. If the online world stayed how it was in 1995 (think text based usenet groups and 2400 baud modems – a 30k image would easily take 30 minutes to download!).

If you consider the future based on the tools we have available today then the future will always look impossible. What he wasn’t considering was that cell phones of today would have 100x the power as the computers of 1995. Or that downloading a full movie today would take 5 minutes, when downloading a simple JPEG image in 1995 takes 30 minutes!

But in uncovering all these problems Clifford was uncovering opportunities – unfortunately he just didn’t know it or didn’t care to act on it. In the article he talks about the lack of social communities in 1995 – hello Facebook, MySpace, etc. He calls the internet a “wasteland of unedited data” – hello Google! And his rant against the future of ecommerce because of a lack of secure online purchasing (PayPal, Google Checkout, SSL, etc.) and lack of social feedback (Amazon rating system, review sites).

The point is that every single one of the problems he mentioned later became billion-dollar industries and, in many cases, companies in their own right. So Clifford was so right by being so wrong!

How does this all relate to DAM Asset Management? Well, just like Clifford I’m not sure yet.

We as a company and an industry have become comfortable with the markets we serve and the use cases from those markets. For example here at Widen we started off serving primarily the manufacturing and retail industries (via their Marketing departments), though more recently DAM software is catching on with Healthcare, Government, Education and other sectors.

We make some assumptions that our product is not the right fit for, say, an individual. Or a sole-proprietor. For all the reasons you might think and agree with—it’s too complicated. Individuals don’t need all those features. People prefer storing their images locally for speed reasons.

But after seeing Clifford’s 1995 example I have to challenge you and myself on these – how many of these are legitimate roadblocks, and how many are glowing opportunities waiting to be solved by the next Bill Gates?

I’d be willing to be bet that the 2025 version of us will kick ourselves for not acting on these ideas sooner.

What is the best digital asset management product? That’s a good question… and a common question among those beginning to research digital asset management technologies and vendors. The purpose of this post to help those understand how to decide what is the best digital asset management product for you.

Organizations of all shapes and sizes are adopting digital asset management systems and practices to improve efficiency, brand consistency, accountability, intelligence and effectiveness. When asked, “what kinds of companies need digital asset management?” my response is typically any company that has sophisticated enough creative or marketing operations that they’re creating significant amounts of digital content – images, videos, brochures, etc. – that need to be used and repurposed. That digital content is to be centrally managed and readily available for multiple users to access the content they are supposed to. DAM is particularly valuable to organization’s that have distributed user networks and workers who require remote, self-serve access to a central library of digital assets. There is no exact right or wrong answer to know if a company needs DAM. The size and scale of a DAM implementation varies. When the “traditional” methods of using the shared drive, email attachments, and FTP site start to bring reoccurring pain, then DAM might be something worth considering.

Organizations that are finding success in adopting DAM software solutions include the following vertical markets:  manufacturing, retail, marketing & advertising agencies, media, entertainment, publishing, sports, colleges & universities, healthcare, insurance, financial services, non-profit organizations, hospitality, food service, government, engineering, construction, hi-tech.

When asked “What is the best digital asset management product?” … There really is no right answer. It varies. The digital asset management analyst community will tell you the same thing. The best DAM solution really depends on you and your company. It depends on what kind of company you are and what your functional goals are. The size of your company or industry you’re in may matter (or may not). The size of your digital asset library may matter (or may not). The types of assets you predominantly need to manage may play a part. The quantity of users and their location (internal or external) may make a difference.

The digital asset management analyst community will tell you to consider the types of solutions vendors offer to fit different use cases. It is important to understand the business scenarios that fit each vendor’s product strategy to find the best digital asset management product for your particular circumstances. The DAM analyst community has helped those looking for DAM solutions by rating vendors according to common scenarios useful for understanding which types of products tend to work better according to the type of projects. These use case scenarios can be divided into three buckets to include: (1) Image Management, Brand Management and Marketing Operations – segmented further by Digital Asset Library, Photo Archive, Brand Management, Marketing Collateral Production and Distribution, and Ad Production services; (2) Publishing – segmented further by Periodicals Production & Distribution, Multi-Channel Publishing, Catalog Publishing, Rights-Managed Content Syndication and Distribution services; (3) Video Production – segmented further by E-Learning, Video Review and Approval, Short Form Video Production, and Broadcast Video Production services.

Other things to consider when looking for a digital asset management vendor (in no particular order) include:

How long has the vendor been around? … How long have they been offering DAM? … How much of their focus is on DAM? … Is DAM a core part of their business or just a side activity? … How many DAM clients do they have? … How many DAM clients have they lost? … Do they have experience in your industry? … Do they offer complementary services? … Where does their experience come from? … How stable is the company? … Have they been bought or sold? … Is their DAM offering home grown or purchased from someone else? …  How sophisticated is it? … Is it evolving as the marketplace changes? … What does their product roadmap look like? … Do they have one? … How often do they come out with new upgrades and innovations? … Who installs them? … Do they have a technical services team? … Do they have a help desk? … What are their hours? … How do you reach them? … Who handles the implementation? … Do they offer training? … Do they perform integrations? How? … What information technology resources will be required internally? … What is the cost to deploy? … What is the cost to maintain? How do you achieve an ROI? … What are the extra costs? … What are their security practices? … How can they ensure my assets are safe? … Is it customizable? … How much customization is required to make it work? … Is it scalable to grow with my business?

These are just a small set of the many questions to ask when looking for the best digital asset management product for your organization.

Leave a comment if you have other advice for those looking at DAM for the first time or share your experiences.

One of the many purposes of a Digital Asset Management system is to provide controlled access to an organization’s library of approved digital assets. Note the key word here is controlled! There are many types of marketing software systems that provide some sort of repository services for centralized storage of documents, images, and other files. However, only a true DAM system should suffice in a sophisticated marketing environment where you want to deliver tiered levels of control for the collaboration, management, and distribution of digital assets. In Widen’s world of DAM, tiered levels of control are managed via Roles and Permissions.

Without Roles and Permissions, you may as well post everything you own to a public-facing website for the whole world to access. In a web-based DAM system, every a user has a secure login which authenticates them into a Role with a predefined set of permissions.

Roles and Permissions determine 'who' has 'what' level of access to 'which' assets and 'how' the user can interact with the assets.

Roles and Permissions allow…

• The marketing team to prepare a campaign that will launch in six months.
• The product team to produce training materials for a product that doesn’t hit the market until next year.
• The regional field reps to only access current collateral and promotions created for them.
• The marketing team to ensure assets for products that have been taken off the market are not accessible by the sales teams and partners.

