Marketing Digital Asset Management

I’m Jake Athey and I’ve been with Widen since May 2004. I work with a variety of marketing people, marketing technologies and marketing practices every day. That might sound a bit mundane, but if you’re reading my blog you know better! We are in the most exciting time to be in marketing.

I’m privileged to be the user and administrator of several popular marketing technologies including customer relationship management, campaign management, digital asset management, email marketing, blogging, and social media management platforms. (If you’ve landed on my blog on purpose, I’m sure you can relate to some the same challenges and experiences...)
 
While the abundance of marketing channels and globalization continue to be key challenges for every organization, the amount and types of digital content is rising exponentially as new marketing channels emerge. This makes effective management and efficient use of content critical to maximizing return on marketing investments. My blog focuses on the technologies that allow marketing departments to capture, store, retrieve, manage and apply digital content. Here, you’ll find commentary and resources about digital asset management, marketing trends, news and events with Widen and the world around us.

No doubt, reading digital asset management software reviews and experiences from other DAM users is an important step in the vendor evaluation process. Our goal is to provide a clear link to the customer reviews provided by Widen Digital Asset Management customers.

The Widen Media Collective is among the top reviewed products on the Digital Asset Management Software Directory by Capterra. View all Digital Asset Management Software Tools listed by Capterra.



Read all Widen Digital Asset Management Software Reviews on Capterra.com

If you are a Widen customer administrator, we invite you to submit a Widen Collective v5.5 Review on Capterra.

See what other digital asset management customers are saying and watch Widen Customer Interviews.

Contact us and we’ll send you a collection of exclusive resources (including third-party articles and whitepapers) to assist in your DAM research process.


More Digital Asset Management Software Reviews & Research Resources:

• VocabControl Blog Post: Procuring a Digital Asset Management system
• CMSWire Article: Poll Results: Usability is Top Digital Asset Management (DAM) Challenge
  
• Enterprise Information Watch DAM Channel: Digital Asset Management blog posts
• DigitalAssetManagement.com Resource Site: Authoring An RFP

Enthralled in the LeBron James buzz that is “The Decision,” Widen has been part of the “madness” that follows the announcement of the NBA's marquee free agent to leave the Cleveland Cavaliers for the Miami HEAT.

The Widen digital sampling process and web-based digital asset management technologies allow the adidas Sports Licensed Division (SLD) and retailers of NBA jerseys and apparel to start selling LeBron James hot market products within 12 hours of the decision going public. Sources report that the LeBron James number 6 Miami HEAT jerseys are selling like hotcakes and are expected to produce record numbers within the first week.

The LeBron James jersey samples you see on e-commerce sites like FansEdge.com and ESPNShop.com were digitally created by Widen’s digital sampling premedia production team. This saves the adidas Sports Licensed Division time and costs of photographing the physical product samples and beats the need to mass produce the products before they can be sold. In cases like this where the jerseys and apparel are being marketed and sold within hours of “the decision” going public, Widen’s process and expertise plays a key role in meeting the hot market demands.

Here’s the breakdown of the steps for the LeBron James hot market orders surrounding the special telecast of "The Decision" on ESPN Thursday, July 8 at 9:00 PM Eastern time:

1.  Widen received digital sampling orders from the adidas SLD on Thursday 7/8/2010 for all scenarios to James’ decision.

2.  Widen prepared digital samples of the blank team jerseys (front and back) for each possibility including the Cleveland Cavaliers, Miami HEAT, New York Knicks, Chicago Bulls, New Jersey Nets and Los Angeles Clippers.

3. Widen digital sampling technicians added the player name (JAMES) and number (6) to the appropriate team blank (Miami HEAT) at 4:00AM CST on 7/9/2010.

4. The final digital samples were added to the adidas SLD Media Collective web-based digital asset management system and images were sent to the customers by 9:00AM CST on 7/9/2010 to be marketed and sold worldwide.





For more information about Widen apparel marketing technology and premedia services, check out the Widen Digital Sampling blog or download the DAM as SaaS 2.0 white paper  featuring a Reebok case study.

Digital Asset Management technologies have become essential to efficient and effective marketing operations in 2010 and beyond. DAM is linked to having a direct impact over the top marketing priorities for 2010.

