To succeed in the attention economy, companies must delight their target audiences with branded experiences. Nowhere is this more essential than when it comes to optimizing the use of rich media. Online marketing campaigns depend on having the right visual themes reinforcing spoken messages, available on both PCs and mobile devices. Even customer support tutorials are enlivened with photos, music, and video clips, delivered by company websites. An enterprise-wide branding portal simplifies the distribution of these high-value digital assets. But rich media comes with its own production costs and risks—locating the best assets that communicate the underlying messages and then having the commercial rights to use them. Whether they are refreshing an existing website or developing the collateral for an entirely new campaign, business and branding teams face tight timelines as they coordinate many different marketing and production activities. Fast and easy access to relevant images, videos, and sound tracks, is needed. These are typically sourced from creative professionals who are managing a company’s rich media collections. For a company intent on building its branded experiences, a DAM system provides essential capabilities for streamlining business processes. More than a networked file share that simply stores rich media files, a DAM system becomes the system of record within the organization for managing how the various digital assets are used.
When it comes to streamlining productivity, a DAM system: • Provides the single source of truth for accessing, organizing, protecting, and appropriately distributing high-value branded assets • Ensures security and manages access controls • Makes it easy for appropriately authenticated digital designers, marketers, and business teams to get work done A DAM system places a premium on combining findability with business orchestration —ensuring that company staffers can quickly access asset collections, select the individual items they need, and then incorporate the results into their work-related tasks. In particular, photos, videos, soundtracks, brochures, and other types of digital assets are tagged with descriptive terms and other kinds of metadata when they are ingested into the repository. A DAM system should support multiple capabilities for managing tag sets and metadata, including incorporating formally defined taxonomies, recognizing predefined metadata, and capturing the results of ad hoc tagging (or folksonomies). Some DAM systems use advanced image categorization techniques—such as facial/ object recognition and date/location mapping—to automatically tag assets with additional kinds of metadata. Some DAM systems feature advanced capabilities for managing video and audio streams, such as key frame identification and time-coded metadata analysis.
HOW DIGITAL ASSET MANAGEMENT EMPOWERS THE TOTAL DIGITAL EXPERIENCE
A PRACTICAL HOW-TO GUIDE
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Moreover, a DAM system provides an open platform for rich media management within an overall digital ecosystem. It is the system of record that can be embedded and/or integrated with other applications being used within an enterprise. For example: • Graphic designers formatting brochures for a product promotion can access photos from within their desktop editing tools. • Line-of-business staffers can find and add the right images and new video clips while updating a web page using their WCM platform. • Account executives can create digital portfolios for their customers and then track their customers’ activities within the enterprise CRM system. Finally, a DAM system ensures that digital assets are used appropriately within a commercial context by supporting digital rights management (DRM) capabilities. For instance, a DAM system can include digital rights descriptions within the metadata of individual assets—identifying the owner and the clearances when, where, and how particular assets can be used. With granular digital rights descriptions and the management framework for tracking individual files, companies can protect themselves against the risks (and legal expenses if sued) of inadvertently misusing rich media when producing their digital experiences
• Graphic designers formatting brochures for a product promotion can access photos from within their desktop editing tools.
• Line-of-business staffers can find and add the right images and new video clips while updating a web page using their WCM platform.
• Account executives can create digital portfolios for their customers and then track their customers’ activities within the enterprise CRM system. Finally, a DAM system ensures that digital assets are used appropriately within a commercial context by supporting digital rights management (DRM) capabilities. For instance, a DAM system can include digital rights descriptions within the metadata of individual assets—identifying the owner and the clearances when, where, and how particular assets can be used. With granular digital rights descriptions and the management framework for tracking individual files, companies can protect themselves against the risks (and legal expenses if sued) of inadvertently misusing rich media when producing their digital experiences
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