Although it can be a very complicated aspect of DAM to administrate, Roles & Permissions can be as simple as can be for a four-person workgroup or as complex as a multi-national enterprise with several departments, divisions, brands and channels for access and control. Maintaining the Role & Permissions structure is critical when rolling out updates and a key point in selecting the right partner. More than that, working with Roles & Permissions that allow for adaptability, flexibility and scalability with ease is vital to the ongoing success of your DAM system.

Read the article in E-Commerce Times: Whose Fingers Are in Your DAM?

Contact Us to learn more or to see the Roles & Permissions structure in Widen’s online DAM system.

Saints Win! Saints Win! The 2010 Super Bowl between the New Orleans Saints and the Indianapolis Colts was watched by more than 106 million viewers, surpassing the 1983 finale of "M-A-S-H" to become the most-watched televised event in American history. This is the fifth consecutive year that the Super Bowl has averaged more than 90 million viewers, according to Nielsen.

That’s a lot of football fans and a lot of consumers that want to be the first to have the apparel the champions wear.

Minutes after the big game, I received this email from DICK’s Sporting Goods announcing the availability of the official Locker Room Merchandise from Reebok, the authentic outfitter of the NFL. No doubt, there are a lot of fans out there who want the Super Bowl XLIV Champion hat and t-shirt worn by their champagne popping locker-room heroes as soon as the outcome of the big game is decided.



How do retailers like DICK’s Sporting Goods get their hands on these images to have their emails and websites ready to go as soon as the champion is declared? More importantly, how does the Sports Licensed Division of The adidas Group make this process efficient, accurate and cost-effective?

With the help of Widen Digital Sampling and Digital Asset Management services, adidas can get official product images in the hands of their retailers who, in turn, get marketing messages in front of the eyes of the consumer as soon as a buying decision is ready to be made.

Widen digital sampling processes and digital asset management tools help ensure the entire digital supply chain is equipped with compelling, consistent and cost-effective content for commerce.

The Widen Digital Sampling process assists in the creation of digital apparel samples and the Widen web-based digital asset management system is used to manage, distribute and provide access to authentic image assets. As the official provider of licensed apparel for the NFL, NBA, and NHL, the adidas Sports Licensed Division (includes adidas and Reebok brands) uses Widen premedia services and DAM technologies to meet hot market demands for the Super Bowl, NBA Finals, and Stanley Cup Finals.  

Widen-powered technology and processes help retailers such as DICK’S Sporting Goods market championship apparel merchandise as soon you see the players wearing the hats and t-shirts after the big game is over.



What’s all included in the Widen Digital Sampling process? This premedia production process generally begins with photography of one neutral grey apparel sample. Next, digital sampling operators digitally create all color swatches according to league approved team colors. Lastly, graphics are applied according to Reebok/NFL technical guidelines and the final approved images are loaded into the image database where they can be centrally managed and available for download in a working file format.

All Reebok / adidas digital samples are loaded into the Widen-powered web-based image library, which holds the all apparel and headwear styles for the current and coming sports season for the NFL, NBA, and NHL. Since many of the physical apparel styles are not yet available in stores or online (or even physically produced en masse), many of the images are on hold and are tightly controlled using Widen’s governance tools. Styles and logos are often determined 6-7 months in advance of the coming season for the major sports leagues.

When it’s time for these assets to go to market, orders are placed in the DAM system and retailers can download the files according to exact specifications for print or web use. All users are required to sign off on a rights release agreement before they have access to the images. For example, DICK’s Sporting Goods was granted permission to access championship apparel images for the Saints and Colts so they could prepare their email marketing templates in advance of the Super Bowl.

As you can guess, the digital apparel sample production and distribution process shaves weeks off the time to market versus the process of physically producing, photographing and shipping physical samples. Plus, it streamlines a very difficult process—particularly when meeting hot market demands such as with championship merchandise. Besides the time savings of digital sample creation, adidas is able to drastically reduce costs of physically producing each item and team combination and the photography and shipping costs to go along with it.
 
Benefits of using hosted Digital Asset Management:

• Accelerated search and retrieval time in accessing official imagery
• Increased real-time collaboration of assets and approvals
• Cost savings through the elimination of physical delivery of samples
• Elimination of the cost of lost or misplaced work
• Reduction in time-to-market through digital delivery

Here’s an inside look at the market preparedness leading up to the Super Bowl:

1 week before the NFL Conference Championships – Conference Championship merchandise was created for the eight teams in the Divisional Round (Baltimore, Indianapolis, N.Y. Jets, San Diego, Arizona, New Orleans, Dallas, and Minnesota)

2 weeks before the Super Bowl – Super Bowl Champion merchandise was created for the four teams in the Conference Championship Round (Indianapolis, N.Y. Jets, New Orleans, and Minnesota)

What happens to the images for the losing teams that didn’t make it, you ask? Quite simply, those are destroyed.

CMSWire recently posted an interesting poll about Digital Asset Management. For those commissioning DAM projects, “What is your biggest Digital Asset Management challenge?”

The answer options to the poll question include:

• Taxonomy/Metadata development
• Selecting a vendor or product
• Building the business case or defining ROI
• The usability of the system
• User adoption of the system

A comment to the poll provides a good summary of the poll results after 2 days of data collection… “Usability of the system, User adoption of the system, and Taxonomy/Metadata development fall out as 1, 2 and 3…”

This poll couldn’t be more timely as two key areas for DAM development and enhancement in 2010 at Widen are Usability (UI) and Analytics.




Let’s talk “Usability”

Usability for a web based DAM system means that a user who logs in three or four times per year should know exactly what to do to find and retrieve an asset based on experiences working with other common web applications. In Widen’s world of DAM, clients generally have a few different groups of users. There are the power users or Admins who usually represent the smallest group in number but use the full features of the DAM system – ingestion through distribution. There’s typically another tier of regular users that use the DAM library with some regularity, but for more common purposes of finding and retrieving digital assets. Then, there are the hundreds or thousands of users that only login a handful of times each year. It’s that long tail of “once in awhile” users that the system should cater to in terms of ease-of-use. Other bells and whistles for more advanced users should exist, but shouldn’t over-complicate the UI, nor be too overbearing for the general purposes of the system—ingest, collaborate, manage, find, retrieve and distribute assets.

To provide a Widen customer example of user adoption, Steelcase—the global office furniture leader—had over 9,000 logins within the first two months of going live with their DAM solution. Interestingly, Widen serves five of the top 15 office furniture manufacturers. This type of user adoption drives the demand for DAM throughout the supply chain. While CMS Watch, an analyst firm who talks to DAM customers, reported that Widen has a “clean, well-designed user interface that appeals to business users,” we still recognize the magnitude of usability and opportunities for improvements in UI design.


