How DAM fits into the enterprise marketing technology landscape

8/4/2019 How DAM fits into the enterprise marketing technology landscape

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Copyright 2011 DigitalAssetManagement.com

How DAM fitsinto the enterprise marketing technology landscape

By Mark Davey o the DAM Foundation

Presented by DigitalAssetManagement.comand Widen Enterprises

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How DAM fts into the enterprise marketing technology landscape

Copyright 2011 DigitalAssetManagement.com. All rights reserved.

1. Defning Marketing in Digital Enterprise

A Brie History o Marketing: From Ancient Greece to the inner space o our minds

As marketing has been on a strange journey o sel discovery, it may be helpul to take a look back at its history tounderstand why marketing and marketing technology roles are now growing and maturing (even reaching board

room C-suite status) along with a number o new technology positions, such as CTO and CIO.

Marketing used to be dened as to buy or sell, but as early as 1884, the Oxord English dictionary notes the

meaning changing to bringing or sending (a commodity) to market, extending the denition to a process broader

than a simple transaction. With the advent o World War II, brands learned the power o marketing a message to

the massesnone more so than Coca Cola which marketed Coke as a patriotic drink, a tonic or the troops, and

one that was to be made available to any U.S. serviceman or woman anywhere in the world. Coke was no longer a

rationed item but re-labeled a morale boosting item. Sixty our plants were set up to supply the troops. These were

subsequently converted to civilian use and Coke was established globally.

Coca-Cola and the other super brands that ollowed have had at least this much in common: they spend money like

crazy on marketing, because as science has proven, marketing works i the message is right.

The battle or the attention o buyers in a marketplace has intensied. Consumers make decisions in seconds about

how we perceive a brand. In a one-to-millions world, the challenge most marketing departments ace is making a

message stand out rom the perpetual and increasing noise o the marketplace.

Social marketing was born in the 1960s as marketers keenly observed the behavioral sciences looking or insights.

Behavioral social sciences created the marketing landscapes we have seen up until the rise o social media.

Neuro-marketing is the next battleeld o the superbrands that are mining or data in our minds. Whether they will

nd those clues remains unclear. Meanwhile, the only way anyone could get that close is utilizing and visualizing

big data.

Marketing is subject to constant change

Marketing has seen highs and lows, always reinventing itsel as new themes, technologies and concepts appear.

Today, marketing is a battle to be always on and available, via any device or distribution channel. As cloud-based

technology and strategies emerge, marketing departments are becoming less reliant on their internal IT resources

and turning to more nimble, more specialized outside rms to help them address the problems o scale and scope.

From the printing press to the microchip to the MRI, increasingly sophisticated marketing tools have raised

marketers to C-suite ranks. Todays tools, though, can only meet their potential in the attention economy i eective

digital asset management systems are involved.

Our natural instinct to save and preserve our history in museums and archives has moved rom lm and paper into

computer technology; we expect immediately relevant and contextual results rom searches and queries. Nobody

leaves this expectation at the oces ront door, so DAM systems have to meet those expectations as well.

Marketing companies and agencies have realized the cost-saving benet o having one central repository that

anyone, anywhere in the world can access whenever they want. Marketing enterprises have been motivated to get

DAM systems because they discovered the cost and time sink associated with assets sitting around on computers,

on CDs in a le, or just plain lost.


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3Copyright 2011 DigitalAssetManagement.com. All rights reserved.


DAM solutions can be used to store most digital ormats (or images, video, documents and other digital media).

These digital assets can then be used or collaboration, which includes some workfow elements within the business,

capturing an entire process rom concept to outcome, and back again. From idea to creative process to campaign

to how the end user reacts, and the eedback o meaningul measures that inorm business.

What have we learned?

According to Eric Schmidt, while CEO o Google, we create as much inormation in 2 days now as we did rom the

dawn o man through 2003. We are learning that the sum volume o digital assets grows exponentially, and that

growth is not slowing. In a world overloaded with digital inormation, marketers need to harness data eectively. They

must also protect themselvesnot only rom excessive and cluttered inormation, but rom erroneous inormation

as well.

Marketers must also better understand digital assets and their value. We have always known their value in the

creative and campaign process, but in the spray-and-pray messaging, they had little more value beyond that. With

a DAM solution in place, though, you can capture an idea as its produced, so that people can monitor and edit its

history and meaning through the metadata attached to that idea.

