How DAM fits

into the enterprise marketing technology landscape

By Mark Davey of the DAM Foundation Presented by DigitalAssetManagement.com and Widen Enterprises

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Copyright 2011 DigitalAssetManagement.com

How DAM fits into the enterprise marketing technology landscape

1. Defining Marketing in Digital Enterprise

A Brief History of Marketing: From Ancient Greece to the inner space of our minds
As marketing has been on a strange journey of self discovery, it may be helpful to take a look back at its history to understand why marketing and marketing technology roles are now growing and maturing (even reaching board room C-suite status) along with a number of new technology positions, such as CTO and CIO. Marketing used to be defined as to buy or sell, but as early as 1884, the Oxford English dictionary notes the meaning changing to bringing or sending (a commodity) to market, extending the definition to a process broader than a simple transaction. With the advent of World War II, brands learned the power of marketing a message to the massesnone more so than Coca Cola which marketed Coke as a patriotic drink, a tonic for 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 four 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 followed have had at least this much in common: they spend money like crazy on marketing, because as science has proven, marketing works if the message is right. The battle for the attention of buyers in a marketplace has intensified. Consumers make decisions in seconds about how we perceive a brand. In a one-to-millions world, the challenge most marketing departments face is making a message stand out from the perpetual and increasing noise of the marketplace. Social marketing was born in the 1960s as marketers keenly observed the behavioral sciences looking for insights. Behavioral social sciences created the marketing landscapes we have seen up until the rise of social media. Neuro-marketing is the next battlefield of the superbrands that are mining for data in our minds. Whether they will find 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 itself 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 firms to help them address the problems of 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 if effective digital asset management systems are involved. Our natural instinct to save and preserve our history in museums and archives has moved from film and paper into computer technology; we expect immediately relevant and contextual results from searches and queries. Nobody leaves this expectation at the offices front door, so DAM systems have to meet those expectations as well. Marketing companies and agencies have realized the cost-saving benefit of 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 file, or just plain lost.

Copyright 2011 DigitalAssetManagement.com. All rights reserved.

How DAM fits into the enterprise marketing technology landscape

DAM solutions can be used to store most digital formats (for images, video, documents and other digital media). These digital assets can then be used for collaboration, which includes some workflow elements within the business, capturing an entire process from concept to outcome, and back again. From idea to creative process to campaign to how the end user reacts, and the feedback of meaningful measures that inform business.

What have we learned?

According to Eric Schmidt, while CEO of Google, we create as much information in 2 days now as we did from the dawn of man through 2003. We are learning that the sum volume of digital assets grows exponentially, and that growth is not slowing. In a world overloaded with digital information, marketers need to harness data effectively. They must also protect themselvesnot only from excessive and cluttered information, but from erroneous information 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 of the metadatas journey from concept to product to delivery and instant feedback 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 for understanding of the assets. We will have less information overload because we will have agents to go out and do the work for us. That will only happen when all these knowledge portals, these walled gardens of information, join together. Because when all the data joins together, the rest of the web and the networks are better informed and have more access to knowledge, and can make informed decisions and then filter that information back to us. But in order to get to that we first have to do the grunt work of 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 for custom design to meet system and marketing needs. Then we will look at two very different real-world instances of large-scale DAM usage in the media industry: First, Microsofts Gaia system created for the movie Avatar, a system built from scratch to provide the technology for a media waiting for a means of expression. Second, we will look at the launch of the BBCs on-demand TV service, iPlayer, and touch on some of the problems associated with developing DAM in a live environment for an existing service.

What does a DAM system look like?

Let us consider a need for a visual assetfor example, a picture of a mountain. You have plenty of pictures of mountains, but finding just the right one (assuming you find 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 effectively, so that having a wealth of assets doesnt mean losing track of them, youll need a DAM system. The core functionality you should look for in a DAM system fits into three distinct categories: digital, human and interface functions.

Copyright 2011 DigitalAssetManagement.com. All rights reserved.