Diving Deeper into DAM Data with “Analytics”

An Analytics application speaks directly to the business case for DAM endorsers and senior leaders who look at how DAM supports top-line revenue growth or impacts the bottom line. Digital Asset Management ROI is measured in a number of ways with hard dollar and soft dollar savings. Common buckets for measuring DAM ROI include: how DAM improves processes, how DAM reduces costs, how DAM increases revenues, how DAM adds new profit centers, and how DAM protects the brand. The time to realizing a DAM ROI is predominantly driven by two things – user adoption and subsequently asset usage and asset repurposing. Leveraging tracking, reporting and analytics tools offers more intelligence and thus greater ability to measure and prove ROI. For that reason, Widen developed four key ratios that help customers watch and evaluate adoption and success:

• Digital Asset Activity Ratio: A comparison between the quantity of assets that have been ordered and the amount of assets stored in the DAM system. This ratio provides insight into the relationship between download activity and all the assets stored in the digital asset library.

• Repurposing Ratio: A comparison between the active digital assets and the quantity of assets ordered. This provides insight into the amount of content repurposing that is taking place over a period of time. Repurposing continues to be a key component of digital asset management value.

• User Activity Ratio: A comparison between the total number of logins and the quantity of users that have logged in provides information about visitation frequency. This metric also provides insight into how frequently users visit to browse or check back on new branded materials.

• Digital Asset Consumption Ratio: Comparing the quantity of files ordered to the users that logged into the system provides information on the amount of data being consumed by each user over a specific time period.

The ratios are further explained in the Business Management article “What Those DAM Statistics Can Tell You.”

So we’ve touched on the metrics for monitoring ROI once DAM is deployed, but how do we build the business case?


Finding It All While Saving A Bundle

If you’re unsure of the costs that come with unmanaged data, consider these factors, and then apply them to your own organization.

• Companies spend an average of $8,200 per person per year on file management activities. These include searching, verification, organization, backup, and security.
• Creative professionals spend an average of one out of every 10 hours of their time on file management. Their prime activity: searching.
• The average creative person looks for a media file 83 times a week and fails to find it 35% of the time.

A digital asset management solution could help alleviate some of these costs. According to findings from GISTICS Research, a DAM solution can cut the amount of time spent on file management by more than 85%. And rather than failing to find a file 35% of the time, users will not find something only 5% of the time.

SOURCE: GISTICS


Visit the DigitalAssetManagement.com ROI calculator for more assistance in putting together a DAM ROI.


Our thanks to all customers who continue to provide feedback and ideas for making the Widen Media Collective more valuable and enjoyable. Widen customers can expect more specific communications to come in the next few months about the User Interface (UI) enhancements and new Analytics application.

Digital Marketing and Digital Asset Management

Marketers shifting or integrating digital marketing strategies cannot ignore the importance of using DAM solutions to control and distribute approved digital media to authorized users. Digital media consumers demand the same amount of quality and consistency in the content they consume as they would offline media; they just might face more noise with the overabundance in clutter of messages. The brands that deliver quality content, including imagery and interactivity, are those that get noticed and drive brand awareness. Getting noticed in a digital marketing world holds tremendous value because of the opportunities for consumers to engage with marketers and other consumers in two-way communications. In the social web, satisfied consumers can serve as brand advocates whereas dissatisfied consumers can bring a brand down.  

Like Digital Marketing is more cost-effective than traditional marketing channels, Software as a Service (SaaS) DAM is the most cost-effective way to manage digital media assets. 

The explosion of digital content, including diverse content types such as rich media, forces organizations to invest in digital asset management tools to maximize the value of those assets by keeping them in a centralized location accessible for multiple purposes. That centralized location should be a SaaS DAM solution that enables the content to be most easily accessed by those that need it, when they need it. Those that need access to a digital asset library include multiple internal departments, partners, agencies, sales channels, and the media.

What are the Core Benefits of SaaS DAM Over Installed Solutions?

• Speed to implementation inside 30-90 days versus 6-9 months
• Low monthly subscription and minimal startup costs make it easier to budget
• Flexibility, adaptability and scalability to grow and change with client needs

What’s the big deal about DAM SaaS?

A recent Forrester ECM (Enterprise Content Management) report by analyst Stephen Powers shows that more interest was seen in SaaS products (than on-premise or open source), with 43% of the respondents expressing interest in SaaS WCM and 39% in SaaS DAM. “Because content stored in these systems are often public-facing, organizations were less concerned with sharing the content outside the firewall,” reports Powers. That’s a new way of looking at it... (at least for a SaaS provider)!

The content stored in a rich media management system (images, videos, ads, brochures, etc.) was developed with the intention to be public facing at some point in time—oftentimes serving advertising and marketing communications purposes—so it should be easy to access (and control). SaaS DAM solutions make it easy to access digital assets anytime, anywhere while offering the security controls to protect rights and release/expiration dates.

Powers reports other reasons that installed content management solutions often fail or fail to meet expectations include poor content strategy and a lack of IT and business alignment. SaaS solutions make up for that because it is the responsibility of the SaaS provider to share best practices, contribute to content strategy and help manage change in order for the system to survive beyond the implementation phases. Remember, SaaS providers are required to meet the client’s needs every month and repeat it on an ongoing basis in order to earn the ongoing business. Moreover, SaaS solutions cut out much of the internal IT resources necessary to implement and maintain the solution because the IT resources, for the most part, are provided by the SaaS provider.

Marketers have been shifting budgets and focus to Digital Marketing strategies for quite some time in order to be “multi-channel” and leverage the power of digital media, online and other interactive channels. These strategies allow brand owners to be more efficient in reaching their target audiences with their message. Leveraging new ways to push messages, publish content and interact with customers is the easy part because the ROI is clearer. However, marketers should not overlook the methods and technologies that assist in creating, managing and distributing the “assets” that power digital marketing strategies. Although managing digital assets is not seen as the “sexy” side of marketing, it is a critical component to increasing efficiency with operations, ensuring consistency in presenting a brand to the marketplace, and maximizing the return on marketing investments.

As marketers leverage more cost-effective means of reaching their audiences, they should also adopt more cost-effective means of managing their digital media with Digital Asset Management solutions.

An Integrated Approach to Marketing

There’s a lot of evidence to show that digital marketing is more targeted, more impactful, and better tied to other vehicles and channels. More appealing to marketing executives is the opportunity that digital marketing brings with reporting, tracking and accountability. While many marketers are not entirely doing away with traditional marketing and advertising programs (TV, print, direct mail, etc.), they have shifted more focus on an integrated approach. Digital marketing helps marketers better engage customers to complement more traditional approaches targeting the masses. Digital marketing is often more cost effective, builds awareness quickly, fosters relationships and is measurable in ways traditional advertising just can’t match.

