Image Distribution

This series of posts features a video interview with Jason Barinaga, Manager of eCommerce Initiatives, at Oceania Cruises, Inc. In this first video, Jason talks about the pitfalls with digital asset management at Oceania before Widen. Prior to implementing the Widen web-based digital asset management system, Oceania was using another proprietary DAM tool that wasn’t as powerful, robust or scalable as what they found with the Widen DAM solution. There were a number of limitations and, consequently, there was a lot of negative feedback from internal and external users who counted on Oceania brand assets for promotions and marketing collateral. Oceania did not have the ability to store, convert or transcode, and distribute high resolution images or video files, nor did their previous DAM system support the handling of PDF files and other corporate branding documents. Watch the video to learn more about digital asset management at Oceania Cruises before Widen DAM.

Throwdown with Bobby Flay, SmackDown from WWE, and now the SaaSisfaction Gauntlet from Widen. 

SaaSisfaction: The satisfaction levels of customers in a software world. My theory is that customers using software-as-a-service (SaaS) are happier with their overall experience than customers using installed software. I am throwing down the gauntlet and sharing our survey results from a recent set of questions that we asked our customers. This challenge is focused in the digital asset management industry.  

For those not familiar with digital asset management technology, systems, and services: marketers need help managing and distributing images and video files – in a nutshell, that's what a digital asset management system does. Of course there is much more but we're keeping it simple here.

In the digital asset management market there are big enterprise players, small desktop providers and everything in between. The buying cycle involves analyst reports, vendor conversations, product demos, feature-by-feature comparisons, reference checks, credit checks, vaporware, future truths, pointless RFP's, overcommitments – but the ultimate question that remains unanswered in the buying cycle is what is my service experience going to be after I sign up? How can we allow a customer to experience what it's going to be like before commitment? You can capture some of this from the analysts, demos, and references but sharing customer satisfaction survey results allows customers to understand what their satisfaction level might be throughout the relationship.

Hence the SaaSisfaction Gauntlet. We invite all the competitors in the digital asset management space to actively participate. Some of these competitors are listed on the recent analyst report by Theresa Regli at The Real Story Group available on the Enterprise Information Watch DAM Stream. Other competitors are listed on the bottom right of one of the best blogs in the digital asset management community at DigitalAssetManagement.org.uk. By all the competitors, I mean big and small – from the Open Text and Autonomy acquisitions to North Plains, MediaBeacon, Celum, Wave, Xinet, and Canto. There are lots, these are only a few. Come one, come all to the SaaSisfaction Gauntlet for the digital asset management market.  

Full Disclosure

In the interest of full disclosure, here are the details of how we ran our survey:

• There were 7 questions and 18 clicks with a $25 Amazon gift card incentive for completion
• We focused on the main contacts at each customer, amounting to 321 total invitations delivered
• The invitations were sent via email in two stages, the first email was sent to all main contacts on 05/12/10 and the next email was sent on 05/27/10 to all those that did not reply to the first invite
• We received 121 responses equating to a 37.7% response rate from 73 unique companies

The Survey Questions

A copy of the survey that you should use is located here: Download Survey Structure 

We used SurveyMonkey.com with a Widen logo in the upper left. Substitute Widen for your organization's name and that's all the changes you need to make. The questions and structure are available at the aforementioned link in addition to the questions below:

1) Please rate your experience with <DAM Company> in the following areas: (4 options given: Excellent, Good, Adequate, Poor)

• Responsiveness of our service teams
• Communicating clearly and effectively
• Keeping you informed of our progress
• Collaborating with you and your team
• Performance of systems/applications
• Product functionality meets your expectations
• Providing value for the money
• Meeting overall project objectives

2) Overall, how do you rate the quality of <DAM Company> products and services? (4 options given: Excellent, Good, Adequate, Poor)

3) Would you recommend <DAM Company> to other organizations? (2 options given: yes or no)

4) What is your perception of the advancements in <DAM Company> technology (6 options given: Ahead of the Curve, Just About Right, Getting Better, Not Fast Enough, Stagnant, Behind the Times)

