Guest Blog Post from Karin Schei, Widen Marketing Coordinator

With the ever changing advancements in marketing software, the world of digital asset management is constantly evolving.  Today, there is a greater demand for the creation and consumption of digital media than ever before and that means here at Widen, we are constantly developing ways for clients to manage and deliver rich media.  Right now, we are working on a new feature that will allow clients to create a direct link to digital assets stored in the master repository to the online medium where they are used and consumed.  This means no more worrying about whether updates within the DAM system are being received by everyone – with DAM as the master platform – it automatically takes place.  This process also allows marketers, webmasters and designers to refrain from duplicating digital asset repositories in other locations for that particular online medium – web content management, e-commerce websites, email marketing, etc. – which ensures brand consistency.  More details to come on this exciting new step in digital asset management.

Widen will be sponsoring and exhibiting at the Henry Stewart Business Briefing on Digital Asset Management on Monday, October 27, 2008 at the Avenue Hotel in Chicago.  Henry Stewart Events cover Digital Asset Management, Marketing Resource Management, and Best Practices in Marketing Operations.  The comprehensive one-day briefing will cover the challenges, opportunities, problems and solutions with digital media management.

See below for the full conference program or learn more at www.damusers.com.

Conference Chair:  Michael Moon, President & CEO, GISTICS

What is DAM – introduction, latest developments, how to get started and how to upgrade

• What is it?
• Who needs it?
• DAM for improved efficiency
• DAM for consistency, e.g. specification and billing
• DAM for better marketing
• DAM for generating new products

Michael Moon, President & CEO, GISTICS

Benefit analysis, ROIs, implications for the bottom line and the construction of an internal business case for implementation and improvement

• Evaluating costs and risks of an enterprise wide asset management solution
• Identifying harvestable benefits: short term and long term
• Strategy from the organizational level to the individual perspective
• Using statistical methods for ROI analysis and forecasting the future

Mary Yurkovic, Manager DAM and Distribution, Playboy Enterprises, Inc

Evaluating and Selecting DAM Technologies

• Fundamentals of DAM technology
• How to categorize the DAM/Media Asset Management marketplace
• Rough cost estimates for different types of projects
• Selecting the right offering to meet the identified business objective
• Typical pitfalls in tool selection and implementation, and how to avoid them

Tony Byrne, Founder, CMS Watch

The Management Challenges In Installation and Operation

• Golden rules to ensure an implementation goes right
• The pieces that need to be in place
• Getting your vendors to work with you
• Managing inevitable changes

Linda Burman, CEO, L.A. Burman Associates

Understanding the critical importance of metadata and adopting a metadata approach suitable for your organization and its activities

• Why metadata is so critical to effective Digital Asset Management
• Taxonomies, metadata and search – combining components to improve findability of content
• Making the punishment fit the crime – how much metadata is enough?
• Who does what? – developing a workable governance policy around development, maintenance and application of metadata

Seth Earley, Principal, Earley & Associates

Case studies – who has done what, how and with what results?

Case Study: Extending the Brand Experience through DAM

• The digital asset management software helped Knaack marketing implement and launch the new system enterprise-wide quickly and seamlessly.
• The web-based DAM system was integrated with the Knaack Partner Gateway allowing channel partners to access images, videos and PDF files in a variety of formats from the same single sign-on portal they use to access other Knaack Resources.
• The Big Achievement: Knaack’s digital media is stored in one location, eliminating redundant and outdated libraries. More importantly, Knaack’s assets are repurposed across multiple interactive media channels to extend the brand experience from corporate marketing to channel partners.

Jim Scarlata, Director of Marketing Operation, Knaack LLC, Division of Emerson Electric Company

Case Study from General Motors

• Designed, implemented and managed a process to streamline the digital asset creation, storage and distribution process in the area of Advertising & Marketing for General Motors Corporation.
• Worked with Marketing Teams at GM, their Ad agencies and Production houses to understand their workflows and create a Digital Asset Management process that improves their workfows. Also, identified redundant systems and migrated those to a common global platform
• All GM brands are now using one common global system to store, share and collaborate advertising assets across the world. This has resulted in multi-million dollars in cost savings and also driven significant efficiencies.

Manish Mallick, Program Manager, Asset Manager, General Motors Corporate

Case Study from Nickelodeon

Nickelodeon deployed its Digital Asset Management system to centrally archive artwork created to support consumer product initiatives for Nickelodeon Shows such as Blue’s Clues, Dora the Explorer, Rugrats and SpongeBob SquarePants. A B2B, rights-managed website, Nicksource.com, was developed in tandem as a means of delivering content to licensing partners, lowering printing/shipping costs and expediting delivery to developing markets. Over time the archive has grown to over 200,000 files and the B2B site has become a globally accessed central hub for creative content. In addition to all internal lines of business (On air, On line, off air design teams, marketing, advertising, press, publications and all international offices) 3,000 users access Nicksource to download 2,000 files a day on average. More recently the Nickelodeon DAM system has been used as a central screening point for viewing QuickTime files of on air promos, reviewing and routing digital photography and serving as a repository for audio, mechanical and Aftereffects files.