As companies make moves in the way they deliver their message and connect with customers to be more cost-effective, they should also make moves in the way they manage the content of their brand. The solution to being more cost-effective with how to manage that content is better known as digital asset management (DAM). 

What DAM Provides to Digital Media and Brand Assets:

• Greater ability to organize and find approved and available assets
• Greater ability to share and repurpose assets across multiple channels
• Greater ability to ensure compliance and consistency with approved assets

Driving Brand Awareness with DAM

Marketers seek to improve brand awareness by being in more places in front of more faces. However, if the brand does not appear consistent from one customer touch point to the next, than that is more damaging to the brand than not being there at all. DAM helps marketers repurpose digital media across multiple channels and do so consistently with assets meeting the quality standards for each channel. For example, image assets were historically developed with the specific channel in mind i.e. print catalog. Now, image assets are developed for multiple channels--print catalog, brochure, store signage, website, email marketing, online video and other social/interactive media.


What Drives DAM Adoption? (From the 2009 Aberdeen Benchmark Study)

• Improved Operational Efficiency – streamlined digital supply chains
• Improved Brand Consistency – approved brand assets used in multiple channels – as opposed to communications coming from disconnected departments
• Improved Return on Marketing Investments (ROMI) – greater opportunity to find and reuse or repurpose existing assets and reduce re-work or costs of re-creating lost assets

Now that we’ve covered the core reasons why marketers should leverage digital asset management technologies to improve marketing efficiency and effectiveness, I’ll cover why SaaS is the most cost-effective delivery model for marketers to deploy digital asset management solutions next.

The last several years have seen a dramatic shift from traditional media to digital media such as online marketing and social media. The move to digital media has led to an exponential growth in digital marketing content, which has in turn created bottlenecks and inefficiencies in managing this content and difficulties in measuring the performance of campaigns and in maintaining a consistent brand image.

Digital Asset Management (DAM) technology can overcome these problems by automating the process of ingesting, archiving, searching, managing, repurposing, sharing and publishing content in a seamless and collaborative environment. DAM adopters achieve substantial return on investment including reducing time to market, improving the performance of marketing campaigns, reducing marketing costs and improving brand consistency. This article will examine in detail how DAM can rapidly generate ROI by improving the performance of digital marketing efforts.

In order to give power to your marketing programs in 2010 and be more efficient in doing so, Digital Asset Management should be your first technology investment.

Widen has released a new whitepaper that addresses 5 key benefits that DAM provides to marketing operations, including:

1. Generate additional revenues by reducing time to market
2. Reduce costs of finding assets
3. Reduce costs of distributing assets
4. Save money on physical samples
5. Improve brand consistency

This whitepaper is an interactive PDF containing videos of customer interview segments from InSinkErator, Brady Worldwide, Knaack and Sub-Zero and Wolf.

Download: Why Digital Asset Management Should Be Your First Technology Investment for 2010.

Almost everyone nowadays has a digital camera, even if it's just on their mobile phone. This means that data and images are no longer stored in file folders and photo albums, but on hard drives and memory cards. While this technology is superb for working with images, it is not without risks. Storage devices can get damaged or stolen and then your precious memories are lost.

Transition that into the business world where there is more digital media and more users requiring access on a daily basis. A memory is to an individual like a brand is to an organization. What does is stand for? How is it perceived? What do people think of when they see a brand’s assets? To consistently market a brand in today’s multichannel environments, digital media and brand assets must be protected and delivered using the most reliable solution.

What options are available to help protect digital media and brand assets?

Many people make multiple back-ups of their computer systems and storage devices. This is great for a while but eventually you end up with back-ups of back-ups with loads of duplicated data. Alternatively, you run the risk of deleting files that you think you have backed up only to discover that you did not. An online Digital Asset Management (DAM) system is therefore something worth considering. It has multiple functionalities, is quite simple to use, cost-effective to purchase, and can help manage all of your digital media very effectively. 

How does a Digital Asset Management system work?

A DAM system is made up of various software functionalities to assist in the creation, management and distribution of digital media. If your organization has multiple internal and external stakeholders, there may be additional applications helpful on both ends of the spectrum—creation and distribution. Here's a brief overview of the various applications that fit the digital asset life cycle.

At the core, a digital asset repository helps you to centralize photos, logos, creative files and other digital media. DAM makes it easy to search for specific media files, convert and distribute them using a web-based platform. You can access your files easily and conveniently—even if the files are very large. A video asset management system is similar in that it allows you to preview, transcode and send video and audio files across the web without much effort. This is particularly useful when working with tight deadlines and you need a convenient delivery method.

If you frequently have to select photographs from portfolios for various creative and advertising projects, then a collaboration application would serve as a versatile feature of a DAM system. Working upstream in the creative workflow from the general DAM repository, web-based workflow and collaboration tools allow photography and creative teams to review and approve the photos that you wish to use. Additionally, when working on specific creative or marketing projects, project owners can coordinate reviews, track comments and approvals on modified versions and keep design teams on track for a streamlined workflow.

Downstream from the general digital asset repository, partners and sales channels can create custom marketing and sales collateral with a dynamic media building tool. Using predefined templates and content options, non-technical or non-creative users can create localized ads, brochures, direct mail and signage. This feature allows sales channels and affiliates to produce brand-approved collateral for campaigns, product launches, events or special promotions at a local level.

What are the benefits of using a Digital Asset Management system?

A big plus of any DAM system is that it helps you manage and search for files in a centralized system for all types of digital media. No more searching for the CD with the photos from last year’s campaign; simply view, organize and retrieve assets online. Web-based DAM systems are designed to be simple and easy to use, and users do not need to be technical experts to get what they need.

An equally important benefit is that a DAM system offers a safe storage facility for your files. Hard drives may fail from time to time, and CDs can get lost or damaged. In that case, you may not be able to retrieve your precious brand assets. A web-based DAM system has necessary back-ups, ensuring that you will always be able to access your photos and videos even if you change your computer hardware.

DAM is a critical technology for organizations with collaborative workflows needing a single storage and access point. Collaboration is particularly useful for staff in the media industry and corporate marketing environments. DAM systems make life much easier in being able to review, approve, search, share and download files that are typically too large for more limiting means of collaboration. The system effectively becomes the virtual meeting point for everyone across different geographic locations, which is both convenient and cost-effective.