5) How likely is it that you will continue to use <DAM Company> in the future (5 options given: Certain, Very Likely, Somewhat Likely, Unlikely, Very Unlikely)

6) If you have any comments or suggestions regarding how <DAM Company> could improve the services or performance, please enter them in the box below. (1 option given: enter free form text)

7) To receive your $25 gift card from Amazon, please provide your information below and the gift certification will be emailed to you. (4 fields displayed: Name, Company, Email, Phone)

A Few Guidelines

Set up the survey using the same questions and incentive:

• Share the results on your web site or blog post (I'm sure the digital asset management blogs will pick it up and post it for us as results come in)
• Share the quantity of open ended responses for question #6 understanding that ideas from customers possess product advancement ideas that may be used for differentiation
• Disclose your invitation methods, list quantities, response rate and unique companies responding 
• I'd like to say there is a minimum number of participants, let's say at least 50 unique companies represented but even if you have less than that, it's ok, the information will be revealed in your disclosure

Widen Results

We have already setup the questions, disclosed our methods, shared our response rate and participation, so now I invite you to see the results of the Widen customer satisfaction survey for free at widen.com. There is a form requesting your information so please provide complete contact info. I already understand competitors are interested in this information so there is no need to register as ABC company with a fake email address. With our web analytics we already know how many times you visit our pages and which pages you visit. So just use your real information.

Sign-up to receive the Widen SaaSisfaction Gauntlet Customer Survey Results

Looking forward to seeing how satisfied your customers are relative to Widen customers.

Good luck!

Aberdeen Group recently launched a new benchmark report titled “Marketing Asset Management: Managing Brand Compliance in Distributed Marketing Environments,” authored by Peter Ostrow, Research Director, Sales Effectiveness for Aberdeen Group. The report examined 136 organizations that have deployed marketing asset management (MAM) solutions and found that 100% of the top performing companies improved their return on marketing investments, compared to 26% in other companies. This report from Aberdeen Group follows last year’s Digital Asset Management benchmark study “The Marketers Guide to Justifying Investments in Digital Asset Management.”

According to the study, managing marketing compliance and brand consistency across business units and geographies are among the top priorities of marketing managers and CMOs in 2010. Many organizations continue to stifle efficiency and waste money on unproductive, decentralized marketing resource management processes. As organizations attempt to operate as efficiently and effectively as possible under volatile market conditions and often with fewer resources, MAM solutions empower sales and marketing teams to maximize return on marketing investments by centralizing and improving accessibility to approved marketing resources.
 
The report reveals what leading companies have been able to achieve through deployment of marketing asset management solutions, including:

• 24% average year-over-year increase in annual revenue compared to 2% increase in other companies
• 32% average year-over-year improvement in return on marketing investment compared to 4% average decrease for other companies
• 18% average year-over-year improvement in brand consistency compared to 2% improvement by other companies

Common characteristics among companies enjoying Best-in-Class performance include:

• 79% deploy a library asset management system for their marketing assets
• 75% use ROI estimates to cost-justify marketing investments
• 71% provide the marketing department with access to all digital assets, allowing them to re-purpose or re-use content and images
• 62% have a process in place to disseminate information on best practices in managing marketing assets to both sales and marketing

Obtain a complimentary copy of the Marketing Asset Management report from Aberdeen Group.

Visit Research.Aberdeen.com for additional access to complimentary Customer Management Research.

Learn more about Marketing Asset Management from Widen.

I’ll be the first to admit… Digital Asset Management is not that sexy. As a marketing guy, it’s hard to get excited about databases. However, the content stored in a DAM system is another story… Of all the content types, digital assets—particularly images and videos—got to be the sexiest! Consider the growth and popularity of online video... Gartner Predicts 25% of content in the workforce to be images, audio or video by 2013.

I understand… you have a limited marketing budget so you’d rather spend that budget on things like social media, search engine optimization, video players and other “cool things.” Isn’t that convenient… Digital Asset Management is the backbone of your marketing efforts because it allows you to better find, manage and repurpose these assets that are the lifeblood of your marketing and promotion campaigns. Social media, digital asset optimization, and video marketing programs all use digital assets as a core part of the marketing message.

