We continue with another Top 10 list with the top ten Widen Digital Asset Management blog posts of 2009 in the Widen world of Software as a Service, web based DAM, video asset management, content management and structure and other posts dealing with digital asset workflow.
1. Getting to a Digital Asset Management ROI, posted on Friday, August 7, 2009 by Mark Norris (The Next Big SaaS)
2. The Future of Digital Media Management: Being Prepared for the Video Demand, posted on Tuesday, May 19, 2009 by Matthew Gonnering (Ramblings of a Mad Marketer)
3. Types of Digital Asset Management Systems, posted on Tuesday, July 21, 2009 by Jake Athey (Marketing Digital Asset Management)
4. How Widen Software as a Service Applies Digital Asset Management Best Practices, posted on Monday, June 15, 2009 by Matthew Gonnering (Ramblings of a Mad Marketer)
5. What is the best way to store videos in a Digital Asset Management System?, posted on Thursday, July 30, 2009 by Al Falaschi (The Impact of VAM & DAM)
6. Digital Asset Management Best Practices: Focus on Metadata Part II, posted on Wednesday, January 7, 2009 by Widen Marketing
7. The Marketers Guide to Justifying Investments in Digital Asset Management, posted on Tuesday, June 9, 2009 by Jake Athey (Marketing Digital Asset Management)
8. Understanding the Digital Asset Life Cycle, posted on Friday, March 20, 2009 by Jake Athey (Marketing Digital Asset Management)
9. Level of Risk for Digital Asset Management Implementations, posted on Friday, May 15, 2009 by Matthew Gonnering (Ramblings of a Mad Marketer)
10. Video Asset Management In High Demand As Viewership Climbs and Marketers Use More Online Video, posted on Monday, November 2, 2009 by Jake Athey (Marketing Digital Asset Management)
Digital Asset Management has long been the domain of the large enterprise – those companies that have front page stories on Time Magazine or companies whose owners make the Forbes 500 richest list 5 years running. But, is all that changing?Is the DAM system that we know and love morphing into a tool that is useful to not only the PepsiCo's of the world, but also that little lemonade stand down the street? And more importantly, is DAM software entering the price range of that lemonade stand?
In this multi-part series of blog posts, we’ll look at the growth of DAM in the small- to medium- sized business space… from the why’s to the how’s and everything in between.
This first article, "Not your Grandpa's Digital Asset Management System," focuses on the why, as in "why is DAM growing in popularity among smaller size companies?" What is driving that growth?
Research shows there are four main drivers today in the SMB (small- to medium-sized businesses) space for Digital Asset Management programs:
Video Growth -- As SMB companies realize the benefits of video (customer testimonials, product demonstrations, training, marketing, etc.) the need to manage, control and distribute these files to the necessary parties will inherently increase as well. According to CMSWire, “organizations are looking for lighter-weight solutions (than [current] video management products) to manage their video assets. We see this as more and more websites offer videos and allow user-generated content in the form of video.” Furthermore, over 65% of companies using online videos and that number is expected to continue increasing (VideoBloom, 2009). This increase in video will also mean an increase in the amount of bandwidth required to serve the video – a requirement that many SMBs may struggle with.
Project Collaboration -- A long-time hot topic in the world of DAM, the advances of web 2.0 “is another trend that is moving DAM away from being more than a basic repository” (Mosher, 2009). According to Eric Barroca of Nuxeo, “users want to work together on developing this type of content, so features such as tagging, annotation for documents, pictures and video, collaborative filtering and viewing assets via a web interface are key to building a better repository of digital assets.”
Lower Cost to Entry -- With many DAM solutions still in the 6-figure range and most SaaS solutions in the 15-25k range, many SMBs struggle to justify an enterprise DAM. According to Frost & Sullivan (Frost & Sullivan, 2007) a lower-cost SaaS model “is expected to help the market grow significantly by luring price sensitive customers to adopt DAM technology.”
So the momentum is building… the need is building… But, how is the DAM industry responding to meet this need?
In the next article we’ll look at the DAM industry as a whole and in particular, how it is addressing this growing need.
