One of the biggest challenges facing today’s marketers is how to keep track of the sheer volume and complexity of marketing content. Factor in the explosion of digital, plus the need to execute campaigns more quickly – with teams often spread across different agencies and countries – keeping any kind of unified control over content storage and usage becomes even more of a headache. Visual material is a particular challenge as it does not naturally lend itself to easy categorisation, yet it’s not unusual for a brand to have over 100,000 assets of this kind.
At the extreme, there is the risk of being sued for brand or copyright infringement (for instance, a user in a remote country did not realise that they were impacting on someone else’s intellectual property rights). Other everyday downsides include: hours can be spent trying to find the right image or file; or content is unnecessarily duplicated and sent at great expense via courier across continents, or discovering that the image the agency based a campaign around has, in fact, expired and they have to start all over again. And it’s draining: when your team would rather be focusing on the creative stuff, everyone’s drowning in administration.
How digital asset management (DAM) can help
This is why an increasing number of top brands are turning to technology tools to help them create central resources of marketing content (documents, artwork, video, etc), which helps brand guardians to maintain control, while making it easy for staff and agencies to find exactly what they need and use within the right guidelines. DAM systems help organisations manage their assets more effectively. Here are a few ‘best practice’ tips to consider for successful digital asset management:
Three tips for successful digital asset management:
Robert Rose at the Content Marketing Institute has identified three elements that, when used together, can provide a much more effective method of managing assets: integration, optimisation and accessibility. Fine words, but what does this mean in practice?
Integration – everything in one place
Integration is about creating a marketing ecosystem where all digital assets are on one platform, covering content from idea conception through to finished work and ongoing iterations. The system needs to be fast to use and create a seamless experience for users, regardless of the marketing channel. Also, he points out: “digital assets have to support old school main stays as well as new school multichannel marketing, and bring them together to deliver a unified experience; from a localised print catalogue to mobile push messages, to an exceptional instore experience and finally, to an online ecommerce purchase.”
Optimisation – easy to use
In this context, optimisation means making sure assets are being used to their best advantage, while reducing unnecessary costs. For instance, this can mean making it possible for remote users to custom version a file (reformat, crop), while still maintaining the original asset.
It’s not just cost saving: the asset management system can also manage version control and workflows, so there are gates in place to ensure the right file is used, by the right people at the right time and with a clear ‘audit trail’ of what happened. As Robert Rose says: “Marketers now have to track and manage access rights, trademark, and other restrictions of use. They need to know where an asset has been used – digitally and in print, as well as who has actually seen it, and if they were moved enough to engage in its call-to-action.”
Accessibility – learning to love asset management
Let’s face it: some marketers are going to resist having another system imposed upon them and may still store files on local hard disks and exchange them via email or CD. Even the best DAM system can’t prevent that behaviour, so it needs to clearly be an upwards gear change and become the easiest, most convenient and fastest way to find and share content. For example, image files that are tagged using metadata are easier to find and interpret. DAM systems can also show related or associated content, for example, a user may search for a campaign video and the system will return not just the video but related campaign assets like the video transcript giving users a ‘one stop shop’ for everything they need.
Suddenly, relying on email, couriers and the agency for every task is a lot less attractive. And by making marketing files easier, faster and cheaper to manage, the content mountain is no longer an uphill struggle to climb. Content really does become an ‘asset’ that adds value to marketing and brands.