Lastly, one of the most critical issues that a DAM system helps to solve is safeguarding an organization’s brand by ensuring only the most current assets are used. An online DAM system provides the easiest access point to approved brand assets. Being able to easily retrieve assets helps to ensure internal and external users turn to the DAM system first as opposed to other unattended sources. Governance features such as roles and permissions help administrators regulate who can see what assets. Assets for future or past due uses can be on hold or archived so the general user doesn’t have access.

Digital Asset Management helps organizations be more efficient, effective and in greater control over the vast amounts of digital media and brand assets at every critical stage of the digital asset life cycle.

New in 2010, Widen is offering free Digital Asset Management system access for up to 90 days to companies and organizations researching DAM or needing a hosted DAM solution.  Try it for a special project, campaign, product launch, trade show or event!  Request VIP Access to the Widen DAM demo system.

Widen has spent over 13 years developing and supporting web-based digital asset management solutions to marketers of all sizes – from Fortune 500 enterprises to small and medium-sized businesses, agencies and non-profits.  In that time, Widen has offered the opportunity for individuals and teams to experiment, test and trial live online digital asset management systems in live production environments, real-time marketing workflows, and sales channel relationships.

Widen is rolling out the red carpet by providing free digital asset management system access to Widen's live online digital asset library for up to 90 days.  You and your users get the same basic functionality as Widen DAM clients within Widen's Digital Asset Management demo site.

Free Digital Asset Management System access includes the following capabilities:

• Setup your own personalized role and permissions 
• Upload your own digital media – hi-res images, videos, audio, PDFs, Word, PowerPoint, InDesign, etc.
• Add your own metadata – descriptions, tags and automatically captured file info
• Download or send media with on-the-fly file conversions to print and web formats
• Create additional users
• Create custom system messages and user announcements

As a Software as a Service (SaaS) provider, Widen DAM solutions are 100% web-based and designed for creative and marketing workflows.  No software downloads or installs, no IT support required, and no specialized skills needed.  Widen SaaS solutions scale to meet the demand for unlimited simultaneous users and unlimited asset uploads and downloads.  Training and support is provided entirely by Widen.  Ownership of Widen DAM SaaS solutions can be afforded with a low monthly subscription.  Widen clients get their own branded web-based DAM solution and personalized URL, plus the ability to administrate their system with custom metadata structures and output types. Contact Us for more information about Widen DAM SaaS products and pricing.

For basic demo access to search and order stock assets, register for the Widen Guest Pass.

Notice:  Widen's Free Digital Asset Management System Access does not provide users with a fixed permanent solution, but is intended to provide those investigating DAM solutions with a no-cost, no-commitment resource for evaluating Digital Asset Management technology and support to answer questions along the way.

Widen Enterprises has released Widen Media Collective® Version 5.4 with its winter 2009 update to the flagship Software as a Service product for digital asset management (DAM).

Over 180 technical enhancements were made to improve usability, reliability, scalability and security with the Widen Media Collective.  Nearly forty customer-suggested features were incorporated into the winter update offering improved support across various creative and marketing workflows for creating, managing and distributing digital media and brand assets.

Upgrades to the core Web-based Digital Asset Management application include: asset uploader improvements for faster file processing, additional search functionality for more focused search results and video player enhancements.  Dynamic Media Building, a template-based ad and brochure building application, has been enhanced to include a new layout engine for more flexibility during the initial template design and end user media customization processes.  The upgrade allows for more advanced text handling, including: dynamic text reflow when variable text is used, copy fitting for reducing text size based on specific formatting instructions, block flexing for automatic resizing and repositioning of design elements, and rule-based block control to automatically populate template blocks.

The most significant advancement with Widen’s winter release is the launch of Source Controller version 1.0 for the Widen Appliance.  Advancing from its previous beta state, the Widen Appliance and Source Controller provide a hardware/software combination that enables internal staff to access and modify digital assets on their own network and automatically update these changes in the Widen Collective hosted platform.  Internal designers, marketing staff, and administrators find files in the browser-based Source Controller application and then check these files out into their own local workspace.  When changes are made to a file, it can be checked back in to update the asset in Source Controller and made globally available to the client’s external audiences.      

“Source Controller provides an attractive browser-based user interface and integration direct to the desktop for internal users working within creative applications,” says Edward Chwae, Director of Research and Development at Widen Enterprises.  “Besides providing benefits of streamlining creative workflows and making the benefits of DAM more entrenched with those workflows, the Widen Appliance provides for a fully replicated set of assets at the client’s location to support disaster recovery and business continuity plans.”

The Widen Appliance bridges the gap between hosted and installed software by offering Widen-managed services on the client site with replicated data to seamlessly serve the internal and external demand for assets.  File management and synchronization between the Widen Appliance and Widen Collective hosted service are automatic, which keeps administration to a minimum for improved efficiency and helps clients better manage the obsolescence of assets for improved brand consistency.

For more specific information about the Widen Media Collective and 5.4 release visit: http://www.widencollective.com.

The video asset is a rising star when it comes to improving marketing performance and bringing a brand message to the market. More and more, companies are investing in the creation, management and distribution of video assets.

Watch the video to learn more about our take on video in the enterprise.




Widen wholly embraces the complexities of understanding the make-up and management of video files. To make sure that we understood the video environment, we launched a video studio at Widen to assist with our own marketing initiatives and gain an in depth understanding of video workflows. Our marketing team deployed video production as an element of our marketing strategy not only to get the benefit of driving brand awareness and revenue, but also to help the organization and other customers understand video workflows.

Widen makes moves to embrace marketing's need to distribute video to their target markets now and into the future. Current Widen video asset management functionality includes automatic preview generation, transcoding on-the-fly to different formats, and embed links. There are two distinct advantages to embed links with every asset that is entered into the Widen digital asset management system – (1) the concept of one internet, one file and (2) scalable infrastructure. 

Embed links allow users to simply take an embed code that's preset to a specific size and then embed that in another website or thousands of websites. When a video is expired or you want to change that video out to a more updated version, you change it in one place – the digital asset management system – and every other website using that embed link will automatically inherit the update.

The second benefit to embed links is a scalable infrastructure. Customers use Widen bandwidth, CDNs and scale power from our use of cloud computing resources. When you want to go from 1,000 views to 100,000 views or to one million views, we scale to meet that demand and scale it back down as needed.

Learn more about Widen’s Video Asset Management application.

Get a 360-degree view of the new trends and technologies shaping the future of cross-media communications at the 2010 IPA Leadership Conference, February 4-6, 2010 – Scottsdale, Arizona.

