Glamour and Guts: The Two Faces of DAM

that are OK to use for a specific marketing campaign. The third key function for a DAM system (and perhaps the most interesting one, thinks Meek) is to provide a media database that can render and deliver content into automated publishing applications. The typical company website is a combination of textual information and visual information, Meek points out, and so wherever the logo, say, appears in the site, it should relate back to the currently approved version of that logo, whether it's a JPEG or a GIF or what have you. Thanks to this functionality, a person in my Boise office can create a website or page or other online collateral, and simply say "logo goes here." The DAM system can then determine (a.) which logo is the correct one; (b.) which format is most appropriate; and (c.) most importantly, UPDATE that link whenever a change occurs to the logo or business rules regarding its use—automatically. So a change to the branding doesn't have to be communicated to every person in the organization, and no employee has to worry about "changing the website." It's done transparently by the DAM. In fact, DAM systems also include presentation templates that can calculate how to render the original high-res image to "fit" the usage... whether it's a little "bug" in the corner of a PowerPoint, or a revolving MPEG of the logo in hi-res. Either way, it's tagged back to the image library. If the original is modified, the system will initiate a search through all its related and connected media forms and promulgate that change everywhere it appears, in all its various forms. "This notion of automated publishing systems is really starting to get interest," says Meek, "not only in Web publishing—where it is pretty much required—but also in the creation of personalized marketing collateral that may be delivered via HTML mail, or electronic PDF or a hi-res PDF that will eventually go to print." There are two benefits: Automated publishing can certainly make the marketers who are responsible for producing catalogs and collateral more efficient, by automating a lot of what they now do manually. Cycle time and thus overall speed-to-market is accelerated, and, naturally, that's a big reason people buy DAM. But it can be taken to another level, where it can create a "Web-to-print" application with which a non-technical sales guy on the road can, for instance, fill in a form and generate a personalized sales-call follow-up document with his head shot, specific product information and images, white papers and brochures they talked about on the sales call... and do it all instantly AND accurately. "You are then delivering a specific, branded piece of sales material that is relevant and specific to what the salesperson ordered," says Meek. A Vision for DAM This is the vision... is it the reality? It's apparently starting to be. A customer of Interwoven recently worked on creating just such an automated publishing system based on DAM. When they went looking for one to buy, there wasn't a software category called "marketing collateral automation." But there is now! Think of a large clothing company. They have thousands of individual items that change seasonally maybe five times a year. They have various brands of those clothes that are sold to different demographics—sports wear, business casual, golf clothes, what have you. By the time they produce a catalog the old-fashioned way, it's already obsolete. And this condition doesn't apply only to fancy color catalogs; by linking product information such as SKU numbers, they can create up-to-date product listing sheets, too. These are BIG points of pain for large consumer-goods manufacturers AND their retailers/distributors. Solving a business problem is one thing; actually creating a new business process by virtue of the combination of product-line information and digital asset management is even more exciting. Think about this: with product information residing in the background on an SAP system, say, and related images tied to that information via DAM and automated publishing, it's possible for a retailer to open a customized PDF catalog, fill in an order form, add a digital "signature," and the order is sent into processing. That "span of vision," says Meek, is the future. And it's happening now. "It's about speed-to-market," concludes Meek. "Getting marketing materials turned around, approved and produced is often the ‘long straw,' the slowest part, in product introductions or in responding to competitors' actions," he says. Digital asset management allows that speed to take place, but also with brand accuracy and consistency... two things often missing in the heat of battle. On top of superior process implementation, when you do this stuff right, you save money to boot, by virtue of the efficiencies and avoidance of repetition and redundancy. "If you can get those people who spend lots of time producing materials to be more effective and cut down the time they spend doing things that can be automated, then they have more time to think strategically about planning the next campaign," says Meek. The merger of content management and digital asset management is plain and obvious, when you think about it. When I need to have the latest and correctly rendered copy of a product shot, I usually also need the 150-word copy block that describes that product. And, I need to customize it for my specific audience... the 150 words that describe my new running-shoe design to teenagers will be very different from the description I would use for my retailers, or my investors. Managing these "chunks" of information, and then relating them to digital assets, is what is driving the need to merge DAM with what we think of as "content management" in a more traditional sense. It does take two different approaches. "Text is pretty malleable," says Meek, but images require transformation and tweaking, color correction, metadata tagging for search purposes, etc. And marketers are starting to "get the picture" (sorry for the pun), says Meek. "A few years ago, marketing people weren't very good at getting funding for capital expenditures (for technology)," he says. But today, the marketing department is gaining a much greater awareness of technology adoption. And that, Meek says, is good. Embracing DAM So it's tempting to think of digital asset management as the reserve of movie moguls and hot-shot Madison Avenue-types. And believe me, there is plenty happening in that area that even Paris Hilton would term "hot." But for the typical KMWorld reader, who has important business processes that need to be improved and competitive, go-to-market issues that spell the difference between success and failure, digital asset management represents a great new tool, emerging now, that should be very carefully considered. This white paper is the first time we've done so ourselves, and the market is fresh and emerging. Matter of fact, lots of what Brian Meek talks about is vision-stuff, and still down the pipeline for companies with greater fish to fry. But there is no question that DAM is coming at us with increasing velocity. It would NOT be a good idea to simply step out of its way. Please read on. We will be addressing DAM in greater depth in the magazine, on-line and in the pages of these white papers with much more interest in coming months. z