I have been reading the research of Dr. BJ Fogg lately. He directs research and design at Stanford University's Persuasive Technology Lab. He writes that for a consumer to make a purchase, requires a “behavior change.” His behavior model talks about the convergence of three things that need to happen for the change to happen.
There needs to be a “trigger” (cue, prompt, call to action, request, etc.), the consumer must have the “ability” (financially, access, simplicity of UI, etc.), and they have to have “motivation.”
One of his key concepts within motivation is “sensation.” Video, by default, combines the use of more human senses than other tools used in traditional sales and marketing scenarios. The more senses you, as a marketer, can stimulate in your audience, the more emotion and sensation you can evoke, aiding in motivating your customers.
IMHO, I also feel that a video evoking emotion or motivation in a potential customer could also serve as the trigger. Two for one. That should help your ROI if you are looking at adding online video to your marketing efforts and needing a video asset management system.
Of course, as more businesses realize the power of video in their marketing campaigns…those videos will need to be managed in a Digital Asset Management system. Have you ever heard of Widen? ;)
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.
Widen is seeing increased interest in Video Asset Management solutions to store, manage, access and deliver digital video for online video marketing purposes.
As Sean Callahan recently reported in the Marketers Make Move to Online Video article in BtoB’s Best 2009 special issue for Marketers and Creative, the “Internet has accelerated the creative use of video in b-to-b marketing, which is one key trend we saw in the submissions for this year’s BtoB’s Best.”
Online video has become an affluent medium for both b-to-b and b-to-c marketers alike. Online video is a key method of delivering and consuming information that educates, entertains, and/or inspires in ways that touch emotions static text on a page cannot achieve. Best of all, online video isn’t just for big companies. An abundance of devices and software for video capture and editing are becoming popular additions for many marketing departments. Furthermore, Web-based DAM technologies are making the management and distribution easier and cheaper for organizations of all sizes.
In terms of viewership, the Nielsen Company recently reported viewers have substantially increased the time they spend watching online videos with YouTube being by far the single largest provider of streaming video. Nielsen's time-per-viewer metric rose to 195.2 minutes per month in September, a 25% year-over-year increase. Read Time Spent Viewing Video Online Up 25% per Viewer to learn more.
While the popularity of creating and consuming online video continues to skyrocket, the problems with video asset management are still there for nearly all marketers. The downside is video files are exponentially larger than text documents. Multiple copies of a file in multiple locations use even more storage. It also makes version control nearly impossible, since someone has to remember each file's location and update or renew it when a new one becomes available or when it expires. Plus, there isn’t always an easy way to search for the right video based on the content.
When you add all those factors, it makes a compelling argument for software-as-a-service that simplifies the tasks associated with managing, finding and distributing video content across the Web. The problem is that a lot of organizations that can benefit from distributing their content in the form of video; they just don’t have the internal infrastructure to support it. Like most projects that are challenging to do on your own, digital asset management can benefit from a software-as-a-service model that allows customers to focus more on what they want to accomplish than figuring out how to go about building and maintaining it.
In Widen’s recent article, RAM: Bandwidth on the Run, the increased demand for video content creates four issues that require more efficiency in how we manage video assets:
- Not enough bandwidth to meet demand.
- Difficulty moving video files from one user to another.
- Multiple copies in multiple locations.
- Lack of searchability.
However, digital media asset management technologies provide much more than simple file management or a video hosting service. Digital media files become assets of value through the attachment of metadata because they can be indexed, versioned, secured, stored and assigned a lifecycle state, a unique ID and an owner. Digital Asset Management systems serve as the keeper for both the files and metadata.
Benefits of digital asset solutions summarized from the Bandwidth on the Run article, include:
- All users watch the same file from the same source.
- Easier distribution.
- Greater control over what is being viewed.
- Simpler, more effective organization.
- Simplifies backup.
For an expanded explanation, read the article titled RAM: Bandwidth on the Run by Matthew Gonnering, CEO of Widen Enterprises.
