How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
How does an organization focused on entertainment television use Digital Asset Management?
Congratulations on winning the DAMMY Award for Best Strategy Ease of Use for End-User Interface. Tell us about this strategy.
What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and people aspiring to become DAM professionals?
Transcript:
Henrik de Gyor: [0:01] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset
Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today I’m speaking with Paul Nicholson. Paul,
how are you? Paul Nicholson: [0:09] Good, how are you doing? Henrik: [0:10] Good. Paul, how are you involved with Digital Asset
Management? Paul: [0:14] I am in charge of amongst other things, at Showtime Network, I’m in
charge of Digital Asset Management here for our creative group that we call,
“Red Group.” Henrik: [0:24] How does an organization focused on entertainment television
use Digital Asset Management? Paul: [0:29] We use Digital Asset Management in many, many ways here at
Showtime. There are a couple of different systems around the company handling
different kinds of assets, whether it be the long form shows and movies
that we air on our networks or the creative assets that we create to promote
the various shows. The majority of my responsibility falls under the promotion
aspect. [0:52] We create all of the video commercials or promos that run on
our networks. We manage and maintain them in a Digital Asset Management
system so that we can find them, archive them, keep them organized, distribute
them, et cetera.
[1:06] We also manage and maintain all of the print assets, all the advertising, and
marketing materials that we create in-house logos, graphic files, various elements,
lots of photography those types of things. Henrik: [1:19] Congratulations on winning the DAMMY Award for Best Strategy
Ease of Use for End-User Interface. Tell us about the strategy. Paul: [1:28] Thanks very much. That’s a very, very important part of what we do
here with Digital Asset Management. We really think about the user interface
and the customer experience, if you will, using our DAM system. Our customers
are other departments around the company, not necessarily outside consumers,
but internal customers. [1:49] It’s very, very important that they’re able to
find things quickly, get to exactly what they need in a moment’s notice, so they
can put together either a presentation or distribute a file to a partner that we’re
using to create something, or just find the assets that they need to create other
assets from those assets.
[2:10] User interface is very important. We take a, what we call here, a Tonka
truck mentality with user interface. It’s got to be real simple, big, clearly laid
out buttons and features that people know exactly what they’re doing. We lead
them down the path to what they’re looking for, as opposed to them having to
hunt and shop for things in confusing ways.
[2:34] I think a lot of people take the other approach. They put lots of features
on the screen, lots of buttons, lots of widgets, lots of tools, and great capabilities,
but that takes away from the user experience because they can’t ultimately
navigate it as quickly. There’s lots of training involved when you do it that way.
We take a very simple approach. Henrik: [2:54] What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and
people aspiring to become DAM professionals? Paul: [2:59] I think the most important part, I always felt, with instituting a DAM
policy, or DAM application, in any organization is that it doesn’t replace the
business process. The business process needs to be there. It needs to be organized,
you need to have good policies and procedures for people to do their
jobs, and then the DAM system can complement that. [3:22] It’s not a replacement.
A lot of people feel like they’re going to buy a piece of software, they’re
going to install it, and that’s going to change and organize their entire operation.
It doesn’t really work that way. It’s just a complement to what you’re already
doing. Of course, it can enhance that, but it’s not going to replace good,
sound business policy and procedure. Henrik: [3:42] Thank you, Paul. Paul: [3:43] You’re welcome. Henrik: [3:44] For more on Digital Asset Management, log onto AnotherDAMblog.com. Another DAM Podcast is available on Audioboom, iTunes and the Tech Podcast Network. Thanks again.
How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
Why does a multi-national advertising and marketing firm use Digital Asset Management?
How does a Digital Asset Management system help you maintain brand consistency?
How do you order something in the DAM to maintain that consistency?
What advice would you like to share with DAM Professionals and people aspiring to become DAM Professionals?
Transcript:
Henrik de Gyor: [0:02] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset
Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today I’m speaking with Frank Chagoya.
Frank, how are you? Frank Chagoya: [0:11] Good, Henrik. How are you today? Henrik: [0:12] Great. Frank, how are you involved with Digital Asset
Management? Frank: [0:17] For Leo Burnett, I’ve been involved in the original RFPs, evaluation
and selection of the DAM provider for our first implementation. We currently
have several launches of DAMs for a number of our clients. As a global hub
with multinational offices, we needed a vendor that would be able to provide
services and sufficiently support these offices and our client’s needs. I’m also
involved in the ongoing DAM maintenance, development, training, and the
training of our end users, as well. Henrik: [0:54] Why does a multinational advertising and marketing firm use
Digital Asset Management? Frank: [0:59] That’s a really good question. Many of our clients are also multinational
and require brand consistency for all their products and campaigns. [1:07]
For example, let’s say we have a client that has a need. A simultaneous launch
of a new product in a major multinational set of markets. This is to coincide with
the release of a major motion picture, so timing is critical.