Within the system, metadata enables an electronic trailthe story o the metadatas journey rom concept to product

to delivery and instant eedback back into the DAM systemto enhance business intelligence.

Where are we going?

Were going to a linked-data linked-web world, that is semantically enabled, that will act as an agent or

understanding o the assets. We will have less inormation overload because we will have agents to go out and do

the work or us. That will only happen when all these knowledge por tals, these walled gardens o inormation, join

together. Because when all the data joins together, the rest o the web and the networks are better inormed and

have more access to knowledge, and can make inormed decisions and then lter that inormation back to us. But

in order to get to that we rst have to do the grunt work o assigning metadata to the assets. Then the machine will

understand all the metadata that weve assigned to assets within a taxonomy and it will produce an ontology.

2. Understanding what drives enterprise marketing technologies

This section will examine core principles that are applicable to all digital asset management systems, as well as the

need or custom design to meet system and marketing needs.

Then we will look at two very dierent real-world instances o large-scale DAM usage in the media industry: First,

Microsots Gaia system created or the movie Avatar, a system built rom scratch to provide the technology or a

media waiting or a means o expression. Second, we will look at the launch o the BBCs on-demand TV service,

iPlayer, and touch on some o the problems associated with developing DAM in a live environment or an

existing service.

What does a DAM system look like?

Let us consider a need or a visual assetor example, a picture o a mountain. You have plenty o pictures o

mountains, but nding just the right one (assuming you nd it at all) among the myriad images you have stored on

your DAM system could become time and cost prohibitive. In order to manage the data eectively, so that having

a wealth o assets doesnt mean losing track o them, youll need a DAM system. The core unctionality you should

look or in a DAM system ts into three distinct categories: digital, human and interace unctions.


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Digital

The technology that drives the system consists primarily o storage, input and output unctions.

Storage: At the heart o any DAM system is secure and sucient storage. The advent o cloud storage has provided

a perect medium or the development o DAM technologies which oer increased connectivity, the ability to scaleand improved output i the cloud is congured to handle delivery to multiple devices (mobile phones, tablets,

TV etc.).

Input: This refers to the process of putting data on a DAM system. Data can flow into the system

fromvarious sources. It should be easy for the right users to contribute assets for the

collective, a group or an indi vidual to access.

Output: The output of the system. A properly managed system will produce a well directed and

clear results that capitalize on metadata to deliver the most relevant information to the

end user.

Human

A DAM systems human component comprises approval, roles and permissions eatures.

Approval: A process of collaboration between agents, managers and vendors, whereby agreement

is reached on the publishing of assets into the public domain.

Roles & Permissions: Administrators should be able to define groups of individuals as being

allowed to engage in cer tain processes when they interact with assets. For our example,

can our picture of a mountain be downloaded? Can it be viewed in the public domain or by

subscription only?

Interace

Comprising the tools that enable human interaction with the DAM system, these are dened as dashboard (control

interace) and security and rights administration.

Admin control panel: A device for viewing, manipulating and moving data around the system,

communications and analytics are also run from the dashboard.

Roles and permissions: Within the system, security protocols will be assigned at each stage of the

process. Security tags can also be assigned to individual assets or groups of assets.

Some elements o a DAM system work through a combination o the human and digital agents and processes. This

structure can be tailored to meet the requirements o any organization, and it is the oundation o any DAM system.

What are the internal processes?

To understand DAMwe could use the metaphor o a dam; the kind that obstructs the fow o a river. The river

foods and creates a reservoir. The contents o the reservoir can then be distributed or redirected. I we are to

assume that data, and not water, fows through the river (or rivers), then we can also conceptualize the reservoir

as the storage acility where all our content is securely held. The dam (and thereore the DAM) not only provides a

containment acility or digital assets, but also controls output at the dam wall.


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Inside the structure o the dam are the monitoring systems, turbines, saety systems and agents (both digital and

human) that process inormation as it passes through the damwe can consider this as the workfow. By using

the metaphor o a dam and its surrounding geological eatures we can build a three dimensional model o the

landscape o a digital asset management system.

How does such a system assist business?

Gaia: The Avatar DAM system

In terms o volume o data, the lm industry produces vast amounts o inormation. With the emergence and allure

o digitally ormatted lms, the storage and management o large quantities o inormation has become a key

consideration or pioneering lmmakers like James Cameron.