How DAM fits into the enterprise marketing technology landscape

Digital
The technology that drives the system consists primarily of storage, input and output functions. Storage: At the heart of any DAM system is secure and sufficient storage. The advent of cloud storage has provided a perfect medium for the development of DAM technologies which offer increased connectivity, the ability to scale and improved output if the cloud is configured 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 individual 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 features. 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 certain 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?

Interface
Comprising the tools that enable human interaction with the DAM system, these are defined as dashboard (control interface) 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 of a DAM system work through a combination of the human and digital agents and processes. This structure can be tailored to meet the requirements of any organization, and it is the foundation of any DAM system.

What are the internal processes?

To understand DAMwe could use the metaphor of a dam; the kind that obstructs the flow of a river. The river floods and creates a reservoir. The contents of the reservoir can then be distributed or redirected. If we are to assume that data, and not water, flows through the river (or rivers), then we can also conceptualize the reservoir as the storage facility where all our content is securely held. The dam (and therefore the DAM) not only provides a containment facility for digital assets, but also controls output at the dam wall.

Copyright 2011 DigitalAssetManagement.com. All rights reserved.

How DAM fits into the enterprise marketing technology landscape

Inside the structure of the dam are the monitoring systems, turbines, safety systems and agents (both digital and human) that process information as it passes through the damwe can consider this as the workflow. By using the metaphor of a dam and its surrounding geological features we can build a three dimensional model of the landscape of a digital asset management system.

How does such a system assist business? Gaia: The Avatar DAM system
In terms of volume of data, the film industry produces vast amounts of information. With the emergence and allure of digitally formatted films, the storage and management of large quantities of information has become a key consideration for pioneering filmmakers like James Cameron. To grasp the scale of digital asset management in the movie industry, we need only look at statistics from Camerons 2009 blockbuster Avatar. Footage from the production was backed up by a DAM system created specifically for the project. The system, created by Microsoft, known as Gaia, was built from the ground up to handle mind-bending volumes of data. The company that managed the final rendering of the film, Weta Digital, utilized 40,000 processors and ran 104 terabytes of RAM to get the job done. Managing this volume of data required a massive DAM system.

Without Gaia, we would not have been able to do the production, and Gaia was the backbone that everything else ran on top of. John Landau, Avatar Producer Avatar
The Gaia system enabled the Avatar production team to capture, store and retrieve digital information from several locations. The system took into account those key components of scale, accessibility, approval and assignation of metadatasuch as scene number, movement of actors and critiques of the take by the director. The system was built on a cloud-based network and linked globally, making information accessible to crews around the world at all times. In this way, the DAM system served as a virtual hub for the production of the movie. Reliability and speed of access were built into the system so that data could be delivered speedily, easily and securely. To facilitate 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 of how a large scale digital asset management system can revolutionize not just companies, but entire industries. The production process for Avatar set a new standard for the management of digital information in film-making and is a fine example of how a central hub, designed for the effective management of assets, with the correct systems and considerations, can facilitate innovative and groundbreaking creative achievements.

What are the main considerations in configuring a DAM system for an existing service?
Clearly, DAM systems can be powerful. However, not every business, organization or institution can build a standalone platform to make a groundbreaking innovation in its industry. What of existing businesses that need to extend and develop their service? Although effective and secure storage is the core function of a DAM system, how the data is arranged, organized and transmitted are also key issues. To explore this further, let us look at another example from 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 of users, but thousands or millions.

Copyright 2011 DigitalAssetManagement.com. All rights reserved.

