DEAR DR. DAM:  I’m Trent, a marketing director for a manufacturer of top-of-the-line tactical apparel and uniforms.  You know that Sprint commercial with the fire fighters and the walkie-talkies…I’ m going to keep it simple like that and limit the bull.  First, I need help storing all of our files in one central location.  Next, we like the ability to control templates that would be used by our business partners and sales channels.  We want dealers to enter a brand asset management software system through our dealer portals and allow them to customize templates, or grab images and logos for promotional use.  This talk about digital asset embed links looks like an important component, along with single sign-on user authentication and robust video asset handling capabilities.  We use Salesforce.com, so we’ll take the Widen integration for DAM and media builder seriously.  So, I don’t really have any more questions for you, as I think you realize I know what we need.  Can I just get your blessing that this is a sound business decision?

DEAR NO BULL TACTICS TRENT:  I like your style.  Are you sure you don’t want to balance the budget or get clean water too?  You have a good handle on your digital asset management needs.  Widen is said by the analysts to be a down-to-earth DAM SaaS provider.  They’re a good choice to give you technology and service, without any bull – what you see is what you get.  You’d be a good speaker at a DAM conference with attitude and drive like that!

DEAR DR. DAM:  I want a hosted digital asset management solution and I want it now.  Sorry, for my candid nature, but I’m Raymundo, the web marketing manager for a mid-size sporting goods manufacturer.  We don’t have an I.T. department that can support such a system, nor can they fully support our marketing efforts.  Our digital files are stored in multiple locations within a file folder structure with no associated metadata.  Our users will require something that is easy to use (i.e. functionally fit) as they will not put up with a system loaded with confusion.  My main focus needs to offer global access to our assets, while enforcing brand consistency.  With that said, varying roles and appropriate permissions are key.  For our retailers and print partners, we’re building an online digital asset management warehouse to download approved files for their advertising, and also to use as an FTP for printers doing outsourced work on our catalogs.  We’ve recognized that there are many types of DAM systems—ranging from light, medium, and heavy.  We do one catalog per year per brand and have a handful of brands under the chief brand.  We have a few dozen sales and marketing people on our staff serving a couple hundred dealers. 

The FTP site does not work well for dealers and we’re doing away with the dealer extranet.  Since we’re revamping our web site, we want to replace the dealer extranet with a hosted DAM solution that will also replace the FTP site.  Some dealers have their own catalogs so once a year they will do a complete download of the entire product line.  Therefore, we obviously have a decent amount of volume when it comes to usage.  We also have a few different printers and advertising agencies, so the DAM system would serve as hub for all levels.  Our file types include product and lifestyle photography, PDF fact sheets, word docs and spreadsheets.  We have some templates for dealer promotions so a web-to-print type of collateral customization tool would be helpful in streamlining the creation of branded materials.  We need our DAM system in place before we launch the new website. 

DEAR BAM HUB RAYMUNDO:  You are facing quite an endeavor.  Your situation sounds complicated, but it’s a pretty average situation for many marketers your size and a mid-sized brand asset management software solution that can scale to meet your needs is well within reach.  You’ll be able to condense your need for different internal resources by doing away with the hard drive storage and FTP usage.  Your DAM system will serve as the graphic communications hub for internal marketing and sales, advertising agencies, printers and your dealer network.  Establishing metadata taxonomies and adhering to those standards will be imperative to the success of the system.  Widen can help you with that by sharing best practices in what others have done from the Widen user community.  Your marketing people should like what the dynamic media building tool can do for your dealers by allowing them to customize ads, brochures and other promotional sales collateral within branding standards.  Hang in there… Widen will help you move along quickly, but in manageable chunks.

Here's the winning entry for the first week of Dr. DAM Madlibs. 

Be sure to stay on the lookout for the Week 2 Dr. DAM Madlibs to enter into the contest for the $50 Amazon.com gift card.   