[1:23] Leo Burnett, as a hub and a brand steward for the creative advertising, will
maintain approved ads and artwork. We provide distribution, as well. Assets can
be ordered for distribution or repurposing. This provides a global consistency
and efficiency for the brand management to the client.
[1:43] We also provide the reduced time to market. We provide our clients with
leading edge technology to improve performance for unimpeded access and
fulfillment of their assets globally. Henrik: [1:57] Frank, how does a Digital Asset Management System help you
maintain brand consistency? Frank: [2:02] For Leo Burnett as a brand steward for our clients, we provide
the assets that they require for their multinational campaigns. We may provide,
or actually be, the hub for the creative here in Chicago. Then this campaign
launches out into, say other, even third world countries. [2:22] Let’s say the president
of this company comes in and says, “We’re going to do this campaign.”
Here it is in Chicago, they see it printed on a billboard. They want to make sure
that when they step out into, let’s say China, off a plane. They see a billboard of
the exact same ad, that it looks exactly the same.
[2:41] We provide the assets that are distributed, not only for local campaigns,
but multinational campaigns. So that once you have these assets stored in one
place, your client has an adequate resource for redistribution of that particular
asset.
[3:01] Even if there’s an image in an ad that’s produced here in the States and
then they want to do another image in another country. It’s not necessary. They
have the ads that were used as originally approved sets of campaign ads. Those
can be redistributed globally. Henrik: [3:19] Great. Frank, how do you order something in your Digital Asset
Management System to maintain that consistency? Frank: [3:26] Our system has 24 hour access via the Internet. Obviously, it’s a
secured access that we use to provide to not only our own facilitates, but to
the client as well. Let’s say, the client decides they want to do an ad in China
that they produced here in the States. They can actually look for that ad on the
site. Once they locate it, they can select it, order to their cart, and then they’ll
receive an email with a hot link that says, “This is what you want. You can download
it via secured link.” [4:01] Then even if he doesn’t want to deliver it himself,
he can pass that link onto someone else who has secured access to this site, and
then get these files so that they can repurpose them. Obviously, when they repurpose
it, they’re going to be doing the language change. So we can provide
them not only with the final asset that was actually produced in the States, we
can actually give them a file that’s workable.
[4:25] So that they can manipulate it and make their changes to the local market.
Henrik: [4:29] Great. What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals
and people aspiring to become DAM professionals? Frank: [4:34] I have lots of advice. [laughs]
Henrik: [4:36] Please. Frank: [4:39] I think that attending the industry events is a critical given.
Because these venues provide access to knowledgeable people who have the
“been there, done that” experience. My biggest piece of advice is to get into
the mix and get some answers, be part of the network. That’s a very important
part. When you’re doing this, don’t hesitate to ask people questions. All people
that I have had interaction with have been more than happy to lend tips and
advice. [5:10] In fact, you might ask for a cup of sugar, let’s say, and end up with
the entire bag. One of the other things that I have as a major piece of advice
would be, make sure you don’t plan your DAM into a corner. Many people focus
on what they need for a DAM, but don’t quite look at the horizon. I think that
you should make sure that you get what you need for your DAM as you need it
now, but then also make sure that you have plans for its future.
[5:41] Always take a look at what other features might be available, or what you
might need as a business to add to the features of your own DAM. Make sure
that there’s an open door for that future. Henrik: [5:53] Great advice. Thanks, Frank. For more on this and other
Digital Asset Management topics, log onto AnotherDAMblog.com.
Another DAM Podcast is now available on Audioboom, Blubrry, iTunes and the Tech Podcast Network. Thanks again.
How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
Why would an organization focused around Architecture and Planning use Digital Asset Management?
What advice would you like to share with DAM Professionals and people aspiring to become DAM Professionals?
Transcript:
Henrik de Gyor: [0:00] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset
Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today I’m speaking with James Chan. James,
how are you?
James Chan: [0:08] I’m great. I’m very good. How are you?
Henrik: [0:11] Good. James, how are you involved with Digital Asset
Management?