How DAM fits into the enterprise marketing technology landscape

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 first week of 2010, there were 23.8 million requests made on the BBC iPlayer service. It was estimated that 120 million download requests would be made each month that year. That kind of demand must be met with excellent planning and implementation of an effective DAM system. The first consideration for the iPlayer service, which launched in 2007, was that of scale. The BBC was strongly criticized for promoting the transfer from beta to open beta as an official launch while it restricted access to the service to allow UK-based ISPs to gauge iPlayers effect on UK Internet traffic. 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 of Trade and Industry and broadcast regulator Ofcom. This highlights an important aspect of media-rich services being rolled out to the public. It was, of course, in the interest of the service development that the BBC used a graded approach to implementation; however, the corporation might have underestimated the scale of 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 of file sharing. Moving from a peer-to-peer system to an Adobe HTTP system enabled the corporation to retain more control of broadcast material, while enabling greater access for users across a wider range of 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 therefore a more focused and humanisedsystem. Another problem with earlier iPlayer versions was that they did not discriminate on the basis of demand. Highly popular shows were initially given no more priority in placement than less popular ones, and a lack of data regarding viewing habits. The solution was to allocate different streams different priorities in order to manage the data effectively. The development of the iPlayer is a good example of the need for efficient DAM, especially because the platform needs to handle large amounts of rich media quickly, on a massive scale and with the correct degrees of relevance, so the metadata assigned to the asset is relevant to the viewer. iPlayer differs from the Gaia system because iPlayer has been developed live and for an existing service. The Gaia system was developed from the ground up for a new project and as a closed system. By drawing this comparison we can begin to understand more fully the need for custom design when it comes to the implementation of certain DAM systems. After all, no two rivers flowing into the DAM will be the same.

DAM is the fundamental tool for harnessing marketing activities

Companies marketing campaigns always have workflows attached to them. They involve people, assets, locations; they are usually time sensitive and private until launch. They can involve ideas, concepts, drafts, a work in progress, creative build, final design and sign-off. This is the ingestion stage and without a DAM system, the process is timeconsuming, cumbersome and conducive to mistakes. Assets get lost, have to be re-shot or re-designed and this impacts efficiency.

Copyright 2011 DigitalAssetManagement.com. All rights reserved.

How DAM fits into the enterprise marketing technology landscape

With a central repository for all assets, stakeholders with the right roles and permissions have full accesseven on the move, if the assets reside in a SaaS (Software as a Service) system; all assets are available via a web browser. This is an important part of building a workflow that fits with how people manage their projects and marketing campaigns. Once input, approved and signed off on, the DAM system really starts paying off, with feedback at asset and human levels, by way of collaboration and project management tools. These inform the whole business and/or campaigns.

Market Asset Intelligence from 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 of users and markets. This makes them better equipped to measure ROI. This will not only inform 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 from the asset level to sentiment and predictive analysis. This means the business is better informed because its has more analytics and metrics to work with and inform marketing activities. The digital media industry is adding layer upon layer of data to the marketing mix.

3. Harnessing Marketing Assets

Here, we will discuss the benefits of DAM to companies, with a strategic focus on workflow, taxonomy and metadata.

Workflow
There is no point in building or purchasing a DAM system that does not take current workflow processes into account. A workflow audit should be taken before an RFQ or RFP and should include automated and human workflows. A workflow audit should include as many touch points in the business as possible, and also focus on external partners and suppliers. The audit will identify weaknesses and use-case scenarios that can be utilized effectively within the DAM procurement process. Although the focus of this white paper is marketing, sales, customer service, HR and other departments can also benefit from a DAM implementation. The C-Suite should be part of the purchasing process and share information with the DAM managers about future goals and target markets.

Taxonomy
At one level, taxonomy is just the hierarchical representation of your business. Time spent configuring a taxonomy will save thousands of man-hours in the process of search and discovery. Planning a taxonomy should take into account skills sets within the business and involve as much as possible the knowledge of librarians, archivists, system architects and consultants, who have keen insights into developing taxonomies that fit the business needs. The key is to identify all the elements in a hierarchical structure and make sure the DAM system can incorporate them.

Copyright 2011 DigitalAssetManagement.com. All rights reserved.

How DAM fits into the enterprise marketing technology landscape

Metadata
Once the taxonomy is established, metadata can be assigned to it. If the metadata has a classification within the taxonomy, standard forms of metadata can be handled via a controlled vocabulary, then some form of automation can and should take place. An enterprise DAM system will enable multiple layers of metadata to be assigned to it; this includes ownership and rights management.

4. Strategic level planning

Levels of 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 of getting assets into some order via a taxonomy and metadata. Its now up to the metadata to enable searchers to find assets. Marketers have worked on the premise of placement, which is still a fine art based on market research. Placement into and on multiple devices for the right product, at the right time, place and price is something only a DAM system can bring to the marketing department. A proficient digital asset management system should enable this with the right strategic planning, which starts at the workflow of 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 future strategic planning and inform the whole business.