WINNING CONTENT:

CLIENT:  I’m Amy, the Creative Director for an Agency. I’m responsible for managing and creating brand approved media for our clients. As for digital asset management, my role is to dig through stacks and stacks of CD's to find an image I need to work with. We have images and videos and they’re used by our clients to drive their marketing efforts.

CLIENT:  However, I have issues with finding everything I'm looking for. It makes me feel like a rat in a maze. All I want is to have organization in my life!

DR. DAM:  I know what you’re going through and I can help you solve your problem. Here’s what I recommend you do, get a DAM solution from Widen to give you a competitive edge and new revenue streams. Once you’ve implemented a more effective digital asset management solution, what are you going to do?

CLIENT:  Now I can focus on business related activities. I feel so relieved! I’m going to go to the mall for a new pair of shoes with the raise I'm going to get!

DEAR DR. DAM:  I’m Kristi… pardon me, but I think it’s funny I’m calling you doctor because I work for one of the largest children’s hospitals and pediatric research centers in America.  As the Creative Services Manager, I’ve worked with various digital asset management systems and creative software solutions before.  I’m unhappy with the current hosted vendor largely because of the lack of segmentation and control, in addition to a tremendous lack of support.  We’re looking to make a switch to a hosted DAM provider that offers greater customer support.  Also, we do multiple photo shoots per week with two full-time on-site photographers and an outside agency.  We’ve struggled to pass along photos to the different people who need to review them.  It would be nice to have an online photography approval system.  We’re under contract with our current vendor until Q1 of next year, but hoping you can shine some light on a better solution.

DEAR CREATIVE KRISTY:  There’s no ignominy in the doctor reference.  We can all be masters of our own domain and subject matter experts.  I’m happy to assist in your evaluation of digital asset management solutions, particularly a DAM SaaS solution that can offer varying degrees of user segmentation based on roles and controllable permissions.  The Widen solution can of course offer you robust user management capabilities and backs their product with industry-renowned customer support.  If at any point you need help, you and your users are just a phone call, email or instant chat away.  As for the photography workflow management portion of your needs, Widen’s Backdrop can serve the as front-end to your DAM system offering collaboration between your creative team, photographers and agencies.  Last, don’t fuss about the contracts because Widen will not lock you into a long-term contract, their pricing options are flexible and they promise to earn your business every month.  Cheers!

Software-as-a-service is now the most fashionable method of using software technologies.  “It used to be fashionable to purchase software independent from the infrastructure and service needed to run the software,” communicates a hypothetical former I.T. fan of installed software.  “It meant job security, new challenges, and a chance to work with different departments that I did not understand.” 

The former I.T. fan of installed software (FITFOIS – see side note regarding JABOT in previous blog regarding acronym use) revealed that he really did not understand the demands of the business unit and really didn’t care.  Mr. FITFOIS goes on, “I admit that working with other departments was like working blind, especially with marketing and creative teams.  Those people had weird demands that I just didn’t understand so I wasn’t really interested in the software installation projects from the marketing and creative teams.”

“The process for purchasing installed software was entertaining,” Mr. FITFOIS comments, “these installed software salespeople commit to doing everything and under deliver every time, it is truly an amazing spectacle – a disaster really.”

This is typical of installed software providers which is one of the key reasons they are no longer the fashionable choice for deploying software technologies.  The other key reason why software-as-a-service providers are more fashionable is the service levels.  Service levels are non-existent in the installed software world and business units are fed up.

Mr. FITFOIS divulges, “you don’t really know how important service is until you actually receive it and I would never go back to installed software given my recent software-as-a-service experience.”  Evidence of this can be seen with an installed software provider in the digital asset management industry.  The research organization CMS Watch identified less than favorable customer experiences with a specific installed DAM software provider AND as a result also uncovered an integrity / lack of factual data issue.  This example can be found at the following blog: DAM vendors engage in analyst payola, then dissemble about it, too.

Full disclosure is what software-as-a-service providers embrace and what installed software providers fear.  It is this reason that SaaS is the new black and the most fashionable choice for maximizing the use of software technologies.

