DEAR DR. DAM:  I’m a Director of Marketing for a sporting goods company.  We have three different divisions and each of them have their own separate archives of marketing materials and brand assets.  As the head of the marketing activities for the enterprise, I’m challenged with needing to minimize costs by centralizing all of our marketing content.  Our distributors and dealers have been begging for more online capabilities to access and assemble materials for POP displays, signage and advertisements.  I’m in search of an easy to use application that would allow all of our divisions to centralize their creative content including POP displays, ads, images, graphics and other collateral and share it with our sales network.  It must be scalable for all but separate for each division because of different workflows and brand recognition.  Can you help?

DEAR SKATING FOR SAVINGS SAM:  I have a system in mind and it rhymes with “hidin’.”  They can set you up with a hosted digital asset management system that can provide you with one central location for everyone to access, one database for all assets, but have separate site skins to represent each individual brand.  In fact, with the robust roles and permissions structure, you can keep users and assets separate in addition to different features and workflows specific to each division.  You’ll find cost savings from a reduction in capital investments for I.T. with web based DAM, in addition to a tremendous amount of soft dollar savings by automating redundant administrative tasks and creating more efficient workflows internally and externally.  You’ll be more effective with all marketing activities using a DAM system as users reuse and repurpose your rich media.  For divisions that need to provide sales channels with access to not only find materials for POP, signage and ads, the Widen Media Builder will allow dealers to build customized materials specific to location, special events and other promotions within brand compliance guidelines.  I know you’ll find cost savings and satisfaction from you users.