5. The future of Digital Asset Management

Assuming the steps above have been understood and followed, we can take a peek into the future of digital asset management for the enterprise marketeer. Marketing will be at the forefront of new ways to engage in the art of attention. We are in the throes of 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 of the digital marketer has changed. Depending on who you ask, we have a maximum of three to five seconds to engage our audience enough to want some more. The marketer of the future will certainly have the tools with which to monitor and maintain this psychological dimension of the attention economy. However, the marketerbeing equipped with the right toolsalso needs to understand the power of the tools and the skill sets necessary to do the job effectively. In order to do this, the marketing route needs the talent to make all the components work. Archivists, creatives, librarians, specialists, information architects, producers, collaborators and neurological scientists are all recognizing the value of harnessing information and distributing knowledge effectively. We have built the networks. We are switching to push-pull methods of delivery. Our content and campaigns need to be ready for 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 of data embedded into them to maximize their value to the whole of the business, as well as prospective customers and clients.

Copyright 2011 DigitalAssetManagement.com. All rights reserved.

How DAM fits into the enterprise marketing technology landscape

No longer can we rely on a few media for communicationour audiences are now fully immersed in real-time rich media channels. Its hip, happening, and they are enjoying the experienceanything else looks outdated and bland after a while. This is not what a marketer wants his audience to think of a brand. As we learn more about understanding data, especially big data, we get a closer view of the state of our campaigns and which channels are working. We become able to sense earlier whether our marketing initiatives have hit or missed. Intelligence gathered via DAM systems of the future will drive marketing campaigns as the number of channels and touch points increase.

Information overload
Whether our brains will actually have the capacity to deal with all the information swimming around is moot. What will most likely curtail this quest for information and knowledge is time. We simply do not have enough time to spend searching and finding. We need to go directly to the source and be assured the information we are receiving is the most accurate and up-to-date. The promise of the linked-data web will bring about the rise of 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 information 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 field, youll hear a voice dictating the search result and see images and video related to your query, in sync with the article as keywords, terms or phrases. In other words, the digital assets that are being scraped from Wikipedia have metadata assigned to them through taxonomy, those elements combined create an ontology of meaning that returns rich media results to the user via a query. Software such as Qwiki will convert a search term into a fully 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-find engines, intuitively understanding the meaning of the criteria that we have provided. Strong taxonomy, metadata and ontology will drive these forces. As metadata is assigned to assets, we will experience superior knowledge exchange and conversion, especially as the methodology to convert information is better informed. When marketing operations couple the technology with a workflow that suits the business, and are able to capture as much relevant information 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 of this investment.

Copyright 2011 DigitalAssetManagement.com. All rights reserved.

How DAM fits into the enterprise marketing technology landscape

About the author, Mark Davey Mark Davey is the founder of 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 for 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 foundation seeks to grow the industry and offer guidance to the communitys members. The foundations innaugural conference was held in March 2011 in Los Angeles. The event was attended by a variety of DAM vedors, consultants and other interested businesses. About DigitalAssetManagement.com DigitalAssetManagement.com is an educational resource designed to help professionals seeking to learn about or shop for DAM systems make the most informed possible decisions. The site offers resources valuable in estimating ROI, understanding the DAM needs of particular organizations and staying up to date on what products in the DAM market are capable of. The site is owned and operated by Widen Enterprises. About Widen Enterprises Based in Madison, Wisconsin, Widen has honed its more than 60 years of experience in premedia services and color management specifically for assisting customers with building brand equity and supporting consistent brand representation across print and Web communications. Through its inventive suite of Web-based digital asset management applications, Widen software services provide marketing networks with real-time, Web-based access to clients digital asset libraries, subsequently eliminating manual search and file preparation time, costs related to replacing images and videos that cannot be located, and added costs for hardware, software and upgrades. For more information, visit: www.widen.com.

Copyright 2011 DigitalAssetManagement.com. All rights reserved.

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