James: [0:17] Firstly, I can tell you very quickly about what we do here at the
studio. We’re an architectural visualization studio. Very quickly, what that means
is that we create photorealistic images of architecture before it gets built. My
role in that is that I help the artists to produce their renderings. What happens
is that the artist will get a 3D model and do their wizardry on it, their 3D
thing, and render out a 2D image of the building. [0:46] That’s when the things
I do come into play. What they do then is, with the render, they bring it into
Photoshop and add 2D assets into that. Assets could be photographs of trees,
people, plants, you name it. Whatever you need to do in order to make the
image look photorealistic. Sometimes it’s a whole image, like a photograph of
the site where the building’s going to go, and they literally just drop the building
into that photograph.
[1:17] Other times, it’s a complete render. What they do then is just add elements,
like people and trees, into the image. What I do is I have to maintain a
library of these images, of these assets. It’s a quite crucial role within the studio.
Because time is money. To be able to produce high quality illustrations or
images that you need to be able to find exactly what you need and be able to
put it into the image straight away.
[1:43] The artist doesn’t want to waste their time looking for things. They just
want to do a quick keyword search, browse a folder or whatnot, within the asset
management system, and find exactly what they want straight away. Quite
often, we get some artists who work with other studios. They come in here, start
fresh and are absolutely overjoyed that they have a really nicely organized and
curated library of images they can just dig into and get what they need.
Henrik: [2:07] Why does an organization focused on architecture and planning
use Digital Asset Management, beyond what you just said?
James: [2:13] Architecture is a very visual discipline. Historically, designs for buildings have started off as sketches. Even current buildings, such as Renzo Piano’s The Shard of Glass which is a great big building being built in London.
It’s a very striking building. It is literally a shard of glass going into the sky. That
started out as a sketch on a napkin.
[2:36] From then, it was put into a CAD drawing. Then, we produced a photorealistic rendering from that. With architecture, they really do communicate in images. I know that in dedicated, proper architectural firms, they use asset management systems. Because that’s how they communicate with each other. They have drawings. They have site photography.
[2:57] They have model shots of models they made themselves. Architecture is
awash with images. It’s crucial for an architectural firm to be able to organize
all their images very effectively. For planning, they use images as well. But it’s
more of a 3D thing. They use a lot of 3D techniques to do their work. But again,
you have to find the images first. It’s really just about finding your images. If you
can’t find them, we all know, it’s not going to be much good to anyone.
[3:33] The artists are fantastic at producing great renderings and 3D files. But
they’re terrible when it comes to the metadata. That’s where I come in. If you
don’t have good metadata, it’s going to be a nightmare to find anything. I provide
the structure and then I also provide the oversight, to make sure things are
keyworded properly and named correctly and organized in a way that makes it
very easy to find it.
[3:57] Architects often are very creative people. Quite often, organization isn’t
necessarily part of the creative process. I know a lot of architects are very well
organized. But it’s quite common for them to lose their images and to have to
come back to us, to say, “We need those images you rendered for us three
years ago,” or whatever. “Because we’re going to have to make some amendments
to it.” Or, “Planning has come around again. We can’t find them anywhere.
Please send them to us.”
[4:24] We really are able to find the images in moments. Whenever we can do
that and we send it to them, they’re overjoyed. They can’t believe how quickly
we can pull out even ancient photographs in moments. It really does help our
client relations.
Henrik: [4:41] What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and
people aspiring to become DAM professionals?
James: [4:45] With the DAM professionals, the two main things I’ve been thinking
about is, understand the users and understand the business needs and
problems. Because Digital Asset Management is really just about problem solving.
You have to understand the problem that exists. Quite often, people don’t
realize that there is a problem or that there’s a better way of doing things. Think
about how to make it as easy as possible.
[5:11] You do that by understanding everything about the business and how people interact with their assets. Also, once you understand that, you need to understand the technology. Once you have a good understanding of the technology, you can come up with solutions, creative solutions. It’s like Photoshop. The more you know about how to use Photoshop, the more ways you can fix a certain problem. You can do the same thing, address the same problem, in Photoshop, in one way, but in many different ways.
[5:47] In an individual situation, you might need a different technique. That’s the
same for Digital Asset Management, the same for metadata. You have to know
your technology inside out, in order to get the most out of it. There are my two
tips for the DAM professional. Also, another thing is, always look for the most
simple and elegant solution. That’s really hard to do. It’s easy to make a very
complicated solution to a problem.
