Meet DAM and Work Freely With Your Files – 7

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8. DAM Solution for Business

Education Assets, Information Assets, IT Assets, Knowledge Assets, Media Assets, Social Assets, Software Code Assets are all different types of digital assets. Different departments of a company may create or use any of these asset types for many different reasons. A DAM is necessary for storing, record keeping, access controlling of these digital assets. While every department benefits from DAM, one department stands out from the rest; marketing.

a. DAM Solution for Marketing

TV, Web, cell phones, digital media players, in-store advertising – everywhere you turn rich media is delivering the message. As consumers become more and more accustomed to receiving marketing and advertising content through a variety of distribution devices and formats, marketers are challenged to find ways to meet these expectations.

Digital content is having a profound impact on a wide variety of industries, and no single department in those industries is more affected than marketing. Regardless of industry, marketing is a ubiquitous function and one that has traditionally managed the lion’s share of a company’s rich media such as logos, collateral, TV and radio spots, photographs, graphics, and presentation materials.

Marketers managing both established and emerging brands need to understand that today’s multi-channel, digitally-oriented environment requires a well conceived digital asset management plan to ensure ongoing brand integrity and meet sophisticated and evolving distribution channels.

b. Embracing Marketing Operation: What’s in it for DAM professionals?

It is fair to say that the abbreviation for Marketing Operations — MO — is an apt descriptor of its potential impact in organizations. Marketing Operations is poised to literally change the modus operandi of Marketing. And a new modus operandi for Marketing in organizations is great news for all of us. So whether you are a DAM project manager or business user, it is definitely in your best interest to become a passionate advocate of MO.

The emergence of MO as a formalized discipline in enterprise today creates tremendous opportunity for all of us. MO paves the path for DAM, MOM and other comprehensive technology initiatives by:

• Spawning a new breed of professionals whose sole purpose is to improve efficiency and effectiveness of their enterprises ’ marketing departments

• Injecting left-brain thinking into the typically right-brained-heavy Marketing function

• Building a marriage between Marketing and IT, as well as other interdependent stakeholders

• Creating a predisposition toward deploying marketing automation solutions to address such challenges as optimizing scarce resources, capturing ROI insight and sharing knowledge.

c. How does DAM Help Marketing Through its “Evolution”?

The incredible speed with which the current marketing environment changes, definitely leads to certain problems:

• Migration from a mass market to a highly segmented market, potentially 1-to-1

• Existence of more products in more variation with shorter product life cycles, potentially heading into the direction of “tailor made solutions”

• Communicating different kinds of information

• Communicating via an increasing amount of interactive media

As in every evolutionary process (i.e. biological, technological), growth in information transactions occurs exponentially. Every year the amount of data stored doubles. Even if innovation in technologies can keep up with the speed, people need to revise their skills in order to adapt to the changing circumstances and processes need to be adjusted to changing volumes. Marketers definitely experience the fall-back of this growth. It is impossible for individuals to keep up with this information expansion. Managers have the feeling that they have less control over what “goes out”, they suffer more stress and are heading for “Information Fatigue Syndrome”, the 21st century burn out.

The sheer magnitude of this information growth and the requirements on how to accommodate these volumes is highly underestimated by many people. This psychological phenomenon originates from the fact that people experience change, but it is perceived as a linear growth. Even an exponential curve approximates a straight line when viewed for a brief duration. Our intuition tells us that situations will change with the current pace.

Technology can be a great help, but will not offer the overall solution. Implementing a content management system, for instance, does not mean that you have content. The obvious conclusion is that we need to develop an environment that can adapt to rapid change and creates overall visibility and control. DAM offers a helping hand.

d. What is Mobile DAM?

“The Possibilities of Archived Streamed Media for Marketers”

As converged mobile devices, such as phones or PDAs become more predominant both in the office and the home, the use of rich mobile media for marketing or other business activities is likely to increase. Although beset by a bewildering array of formats, protocols and device hardware, the principle of mobile DAM, or archived streamed media, is quite straight-forward. Web-enabled mobile users can either request or be served video or similar ‘rich media’, stored in an online digital archive. Furthermore, it is now possible to enable users to record video on converged mobile devices and upload it to the very same archive.

The possibilities for marketers and other business professionals are numerous. First, and perhaps most obvious, are the possible applications for B2C marketing. Video can be pushed to ‘opt-in’ targets to advertise your latest product or service offers. This provides a highly effective method of communicating in competitive arenas such as consumer electronics, FMCG or other consumer retail markets.

Further, video can be distributed to customers as an after-sales service. For example, technology vendors can send video installation guides to recent customers of products such as plasma TVs, which in turn provide further up selling opportunities. Media-rich mobile communications can therefore be considered an increasingly essential component of CRM programs and the wider marketing mix for these types of businesses.

But it is in B2B markets where the opportunities are most diverse. Video podcasting is gaining ground as a pull-marketing strategy for businesses ranging from the hi-tech industries to the public sector – and mobile DAM provides an excellent platform for these sorts of business communications. Rich media can be used to assist professionals in the field. Consider the use of detailed video footage of specialist operations for engineers or architects lacking that experience and who are on-site. From marketing to operational activities, mobile DAM has varied uses for modern businesses.

Where mobile DAM truly becomes leading-edge is via its reverse application, i.e. enabling mobile users to record and upload media from converged mobile devices to an online digital archive, accessible by corporate or public users. In this scenario, videos or photos, etc. can be stored and shared in organizations, almost in real-time, offering many advantages for professionals in the field, such as civil engineers or press officers. As the uptake of converged mobile devices spreads, this use of mobile DAM technology has potential for B2C marketing operations also.

Already forward-thinking businesses who target youth markets have used this technology to enable consumers at their sponsored events to record and upload their own videos to public websites or similar.

In summary, mobile DAM provides a host of opportunities for business from almost any sector. Such systems can be used to push media-rich content to end-users as well as enable mobile users to upload, store and share rich media with corporate or wider networks. Mobile technologies, in particular mobile DAM, will be indispensable tools for marketers and other business professionals in the not so distant future.