We had our big splash “60 Years of Service” celebration and announcement back in September, but I just had to blog about it again after some dialogue we had at the Henry Stewart Digital Asset Management Symposium in LA earlier this week.  The guys from Kaiser-Permanente stopped by our booth to find out more about the Widen digital media management solution and they first asked “Where is Widen?”… Response being… “Headquartered in Madison, Wisconsin. “ Next, they asked “How long have you been around?”  Answer being quite firmly “60 Years…” the confused looks on their faces automatically triggered the question, “Did you say 6 or 16?”  I had to clarify with my Wisconsin accent “6-T or 6-D (depending on how you want to say it meaning 6-0)” … 60 years.  Like many others that ask about our age, the response is “Wow, a 60 year old DAM company!”  

I’d love to make the claim… that yeah “we invented digital… we invented digital assets… and we invented the term ‘digital asset management.’  We didn’t invent any of that, but we were there as they all evolved.  We were managing large amounts of large files for clients before DAM was an industry and DAM solutions were commercialized.  You can take a look at our history and see how we’ve evolved from a photographic engraving shop 3 generations of Widen’s ago to learn more about how we’ve evolved.  Keyword being:  “we’ve evolved.”  There’s a lot behind evolution… and the evolution of a technology company.  However, to keep it simple, two things remain constant in a continuously changing world of marketing operations and creative workflows from a Widen point of view.  First, Widen is committed to ‘interpreting the unarticulated demand of the marketplace’  through client interaction and providing technology solutions to make their everyday lives easier, save money and bring more value to each customer and their customers.  Secondly, we value our reputation, culture and commitment to ‘customer service.’  Whether you need Widen for premedia production help or for marketing software solutions, you’re going to find ‘service’ in the title of each division because that’s what it’s all about.  We will earn your business every month because of the service – Software as a Service or Premedia Services.  There’s not many other companies in the content management space that can say they’re 60-years-old. 

The funny thing about the digital asset management competitive landscape is that we talk about making it easy for users to search and download images, video and other types of digital media.  Once users locate the appropriate digital assets it makes sense for them to download so they can be placed on a web site or used in desktop software applications.

The funny part is coming.

Isolate the digital assets used in web sites across marketing channels for a moment.  Think of every file that is owned by corporate marketing teams and used throughout the internet for promotional purposes.  This could be product images used by distributors or dealers, training videos, recordings of executive speeches, or high-definition promotional videos.  Every time someone wants to use one or all of these digital assets they download them from the digital asset management application and place the branded files into the appropriate internet location (e.g. web site, blog).   On the surface, the digital asset management system accomplished the objective. 

Here is the funny part.

You have surrendered control over your entire marketing library because you just let everyone that needed to place your branded material on their web site to download a file from your DAM system.  Something that you were told you would have more control over just went out the window.  When you want to change or remove that file you trust everyone will check back to make sure they are using the most current version.  You could also send an email notice (or have the DAM provider do it for you) to let the user community know a new digital asset exists.  How many users do you think will change the file on their web site to the most current version because you asked them to? 

Here is a funnier part.

Imagine this is a video file -- you have just burdened the infrastructure and I.T. department of your marketing channel by giving them a cool new video to help promote the product but they cannot use it because it would cripple the entire web structure if more than 10 people watch it simultaneously.  A cool new video that cannot be repurposed by your channel partners is an expensive shame.

Now we can get serious.

Think big picture.  These files are all being used on the internet somewhere in a web page or blog.  There is only one internet so why do you need all your channels to download their own files?  It’s not your fault, you were trained by digital asset management providers to believe the purpose of a DAM system is to enable users to search and download.  Widen is here to break those bad habits caused by our own industry.

One internet, one file.

Since there is really only one internet, Widen has allowed organizations to use one file (located in the Widen DAM system) across all internet locations.  Instead of enabling users to download files, users of Widen digital asset management technology copy a pointer to that file instead.  That pointer is just a bunch of text (JABOT).  Side note:  I learned from tech junkies to make up acronyms and use them frequently to create another language that can only be deciphered by like-personnel, enter new acronym, JABOT.