Anderson Analytics recently performed a study that measured, among other things, the importance of various marketing trends to top marketing executives such as Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs). The “Marketing Trends Report 2010” survey was completed between January 11, 2010 and February 8, 2010 by respondents who are members of Marketing Executives Networking Group, hold a position of Vice President or higher and have a minimum base salary of $160,000. The survey showed that the top priorities of the executives are: Marketing ROI, Customer Retention, Brand Loyalty,  Positioning/Differentiation, Branding, Customer Satisfaction and Social Media.



It's interesting to note that Digital Asset Management (DAM) can have an important impact on each of these priorities specified by the top marketing executives themselves. DAM software addresses these priorities by providing a central repository for digital media files and a set of tools to store, manage the approval of, find and convert these files to increase their value in the marketing process. DAM systems also make complete or selected subsets of the organization's digital media resources easily available to authorized users such as sales representatives, channel members, the media, etc. These capabilities can have a far-ranging impact on the marketing organization and the enterprise as a whole.

Download the white paper to learn more about how Digital Asset Management can assist with:

• Increasing return on marketing investments
• Raising customer retention rates
• Improving brand loyalty and brand consistency
• Positioning and differentiating products
• Increasing customer satisfaction

Download: How Digital Asset Management Can Help Achieve Top Marketing Priorities

What does it mean to reuse a digital asset? What does it mean to repurpose a digital asset?
These two terms are used interchangeably all of the time in the Digital Asset Management (DAM) space.

Do these terms mean the same thing to you?

The goal of this post is to introduce how I distinguish the concepts of RE-USING and RE-PURPOSING digital assets. Join the conversation by submitting a comment as I’m interested in understanding your take.

Digital assets are generally developed for one of three reasons:

• To make money in businesses where the assets are the actual products being sold, like digital music or movie downloads.
• To market and/or sell products or services where the digital assets represent the product(s) being sold—for example, product images in a catalog or Web site.
• To reinforce a brand image or build brand equity, like a brand logo or logo representing a special occasion such as “60 years of service.”

The goal for any digital asset produced is to get as much value out of that asset as possible. Maximizing the value of a digital asset is accomplished by getting as much use (work) and result (return) from that asset. The way we measure results and return varies because there are tangible and intangible methods of measurement. I’ll save the methodology for determining the value of digital assets for later posts…That's a complex subject. For now, let’s clarify the difference between re-using and re-purposing digital assets, as I see it.

RE-USE – To reuse a digital asset is to employ the asset for the purpose in which it was created more than one time.

For example, this image was developed for use in a specific PowerPoint presentation. The first time that presentation is “created” or “given” then that is the point in which the asset is first “used.” The more times the asset is used in another presentation (separate slide deck – OR – staged appearance), then it is being “re-used” for the purpose in which it was produced. Reusing or re-presenting the original PowerPoint presentation or re-deploying the slide (or slides) that contain that digital asset would count toward the number of times it is “re-used.” Again, the reason the image asset was produced in the first place was for use in one or multiple PowerPoint presentations.

RE-PURPOSE – To repurpose a digital asset is to utilize the asset (in its original form or modified) for a new and different purpose than which it was originally produced.



Again, let's say the common image in these examples above was originally developed for use in a PowerPoint presentation; however it was “re-purposed” for use on a website, in a brochure, in a promotional video, conference poster, Facebook page, and Twitter background. It is used in places different than its original intended purpose, thus it is “re-purposed.” The more an asset is repurposed, the more value it provides.

Repurposing is so commonplace in today’s multi-channel marketing environment that it is the standard. Everyone must deploy their message across multiple mediums in order to get the greatest impact and maximize the ROI in the time and money spent producing that asset. As marketers, if there is one thing we have learned over the last few years, we are expected to “do more with less.” It is also incumbent upon us to take advantage of all the latest cost-effective digital marketing vehicles that have come about. Advancements in technology, creativity, digital media management and digital asset optimization mean the emphasis is on efficiency.

Learn about the four key ratios in digital asset management that help customers realize the value of their digital assets. Among those four success metrics with digital asset management programs is the Repurposing Ratio. Download the whitepaper – Maximizing the Value of Digital Assets – to learn more about the Repurposing Ratio.

Read the related article on ChiefMarketer.com – Derive More Value From Your Digital Assets.

Widen recently had an article published on ChiefMarketer.com – Derive More Value From Your Digital Assets – discussing the role of digital asset management tools in maximizing the value of your digital media and brand assets.

Here’s an excerpt from the article…

An old episode of “Saturday Night Live” spoofed a real commercial, showing two characters arguing over whether the can they were holding was a floor wax or a dessert topping. After about 10 seconds of animosity, a chuckling Chevy Chase stepped in and said, “Hey you two, it’s a floor wax AND a dessert topping.”