Training, reporting and analysis are key ingredients to the implementation and ongoing success of digital asset management systems. Widen is helping customers understand four ratios serving as key success metrics to digital asset management adoption. As a DAM Software as a Service (SaaS) provider, Widen is able to collect quantitative usage data from all customer deployments. The data can be applied to help customers compare numbers against historical activity within the same system or against historical activity across the entire customer base. The key ratios are defined below:
Digital Asset Activity Ratio: A comparison between the quantity of files that have been ordered and the amount of files 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 files 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.”
Digital Asset Management systems have been around for over a decade now, and before that it was your standard assortment of file folders, CDs and even floppy disks. As the DAM systems evolved many first-movers were able to take advantage of this new technology for the benefit of themselves and their organizations.
But if you don’t have a DAM system yet, are in the process of selecting a vendor or even if you have no idea what this DAM thing is and have been tasked to do some DAM research – don’t worry! Below you’ll find some great research and sources of information to help you make an informed decision.
As a digital asset management systems provider ourselves we are obviously a little bit biased, but we also realize that an enterprise DAM is not for everyone. Below are 3 top reasons, backed up with research and sources, of why people acquire a DAM system:
Reason #1: It Supports your Marketing Initiatives
The top priorities of the Chief Marketing Officer for 2009, according to a survey from the Verse Group and Jupiter Research, are directly impacted by the deployment of a DAM System. In fact, 3 of the 5 of the top CMO goals translate into the top 3 reasons why companies invest in DAM, according to digital asset management research by the Aberdeen Group.
Top Priorities for CMOs and Senior Marketers in 2009:
- Achieving measurable ROI on marketing efforts. – Why 46% invest in DAM – to Improve Return on Marketing Investments
- Developing marketing programs that integrate online and traditional media.
- Translating brand experience across different touchpoints. – Why 46% invest in DAM – to manage brand consistency
- Cutting marketing budgets without cutting performance. – Why 66% invest in DAM – to improve operational efficiency
- Optimizing portfolio of brands.
Reason #2: You’re Wasting Too Much Time
Widen contracted with a third-party research firm this spring to conduct digital asset management research to examine a number of digital media management processes and practices among marketing and creative professionals. According to the findings:
- 1 to 3 hours (29%)
- 4 to 6 hours (33%)
That’s consistent with Mark’s Digital Asset Management ROI blog last week reporting on GISTICS digital asset management research that creative professionals spend an average of 1 out of every 10 hours of their time on file management, mainly searching.
10% of a 40 hour work week is spent searching for files! That’s a huge drain on productivity. What else could you accomplish in a day, week or month with 10% more time?
Making the problem worse for most organizations is how they are currently storing their digital assets. According to Widen’s third-party research, 41% had an internally developed system and 26% used an internal network folder. This means that 67% of marketing and creative professionals are searching for digital media stored internally by manually clicking through folder after folder, hoping they can still find it!
According to GISTICS Research, a DAM system will help cut the amount of time searching for assets down by over 85%!
Reason #3: Lower Your Cost Per Use and Increase Brand Impressions
According to Widen’s third-party research, frequency of use was the #1 driver to the value of a digital asset.
According to GISTICS digital asset management research:
- The average creative person looks for a media file 83 times a week and fails to find it 35% of the time
- Research shows that digital asset management solutions will drop that figure to 5%
DAM systems make it easier to find what you’re looking for, thus increasing the ability to use it more frequently. The more frequently an asset is used, the lower your cost per use of the asset and the more brand impressions. (Plus, if you can find a digital asset, you have more opportunity to repurpose the asset. If you can find it, you don’t need to re-create the asset, thus lowering your cost to produce new assets.)
DEAR DR. DAM: I’m Eddy, the director of corporate marketing with a large engineering, consulting and construction company and I’m working with our I.T. business analyst to find a solution to our current digital image management process—which is doomed. We’re leading an initiative to find a better digital media management system to manage and share images and marketing collateral. We have nine different locations throughout the US and we’re in dire need of a more organized approach to share approved imagery with our marketing and engineering folks around the world. We’re losing a lot of time and money chasing our tails with materials that we don’t even know exactly where they are.
