I’m Kathy Lewis and welcome to Widen. As the Marketing Assistant at Widen Enterprises, I am the first person you see when you walk in the door and the first person you talk to when you call. Prior to Widen, I was a kitchen designer for everything from apartments to million dollar homes. Yes, I know, a major occupational change on my part, but I do not look back and only look to the future of what I can do to contribute to Widen’s success.
Being part of the Widen Marketing Team as the receptionist, many people refer to me as the 'manager of first impressions.’ I wear many hats at the front desk, including: chief greeter, operator, CRM administrator, campaign manager, travel agent, order filler, A/V display expert, interior designer, and video transcriber just to name a few.
My purpose for blogging is to give the average person a look at Widen through my eyes, in a simplified manner. I promise to minimize the technical talk in this blog. I think you’ll value my spirit for what we do here. Again, welcome to Widen!
We continue with another Top 10 list with the top ten Widen Digital Asset Management blog posts of 2009 in the Widen world of Software as a Service, web based DAM, video asset management, content management and structure and other posts dealing with digital asset workflow.
1. Getting to a Digital Asset Management ROI, posted on Friday, August 7, 2009 by Mark Norris (The Next Big SaaS)
2. The Future of Digital Media Management: Being Prepared for the Video Demand, posted on Tuesday, May 19, 2009 by Matthew Gonnering (Ramblings of a Mad Marketer)
3. Types of Digital Asset Management Systems, posted on Tuesday, July 21, 2009 by Jake Athey (Marketing Digital Asset Management)
4. How Widen Software as a Service Applies Digital Asset Management Best Practices, posted on Monday, June 15, 2009 by Matthew Gonnering (Ramblings of a Mad Marketer)
5. What is the best way to store videos in a Digital Asset Management System?, posted on Thursday, July 30, 2009 by Al Falaschi (The Impact of VAM & DAM)
6. Digital Asset Management Best Practices: Focus on Metadata Part II, posted on Wednesday, January 7, 2009 by Widen Marketing
7. The Marketers Guide to Justifying Investments in Digital Asset Management, posted on Tuesday, June 9, 2009 by Jake Athey (Marketing Digital Asset Management)
8. Understanding the Digital Asset Life Cycle, posted on Friday, March 20, 2009 by Jake Athey (Marketing Digital Asset Management)
9. Level of Risk for Digital Asset Management Implementations, posted on Friday, May 15, 2009 by Matthew Gonnering (Ramblings of a Mad Marketer)
10. Video Asset Management In High Demand As Viewership Climbs and Marketers Use More Online Video, posted on Monday, November 2, 2009 by Jake Athey (Marketing Digital Asset Management)
With the season of “lists” upon us, here are the top ten Widen Premedia blog posts of 2009 in the Widen prepress services world of digital photography, color retouching, digital sampling, catalog production, color management, and wide format printing.
1. RAW Presets for Photoshop CS4 & Lightroom: Canon 5D Mark II Nikon D3 Nikon D300 Nikon D700 Nikon D3X, posted on Tuesday, April 14, 2009 by Matt Anderson (Industrial Retouch and Color)
2. Call Me Mr. Biv, posted on Friday, October 24, 2008 by Mark Pajari (The Color Space)
3. Digital Asset Solutions: Adding Micro Contrast and Detail to Digital Images by Matt Anderson, posted on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 by Matt Anderson (Industrial Retouch and Color)
4. Smart Objects Part Déux, posted on Wednesday, April 22, 2009 by Matt Anderson (Industrial Retouch and Color)
5. A technical observation of post processing styles, posted on Wednesday, May 27, 2009 by Matt Anderson (Industrial Retouch and Color)
6. Edward Cullen Sparkle... For All You Twilight Fans, posted on Monday, July 27, 2009 by Joy Hamel (Premedia Arts)
7. Assigning, tagging, converting, and embedding ICC profiles in Photoshop, posted on Tuesday, March 24, 2009 by Mark Pajari (The Color Space)
8. Hair Mask Quick Tip for Color Retouching, posted on Wednesday, April 8, 2009 by Joy Hamel (Premedia Arts)
9. Into the Light, posted on Tuesday, April 7, 2009 by Joy Hamel (Premedia Arts)
10. Wide Format Digital Printing at Widen, posted on Monday, May 11, 2009 by Joy Hamel (Premedia Arts)
Here at Widen, we welcome any prospective client, current customer or vendor to come meet us and tour our facility. Ok, coming to Madison, Wisconsin in January may not sound too fun for you at -10 below zero, but we try to make it an exciting adventure for everyone.
I have a very nice 42” LCD TV behind my desk that is our welcome sign, where we put up the guests names, company web pages, and logo. We had the social media experts at Sway come share some insights with us today. (There’s some really great stuff that they’re doing in the social media space to propel marketing into 2009 and beyond!) So, getting back to my blog title, I must do my research on the company before I put the information up on the screen. The reasoning behind that is I have several employees that walk by the front desk asking who is coming, when are they coming and what does that company do. (Plus, I enjoy getting to know all the different companies and industries we have the pleasure of working with).
We may be meeting with them for digital asset management demos, business branding initiatives, video management or premedia services. Regardless, we have the opportunity to touch several top brands and make our mark the efforts for brand consistency and marketing distinction.