The IPA Leadership Conference, 360-Degree Marketing Execution, brings together brand owners and business leaders from creative, premedia and print communities to share experiences, strategies and knowledge of marketing execution and cross-media communications. Many of the most respected thought leaders in marketing will provide a 360-degree view of the trends and technologies shaping the future of cross-media communications.

Gain critical insight and valuable ideas on how your company can plan for success!

Registration and details online at www.ipa.org/leadership or download the complete program.


Keynote Presentations

Best Practices in this Brave New World of Marketing
Julie Roehm, former chief marketing officer, Walmart and DaimlerChrysler

Julie Roehm, a powerful, charismatic marketing visionary, is one of the most successful global marketing, new media, advertising and brand-building experts in the United States. Roehm will share her story from behind the scenes at the world’s most influential retailer to show how quickly the world is shifting and how marketers, agencies and service providers can plan for success in this brave new world. Always ahead of trends, Julie will provide you with extraordinary insight and ideas on how to succeed in the tumultuous world of marketing communications.

Lead Gen-to-Gen Y: Preparing for the New B2B Buyer
Liz Brohan, Co-CEO, Colman Brohan Davis (CBD) Marketing

Gen Y, the tech-savvy children of baby boomers, are fast becoming managers making purchase decisions about your products and services. Don’t market to them in the same old ways. The leader of one America’s largest integrated marketing agencies will reveal how Gen Y’s habits and characteristics are defining what’s new and what’s next in integrated marketing, lead generation and retention. You’ll gain new ideas about how to sell to this emerging buyer of media production and marketing services.

Facing the Future of Sales: How to Reach the CMO
Liz Miller, Vice President, Programs and Operations, CMO Council

The need for face-time with the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) of both current and prospective clients has never been greater. With variable data, social networking, shifting marketing budgets and the ability of sales tracking, a CMO-meeting is a critical step in the sales process. Reaching and interacting with the CMO takes planning, a pinch of tact, and a whole lot of technique. The VP of operations for a worldwide organization of 5,000 CMOs, controlling more than $125 billion in annual marketing buys, will share how to communicate effectively with C-level executives.


Conference Themes

Marketing Execution Best Practices
Get a 360° view of marketing successes and failures that will help you execute breakthrough marketing programs.

New & Emerging Media
Learn how you can use new technologies to enable clients to make the transition from traditional to more personal and engaging marketing.

Fundamentals of the New Media Enterprise
Find out what it takes to reach marketing services buyers with the right message in this new world of cross-media communications.


Session Highlight: Interactive Discussions

Proven Marketing Execution Best Practices

• Julie Roehm, Walmart & DaimlerChrysler
• Margie Dehm, Sara Lee Corporation
• Marriott Winchester, SGS International

Integrating Social Media with Cross Media

• M.J. Anderson, Trekk Cross-Media
• Jim Egan, Kerry Ingredients
• Chris Walling, Brandfire Marketing Group

Profiting from New & Emerging Media

• Liz Brohan, Colman Brohan Davis Marketing
• Pam Ansley Evans, IBM

Innovative Procurement Models

• Cheryl Kahanec, Sandy Alexander
• Print Production Manager, GlaxoSmithKline
• CJ Kornell, Arizona State University

Registration and details online at www.ipa.org/leadership or download the complete program.

Watch the interview with Brian Becker, VP of Client Development for Widen Enterprises, as he talks about the prepress production processes performed for a large apparel marketer. Part II focuses on Widen's digital sampling and color retouching services in the life cycle of a digital asset.
 

Intro

Widen recently helped a large apparel company improve quality and streamline creative production processes by utilizing a blend of Widen premedia services and digital asset management technologies. Widen helped the client make the move from showcasing garments currently shot on mannequins to garments shot on live models for a new women's sports licensed apparel campaign. In meeting the goal of going live inside 30 days, Widen created over 500 images with 20-25% of their shots featuring garments on live models versus mannequins.

To get up to speed with the photo shoot and Widen photography workflow management capabilities, check out Widen Premedia Workflow Study Part I - Photography Workflow Management.


Color Production
The image work for the project was done by the Widen Color Production department, which consists of six master graphic artists. They are the ones that go in and clean-up the files… They take the camera raw data and optimize it for the best environment for lighting of the flesh tones, hair color, garment color, detail and sharpness, etc. Widen’s color retouching experts have a knack for understanding the customer expectations, which was very simple and natural for them given the jobs they work on every day.


Digital Sampling
The Digital Sampling department is the group that applies the graphics to the garments shot on the models and mannequins. The color operators take artwork from Illustrator and merge them onto the actual photograph in Photoshop. There challenge and expertise is to make sure the graphics follow the contours, shapes, highlights, shadows and wrinkles in the garments as they apply logos, team names, numbers and names, etc. supplied in the client's technical specs.

Many people don't realize what a huge production process there is that goes on behind the scenes to get garments sent to Widen, put on models, styled, shot correctly, color-optimized, digital-sampled, posted to a database and eventually marketed on a website or print catalog, signage, etc.


Color Management
Consumers only spend a few seconds shopping for garments online, so it’s critical that what they see on the screen is what they’ll get in real life.  We don’t use our eyes to confirm what we “think” we like on a screen, we use technical data that comes from a strong color management umbrella over the top of everything we do in production. From our cameras to our proofing devices, everything is color managed for the desired output – website or printed material.

In the end, Widen created approximately 500 images, which are upload to their digital asset library also hosted by Widen. From there, the images are ordered for placement on any number of websites. Posting images via embed links will help to ensure the most current images are used across all web domains.

The Widen Advantage caters to the life cycle of a digital asset by offering all of the production, management and distribution services under one roof. The blend of Widen premedia services and digital asset management solutions working together help clients in a number of ways, including:

Cost Savings - Increases efficiency in creative/production cycles plus centralization of re-usable assets minimizes efforts re-inventing every process of the creation-production-distribution value chain.

Faster Time to Revenue - Shortens time to market and increases effectiveness of marketing execution by empowering sales channels with on-demand access to use brand-approved digital assets.

Competitive Advantage - Improves brand consistency with quality representation of products and ensures compliance across targeted, multi-channel marketing campaigns.

Better Planning and Strategy - Tracking of usage patterns including reuse and repurposing of assets allows for more effective budgeting, resource allocation and planning of future marketing campaigns.

Check out the Widen Premedia Workflow Study Part I - Photography Workflow Management.

Watch the video compilation from several marketing professionals discuss how digital asset management supports brand consistency.




In the first segment, Michele Bedard, Vice President of Marketing, Sub-Zero, Inc. and Wolf Appliance, Inc. talks about how Sub-Zero and Wolf are all about the brand experience. For that reason, it is important to have brand consistency so the “brand” looks and feels the same from whatever source a consumer or partner would see it. Web-based digital asset management tools provide representatives in the field and/or channel partners, access to use the latest brand-approved digital assets – images, videos and marketing/promotional materials – from anywhere in the world.