Our corporate marketing team wants to be able to drive brand consistency while doing a better job of capitalizing on the money spent on purchased images we know exist somewhere, but cannot locate. Right now, we’re just using a shared network drive and it demands a lot of our designer’s time to fulfill requests for images. We are also having issues with our marketing collateral containing outdated info and need to develop a more accurate process for customizing brochures with different pieces of information. We currently use another enterprise software vendor for content management and looked into the DAM plug-in but that would cost us $100K+, which is out of the question. We want a hosted digital asset management system because we don’t want to deal with our own internal servers anymore. Please point us in the right direction.
DEAR ENGINEER A NEW DAM EDDY: Looking toward a hosted DAM is a smart alternative, particularly in these times. There are no major expenditures on hardware or expensive upgrades/add-ons to purchase. The Widen hosted digital asset management system provides you with your own branded web portal to drive your corporate branding initiative. Plus, you’ll get free software upgrades on a quarterly basis for as long as you’re a customer. Your designers will enjoy more time to concentrate on what they set out to do because your agents will be able to fulfill their own requests. No more purchased images will fall through the cracks as a new DAM system will greatly help you improve organization and accountability. The Widen Media Collective includes a project collaboration module to route images and documents for comment and approval tracking. And, the media building app will help your users produce custom marketing collateral using images and content fit for the situation. You’ll enjoy the ability to run usage reports and see where your users are and what’s being downloaded. Get ready for a change because you’ll start realizing an ROI within a few short months. 
As I investigate new possible brands and product avenues for Widen to go down, I inevitably end up studying our current flagship product, the Media Collective Digital Asset Management system, quite a bit. And having come from an enterprise-software sales background my mind is always going down the path of "what is the benefit to the customer, what is in it for them?"
In today's economic conditions most companies demand an ROI. Those projects that have a "this would be nice" benefit or even arguable soft costs are getting buried at the bottom of the stack while products and solutions that can reduce costs or even show an ROI are going straight to the top. And in a time of high unemployment employees have a vested interest in finding solutions to reduce their companies’ costs: the more a company can save, the better they can afford to pay their employees.
While we know there is an ROI associated with time it can be difficult to articulate to customers because there are too many soft costs... How much is your time worth? How much time could you save if you could find images faster? If you could protect your brand better how much is that worth to you?
All great talking points but in a world of black and white numbers sometimes that is not enough. Hard numbers and clear ROI are required.
To that effect, I came across some great statistics on DAM and how DAM can help various organizations reduce costs. The numbers come from GISTICS research, with some highlights below:
- An average of $8,200 per person per year is spent on file management activities which include searching, verification, organization, back-up and security.
- Creative professionals spend an average of 1 out of every 10 hours of their time on file management, mainly searching.
- The average creative person looks for a media file 83 times a week and fails to find it 35% of the time.
- Research shows that digital asset management solutions will drop that figure to 5%.
$8200 per year per person!! How many people at your firm or organization deal with file management per year? How much does that add up to on a 1-year and 5-year basis?
And those numbers don't take into account the fact that when you are not searching for files/images you can be working on something else, possibly something billable. And the average person fails to find digital media over one-third of the time? How much productivity is lost there? And how much frustration is built up there? And with SaaS, hosted DAM you don't even have to worry about maintenance, servers, etc.
Add to that the fact that with a digital asset management solution you CAN protect your brand, that little thing you've invested thousands and millions into.
Digital Asset Management has always made sense and always had clear benefits and process efficiencies. But as the economy continues to struggle it is also becoming more and more clear that there is ROI to be achieved as well.
DEAR DR. DAM: I’m Betty, the director of marketing for a division II university. I just took a position with the U about 2 months ago and I’m leading an initiative to implement a digital asset management system by start of the semester. It’s one of those summer projects that I didn’t want to let pass me by. We have hit a wall in managing our institution’s digital assets. Our photos, logos, videos, and marketing documents are scattered everywhere across the network and the IT department has come down on us to clean it up. Every department is creating their own stuff when we could be doing a lot better job sharing and re-purposing each other’s work and master assets. Not to mention how difficult it is to keep the school’s branding and reputation in check. With more departments, more people in different locations and more channels where our stuff is used… we have a problem. It was manageable when we just had printed materials, but with the advance of the web and social networking sites, we need a master repository to keep everything together. This master repository should be the communications hub for marketing, athletics, library, media relations, photography services, crisis communications, event support, webcasting and videography. Does such a thing exist?