When JABOT is placed on the web site or in a web content management system like Clickability, the web page presents the digital media from the DAM system every time the page loads.  This includes images and video files so the strain of video is no longer jeopardizing the infrastructure of your marketing channels.  The Widen DAM system is scaling to meet that demand.  And if you want to change the image or video, the change is made one-time to the DAM application and every place that used the JABOT now represents that new digital content within seconds.  It’s magic.  No more downloads! 

Welcome to Widen world and our philosophy on managing digital media: one internet, one file.

Widen’s expo and technology track presentation at the Henry Stewart LA Digital Asset Management Conference will feature a sneak peak at the new digital asset Embed Links technology.  If you’re planning to go to the LA show, be sure to check out a live demo of embed links in action at Widen’s booth #117. 

Embed links enable Widen Digital Asset Management users and online marketers to tie image and video assets to online mediums via unique web address, without placing the file in another location.  Every time a page loads that contains the embed link, data is transferred from the Widen DAM system to the online channel.  Embed links allow content consumers to instantly connect with rich media objects and ensures the latest content updates are always on display.


Marketing benefits of digital asset embed links include:

• One master repository for all images and videos used online
• All asset updates made in the Widen DAM system are dynamically published to an infinite number of online channels
• On-demand infrastructure scalability and “pay for what you use” services
• Consistent and accurate use of assets across all online channels

I'll be presenting "What's new in DAM SaaS" covering DAM as the foundation for online media publishing with embed links and the concept of “One Internet – One File” during the Technology Track at 2:15 on Monday, November 10.  My presentation will also include a look at DAM SaaS 2.0 with managed services on the client site using the Widen Appliance to accommodate internal creative workflows and will include an inside look at what “service” really means to a SaaS client using several customer case studies.  I'll be sitting in on the panel for the Brand&Marketing Asset Management Vendor Shootout at 1:15 on Tuesday, November 11. 

Widen has two customers presenting case studies at the DAM Conference:

Manny Cuevas, Director of Sales & Marketing for Level III Services, Inc. will talk about how the Widen hosted DAM system is used to deliver value-added services at 2:15 on Tuesday, November 11.

Stephanie Ruff, Marketing Specialist for Motorola, Inc., will present "What We Achieved with Enterprise DAM," addressing the challenges, business objectives and solutions to an enterprise-wide deployment of a DAM solution at 3:15 on Tuesday, November 11.

I hope to see you at the conference.

View the full conference program for Henry Stewart LA 2008

If you were in attendance last week at the Henry Stewart Business Briefing on Digital Asset Management in Chicago, Widen thanks you for taking the time to learn more about the challenges, opportunities, problems and solutions with DAM.  We hope you found the event to be very helpful in your quest for a digital asset management solution implementation or expansion.  If you were unable to attend, we extend the invitation to learn more from the presentations archive.



The even featured several keynote speakers and case studies, including:

• An Introduction and “How To” from Michael Moon, President&CEO of Gistics
• Benefits and ROIs from Mary Yurkovic of Playboy
• Evaluating and Selecting DAM Technologies from Tony Byrne of CMS Watch
• Digital Asset Management Deployments from Frank Chagoya of Leo Burnett
• Critical Importance of Metadata from Philip Spiegel of National Geographic
• Common and Less Common Problems and Solutions from Doug Rammel of Synapse Operational Systems and Solutions, formerly of The adidas Group

Widen’s participation included a vendor presentation by Matthew Gonnering, VP of Sales and Marketing title “The Repurposing Department of Repurposing,” covering:

• The epicenter of all digital media no matter where it is used
• One true central source of digital media linked up to the world with the concept of “one internet, one file” via digital asset embed links
• Publishing images and video without straining internal infrastructure
• The matrimony of DAM and web content management
• How SaaS providers enable scalability on-demand

A customer of Widen, Jim Scarlata of Knaack LLC, Division of Emerson Electric Company, presented a case study titled “Extending the Brand Experience through DAM,” covering:

• How brand asset management software helped Knaack marketing implement and launch the new system enterprise-wide quickly and seamlessly
• Using DAM as a Platform Technology, Not Just an Application
• Brand Consistency on a Global Scale
• Building Equity in Brand Centralization

Contact marketing@widen.com for full access to the presentations from Doug Rammel, Matthew Gonnering and Jim Scarlata.  Video segments of the Widen presentations coming soon.  View the full presentation archive from Henry Stewart at http://www.damusers.com. 