So, I like to do a little research on the companies visiting us so I may answer the questions that are brought up to me when anyone walks by. If you would like to stop by and take a tour, be our guest. I’d like to put your name and company up on our welcome sign.
I have been asked to find digital images that we can display throughout our building. Not being real familiar with the Widen Media Collective, I took it upon myself to try to do it on my own. And lo and behold it is a pretty simple system to use. I just typed in a specific keyword on each Collective site and was able to pull up amazing images. We have many companies we work with and thousands of images, so it was pretty fun to get a little more comfortable with our digital asset management programs. It was so very simple to order up an image and have it immediately sent to my inbox within seconds, so I was able to send it to our Graphic Designer for her to add the company logo to it and it was off to our prepress production department.
I wanted to get an image from one of our newest customers for our internal Widen gallery so I went to the National Trust for Historic Preservation Media Collective site to see if there happened to be any images in their digital asset library and they already had several images up and ready to use. So I chose one of their images and it will soon be on the wall near my desk. It is so nice to walk through our company and see all of the images that we have produced and we store here at Widen. My next project is to have a few products displayed here with an image created by our color production team once the product has been photographed in our photo studio. It is just amazing how it all comes together and how it falls into place so simply.
“And That’s the Truth" video interview with Jim Magruder, Senior Marketing Communications Manager of InSinkErator, Division of Emerson Electric Co.
Customer service is definitely key when it comes to sales and service. If you don’t have service to back up the sale, what good are you? I'm a customer service person, always have been and probably always will be. The customer always comes first, regardless of how busy you may be with your normal everyday duties. For Jim Magruder at InSinkErator, he admits he is a non-technical person (like me) and for him to be able to have an expert on the other end of the line to help him with digital asset management solutions to solve his problems is a wonderful thing for him. Widen delivers on what we say and deliver with a smile.
"The Value is People" video interview with Jim Magruder, Senior Marketing Communications Manager of InSinkErator, Division of Emerson Electric Co.
Please don’t leave me all alone to figure it out!
Software as a Service is a wonderful thing. To be able to have the technical expertise to call on to solve any digital asset management workflow problem you may have is indeed a wonderful thing. Here at Widen, we enjoy making peoples life easier and simpler as Jim Magruder of InSinkErator admits in this video. He did not want an installed software provider that would leave him on his own to try to figure things out. He prefers working with people and experts on all of his software issues. Widen technical experts are always available so you are never left all alone.
"Ease of Use" video interview with Jim Magruder, Senior Marketing Communications Manager of InSinkErator, Division of Emerson Electric Co.
How simple can it be? Well, Jim Magruder of InSinkErator says the Widen Digital Asset Management system runs itself it’s so simple. It saves his staff a lot of time with how easy it is to order up an image using the web-based DAM. When all you need to do to find an image is type in a keyword and you’re presented with an array of high-quality images, you’re relieved! Then, when a user sees the yellow star highlighting the most preferred image and can access it instantly in the preferred file format using a simple check out system, that’s simple. Who wouldn’t want something so easy to work with? If only life in general was that simple.
"Global Access" video interview with Jim Magruder, Senior Marketing Communications Manager of InSinkErator, Division of Emerson Electric Co.
Being able to access brand assets 24/7 via web based DAM system is such an important benefit to sales. I myself was a kitchen designer and worked at home all hours of the night to finish up a project and being able to find the details needed to complete the project are definitely very important. InSinkErator products are sold in over 80 countries all over the world, so for any of their channel partners to be able to access images and marketing materials at anytime through a web based digital asset management platform is tremendous resource.
"Brand Control on a Global Scale" video interview with Jim Magruder, Senior Marketing Communications Manager of InSinkErator, Division of Emerson Electric Co.
Selling any type of product, you want to make sure you are selling what people see and want. If I was to look in a magazine or a brochure, I would want exactly what I see in the photo. That is where Widen comes in to place. If you want brand consistency on a global scale, Widen digital asset management solutions and services make that happen for top brands around the world. You would be able to have everyone across the globe using the same high quality image for all of your brochures. If not the same image, it would be a high quality one most representative of the market where it's used. We make it easy to control market differences for more effective brand asset management.
In my first blog post, actually a series of blog posts, I’ve provided my commentary on our latest set of video case studies featuring Jim Magruder, Senior Marketing Communications Manager of InSinkErator, Division of Emerson Electric Co. I didn’t sell Jim the DAM system, I didn’t program the code that his team is using and I’m not his main Widen contact, but I did transcribe every word he spoke to our video cameras. I hope you enjoy my commentary as you watch the videos of Jim speak of some incredible differences his marketing team is able to achieve with the help of Widen.
"The Issue" video interview with Jim Magruder, Senior Marketing Communications Manager of InSinkErator, Division of Emerson Electric Co.
In my years prior to Widen I sold garbage disposers. InSinkErator was the only brand I sold mainly because I knew their product was exceptional. I managed the kitchen department and I was the one who had to handle the returns of products that were defective, and I did not like having to do that. In the long run it meant fewer headaches for me and my customers. Jim Magruder of InSinkErator feels the same way about us here at Widen. Providing digital assets for his clients before Widen was a headache, and the more headaches he got the more he realized he needed Widen's services. We gave him what he calls an “electronic filing cabinet” for his images. He can send them anywhere in the world at anytime - day or night. He quickly realized Widen’s digital asset management software as a service solved his headaches.
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