DEAR BREAK DOWN THE WALL BETTY: Sure thing! Widen has helped several other colleges and universities on a very tight budget implement a 100% web-based digital asset management solution. The Widen DAM solution will allow you to centralize digital content for multiple departments. Photographers have ability to upload assets and add metadata. Marketing can store, share and retrieve images and brochures with ease. The Athletic department can store videos and convert to different formats on-demand. You can control access levels to keep all departments separate and provide for various roles at each level. Your top-level admins keep the University’s master assets and insignias in check and delegate administration to each department head to regulate their own digital media system. Best of all, you can get up-and-running with training in 4-6 weeks – just before homecoming! It’s no short term solution either; Widen DAM software is scalable to meet unlimited storage size growth. It’s like comparing apples and oranges when pinned against installed solutions in the same price range. Best of all, you’ll appreciate their special pricing for educational institutions.
Highest Res: Whether the video is HD, or standard definition, it was acquired, or shot, on a video camcorder that recorded the footage in a specific format. This changes a bit if you take into consideration editing and effects, but based on just the video footage alone, the format the video was shot in is the “Highest Resolution.” If it was shot on a standard definition camcorder in the DV format, then that is the highest resolution (assuming it has not been recompressed). If it was shot on an HDV camcorder, then that is the highest resolution available, and typically what is stored as the master format. No additional recompression has been done that could degrade the quality. If you are making footage available, through your DAM, or your video asset management system, this is what they will want.
Here is a screen capture from a file off the camera:
High Enough: This could also be called a “Mezzanine format,” or “Proxy.” High resolution video can have very large file sizes, that in high volumes, can make digital asset management cost prohibitive. In many corporate marketing asset workflows, editing has already taken place, and the goal is access and distribution of finished video assets. Compression can be applied to video files to reduce file size while maintaining an acceptable level of quality. As video compression technology has gotten better over the past 10-15 years, some compression methods can reduce file sizes by 50-75% while maintaining a virtually indistinguishable visible difference in quality. So for the purpose of either viewing the video, or converting it to smaller, more compressed versions for email, or powerpoint presentations, a mezzanine format provides good enough quality while taking up 50-75% less disk space and bandwidth. This option gives you the high resolution viewing, and repurposing, while minimizing file storage. It will be the best option for most corporate marketing department's media asset storage and repurposing needs.
Here is a screen capture of a Mezzanine format. Notice there is very little difference:
This is all I have: It is common that marketing departments find or stumble upon video files that they would like to repurpose. All too often, they have “found” a highly compressed low resolution version of a video. If there is no way to go back to a master tape, or find the company that produced the video, then essentially you have the highest resolution of a video that just isn’t very hi res. That does not mean that it can’t be viewed and repurposed. This is unfortunately all to common, but it is ok.
Here is an screen capture of a highly compress video. It is not great, but it will work if it is all you have.
The types of Digital Asset Management (DAM) Systems that are mentioned in the Business Management article include the following:
Brand asset management systems: Focus on content re-use of marketing and sales materials such as product images, logos and marketing collateral.
Library asset management systems: Focus on storage and retrieval of large amounts of infrequently changing media assets—video and photo archiving.
Production asset management systems: Focus on storage, organization and revision control of frequently changing digital media.
Digital supply chain services: Focus on pushing digital content out to digital retailers, such as music, videos and games.
These definitions of the types of digital asset management systems have common characteristics with the three core categories of DAM systems defined by another leading digital asset management analyst firm. The breakout includes the following core categories based on these use case scenarios:
Brand Management & Marketing Operations
- DAM Library of Photo Archive
- Basic Brand Management
- Multi-Lingual Brand Management
- Marketing Asset Production & Distribution
- Ad Production
- Periodicals Production & Distribution
- Multi-Channel Publishing
- Catalog Production
- Rights-Managed Syndication & Distribution
- E-Learning
- Video Ad Review & Approval
- Short Form Video Production
- Broadcast Video Production
Widen’s 11 most recent customers added in Q2 2009 fall into several of these overlapping use cases, but primarily fall into the brand management and marketing operations category. Nonetheless, they all adopted Widen digital asset management tools to make creative workflows more streamlined, improve brand consistency and be more agile marketers.