Our main challenges:

• An ever growing amount of content that is regularly being revised, updated and retired.
• Limiting content by contract rights, region and timing which coincides with broadcast.
• Global delivery of large amounts of content in a simple, visual manner as quickly as possible and routing artwork simultaneously to offices throughout the world
• Distributing exclusive artwork to select partners.
• Dealing with large, difficult and complex file sizes.
• Routing artwork simultaneously to global offices.
• Receiving content.

Opportunities our DAM System Presents:

• Ability to create active user and work groups for particular pods of creative.
• Ability to track download history
• Targeted delivery of cataloged assets.
• Cataloging of an enormous body of character art
• Ability to deal with assets in multiple formats: Quark, InDesign, PhotoShop, Illustrator, Quicktime, Audio and others

Miles Rohan, Senior Digital Asset Manager, Nickelodeon

I read an interesting the article the other day featured in Chief Marketer called “Give Content a Chance: Why Smart Content is Smart Marketing” by Joe Stanhope.  The article talked about a convergence of analytically-led marketing and the face of marketing to consumer’s – the content – including new content, versioned content, and dynamic content; which with the right strategies and toolkit can be used to create “smart content” or content most relevant to the consumer. 

The article is relevant to Widen marketing software because it talks about digital asset management as the foundation of the marketing resource content repository.  According to Joe Stanhope, “Smart content requires investment in marketing technology.  Initially, marketing needs an asset management system that contains all of its creative efforts, templates and documentation.  This centralization drives consistency, leading to an improved customer experience, and also makes marketing more efficient by enforcing standards and reducing the effort required to pull campaign elements together.”

Other parts of the article mention that the marketing asset management system must be integrated with the campaign management system to drive efficiency in distribution from a single source, avoiding duplicate efforts.  The author mentions that this helps the content become a stronger component of the campaign with equal consideration and balance with the “tactical components of campaign design.”  Stanhope mentions that marketing needs to track content consumption throughout campaigns and goes on to provide a list of new questions that arise. 

This article strikes a chord with Widen on multiple levels.  Widen’s digital asset management integration with Salesforce.com allows marketers to centralize all rich media within campaigns, which allows marketing content to be tracked to the individual campaigns and measured with its cumulative value across all campaigns.  Widen’s new release of embed codes allows marketing to treat DAM as the foundation with all assets centralized in one location and seamlessly repurposed across multiple online mediums.  Widen’s Marketing Template Creation application for Salesforce.com allows marketers to provide sales channels with customizable content.  Integrations with Salesforce.com allow marketers to be smart with their content by bringing the content to the end-consumer via the CRM.  All Widen marketing software comes with reporting tools that allows marketers to track and measure content availability and use. 

How does Digital Asset Management from Widen help simplify brand management and marketing?

Gauges effectiveness of marketing campaigns and brand assets with automated tracking and reporting tools to influence future decisions.

How do you do that?  Using real-time reporting tools, administrators can view and evaluate user access and asset usage.  Standard reporting tools can be used to show reports matching a variety of statistics including trending graphs that allow you to monitor trends over time without having to do the calculations and build the graphs yourself.  You also have the ability to run custom reports that can be mixed, matched and exported to Excel.  Want to know what was the most popular product image representing X-model widget in China last month?  That’s easy with just a few clicks.  Widen Digital Asset Management is not only a tool for marketing organization and execution in dealing with rich media management; it’s also a key part of marketing planning and strategy.

How does Digital Asset Management (DAM) from Widen help simplify brand management and marketing?

• Reduces the chaos in managing the latest product images, logos, presentations, audio/video and other marketing materials with one master library under Widen’s DAM SaaS platform.

How do you do that?  Manage all your digital media from your very own branded web portal, while your master assets reside at Widen’s secure hosting facility.  Administrators control who can access what assets via roles and permissions.  Additionally, administrators can control when assets are to be released to general users or expired / archived and made unavailable for general access. 

• Enables real-time marketing for geographically dispersed employees, external agencies and creative partners to manage, create, collaborate, share, upload and download your digital media 24 / 7.

How do you do that?  Internal and external teams all dial into the same set of master assets via web based DAM system to ensure the latest version is accessed when re-working or re-purposing digital media.  When new versions are created, approved users can upload the new versions and attach them as the new current version or create new assets with the simple click of a button.  Haven’t quite reached the final version?  Widen Project Collaboration allows you to route new digital media files (in their pre-asset state) to other internal users to gather and track all comments and approvals.  When the final version is reached, the project (PDF document, image, audio/video file or presentation) can be released as an asset available to all general users with permission to view the file.

• Speeds time to market with new product introductions, ad campaigns and sales promotions by automating the distribution of marketing materials in the proper formats to print and web channels.

