Hosted Digital Asset Management

At the Henry Stewart digital asset management conference in New York and realized there is some confusion over hosted DAM and software as a service DAM. I attended the vendor round-up for SaaS providers of digital asset management systems and shot the video below.

Names are a big deal with marketing and creative groups; especially when it comes to the everyday business systems and applications you depend on to do your job. Choosing a name for your digital asset management system is key to a successful deployment in building user adoption internally and externally. Not all users of your DAM system will understand what “Digital Asset Management” is, so it’s common to choose a different, more identifiable name. This post will help you understand how to go about naming your digital asset management tool and provide some helpful ways of building a short list of possible names.

Best practices in naming your Digital Asset Management System:

• Choose a name that fits the department or functional area leading the project – e.g. marketing communications, creative, public relations, sales, etc.
• Choose a name that fits the primary group(s) of users of the system – internal or external – e.g. marketing partners, sales channels, dealers, etc.
• Choose a name that fits the types of assets that are most common – e.g. images, photos, videos, and marketing materials. If it’s all of the above, use a more general term such as media or brand assets.
• Choose a name that fits your organization, brand(s) or mission. ** The most important best practice because your DAM solution is the single point of management and access to your brand assets.

Quick Tips – Be Creative, Realistic, Memorable and Simple:

• Be Creative – Names that are catchy and fun are easier to remember.
• Be Realistic – Names that fit the purpose of the system set clear expectations.
• Be Memorable – Names that are easy to remember improve frequency of use.
• Be Simple – KISS. (You all know what that means...) Confusion turns users away.

Two and three word combinations work best in achieving the goal of being Creative, Realistic, Memorable and Simple. Typically, you will want to attach your organization or brand name to the front of the two-word or three-word name for your DAM system. For example, “Widen Video Library” or “Widen Brand Asset Portal.”


Chart for Picking a Two-Word Name for your DAM System:

Asset Type Descriptor	System Type Descriptor
Brand	Bank
Creative	Collection
Digital	Database
Image	Resource
Marketing	Tool
Media	Library
Photo	Toolkit
Video	Source
	Gallery
	Portal
	Collective
	System
	Center

Sample Two-word Names (Not including the Customer/Brand name):
Creative Library, Digital Gallery, Digital Toolkit, Image Library, Marketing Library, Marketing Toolbox, Media Database, Media Library, Media Source, Partner Portal

Sample Three-word Names (Not including the Customer/Brand name):
Brand Asset Library, Creative Resource Bank, Digital Image Gallery, Digital Media Library, Image Management System, Marketing Resource Center, Video Asset Library



The Widen Media Collective® Brand Name

Media Collective® is the trademarked name for the Widen digital asset management software suite and serves as the default name for Widen customer DAM systems unless you choose your own. Generally, the name will appear in the title of the web-based DAM system, login screen and header within the application. The standard web address is https://customer.widencollective.com.

What if we want a vanity web address?

There is no cost to select a custom name, however additional charges may apply for maintaining a custom vanity URL. Here’s an explanation of the vanity web address options:

Vanity Web Address Redirect: Organizations not wishing to use the standard web address of https://customer.widencollective.com may opt for a vanity web address that is redirected to the standard address. For example, you can direct users to http://WidenMediaCollective.com and they will be redirected to https://demo.widencollective.com when they arrive on the page.

Vanity Web Address: Organizations not wishing to use the standard web address of https://customer.widencollective.com may opt for a vanity web address that is NOT redirected to the standard address. For example, you can direct users to https://WidenMediaCollective.com and that will remain the core part of the URL string throughout their use of the system.

This is the eighth video in the series of Widen customer interviews with Jim Scarlata, Senior Marketing Operations Manager for Knaack LLC. In this segment, Jim talks about how in any business there are choices. The digital asset management market has clearly differentiated itself between hosted and installed solutions. To Jim, SaaS made the most sense five years ago and makes the most sense now. Regardless of the relationship, Scarlata explains that if Widen wasn’t performing, Knaack would have to look at replacing that system. However, Widen meets and exceeds expectations in all aspects of the service for managing digital media and brand assets. Watch the video to learn more about why Widen is Knaack’s choice for digital asset management software.