Do you agree with the breakout of the types of Digital Asset Management systems above? How would your use cases agree or differ?
As I field questions from potential customers about adding video to their digital asset management system, I tend to field the same type of question. “I have a QuickTime file. Is that good?” That is really a loaded question. The next statement is….”It is 100 Megabytes. Is that good?”
I will attempt to explain how video bandwidth is the intersection where time length avenue and storage size street cross. Unlike an image file, video is a time-based media. It not only has a resolution, but it has a time length, over which the resolution is maintained. Compression is used to help keep quality up and files size down, but that is for another blog topic.
“Storage” is static….a 100 MB video file sitting in your video asset management system is much like a one gallon bucket of water sitting on a counter. “Bandwidth” has motion to it. If the video is 1 minute long, and you are watching it online, your internet connection (or pipe) will have exactly 60 seconds to pull through 100 MB of data. If we think of the water in the bucket, we will poor that water into the sink. The opening of the drain will need to be wide enough to let exactly 1 gallon of water through its opening in 60 second. Anything less will result in stuttered playback of the video.
Therefore, “bandwidth” is simply storage size divided by the total run time (TRT). For example, let’s say 10 people want to simultaneously watch a 7.5 MB (storage size), 60 second video (TRT). One thing to note is the difference between Megabyte (MB) and Megabit (bit). Storage is usually expressed in Bytes, and bandwidth is usually expressed in bits per second (bps). Note the use of lower case and upper case letter “b.” Also, there are 8 bits in one Byte.
Here’s the math for our example:
7.5 MB (total file size) ÷ 60 seconds (TRT) = 0.125 MBps X 8 (there are 8 bits in one Byte) = 1 Mbps (bandwidth)
1 Mbps is the “bandwidth” of the video. If 10 people simultaneously watch the video, you will need 1 Mbps X 10 people = 10 Mbps worth of available bandwidth for all 10 people to watch the video without stuttered playback. If we convert this to water in the sink, we would have 7.5 MB (file size) X 10 = 75 MB worth of water in the sink. The drain opening would need to be sized to allow 10 Mb of water through the drain per second (or 10 Mbps). This would allow all 75 MB worth of water to flow through the drain in exactly 60 seconds.
Your video asset management system may have enough storage to keep every video asset you have, but do you have enough bandwidth to facilitate the number of viewers you may have?
Have you ever wondered how that happens so quickly?
Widen helps make it happen. 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 and distribute them. As the official provider of licensed apparel for the NBA, NFL, 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 NBA Finals, Super Bowl and Stanley Cup Finals.
The Widen process helps Adidas retailers such as DICK’S Sporting Goods market championship apparel merchandise as soon you see the players wearing the t-shirts and hats after the game is over.
Widen Digital Sampling Process
- Photograph 1 neutral grey apparel sample
- Digitally create all color swatches according to league approved team colors
- Apply graphics according to Adidas supplied technical guidelines
Next, all Adidas digital samples are loaded into the Widen-powered web-based image library so that Adidas can manage them in one central location. The Widen web-based DAM holds all apparel and headwear styles for the current and coming sports season for the NBA, NFL and NHL. Since many of the physical apparel styles are not yet available in stores or online (or even physically produced), many of the images are on hold and are tightly controlled using Widen’s roles & permissions structure. 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 images for the Lakers and Nuggets so they could prepare their email marketing templates in advance of the final game of the Western Conference Finals.
An Inside Look at the Digital Samples Created for the NBA Hot Market
Conference Finals Locker Room Apparel – Caps and Tees prepared for all 8 Semifinals Teams
NBA Finals Apparel – Caps and Tees prepared for Lakers, Nuggets, Magic and Cavaliers
NBA Champion Apparel – Caps and Tees prepared for the Lakers, Magic and Cavaliers*
(*Interestingly, the Cavaliers were expected to make it to the NBA Finals so Widen prepares digital samples in advance of the final outcome. Widen staff are responsible for deleting all inaccurate/obsolete assets as soon as the outcome is determined.)