Bryon Zimmerman googled himself the other day and saw his name and face all over the web courtesy of Widen.  We said to Bryon, “You know, Bryon, you volunteered to be a video case study to express the value of digital asset management solutions for agencies, marketing organizations and creative groups.”  With that said, of course his face, name and video segments are everywhere because we (the Widen marketing team) use our own web based DAM technologies to publish our digital assets to the web.  

That’s digital asset optimization (DAO) – Widen style.  With the help of our DAM SaaS platform, our marketing team is able to repurpose the videos with just a few clicks to our own website, our blog hosted by Compendium Blogware, YouTube and other online destination sites.  Within the Widen hosted digital media management system, we manage all our videos in one location – both the file and metadata (keywords, descriptions, file details, etc.), repurpose the file in multiple formats on-demand and deliver the file to multiple people and destinations in just a few simple clicks.

What’s even more impressive is the use of digital asset embed links to display images and videos across multiple websites, blogs, press releases, campaign landing pages, e-commerce sites and many other online locations.  Anytime we need update the file in our DAM system, the videos and images are dynamically updated across all the channels in which they are published.  There’s no need to create separate libraries or locations for assets to be published elsewhere.  Updates are simple, painless and one time – one internet, one file.  

Keep your eyes and ears open for more video segments from Bryon Zimmerman talking about Widen and digital asset management for agencies and marketing organizations.  Thanks Mr. Zimmerman and ZDO for helping us show the power of DAO.

Write your own Dr. DAM story.  To participate, copy/paste the text below the images into the Comments block and fill in the blanks to create your own Dr. DAM Madlibs.  Your contributions will be considered for the Dr. DAM comic book -- coming soon!  Stay on the lookout for four different Dr. DAM Madlibs blogs.  All participants will be considered for the grand prize drawing after four weeks -- a $50 Amazon.com gift card.  One completed Dr. DAM Madlibs comment will be selected each week for display on the Dr. DAM blog.  Note: All comments must be approved before they appear.

Are you planning on attending the premier briefing and networking event in digital media management and marketing operations? 

Make sure to stop by the Widen booth #117 to catch the latest in DAM SaaS technology featuring an interactive presentation of the new digital asset Embed Links.  

The event features over 75 talks, case studies, panel sessions and interactive presentations. 

Sponsored by Henry Stewart, the event is for everyone involved in production, use or management of rich media and covers:

Digital Entertainment and New Media • Film Production • Exploiting Multimedia Platforms • Brand Management • Marketing (and Advertising) • Digital Rights Management • Ensuring Security • Optimizing Creative Workflows and Empowering Supply Chains • Metadata and Taxonomy Solutions • Latest Developments in Search Strategies • Structuring the Architecture of Systems for Maximum Performance

This is an event that will deliver exactly what it promises – briefings on all the important issues supported by case studies of real world performance.  Digital content management for increased revenue, profits and shareholder value.  Digital asset solutions for cost reduction, more effective marketing, brand management and new product development.

View the Full Program Details

Register Here

Contact Widen to receive $100 off the rate card price.

Watch the video interview with Bryon Zimmerman, CEO of ZDO (www.zeedio.com) – Widen’s newest creative design firm DAM user, talk about how the Widen on-demand digital asset management solution enhances client relationships.  The Widen digital media management platform helps ZDO clients find images and artwork on their own by logging into the web-based DAM system whenever they want to browse jobs or download assets.  Widen digital asset solutions help ZDO project a cutting edge image, which is important to both ZDO and their clients.