Many of my premedia / prepress clients have digital assets that require image extensions based on different uses. Their photo studio might have shot a certain scene in horizontal format, and the image is now needed in vertical for a different purpose. Another scenario may be a picture box in a page layout program ( Quark / InDesign ) is expanded by a graphic designer. The newly formed "white space" needs image data created. As is the case below. My client had a very nice legacy image that was retrieved from the image management system. This image needed to be versioned for a new purpose. My job was to use my high end Adobe Photoshop retouching and color correction skills to expand the bounds of the digital image, filling the new required space. The extension of this room scene wasn't as difficult as the image I posted in the prior blog. The wooden floor boards were easily stepped and repeated as necessary. You can see I did some selective masking and color correction on our clients amazing products.

Many of my premedia / prepress clients have digital assets that require image extensions based on different uses. Their photo studio might have shot a certain scene in horizontal format, and the image is now needed in vertical for a different purpose. Another scenario may be a picture box in a page layout program ( Quark / InDesign ) is expanded by a graphic designer. The newly formed "white space" needs image data created. As is the case below. My client had a very nice legacy image that was retrieved from the image management system. This image needed to be versioned for a new purpose. My job was to use my high end Adobe Photoshop retouching and color correction skills to expand the bounds of the digital image, filling the new required space. This particular image may have been the "trickiest" background extension this post processor has ever tackled. Using tricks such as vanishing point, content aware scaling, healing brush, and good ole' fashion cloning. The contour of the tile, light fall-off, and scene elements made this image fierce competitor, but in the end, the results were superb.

Many of my premedia / prepress clients have digital assets that require image extensions based on different uses. Their photo studio might have shot a certain scene in horizontal format, and the image is now needed in vertical for a different purpose. Another scenario may be a picture box in a page layout program ( Quark / InDesign ) is expanded by a graphic designer. The newly formed "white space" needs image data created. As is the case below. My client had a very nice legacy image that was retrieved from the image management system. This image needed to be versioned for a new purpose. My job was to use my high end Adobe Photoshop retouching and color correction skills to expand the bounds of the digital image, filling the new required space. This was on of the more tricky images I have worked. Using tricks such as vanishing point, content aware scaling, healing brush, and good ole' fashion cloning.

Careful selections, masking, and photo composition skills made this image possible. We now have a new media asset repurposed via high end prepress production.

Todays tip will involve using Lab color space in Adobe's Photoshop CS4. We'll make a curves adjustment layer, tweak the a / b channels, adjust the layer opacity, and BAM! Your photo just got more color than a new 64 pack of Crayola's ! Prepress color management and color manipulation done fast.

Step one, open your image and under "Edit" menu, use the Convert to Profile command, and choose Lab.

Step Two go to Layer, New Adjustment Layer, Curves

Why is it that IT departments want Digital Asset Management solutions that are installed on-site? Is it because they own it? Is it because they can customize it? Is it because they want their assets behind their firewall? These are all valid questions. DAM SaaS providers and SaaS adopters deal with these questions all of the time. There are answers to these questions, but the DAM project owners should ask these questions back to their IT managers as well.

The truth is you don’t own the installed software. You only own it if it’s a home grown solution and many large companies are finding that their home grown solutions, after years of development, do not compare to modern-day DAM solutions. Many home grown solutions don’t embrace the feature set, ease of use, and scalability of today’s enterprise-class DAM solutions. If you’re thinking an installed solution belongs to you, you’re not entirely correct. You don’t own the code. If you want to customize it, you must ensure the parts to customize fit with what your needs are and that you have the competency to customize it.

You’re still subject to the release cycles, support and professional services offered by the installed provider. There’s a certain level of expertise it takes to implement and maintain DAM software and many IT departments are not staffed with “DAM experts.” Consider the competencies of IT and the competencies required for a DAM implementation, ongoing maintenance and expansion. In most organizations, the IT team’s time is filled in maintaining the other business critical systems. Does DAM carry that high of a priority with IT?