That skit demonstrated how everyone feels good when they get more than one use out of something they buy. Wow—I can put it on my pumpkin pie and see myself in my kitchen floor? I must’ve done well when I bought it!


The same mindset is pervading the world of digital assets, particularly in a cost-conscious economy. Organizations are looking to maximize the value of all their digital assets, both to reduce up-front costs and increase the ROI on every expenditure.

That’s why digital asset management (DAM) has become so important to organizations large and small. It provides a way to centralize the organization’s digital assets, ensuring not only that the correct and most current version is being used, but also that it isn’t being duplicated unnecessarily.

Digital assets are generally developed for one of three reasons:

• To make money in businesses where the assets are the actual products being sold, like digital music or movie downloads.
• To market and/or sell products or services where the digital assets represent the product(s) being sold—for example, product images in a catalog or Web site.
• To reinforce a brand image or build brand equity, like a brand logo or logo for a special occasion such as “60 years of service.”

Maximizing the value of those digital assets is accomplished by getting as much use or work and result or return from that asset.

There are two basic ways to do that. You can either re-use a digital asset, which means employing it for the purpose it was created more than once, such as an image created for a specific PowerPoint presentation that is then used in other presentations. Or you can re-purpose the asset, that is, use the image created for one medium in a different one. An example of re-purposing would be to take the image created for the PowerPoint presentation and use it in a brochure, on a Web page, on a Facebook fan page, or in an e-mail marketing piece. Each method creates a different type of value for the asset.

Read the rest of the article at ChiefMarketer.com - Derive More Value From Your Digital Assets

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.

We’re SaaSing back at the conventional wisdom of IT because DAM doesn’t need to be so difficult! Read our article in today’s ECM Connection newsletter--SaaSing Back without Getting Smacked. Here's a bit from that article...

Gartner put out a report in 2008 that indicated the SaaS model has become increasingly popular during the last three to four years. The report said more than 40% of organizations have used SaaS for more than three years and nearly 90% of organizations surveyed expect to maintain or grow their usage of SaaS, citing the following as primary reasons for adoption:

Immediate Deployment
SaaS services are immediately usable and begin returning on the investment immediately.

Service is Just as Important as Technology
Service providers supply implementation, training, software, integration, maintenance, upgrades, and support as part of the total package and are staffed to handle each component themselves.

Infinite Scalability
Software-as-a-service providers are already geared up to handle scalability so when you need to go from 100GB to 100TB, even for 24 hours, you can do it and only pay for what you use.

Lower Price Points and Total Cost of Ownership
Service providers are sharing in the power of user communities, shared technology, and innovation to keep costs down and price points that make installed software pricing look ridiculous. Also, no additional resources needed in a complete software-as-a-service model. No extra IT maintenance is required.


It’s the start of a new month, new quarter and new victories to be had… Are you ready to start increasing your Marketing ROI with Digital Asset Management?

When marketing teams implement Digital Asset Management software technologies to centralize, repurpose and track marketing and brand assets, they’re better equipped to:

• Maintain brand consistency and compliance across all media channels and selling channels in different geographic markets

• Reduce time to market with new campaigns by finding existing materials quickly and easily in ready-to-go file formats appropriate for the intended purpose

• Eliminate redundancies creating and distributing assets by reducing the need to recreate lost assets or depend on slower, manual processes for sending files

• Get internal teams and external partners on the same page with access to the same library of marketing and sales materials, collaboration tools and collateral customization

Widen makes it simple because 100% DAM SaaS provides you with a guided implementation (including training), automatic upgrades, and powerful web-based DAM without the burden on your internal IT resources.

We’ve reloaded our Demo site and invite you to check it out! Get acquainted with web based digital asset management and take the tour on your own.

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.

I work in a small marketing team of about five. We have a designer, a product manager, a brand manager, a marketing assistant and an online marketer. We work closely with the sales and customer success management teams. We often collaborate with the account executives and project services teams on projects. Basically, anyone with a customer-facing role depends on Marketing and Marketing depends on them.

Like many organizations, our marketing communications programs include online marketing, public relations, brand management, event marketing, etc. We produce a number of digital assets that are put to use promote our brand, sell products and services and assist with customer relationship management objectives. These digital assets are owned and created by a number of different people across multiple departments inside the organization and externally. Each department has their own shared folder on the network and many employees also have their own folder as well. It’s easier for each department to work separately and for each employee to keep their work on their desktop. When we have a new project, we just start fresh in creating new materials. It’s just easier to re-create something than go digging through some archive somewhere or turn to someone else.