Watch the video interview with Bryon Zimmerman, CEO of ZDO (www.zeedio.com) – Widen’s newest creative design firm DAM user, talk about how the Widen on-demand digital asset management solution helps differentiate ZDO from other agencies by providing more value to clients.  Widen helps ZDO provide a highly organized library of everything pertaining to the jobs they are responsible for in working with their clients.  Widen DAM technology helps ZDO reduce project time and increase profit margins by the efficiencies the DAM SaaS solution creates.  The high level service is used internally by ZDO creative and design staff as well as in collaboration with clients. 

Guest blog post from Sean Banahan, Widen Area Sales Director

I recently spoke with a prospective Fortune 500 customer who was going through a formal evaluation of Digital Asset Management software vendors and solutions and was facing an interesting dilemma.  This prospective customer had kick started the evaluation process with the generation and distribution of a formal RFP.  This RFP document had been sent to a number of vendors that had popped up in web searches and inquiries into the DAM space.  The list contained the usual list of players that you would find by doing a simple search for DAM on google. 

The RFP was sent out and vendors were given a couple of weeks to submit a response.  Vendors were not expected to provide any really detailed information on their products because it was assumed that this type of information would be ferreted out in the demonstrations and discussions that would follow the initial proposal.  The problem occurred when only two vendors submitted responses to the RFP within the allotted time.  This prospective customer's purchasing process requires that they review at least three different proposals.  This left the customer scrambling to find out how to address this particular problem.  Should they give more time, should they put the project on hold or go through the effort to get an exception made to an internally established practice? 

While taking efforts to address the issue, the original timeline for a decision came and went.  Then the date when they had hoped to have phase one implemented flew by.  They are still waiting for responses from the remaining DAM vendors today as far as I know.  This really blew my mind.  How can any company trust a vendor as a future partner and service provider who can't even respond to a simple RFP and instead provides lists of weak excuses.  Its not like they were required to provide extremely detailed or extensive information over night.  Are they even doing business?  Maybe they have enough partners as it is.  This customer should start implementing phase one through Widen's on-demand digital media management service.  A basic DAM SaaS solution from Widen would be live and configured within two weeks.  Let the other vendors chase you down and explain why you should give them your business rather than the other way around.

Guest Blog Post from Tim Vial, Widen Sales Representative

In the wake of my defeat in Widen’s weekly football game, I found myself wondering what went wrong.  Many of you may be feeling like this in a much more important game. Like in a backyard football game, the team with the most talent doesn’t always win, but rather the team with the best system.  Attacking today’s global market is a lot like this backyard football game.  There are three pieces to the ultimate victory, score points (get your sales team the ball), don’t give up any points (manage all the new “looks” creative is giving you), and last but not least appeal to your fans (marketing).  How the team with the best system (DAM) will always prevail:

As the quarterback (head of your department) you are the decision maker, and the one who needs to start the production.  Each down (selling situation) is different and has certain routes that will yield better results.  You need to get your receivers (sales reps) the ball quickly, efficiently, and with the best chance of success.  Just like with your business, you need to get your sales reps the most up to date information, with the opportunity to be able to tweak it for each specific opportunity without losing brand integrity.  In the mist of all this action, you have blitzing linebackers (deadlines) closing in on you fast.  You need to play like a veteran.

Offense puts fans in the stands but defense wins championships.  On the other side of the ball, you need to keep track of all those other receivers (assets).  The offense is constantly changing their formations, and bringing in fresh, new players.  The key is managing where those receivers are, who is being used the most, and for what purpose.  That will keep you from falling behind.

Like every team in any sport, you’ve got to pay the bills.  Would a fan come and watch your game and spend their hard earned money if you showed them pictures and told stories of the “glory years” that are long and gone?  Getting your team’s fresh, new image out to the public has to be efficient and effective as well.

In the business world you face the same challenges, which can be solved with Widen’s Digital Asset Management’s Software as a Service technology.  Get your branded material out to Sales teams quickly, with the ability to change some specifics for each target audience, but maintaining brand integrity.  Manage all the new materials creative is busy producing, all the while knowing you are using the most up-to-date image, video, or document with version control.  Find the digital material you are looking for quickly with self service access complete with advanced search options, in an organized central repository, with roles and permissions allowing you to decide who uses what.  In addition, full reporting that makes it easy to find out what images are being used, what’s most popular, etc.