If you’re not sure you need DAM, then you may want to read my last post (Why we don’t need DAM…). I apologize for the overabundant use of sarcasm. Yes, small to medium-sized businesses need DAM just as much as marketing teams at Fortune 500 enterprises. And yes, there are still mid-market digital asset management solutions out there… few and far between… but they’re out there.

Step 1 – Admit you have a DAM problem. Step 2 – Seek help.

Now, more on making the case for digital asset management software in your marketing operations. Reference the recent eMarketer article “Marketers Buzz About ROI” that discusses the Marketing priorities for 2010. Many US marketing executives were planning to increase budgets this year as they were much more optimistic about the economic outlook in February 2010 than in 2009 when the recession was in full swing. However, that doesn’t come without scrutiny because the number one priority is focusing on ROI.

Priority #1: Increase Marketing Return on Investment —according to the “Marketing Trends Report 2010” from Anderson Analytics and the Marketing Executives Networking Group (MENG).



Priority #1 as it relates to DAM—explained. You’ve made investments in the creation of digital media—photo shoots, retouching, video shoots, editing, stock and rights-managed photography purchases, etc. You’ve made investments in assembling the destination points for your digital media—websites, blogs, social networks, advertising, promotions and print. Now, it’s time to invest in a digital asset management product that will help you realize a maximum return on those investments by getting greater use out of your digital assets. DAM tools make those assets easy to find, distribute, reuse and repurpose while also allowing you to track, compare and measure their value.

Priority #2, 3, 4 & 5 will be introduced and explained in later posts. However, point 3 and 5 deal with brand loyalty and branding—another reason why companies invest in DAM technologies.

Focus on Marketing ROI – Reference the 2009 AberdeenGroup DAM Benchmark Report. Best-In-Class companies are using Digital Asset Management systems to improve efficiency, increase brand consistency and improve return on marketing investments. See the key charts from the report in the blog post for “The Marketers Guide to Justifying Investments in Digital Asset Management.”

AberdeenGroup found that best-in-class companies centralizing access to digital assets are two times more likely to use a DAM system for the marketing functions. These same best-in-class companies reported a 23% year over year reduction in time to market and an 18% increase in average return on marketing investments. On the other hand, time to market increased by 11% for DAM laggards and average return on marketing investment fell by 17%.


Download the whitepaper "Why Digital Asset Management Should Be Your First Technology Investment for 2010" to learn more about how DAM adopters achieve substantial return on investment including reducing time to market, improving the performance of marketing campaigns, reducing marketing costs and improving brand consistency.

The Bottom Line

DAM is not all that sexy, but you can’t ignore the fact that you need it to power your marketing operations and improve marketing ROI. In today’s distributed marketing environment, shared drives, FTP, CDs/DVDs and tape libraries won’t cut it. Your marketing partners need instant access to your digital assets and you must be able to find, reuse and repurpose assets multiple times and in multiple locations. Marketers don’t just rely on one channel anymore. We are all multi-channel marketers and publishers.  To do more with less, be a more productive marketer and get more out of the investments in creating and distributing assets, you need an asset management system.

Step 1 – Admit you have a DAM problem. Step 2 – Seek help.

Lucky for you, Widen provides DAM as Software as a Service provider, which means YOU GET HELP. With 100% DAM SaaS, you keep on marketing – no IT resources necessary. SaaS includes: guided implementation, shared best practices, help desk available when you need it, admin and end-user training, promotional support, automatic upgrades, ongoing maintenance and technical support. Learn more about Widen DAM SaaS.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Roles and Permissions allow…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Digital Marketing and Digital Asset Management

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

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

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

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

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

What’s the big deal about DAM SaaS?