If for some reason, someone needs something that someone else has worked on, we’ll just email it or post it to the FTP. Sometimes, the materials get too large for email so we’ll just use web-based delivery programs like YouSendIt or something like that. There are all sorts of tools or methods we can turn to… no need to settle on one. If someone needs a logo or letterhead, they can always email our designer and she can stop what she’s working on and send them whatever it is they need. Sometimes it might take a few emails to get it right, but that’s ok she’s paid by the hour.

It’s common for teams to email a project file back and forth a dozen times and still see mistakes in the end. “She said this” and “he said that” and the project file morphs into something totally different than expectations called for. They should have given better directions and should have done a better job keeping track of changes. Version 1… version 2… version 7… Who cares what was done to which version and where they’re at? That’s just part of internal communication breakdowns that all businesses have. Why should Marketing care?

It doesn’t really matter to Marketing that different departments have their own libraries of materials and guidelines that they follow—we don’t have that strong of a brand presence anyway. Inconsistency is just part of business and “brand consistency” is a made up marketing term anyway… it has no financial impact. If companies would just spend more time selling and less time on branding then they’d be more successful, right?

Although it’s a pain in the neck, working with agencies or other partners is another part of marketing. If we work with an agency on a brochure, video or website we’ll just assume they’re keeping all of the original files, master assets and anything else they produced. If we need it later, we’ll just email the agency and wait for them to send a CD with the final files. Hopefully, they’ve kept all the files even though it’s been a couple years since the project. Why should we be care what happened to the files or if we have them later? ...Chances are we’ll never use them again.

If only Sales could do their job. It’s not Marketing’s problem to look after the crap sales teams put together. If our sales teams put together poor-quality presentations and lose a deal, then that’s their fault… they should have done a better job. They deal directly with our customers, they should get it right. If they’re putting together presentations on the road or working after five, then it’s not Marketing’s problem if there’s no one at the office to track down and send them the files they need. They should be better prepared.

Why should Marketing care what materials are accessed by whomever, used wherever and what impacts they had. All we want to do is create content and move on. If that old logo was used for the new proposal, that’s not Marketing’s fault. If that image for the new campaign was used before it was to be available for general use, that’s not Marketing’s problem. Why should we care what materials were used the most or had the greatest impact? We know what’s best because we’ve always done it that way. That’s Marketing for you… the department that doesn’t require accountability or intelligence.

We don’t need a digital asset management system. Or do we?

“IT wants our Digital Asset Management solution installed at our location.” … I’m sorry to remind you Marketing but are you sure IT knows what is best for you? Does IT do everything else you want? Do they provide the timeliness in response you need? Have they ever dropped the ball on a project before? Do you ever get the feeling like you’re left on an island? I don’t mean to bring IT down or even make reference that you’re IT department is lacking in support for marketing, but we’ve seen it time and time again… IT has way too many other business critical responsibilities and projects going on to give little ole marketing the attention it needs. Marketing requires immediacy in action and a certain degree of understanding of your processes.

Marketing, remember to consider your DAM needs first. You have the right to work with a team that understands creative and marketing workflows. You have the right to a timely and guided DAM software implementation. You have the right to have your administrators and DAM users receive the proper training they deserve. You have the right to have a help desk with DAM specialists that can help when you and your users have questions. You have the right to receive regular upgrades with new features and innovations in DAM and marketing technology. You have the right to contribute ideas and feature requests. You have the right to have a system that is scalable to grow with your needs. You have the right to have a DAM system that can work with other systems. You have the right to a responsive team that can restore digital assets that are accidentally deleted. You have the right to have the peace of mind to know your digital assets will always be accessible. You have the right to know what you’re paying for and only pay for what you use. You have the right to know that your digital asset management programs will be a success.

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.

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.

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

The answer options to the poll question include:

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

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

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




Let’s talk “Usability”

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

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


Diving Deeper into DAM Data with “Analytics”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Finding It All While Saving A Bundle

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

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

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

SOURCE: GISTICS


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


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

Digital Marketing and Digital Asset Management

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

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

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

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

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

What’s the big deal about DAM SaaS?

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

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

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

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

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

An Integrated Approach to Marketing

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

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

What DAM Provides to Digital Media and Brand Assets:

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

Driving Brand Awareness with DAM

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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