Enough physical samples are produced for the 2 teams in the Western Conference Finals, Eastern Conference Finals and NBA Finals.
The Widen Impact
As you can guess, the digital sample production and distribution process shaves weeks off the time to market versus the process of physically producing, photographing and shipping physical samples. 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 Widen Hosted Digital Asset Management:
- Accelerated search and retrieval time
- Increased real-time collaboration of assets and approvals
- Cost savings through the elimination of physical delivery
- Elimination of the cost of lost or misplaced work
- Reduction in time-to-market through digital delivery
Widen assists the Adidas Sports Licensed Division in many ways to increase multi-channel marketing efficiency and effectiveness. With the NBA Finals between the LA Lakers and Orlando Magic underway, Widen already has all of the championship merchandise digital samples ready to go.
While images have historically dominated the make up of digital asset management systems, the trends are showing a growing amount of video and audio files are growing as the dominant asset types. A more diversified digital asset library means that we’re dealing with much larger file sizes. Widen is embracing trends by giving customers the scalability they need to use video in their digital asset mix. It’s our job to say no problem and be prepared to handle the video demand. We’ve thought of the next step because we watch the trends and position the technology to best serve customer needs so that you don’t have to. Watch the video commentary.
Why is the DAM SaaS method less risky than the installed? I was in beautiful downtown Madison, WI at the University of Wisconsin this morning and I was inspired to communicate the risks. Check out the video.
Let us take a deadline for instance, aka the end of the game. You’ve got 24 seconds to find an image of your building to use in some Marketing collateral, and send off to an area Sales rep… GO! Now as you scramble through those stacks and stacks of CD’s, or jump from one folder to at this computer and run over to the next; Scottie has already had enough time to pull up Widen’s image management system, type in “building” which searches all associated metadata, grab his second cup of coffee, shoot the image off to the rep, all with enough time to watch his last second heroic highlight one last time.
Now I know 24 seconds might be inconceivable to you, most of your deadlines are a day or two, but think of all the extra time you would have. Don’t believe me? Why not take the 24 second Widen challenge? Send me a file of yours that is always “impossible” to find. Participate in an online demo with me, and if I cannot find that image in our database in less than 24 seconds, I will give you a $10 gift card to Amazon for every second I am over! Even Scottie admires our skills…
A prospective customer and I were discussing their current digital asset management vendor and DAM solution evaluation processes and how those have changed with the recent economic climate. They pointed to a previous software implementation they had gone through two years prior as a scenario that was one to learn from. During the evaluation process they had brought in a major consulting firm to help pinpoint their requirements, prepare a formal and lengthy RFP, evaluate responses, and prepare a risk assessment and so on. They ended up selecting a licensed software solution that cost them a couple hundred thousand dollars after the dust settled. That included the cost for the solution they purchased as well as the licenses for all of the required hardware and software needed to get it up and running. They also had to account for ongoing annual maintenance, training and implementation fees. What was surprising to me was that nearly a quarter of the cost was for the consultants.
They were never presented with a hosted option though some ASP providers were on the list of early vendors to look at. He couldn’t immediately recall why none of them were ever included on the list of vendors to receive the RFP though. I asked him if the consultant was involved in the implementation process at all and he confirmed that they had been. We got to talking about how DAM SaaS solutions provide the consulting and change management services as part of the package. Hosted solutions are designed to eliminate most of the heavy lifting and costs associated with licensed software implementations. Hosted providers typically bundle all of the costs into a single subscription fee of some kind, have fast and easy implementations and because they are working with their own software can make changes, configurations and even customizations fairly easily.
Consultants have a right to say that they save the customer countless thousands by ensuring they get a software solution to exactly match their requirements. They can make a case about hidden costs for hosted solutions and how many customers have no idea how their own businesses are even run and require a steady hand to figure it out. The prospect I was talking to was implementing another digital asset management system the first go around. This is in fact why we were speaking in the first place. They were in the market to replace the solution they had previously purchased with something that will work for them. The solution they originally chose is still not implemented and is only supporting a handful of administrative users at present, though they planned a rollout to thousands of people. This time around, they have decided to forego a formal evaluation process and speak directly to the vendors.