To grasp the scale o digital asset management in the movie industry, we need only look at statistics rom Camerons

2009 blockbuster Avatar. Footage rom the production was backed up by a DAM system created specically or

the project. The system, created by Microsot, known as Gaia, was built rom the ground up to handle mind-bending

volumes o data. The company that managed the nal rendering o the lm, Weta Digital, utilized 40,000 processors

and ran 104 terabytes o RAM to get the job done. Managing this volume o data required a massive DAM system.

Without Gaia, we would not have been able to do the production, and Gaia was the backbone thateverything else ran on top of. John Landau, Avatar Producer Avatar

The Gaia system enabled the Avatar production team to capture, store and retrieve digital inormation rom several

locations. The system took into account those key components o scale, accessibility, approval and assignation o

metadatasuch as scene number, movement o actors and critiques o the take by the director. The system was

built on a cloud-based network and linked globally, making inormation accessible to crews around the world at all

times. In this way, the DAM system served as a virtual hub or the production o the movie.

Reliability and speed o access were built into the system so that data could be delivered speedily, easily and

securely. To acilitate protection protocols, assets were assigned security tags and bar codes which also contained

valuable metadata and detailed direction material.

The Gaia system is perhaps the most elaborate example to date o how a large scale digital asset management

system can revolutionize not just companies, but entire industries. The production process or Avatar set a new

standard or the management o digital inormation in lm-making and is a ne example o how a central hub,

designed or the eective management o assets, with the correct systems and considerations, can acilitate

innovative and groundbreaking creative achievements.

What are the main considerations in confguring a DAM system or an existing service?

Clearly, DAM systems can be powerul. However, not every business, organization or institution can build a stand-

alone platorm to make a groundbreaking innovation in its industry. What o existing businesses that need to extend

and develop their service?

Although eective and secure storage is the core unction o a DAM system, how the data is arranged, organized

and transmitted are also key issues. To explore this ur ther, let us look at another example rom the media industry. In

this instance, lets consider how the data is made available to the public and what issues are associated with having

not tens or hundreds o users, but thousands or millions.


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The BBCs iPlayer

The BBC iPlayer is an on-demand internet television and radio service developed by the BBC in a live environment

to extend and enhance an existing service.

In the rst week o 2010, there were 23.8 million requests made on the BBC iPlayer service. It was estimatedthat 120 million download requests would be made each month that year. That kind o demand must be met with

excellent planning and implementation o an eective DAM system.

The rst consideration or the iPlayer service, which launched in 2007, was that o scale. The BBC was strongly

criticized or promoting the transer rom beta to open beta as an ocial launch while it restricted access to the

service to allow UK-based ISPs to gauge iPlayers eect on UK Internet trac. As the BBC has a mandate to provide

equal access to the British public, criticism was exacerbated by the BBCs decision to restrict use to Windows XP

users, this resulted in over 16,000 signatures on a petition on a government website, objecting to the BBCs lauching

iPlayer to a Windows-only audience. Complaints were subsequently made by the Open Source Consortium to the

BBC Trust, the Department o Trade and Industry and broadcast regulator Ocom.

This highlights an important aspect o media-rich services being rolled out to the public. It was, o course, in

the interest o the service development that the BBC used a graded approach to implementation; however, thecorporation might have underestimated the scale o the demand with which it would be met. The question at this

point is how would a current DAM system manage this particular problem.

The iPlayer also ran into problems with its mode o le sharing. Moving rom a peer-to-peer system to an Adobe

HTTP system enabled the corporation to retain more control o broadcast material, while enabling greater access

or users across a wider range o operating systems.

In 2010, the iPlayers 3.0 version was released, which provided greater integration with social media and

other on-demand media sites. By connecting the metadata within the system, the iPlayer has become a more

connectedand thereore a more ocused and humanisedsystem.

Another problem with earlier iPlayer versions was that they did not discriminate on the basis o demand. Highly

popular shows were initially given no more priority in placement than less popular ones, and a lack o data

regarding viewing habits. The solution was to allocate dierent streams dierent priorities in order to manage the

data eectively.

The development o the iPlayer is a good example o the need or ecient DAM, especially because the platorm

needs to handle large amounts o rich media quickly, on a massive scale and with the correct degrees o relevance,

so the metadata assigned to the asset is relevant to the viewer. iPlayer diers rom the Gaia system because iPlayer

has been developed live and or an existing service. The Gaia system was developed rom the ground up or a new

project and as a closed system. By drawing this comparison we can begin to understand more ully the need or

custom design when it comes to the implementation o certain DAM systems. Ater all, no two rivers fowing into the

DAM will be the same.