How do you do that?  First, automatic file conversions allow you to store only one file type as the master and access other derivative formats on-demand.  Need an image for a website, presentation and brochure – you can get a 72 dpi JPEG and a 300 dpi TIFF from the master hi-res EPS file stored on Widen’s servers.  We do the same for Audio and Video assets as well.  Secondly, where do the files need to go?  If you need the files now and can download them from the web… no big deal.  What about when you’re unable to download a 2GB image or a 60-minute video?  That’s ok too because Widen will burn / author the files to a CD / DVD and ship them overnight on your behalf. 

• Empowers sales channels to create personalized on-demand marketing resources according to brand compliance guidelines and marketing-approved messaging.

How do you do that?  Using brand approved templates and marketing-supplied content, dealers, distributors, franchisees, branches, sales people or anybody else who doesn’t have the know-how or access to Quark or InDesign (but still rep your brand) can build professional quality marketing collateral.  Users point-and-click to build ads, brochures, POS and direct mail customized, localized or co-branded for any selling situation – ad campaigns, special events, or in-store displays. 

• Gauges effectiveness of marketing campaigns and brand assets with automated tracking and reporting tools.

How do you do that?  Using real-time reporting tools, administrators can view and evaluate user access and asset usage.  Standard reporting tools can be used to show reports matching a variety of statistics including trending graphs that allow you to monitor trends over time without having to do the calculations and build the graphs yourself.  You also have the ability to run custom reports that can be mixed, matched and exported to Excel.  Want to know what was the most popular product image representing X-model widget in China last month?  That’s easy with just a few clicks.  Widen Digital Asset Management is not only a tool for marketing organization and execution in dealing with rich media management; it’s also a key part of marketing planning and strategy.

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

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

• Easily create an a secure online image library
• Increase collaboration, communication and accountability
• Reduce capital expenditures with high I.T. investments
• Create workflow efficiencies upstream and downstream
• Become more agile in the ability to deploy and maintain assets across multiple media channels

I like to periodically expose some of the actual stories that take place with clients looking for ways to get control of their brand assets and rich media.  This was my original intention for Dr. DAM.  Does this sound like you?

We recently had a discussion and demo with the creative director at an advertising agency seeking help in managing two terabytes of data stored on local hard drives and CDs.  They currently use FTP sites to distribute digital assets to clients, but they're getting complaints that this isn’t meeting their needs.  The current processes are not user friendly, assets aren’t globally accessible, they’re grappling with multiple file formats and all of the files are too large to email at 70MB+. 

Like many agencies working with big companies, they have an enterprise client that has turned to them for help in building a web based DAM system to manage their brand assets.  The client needs to allow people from multiple departments all over the world to access current assets, add metadata, share, send and download images, store displays, banners and other marketing resources. 

Other “must-haves” for the client include:

• Branded site to meet corporate branding standards
• Full reporting and tracking of asset usage
• Simple ability to upload assets, add metadata and structure content
• User permissions to control who sees what

Since many ad agencies do not have the time or resources to take on enterprise digital asset management software implementations nor is it within their area of expertise, it’s becoming more common for agencies to turn to a hosted service or SaaS provider for help.  If you’re interested in Dr. DAM’s recommendation… trust the experts.

Post from guest blogger Sean Banahan, Widen Area Sales Executive

There has never been a shortage of vendors claiming to offer some sort of tool to manage, archive or distribute rich media files.  Of the throngs of Digital Asset Management vendors that cloud the market, few competent pure play vendors and even fewer DAM as Software as a Service (SaaS) providers seem to remain.  A landscape that has traditionally been characterized by companies who focused exclusively on providing solutions for managing digital media files has been taken over by the larger Content Management behemoths that have gobbled up the original inhabitants to offer DAM modules instead of solutions.  This trend hasn’t been a secret or a surprise to many as companies like OpenText, EMC and Oracle have recognized the benefits of digital asset management platforms and begun bundling them into larger product portfolios.  What I find surprising however, is while giant CMS and licensed DAM providers have in some part recognized the benefit of offering hosted services to their customers, those companies that previously led the charge into the SaaS arena have all but disappeared.  They too have been eaten by the larger beast and become a line item on a long product list. 

Companies like Interwoven, OpenText and North Plains can now finally claim they have hosted solutions, whether that’s through a recent acquisition or a simple “find and replace” effort on a marketing brochure.  One has to wonder though...  With R&D, sales and support resources focused on licensed product sales worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in each transaction, how much room does the smaller hosted service warrant in the grand scheme of things?  After all, most DAM SaaS solutions cost less per year than the annual support fees associated with standard licensed DAM products.  Do CMS and DAM software providers view the hosted service as a viable product or just another sales tool to ultimately force customers into the licensed application where the revenue’s at?  If that’s the case, as I suspect it often is, can these software companies truly make the claim that they offer hosted services?  I think it’s a bit of a stretch.  While SaaS offerings for DAM have never been in higher demand, the number of vendors offering those services has shrunk to just a few left on the field.