Installed or SaaS, You Still Own Your Digital Assets

Whether you deploy an installed solution or work with a hosted provider, you still own the assets. It’s just a matter of where they live. Of course with an installed solution, they live behind your firewall. With a SaaS solution, your assets live in the hosted provider’s secure data center or the cloud. This is much like banking… you keep your money in a bank because you trust they can do a better job managing it than you can. Certainly, there are good reasons to have asset libraries on the client site. That’s why Widen introduced the Appliance. With the Widen Appliance, companies have replicated assets on-site to support internal creative operations and business continuity planning in the event of catastrophe causing the internet to go down.

One of the many reasons companies – big, medium and small – choose to work with a SaaS provider is because the hosted DAM provider has a better infrastructure to support a widespread network of internal and external users. A hosted provider can often offer greater scalability of the infrastructure. This includes scalability to scale resources up as the demand increases and scale the resources down when so much storage and bandwidth is not required. Scalable SaaS DAM deployments can be more cost-effective as they support a true pay for what you use model.

We had a prospective client share their DAM story with us last week and their needs matched up very closely with what Widen could provide in a hosted Digital Asset Management solution. They needed a central repository for images and videos, easy to use, easy to find assets, multiple levels of control and access, and asset tracking and usage reporting.

However, after learning the Widen online digital asset management solution matched up very well to the needs of this particular client, they came back to us saying that their IT department would only consider solutions installed on-site. Regrettably, Widen is a 100% DAM SaaS provider and delivers web-based DAM solutions where the asset libraries are hosted in Widen’s data center.

Do they want the internet installed too?

I thought it was interesting that this particular client’s IT team would only consider an installed solution since they’ve been unable to maintain the current system. This is something we hear all of the time. Ironically, most of their digital assets – images and videos – end up online. Do they want the internet installed too? If the destination for your digital assets is to be online, then wouldn’t it make sense for the digital asset management solution to be online as well?

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.

Consider the use and destination of your digital assets in defining your goals and needs with a DAM system. In a large organization with multiple divisions in multiple locations, an installed solution isn’t always the best option. Consider all internal and external users? Will the installed solution be the single point of reference for everyone in the organization? Will everyone adopt the solution or will people still work in the same siloed environments their used to? One of the main goals for deploying a DAM solution should be making it easy for users to access the system, enjoy using it and make it easy to get want they need so they will come back again.

Widen recognizes that digital assets need to be externally distributed, but also need to be internally consumed. Creative workflows demand hi-resolution files be accessible at local speeds. Marketing networks require remote access to the most current assets. Watch the video to learn more about the hybrid approach to digital asset management with the Widen Appliance as the creative workflow extension to the hosted model… entirely under the Software as a Service approach to DAM.

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.

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.

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 growing popularity of video is well documented... There are a number of reports available. They explain the power and attractiveness of using video, specifically in the enterprise environment.

More than 65% of companies are using online video and that number is expected to continue increasing (VideoBloom, 2009). (Remember an earlier post, Gartner Predicts 25 Percent of Content in the Workforce to be Images, Audio or Video by 2013.) 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.

Director of research and design at Stanford University's Persuasive Technology Lab, Dr. BJ Fogg, writes that for a consumer to make a purchase, it requires a “behavior change.” Fogg’s behavior model talks about the convergence of three things that need to happen for the change to occur – a trigger, ability and a motivation. Motivation is strictly tied to “sensation.” Inherently, video combines the use of more human senses than most other traditional sales and marketing tools. Read more about the reason "why" video use is on the rise in business marketing.

How does that impact Digital Asset Management? Video is a digital asset. As its popularity grows, enterprises will struggle to manage the creation, storage, and distribution of it. Video files are exponentially larger than text documents. Multiple copies of a file in multiple locations use even more storage. Version control is 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. Beyond that, an increase in video will also mean an increase in the amount of bandwidth required to serve the video – a requirement that many SMBs struggle with.

We can learn a lot just by looking at trends within Widen’s own organization and DAM software customer base. There are notable increases in not only the number of video assets being added to our DAM systems, but also in the rate of videos added per year. Due to the raw size of high resolution video, the percentage of the overall file size of our DAM taken up by video has grown extensively. Again, the rate of growth per year is also increasing as we choose to use video more and more for marketing, sales and customer service purposes.