As a bonus to ensuring enterprise-wide brand consistency, Sub-Zero and Wolf have more distributors and dealers using their advertisements and promotional resources that fit within the corporate campaigns. Thus, they get more return on their advertising investments with extend the reach and utilization of corporate-branded materials further down the marketing supply chain.

Plus, the corporate marketing departments and individual distributor/dealer networks are more efficient and effective in their collaborative marketing communications functions. The centralization of all images, videos, ads and marketing materials allows Sub-Zero and Wolf to have greater control in managing access to digital assets in addition to greater ease in managing the obsolescence of digital assets.

In the second segment, Jim Scarlata, Senior Marketing Operations Manager for Knaack LLC, explains that the Widen DAM solutions offer up the ability to have 100% brand consistency. In this economic climate where staffs are lean and staffs have numerous other responsibilities, DAM or brand asset management software provides Knaack corporate marketing with a safeguard.

As the person responsible for the Knaack marketing operations, DAM serves as a “brand guardian.” No matter what a channel partner, marketing agency, internal or external user needs, they will get an asset that is current, one they can use, and use it in whatever format they need to complete the project.

In the third segment, Jim Magruder, Senior Marketing Communications Manager at InSinkErator, provides testament to how DAM software helps maintain global brand consistency in keeping with the InSinkErator global brand guidelines. To a company whose goal is to offer the most state-of-the-art and innovative products, they have an innovative system to store, retrieve and manipulate digital assets management in a way that best supports the marketing of those products.

Watch more Widen customer interviews to learn more about how Widen Digital Asset Management software and premedia services support the roles of marketing and creative people.

Unfortunately, my wife lost her battle to cancer earlier this year. In her memory, myself and other local musicians organized "Funk Out Cancer" a memorial benefit for Kate Gates Falaschi. All proceeds were donated to the University of Wisconsin Carbone Cancer Center for cancer research. When I started contacting local radio, tv, and newspapers, I knew they would want pictures, and audio and video of Kate for news stories that they would create. I sectioned off a portion of Widen's demo online digital asset management system and posted assets featuring Kate. I needed digital asset hosting as I knew I would be contacted often about these...and didn't want to spend my days fulfilling requests for assets. Not that a one time event has a "brand," but it also served as brand asset management software. It made it so easy to retrieve assets, that everyone grabbed the hi res approved assets that I determined were fit for public consumption...not low res, right click/save image as garbage from myspace.

I'm happy to report that over 50 different organizations logged in and placed orders for assets. That would have been a lot of emailing. Thank you Widen DAM software. Here was a video promo created from the assets I hosted in the digital asset library.


If you would like more info on the event...or to make a donation :) go to http://www.funkoutcancer.com.

Desert Training

While reading an on-line forum recently, I ran across an interesting quote that somebody had placed on the bottom of their post. It went something like this, "It is better to train people and risk they leave - than to do nothing and risk they stay."

In the spirit of that quote, I thought I'd devote a few words to one of the best investments in training that any company with a color critical workflow can make. Whatever corner of the industry you call home - printing, prepress or premedia services, photography, graphic design, color retouching, packaging, brand management... If it involves the need for accurate color reproduction then you should consider a presence at the upcoming PIA Color Management Conference.

To be held again at the beautiful Hilton Tapatio Cliffs Resort overlooking the sparkling desert city of Phoenix, The 11th annual PIA Color Management Conference runs from December 6th through the 8th, with a special pre conference program on Saturday the 5th. Each year the advisory board, working with the PIA (Printing Industries of America), assembles some of the top speakers in the industry that address all aspects of color reproduction and color management. Among the many excellent speakers scheduled to present this year are Steve Upton president of Chromix, Don Hutcheson from HutchColor LLC, Dave Hunter, president of Pilot Marketing, Steve Smiley from Vertis, Dr. Abhay Sharma from Ryerson University, and Kelly McCathran from Adobe Systems. 

The conference this year includes almost 60 sessions and hands-on labs. Among them...

Color Meets the Frontier of Electronic Paper
Dr. William Ray with NthDegree Technologies Worldwide, discusses how color management is applied in the developing field of Printed Illuminated Paper which lights up and creates the illusion of motion. He has created a unique color model for emissive color that draws on both RGB and CMYK.

How to Compete in the Global Marketplace with Monitor/Softproofing
This session covers how adopting soft proofing will help you save money on materials, labor, time and transit costs. This session will give examples of companies that made the switch from contract proofs to soft proofs and saved themselves and their customers money.

Real World RAW from Large Format to Digital SLRs
Steven Johnson, world renown photographer and last year’s excellent keynote presenter takes a look at where we are in color management and where the technology is going as it relates to the uninterrupted stream of data in RAW workflows. 

RGB Working Spaces
Don Hutcheson discusses the difference between RGB working spaces and how to choose the correct space for Web, publication, fine art photography, RAW export, image archives, etc. He will talk about the benefits to wide-gamut spaces, and if there is one perfect RGB space for all work.

The program this year also includes two great keynote sessions...

Delivering the Color for Broadway
Representatives from King Displays, a Manhattan printing company, will discuss how they produce 90 percent of all the signs and displays for the Broadway theater market. Everything they produce is color critical and they will show how they meet the needs of a distinct clientele with demanding color needs and quick turnaround times.

Forecasting the Right Colors
James Martin, the president of the Color Marketing Group, will discuss how his group of color designers comes together each year to collaborate and then interpret their shared information into salable colors that will ultimately make up the color directions for all industries, manufactured products, and services.

I can speak from experience that this valuable, one-of-a-kind conference is very much worth attending. Color management technology is still in a state of evolution. Whether you live in the world of print or the Internet, every year new products, best practices and procedures are developed that benefit everyone involved in the exchange of color. See the PIA Color Management website for more information.

Follow my tweets and updates from the conference December 5-8 on twitter @widenpremedia.

Mark
        

Again, I had the opportunity to provide a preview of what Widen is doing in the SaaS / cloud computing space at the SIIA OnDemand Conference on October 28, 2009. Check out the video from the conference.