Competing against a business with no DAM is like playing a football game against a quarterback that throws back across the field… Easy pickings.  Let a hosted digital asset management system from Widen Enterprises give you all the tools needed for victory, while always having a “coach” there to guide you, and a “trainer” for all the “bumps and bruises”.

DAM Pros 100, DAM Joes 0

This past weekend I was in Lawrence, Kansas attending the CCUMC (Consortium of College and University Media Centers) annual conference.  Widen Enterprises was a Gold Sponsor of the event and took part in the Vendor Showcase on Saturday and was one of the sponsors of the Sunday luncheon.

What did I learn from talking with people at this event?  That IT isn’t making a lot of friends with media staff at colleges and universities.  As one gentlemen said, “IT has us in a bottleneck.”  Server space isn’t available.  Projects given to IT can take months and months and sometimes still never get completed.  IT freaks out about video files eating up storage.

So, is there any hope for escaping this?   Luckily, Widen’s digital asset management application DOES help media staff (and anyone else) avoid issues with IT.  How can this be possible?  Well, our application is a web based DAM system so there is no need to have asset management software loaded on your desktop or university server.  Widen hosts and maintains the system and users only need internet access to search, find, and order digital assets.  All your digital files (images, pdfs, videos, audio, documents) are located on OUR servers – not eating up storage on campus.  Media staff doesn’t have to worry about hardware, software implementation, or upgrades – and best off all – they can avoid IT.

Disclaimer:  No IT staff was harmed in the writing of this blog.

DEAR DR. DAM:  I’m Kate and I work for an interactive agency that does email marketing, websites and print collateral for a number of clients.  We have a situation with one particular client in which sales and marketing do not get along.  It’s really pretty silly… the independent salespeople don’t like and don’t use the print collateral that the corporate marketing department creates for them.  The independent salespeople need something more personalized for their customers.  Given the time-sensitive nature of their business, salespeople oftentimes end up whipping up their own sell sheets and brochures.  Of course the marketing team cringes when this happens because the business branding is inconsistent.  Since they are not all part of the same corporate head, it’s difficult to enforce.  If you can help me help my client’s sales and marketing people get along I would be very happy. 

DEAR 'CAN’T WE ALL JUST GET ALONG' KATE:  You need to check out Widen’s brand asset management solution – Media Builder, which will help you build your client relationship by helping marketing help sales.  How it works is the marketing department creates templates with certain static content such as your logo and corporate branding.  Marketing provides a library of official product imagery and associated textual content.  They have options to the degree of freedom they want to give salespeople to customize the piece – headlines, main messages, etc.  Each salesperson can build their own brochures on-demand by selecting which products their clients want to see, and then add their contact information.  Sales will be able to customize their collateral for the customer and marketing will be able to protect the brand recognition.  Best of all, you’ll look like a hero for presenting such a solution.  People helping people… it’s a powerful thing.

DEAR DR. DAM:  I’m Sampson, the web marketing manager for the world's leading source of independent news and information about the Olympic movement.  Every day, via the internet and email, we deliver the most up-to-date news on issues affecting the Olympics.  Email subscribers are alerted on developments via e-bulletins each day.  We’re in need of a rich media management system for images and videos used online and for our print magazine.  We currently house 55,000 assets on a local server using a file folder structure, but as you can guess it’s difficult to find assets.  Our #1 pain is the time it takes to locate and convert assets.

DEAR SUBSCRIBERS RULE SAMPSON:  A Widen web based DAM system would suit you nicely.  Even for a small internal workgroup it will help you drastically increase efficiency in providing the most current content to your subscribers.  Widen’s price point is more in the ball park of what you’d want to spend.  You’ll be increasing your subscriber base with the amount of quality interactive content you’ll be able assemble by increasing efficiencies in the management and distribution of this content.