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

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

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

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

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

An Integrated Approach to Marketing

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

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

What DAM Provides to Digital Media and Brand Assets:

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

Driving Brand Awareness with DAM

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How does a Digital Asset Management system work?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

I think there is a bit of a brand misconception that has brewed for years. I’m not here to say one is less mushy than the other. I think the proof is in the pudding. Even more so, I dare say a global statement like “Nikon’s colors are this or Canon’s colors are that” is a bit ... ah, um, well, ignorant. How can you summarize a whole brand of various product and technology in one quick categorization? That’s like saying “all GM cars are slow gas guzzlers” or “everyone from California is a pretty movie star.”
 
In my humble opinion, the mushiness stems from lack of skill from camera to output. Sure Canon or Nikon might have weakend the CFA for better transmissiveness. A less dense CFA means possibly having less separation between hue and less defined chroma details. If you have ever worked in prepress or premedia, most of the time you don’t have the luxury of controlling the capture stage. All too often you’re handed a digital file that has suffered from bad decision making from the start. No matter. Get this file into the hands of a skilled color production artist and stand back! Like the Army, a savvy color correction specialist knows how to let the file “be all it can be.” Gazillions of tricks have been created to solve every image problem possible. This is the part where I typically insert before and after images of various wars and miracles I have courageously battled thru. Well, not today mister. No Sir, Today I’m going to give you a RAW file you can do your own R&D with. Today I let you, this here blog reader, download one of my precious RAW files to examine for yourself. (Just don't take credit for the shot and distribute it please!) Today you can process the file however you deem appropriate and make your own assessment(s).
 
Does Canon have mushy colors?
 
I would recommend you process the file in DPP, Canon’s proprietary RAW processor. In doing so, you will have honored all the integrity of the file and the decisions I made at capture time. Yes I know, not everyone has DPP, unless you bought a camera from Canon, you won’t have access. That’s why I also am providing you a full res JPEG to boot! A JPEG that has been exported from DPP with all the nifty decisions I made. (Hopefully I didn’t select the mushy color button!) And, just so you know, I also shoot with a Nikon D3, D300, D200, and medium format. I’m no fan boy. My loyalty is not to some camera making company. So for those of you who want to dig and find out, “Does Canon have mushy colors”, feel free to download the zip file located at the end of this rambling, and make your own assessment. Good-day-mate!

Download: Zip file containing the RAW Canon 5D Mark II Image and Jpeg Exported from DPP


Keywords: Photography, Color Manipulation, Correction, Retouch, RAW, Processing, Digital Image Management, Image Distribution, Canon, Nikon, Digital, Photo, Professional

Do you want all the latest and greatest news and updates about Widen digital asset management programs and premedia services?  Become a Fan of Widen on Facebook.

The Widen Facebook fan page provides a central location for everything “Widen” with links to all of the latest articles, news, blogs, videos, photos and more.

Become a fan of Widen on Facebook and join in on the conversations.



Introduction to the main features of the Widen Facebook Fan Page:

The Wall – View a log of the latest article placements, mentions in trade publications, press releases, blogs and member commentary.  Some of the more notable recent postings include links to Widen articles in Adotas, ebizQ, DM News, Corporate Media News, Multichannel Merchant and the American Marketing Association’s Marketing Power.com. You can also find Widen quotes and client successes in recent trade publications including KMWorld, Processor.com and Big Picture Magazine. 

Info – Catch a glimpse of Widen with a short company overview, mission and product snapshot.

A sample of the Widen Product snapshot:

Widen Media Collective - A web-based digital asset management software application for creating, managing and distributing photos, videos, marketing materials and other digital media.

Premedia Services - photography, color retouching, digital sampling, catalog production, color management and wide format printing.

Photos – Check out Widen photo albums including Widen magazine covers from the premedia open house, Widen company kickball, black and white historical images of Widen Engraving Co., and portfolios of Widen Digital Sampling, Color Markups and Color Retouching.

Videos – Watch Widen’s latest photoshop magic premedia viral videos and get 1-on-1 with Widen’s CEO and other subject matter experts.

Other areas of interest on the Widen Facebook page include RSS feeds of all the latest blogs covering  Widen’s areas of expertise, links to other industry resources, and favorite pages linking to the fan pages of Widen Customers.

To learn more, become a Fan of Widen on Facebook.