From a sales and marketing standpoint, there are dramatic increases in the coverage of video as a topic in many of our sales calls, and in RFPs that we receive. There are a number of factors that are causing these increases. One is the growing popularity of video. Again, this is well documented. In addition, there is the entire social movement. For video, this requires organizations to not only produce video content, but to make it accessible and publish it to as many online video channels as possible.

An often unnoticed factor is the shift in video camcorder technology from “tape” to “tapeless.” Tape has been a crutch for video storage and backup for… well, for forever. With the new tapeless camcorders recording very high resolution files resulting in very large file sizes with no tape to put them on, suddenly, organizations are faced with storing, securing, backing up, and distributing files that are ten times the size of the files they are familiar with managing. And remember, it is GROWING!

Bottom line, the increasing demand for video will place demands on DAM software and digital asset hosting providers to make sure that video is handled seamlessly alongside all other assets.


Stats on video usage from VideoBloom's VIEW Index (Video-Enabled Web Index):
100 Web Sites Surveyed

In August of 2009, the VIEW main index for the 100 surveyed companies was 30-75-25, which indicates that 30% of the companies had video on their home page, 75% had video on their site, and 25% didn't use any video on their Web site.

• 41% of the 100 surveyed companies have placed their Web videos 1 click away from the home page.
• 25% of the surveyed companies have placed their Web videos deep into their Web sites, 3 clicks or more away from the home page.
• 25% use online video in an advanced manner: contextual integration of videos, variety of video players, call-to-action tied to the video.
• 32% offer a full-fledged "video center" comparable to a corporate TV channel.
• 21% give access to such video center directly from their home page (one click away).
• 12% display video ads for products on their site; 7% display video ads on their home page.
• 36% offer full-screen video option.
• 4% have video on auto-play (i.e. video starts as soon as the user lands on the page).
• 11% open video in a new browser Web page.
• 18% use a pop-up window to display video.

• Video uses: 48% of the surveyed web sites use video for promotional purposes, 24% use it for informational purposes, 20% use it for demonstrative purposes, 6% use it to deliver news, 5% use it for entertainment purposes, 1% use it for other purposes and 0% use it for UGC (user generated content). (The percentages don’t add up to 75% because many sites use online video for several different purposes.)

• Video formats: 61% use Flash video, 21% use Windows Media Player, 8% use QuickTime and 4% use Real Player. (The percentages don’t add up to 75% because some websites use more than one video format.)

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 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 I focuses on Widen's digital photography and photography workflow management capabilities 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.

This is a case of having a DAM customer, in which Widen provides the technology and service to manage thousands of images, take advantage of Widen’s expertise in premedia services to create their digital assets for this particular campaign.


Models and Apparel – Connecting one DAM Customer with another DAM Customer
Since this apparel customer wanted to use live models for the photo shoot at Widen, we were able to help because we have another DAM software customer that is a model and talent agency. In essence, we were able to connect one DAM client with another DAM client to complete the photo shoot. To get started, the apparel company was able to browse model shots by viewing assets from the Rock Agency online image management system and select the talent for the shoot.


Digital Photography, Review and Approval
When it came time for the shoot in Widen's photo studio, we brought in the models, photographer, and did all the make-up and styling so that we could capture a single garment before it was off to our digital sampling and color retouching departments to create all of the products and get them ready for the customer’s campaign.  (Learn more about Widen digital sampling and color retouching services in Part II.)

Leveraging Widen's online photo approval application, Widen could post the best shots for client approval before the models had even left the studio. Widen’s photo approval system allowed for same-day sign-off by the client who was over a thousand miles away.


Color Retouching, Image Management and Distribution
Once the preferred shots were selected, Widen’s Digital Sampling department created the other variations of the garments by applying logos, team names, numbers and names, etc. supplied in the client’s technical specs with Illustrator files. Widen's Color Retouching department also created the one-of-a-kind pieces by taking a photo of the garment on the mannequin and applying color retouching techniques to create quality digital apparel samples optimized for e-commerce websites. All of the final images were organized and managed in Widen’s online photo asset management system where the client could select the best shots for executing the campaign.


The end result helped the client achieve superior image quality and color consistency for the product images on the web to best represent the real-life garment.


Check out the Widen Premedia Workflow Study Part II - Digital Sampling and Color Retouching.

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.

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.



Is now the right time for you to implement Digital Asset Management programs?

• 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.