This session at The PIA Color Management Conference featured three industry experts who took the audience back in time and then took a peek into the future of color management technology. I will cover each speaker's presentation in a seperate blog post. First up is Dave Hunter...
Dave Hunter
Dave Hunter, President of Pilot Marketing and one of the founders of the conference, discussed the previous 10 years and reflected back on how things have changed since the conference's inception in 1999.
Dave began by talking about what he referred to as the "bleeding edge technology" of color management. "Bleeding edge technology means that the technology doesn't always work, and when it doesn't, you get cut. And depending on how bad it doesn't work, you bleed. And sometimes you bleed a lot. If I knew then, what I know now, I wouldn't be up in front of you talking today. Because I've lived through a lot of bleeding edge technology." Dave said.
Proprietary Systems
Looking back 10 years, Dave said that initially it was a very proprietary color world. Prepress color management systems only interacted with themselves, not other systems. The formation of the ICC in 1993 gave the industry an open platform so companies like Aldus, Adobe, Quark along with different RIPs could share the same profiles.
"Remember Pagemaker?" Dave asked while he talked about some of his early experience with color management when he was with Aldus. He would attend summit meetings with top software manufacturers (Agfa, Apple, Adobe...) to work through color problems. Dave said he learned a lot in those early days by writing down notes and listening to the conversations.
Dave discussed the state of the art in profiling in 1992. "At Kodak's labs in Bedford, MA, the hand held spectrophotometer took two of us to carry across the room, and costed around $15,000. "There were three of us that would take turns reading a 1,000 patch output target, one patch at a time. It would take approximately six hours to do. And to process this profile, would take about eight to ten hours." Dave said. He added that the state-of-the-art Mac IIci that was used would crash about half of the time. "An output profile would literally take 16 hours to make." Dave said.
The Holy Grail
Dave continued his stroll down memory lane by reminding the audience when color management was sold as the Holy Grail. Color management was oversold as something that will take bad images and make them good or "Child's Play" as Lino Color used to say. Or "Perfect color with your eyes closed." as ColorBlind claimed. "It never met expectations, and it was getting a pretty bad reputation because it was this never-ending promise that was never fulfilled." Dave said.
Anyone Remember this claim? "Perfect color with your eyes closed." Really?
Apple Trouble
Dave spoke about the turmoil at Apple in 1996 - 1997. In 1997 Apple considered dropping ColorSync until they figured out that it was unique and catered to it's core users: graphic arts and printing. Since then they have put a lot of resources into ColorSync and it helped save Apple as a company.
Some of the companies from 1998 that were making software or hardware for color management: Color Savvy, Logo, RIT80, Praxisoft, ColorBlind, Fuji, LightSource, Monaco, Optical, Heidelberg, GretagMacbeth, Techkon, Sequel Imaging. "Many of these companies are not around anymore." Dave said. He also referred to what he called the 2008 X-Rite Empire. LightSource, Monaco, GretagMacbeth, Sequel, Logo and Pantone are now all part of X-Rite. And although X-Rite bought out GretagMacbeth, Dave pointed out that more of the recent product releases have been GretagMacbeth products.
Enabling Technologies
Dave expanded on some of the enabling technologies to color management throughout the last ten years:
- LightSource Colortron 1997 - 2001
- First hand held sub $5000 spectrophotometer ($1500)
- Used software on a computer for intelligence
- ColorBlind software 1997 - 2000
- First to use 3D modeling so you could see what was happening with gamuts
- Standards Committees
- Dave McDowell, Larry Warter, Mike Rodriguez, Larry Steele worked tirelessly to provide the framework that enabled all of this color management technology. "These guys don't get enough credit. Because without them, this industry would really be in disarray." Dave said.
Education is Key
Dave wrapped up by emphasizing that education has always been an issue and it is still lacking. "I liken the analogy of color to an onion. Just when you think you know it all, there is another layer. And I'm still peeling back these layers of the onion because there's so much to it. And still crying along the way" he joikingly added.
Mark
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