DAM is the undamental tool or harnessing marketing activities

Companies marketing campaigns always have workfows attached to them. They involve people, assets, locations;they are usually time sensitive and private until launch. They can involve ideas, concepts, drats, a work in progress,

creative build, nal design and sign-o. This is the ingestion stage and without a DAM system, the process is time-

consuming, cumbersome and conducive to mistakes. Assets get lost, have to be re-shot or re-designed and this

impacts eciency.


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With a central repository or all assets, stakeholders with the right roles and permissions have ull accesseven on the

move, i the assets reside in a SaaS (Sotware as a Service) system; all assets are available via a web browser. This is

an important part o building a workfow that ts with how people manage their projects and marketing campaigns.

Once input, approved and signed o on, the DAM system really starts paying o, with eedback at asset and humanlevels, by way o collaboration and project management tools. These inorm the whole business and/or campaigns.

Market Asset Intelligence rom concept to campaign and beyond.

As we move into real-time networks and social media channels, the intelligence gathered by use, share and

like buttons enables marketers to build clearer pictures o users and markets. This makes them better equipped

to measure ROI. This will not only inorm marketing departments, but has value to the whole business through sales,

human resources and planning.

In large marketing companies, the CTO, CIO and CMO are hard at work utilizing the knowledge gained rom the

asset level to sentiment and predictive analysis. This means the business is better inormed because its has more

analytics and metrics to work with and inorm marketing activities. The digital media industry is adding layer upon

layer o data to the marketing mix.

3. Harnessing Marketing Assets

Here, we will discuss the benets o DAM to companies, with a strategic ocus on workfow, taxonomy and metadata.

Workfow

There is no point in building or purchasing a DAM system that does not take current workfow processes into account.

A workfow audit should be taken beore an RFQ or RFP and should include automated and human workfows.

A workfow audit should include as many touch points in the business as possible, and also ocus on external

partners and suppliers. The audit will identiy weaknesses and use-case scenarios that can be utilized eectively

within the DAM procurement process.

Although the ocus o this white paper is marketing, sales, customer service, HR and other departments can also

benet rom a DAM implementation. The C-Suite should be part o the purchasing process and share inormation

with the DAM managers about uture goals and target markets.

Taxonomy

At one level, taxonomy is just the hierarchical representation o your business. Time spent conguring a taxonomy

will save thousands o man-hours in the process o search and discovery.

Planning a taxonomy should take into account skills sets within the business and involve as much as possible the

knowledge o librarians, archivists, system architects and consultants, who have keen insights into developing

taxonomies that t the business needs.

The key is to identiy all the elements in a hierarchical structure and make sure the DAM system can incorporate them.


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Metadata

Once the taxonomy is established, metadata can be assigned to it. I the metadata has a classication within the

taxonomy, standard orms o metadata can be handled via a controlled vocabulary, then some orm o automation

can and should take place.

An enterprise DAM system will enable multiple layers o metadata to be assigned to it; this includes ownership and

rights management.

4. Strategic level planning

Levels o sophistication

Today, the noise in the marketing industry is palpable. To stand out in the attention economyand thus our target

marketswe need to make sure our assets are clear, contextual and relevant to potential customers. Weve covered

the process o getting assets into some order via a taxonomy and metadata.

Its now up to the metadata to enable searchers to nd assets. Marketers have worked on the premise o placement,

which is still a ne art based on market research. Placement into and on multiple devices or the right product, atthe right time, place and price is something only a DAM system can bring to the marketing department.

A procient digital asset management system should enable this with the right strategic planning, which star ts at the

workfow o the business and moves through the campaign and content into the right devices at the right time.

When a DAM is enabled to provide the right touch point analytics and backed up with methodical examination, it will

improve uture strategic planning and inorm the whole business.

5. The uture o Digital Asset Management

Assuming the steps above have been understood and ollowed, we can take a peek into the uture o digital asset

management or the enterprise marketeer.

Marketing will be at the oreront o new ways to engage in the art o attention. We are in the throes o growing and

building the attention economy at an unprecedented rate. Getting the message to our target group is the easy bit;

garnering enough attention time is the art. The world o the digital marketer has changed. Depending on who you

ask, we have a maximum o three to ve seconds to engage our audience enough to want some more. The marketer

o the uture will certainly have the tools with which to monitor and maintain this psychological dimension o the

attention economy.