Here’s what I talked about:

• Why DAM - Digital Asset Management - deserves recognition among other key enterprise software acronyms
• Why Widen is good at providing DAM SaaS - Digital Asset Management Software as a Service
• How we go about delivering software as an on-demand / hosted DAM provider
• How we differentiate in the market by emphasizing the last “S” in SaaS (backing 60 years of service)
• Widen25 commitment to response times – a new Widen service program
• How Widen uses an aggregate of data and key ratios to help clients understand usage, make comparisons and recommendations for improvement. Read the article: What Those DAM Statistics Can Tell You

Catch All Presentation Videos from SIIA OnDemand -- Keynotes, SaaS/Cloud Insights and Previews

If all you have is 30 seconds to watch a 10-second message, check out the version our marketing team decided to have some fun with: SaaS Remix: Service Is Equally, If Not More, Important Than the Technology


About SIIA OnDemand
SIIA OnDemand is an annual conference produced by the Software & Information Industry Association and is the industry’s most comprehensive ISV conference for understanding the business drivers around SaaS and Cloud Computing. For more information, visit the SIIA OnDemand Home Page.

There are a lot of companies that will say “now is the time to gear up for the new year so that you can hit the ground running,” but this customer video compilation goes to show why top marketers implemented Widen digital asset management programs to improve their marketing operations. See why these marketers have made the investment in Widen’s hosted DAM software to create efficiencies, improve productivity, and increase brand consistency throughout their marketing channels.

• Are you wasting precious time and resources managing and fulfilling requests for brand assets?
• Are you looking for ways to improve marketing efficiency, effectiveness and agility?
• Are you seeking fool-proof ways to achieve brand consistency across all customer touch points? 
• Do you want to empower sales channels to be more effective?

In the first segment, Jim Magruder, Senior Marketing Communications Manager at InSinkErator, talks about their growing problem managing and distributing brand assets. He explains what a problem it was to regularly get calls from customers, sales reps, ad agencies and PR firms needing digital assets and there was no easy way to provide them what they needed in a timely matter. Sound familiar? He knew they needed a more efficient digital media asset management system so he wouldn’t lose precious time having to duplicate the same process over and over again fielding requests such as “I need an image and I don’t know what format I need.” Each time, he would have to stop what he’s doing to find the asset, convert it, ship it, etc. Widen DAM asset management services changed all that and removed the burden of having to manage and distribute assets “the old way.”

In the second segment, Jim Scarlata, Senior Marketing Operations Manager for Knaack LLC, explains that there was one gatekeeper to their digital asset library and there was no easy way to achieve brand consistency across all marketing channels, ensure the most current brand assets were always available (and used), and make assets easily available to all channel partners. With Widen’s help, Knaack has a single online location for all of the most current digital content to be globally available to any approved user.

In the third segment, John Wernecke, Global Marketing Manager (Former Public Relations Manager), Motorola Mobile Devices talks about the ease of use when it comes to digital assets management with the help of Widen. The Widen Media Collective provides Motorola with enterprise-wide ability to share and collaborate interactively 24 hours a day, which has allowed marketing and creative groups to come together at a central location that is always accurate and working.

In the fourth segment, Michele Bedard, Vice President of Marketing, Sub-Zero, Inc. and Wolf Appliance, Inc., explains how Sub-Zero and Wolf is all about the brand and making sure customers have  a consistent brand experience across all touch points. The Widen online digital asset management tools provide the people in the field with access to the most current assets so Sub-Zero and Wolf brands look the same from whatever source anyone would see it.

In the fifth and final segment, Michele Kowalkowski, Catalog Manager North America, Brady Worldwide, Inc., talks about how the Widen corporate image library empowers sales people to carry out their jobs and supports relationships with their distributor networks. Without always having to be reliant on the marketing team, they have a digital asset library they can trust to be accessible when they need assets and get them instantly in the format needed to complete their project.

To get more takes from the pros, watch more Widen Customer Interviews.

The branding article in the September / October IPA Bulletin titled "Rebranding Your Company" by Nancy Lowther features an interview with Widen CEO Matthew Gonnering.

Recognized for its comprehensive coverage of issues and challenges facing graphic solutions providers, the bimonthly IPA Bulletin magazine features in-depth articles on technical innovations, standards, and business development in graphic communications.

Go straight to the article: Rebranding Your Company.

Here's a summary of the main points in the business branding article:

Branding is the most valuable and fragile asset to an organization.

Brands have two sides – an external and an internal. Externally, it is the perception of the products or services delivered to the marketplace. Internally, it’s a personality... a set of defining characteristics to which a company aligns. 

How is Widen an example of a company re-branded? Like other traditional prepress services companies and printing companies offering prepress services have done, Widen has evolved and diversified into areas to include digital media management, digital content management, photography and premedia services. However, this goes beyond “re-branding” but also includes a company reinventing itself.

Why do companies rebrand? Companies look to rebrand if and when they say yes to any of the following questions:

• Is your revenue declining?
  
• Has your revenue been the same year after year?
  
• Have you lost customers?
  
• Are you losing key employees?
  
• Have you lost market share due to market changes and trends?
 

Companies must face the rebranding question to answer this one: "If we continue to do what we’ve always done, will we still be in business 10 years from now?”

How do companies rebrand? Branding goes along with a company’s Vision, Goals & Objectives and Strategies.

A Vision is how you see your ideal future. Without a vision, you may not recognize opportunities that can get you to that ideal future. Things to consider include: the perspectives from key leaders and possible roadblocks, market demand and competition. You have to interpret the unarticulated demand of the market to recognize an opportunity. Brand building involves connecting at an emotional level and establishing trust to build brand equity. Brand positioning defines where you place your products/services relative to your competition and where you place in the minds of your customers. A Vision for your brand is achieved by learning what your customers need and want to be successful.

Objectives and goals are what shapes your vision. Every employee must know what an organization’s goals and objectives are. Objectives and goals are shapes by an organization’s major strengths (core competencies) and how they can be built upon. You must not forget to look for deviations from what it is and what it should be. Goals and objectives can also be developed by categorizing products and services according to a lifecycle state—startup, growth, mature, declining, etc. Other factors in formulating goals and objectives include a gap analysis of the market, products, services, customers, employees, finances and technology.

Strategies are the action steps on how to achieve your objectives. There will be one or more actions for every objective. Marketing actions are included for most objectives. Marketing uses this information to create a marketing plan. However, this is not owned by just the marketing department. Business and technology strategies must be aligned and every employee and manager must know how to implement them.

“Marketing Your Brand” - With an abundance of marketing and customer touch points and channels, brand consistency is a major concern for organizations of all shapes and sizes. Centralization of branded content and brand asset management is critical to making sure your audience hears and sees a consistent message. Your branded content involves everything from your stationery and business cards to brochures, website, packaging, signage, trucks, how you present yourself at a dinner meeting, how the company phone is answered and how the front lobby looks. As the old saying goes: “You never get a second chance to make a first impression.”

Read the full article in the IPA Bulletin: Rebranding Your Company