However, the marketerbeing equipped with the right toolsalso needs to understand the power o the tools and

the skill sets necessary to do the job eectively. In order to do this, the marketing route needs the talent to make all

the components work. Archivists, creatives, librarians, specialists, inormation architects, producers, collaborators

and neurological scientists are all recognizing the value o harnessing inormation and distributing knowledge

eectively.

We have built the networks. We are switching to push-pull methods o delivery. Our content and campaigns need to

be ready or when the pull (search) is enabled. We are rapidly moving toward a contextually aware, real-time world.

Right or wrong, our campaign assets need to have a wealth o data embedded into them to maximize their value to

the whole o the business, as well as prospective customers and clients.


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No longer can we rely on a ew media or communicationour audiences are now ully immersed in real-time rich

media channels. Its hip, happening, and they are enjoying the experienceanything else looks outdated and bland

ater a while. This is not what a marketer wants his audience to think o a brand.

As we learn more about understanding data, especially big data, we get a closer view o the state o our campaignsand which channels are working. We become able to sense earlier whether our marketing initiatives have hit or

missed. Intelligence gathered via DAM systems o the uture will drive marketing campaigns as the number o

channels and touch points increase.

Inormation overload

Whether our brains will actually have the capacity to deal with all the inormation swimming around is moot. What

will most likely curtail this quest or inormation and knowledge is time. We simply do not have enough time to spend

searching and nding. We need to go directly to the source and be assured the inormation we are receiving is the

most accurate and up-to-date.

The promise o the linked-data web will bring about the rise o intelligent agents (semantically enabled personal

search engines and tools). These agents will understand that their mission is to bring us the very best available data

based on who, why and where we are.

Tools such as Qwiki are changing the way we engage with knowledge-based content. The Qwiki engine scrapes

Wikipedia inormation through a text-to-voice engine. Meanwhile, it embeds relevant images, video and documents

into a search result. This means that when you type digital asset management into a search eld, youll hear

a voice dictating the search result and see images and video related to your query, in sync with the ar ticle as

keywords, terms or phrases. In other words, the digital assets that are being scraped rom Wikipedia have metadata

assigned to them through taxonomy, those elements combined create an ontology o meaning that returns rich

media results to the user via a query. Sotware such as Qwiki will convert a search term into a ully immersed

knowledge experience.

As we head towards a more contextually relevant digital world, the machinesgiven the right metadatawill be

able to act as search-and-nd engines, intuitively understanding the meaning o the criteria that we have provided.

Strong taxonomy, metadata and ontology will drive these orces. As metadata is assigned to assets, we willexperience superior knowledge exchange and conversion, especially as the methodology to convert inormation is

better inormed.

When marketing operations couple the technology with a workfow that suits the business, and are able to capture

as much relevant inormation as possible, well begin to experience more complete business intelligence, and

develop a greater potential to disrupt markets. In order to get to this, we need to assign the right metadata to the

right assets. That takes planning, time, skill and the will to see the reward o this investment.


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About the author, Mark Davey

Mark Davey is the ounder o the DAM Foundation. He is a knowledge wealth specialist with a background in

publishing, marketing, advertising and consulting. He is currently a consultant in media rich applications and

services or government and business ecosystems.

About The DAM Foundation

The DAM Foundation is an organization whose mission is to build a DAM industry community that promotes best

practices and establishes standards in the marketplace. The oundation seeks to grow the industry and oer

guidance to the communitys members. The oundations innaugural conerence was held in March 2011 in Los

Angeles. The event was attended by a variety o DAM vedors, consultants and other interested businesses.

About DigitalAssetManagement.com

DigitalAssetManagement.com is an educational resource designed to help proessionals seeking to learn about or

shop or DAM systems make the most inormed possible decisions. The site oers resources valuable in estimating

ROI, understanding the DAM needs o particular organizations and staying up to date on what products in the DAM

market are capable o. The site is owned and operated by Widen Enterprises.

About Widen Enterprises

Based in Madison, Wisconsin, Widen has honed its more than 60 years o experience in premedia services and

color management specically or assisting customers with building brand equity and supporting consistent brand

representation across print and Web communications. Through its inventive suite o Web-based digital asset

management applications, Widen sotware services provide marketing networks with real-time, Web-based access

to clients digital asset libraries, subsequently eliminating manual search and le preparation time, costs related to

replacing images and videos that cannot be located, and added costs or hardware, sotware and upgrades. For

more inormation, visit: www.widen.com.
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How DAM fits into the enterprise marketing technology landscape