[6:14] Anyone can do that. [laughs] It’s trying to find the most simple, elegant
solution that, when you actually come up with it, you wonder why you haven’t
come up with that 10 days before, or a month before, or a year before. When
you have that kind of a solution, that’s when you know you’ve hit on the gold
dust. Gold dust is simplicity in all Digital Asset Management things. Anything
that makes things more complicated, more time consuming, takes more time to
teach someone, then you really have to go back to the drawing board. Because
it’s a waste of effort.
[6:46] The effort should always go into finding the most simple, elegant solutions.
As for people who want to become Digital Asset Managers, how I came
into it was that I was working in a sports photography agency. We’d be processing,
in a team of 10 people, a thousand images or so. Whether it be live images,
coming in live from the football field, or taking the orders from the photographers,
when they have a couple of hundred photographers coming through.
[7:17] The way the images would flow from the photographer, through the production
department, into the archive and onto the website got me thinking
about workflow. That got me thinking onto Digital Asset Management. That’s
where I found Peter Krogh’s book. I can’t pronounce his surname.
Henrik: [7:34] Peter Krogh, yeah.
James: [7:36] That’s the one, The DAM Book. I found that book. That really
inspired me to look more and more into things. That’s how I got my current job.
I found problems which I found interesting. I wanted to find solutions to that. I
did some research. I discovered a whole field called Digital Asset Management.
It’s still a very young field. I got to where I am now just by being inquisitive and
trying to understand the problems other people or organizations might have
and try to think of ways I could solve them for them.
[8:09] Luckily, I found this job here at the studio where they literally did advertise the job as a job for a Digital Asset Manager. That was certainly easy for me to find this place. It was
a very nice fit. I went straight in there. I said some few key things, which were
metadata, control vocabulary, Digital Asset Management systems. I mentioned
a few blogs or a few people who talk about Digital Asset Management. I got the
job within the first 10 minutes.
[8:36] They’d been advertising the job for more than two months, and interviewed
over 30 or so people. I was the only person that actually understood the
job. It was a bit of a no-brainer for them, and it was a no-brainer for me. It was a
perfect match. To anyone who wants to become a Digital Asset Manager, they
have to do the research. Understand that you need to be a problem solver and
come up with creative solutions to problems.
[9:04] Also, I view my role as being a communicator between the technical side
of things and of the creative side of things. Often, the end users of Digital Asset
Management systems are creative people. Sometimes they don’t understand
technical things. So you really do need to be able to have the ability to translate
technical things into lay person speak. On that note, don’t worry if you come
across, for example on Twitter, I see a lot of people talking about pretty technical
things, things that go over the top of my head.
[9:40] It got me a little bit bothered, to think that maybe I’m at a very low level in
my career. But I got over that very quickly because I realized that you don’t need
to be an IT professional to work in Digital Asset Management. You just have to
know how the software works and can always learn. It’s a process of learning.
That’s why you have IT departments. [laughs] That’s why you have people who
are IT professionals.
[10:06] They don’t necessarily understand how the software or the technology
would work for the end user. That’s where you come in. You need to be the
translator between the IT professionals and the end users. Once you understand
how that works, you can find yourself in a very rewarding career. That’s
that. That’s me. That’s my rant. [laughs]
Henrik: [10:23] Excellent. Thanks, James. For more on this and other
Digital Asset Management topics, log onto AnotherDAMblog.com. Another DAM Podcast is available on Audioboom, Blubrry, iTunes and the Tech Podcast Network. Thanks again.
How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
What are the biggest challenges for dealing with creative assets in a DAM system?
What advice would you like to share with DAM Professionals and people aspiring to become DAM Professionals?
Transcript:
Henrik de Gyor: [0:02] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset
Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today I’m speaking with Tracy Guza. Tracy,
how are you? Tracy Guza: [0:11] I’m very good. How are you? Henrik: [0:12] Good. Tracy, how are you involved with Digital Asset
Management? Tracy: [0:16] Currently I work at Corbis. Corbis Images is a stock photo and
various other creative types of format company, and I am part of a small internal
team in editorial photography that creates custom content for a client of ours. I
manage their Digital Asset Management system. Henrik: [0:41] What are the biggest challenges for dealing with creative assets
in a Digital Asset Management system? Tracy: [0:45] Well, currently my challenges are somewhat different than previously.
I have worked in Digital Asset Management for some time at a variety
of advertising agencies. I’m pretty used to creative users and how they search.
One of the things I’ve found, over the years, is that the way that a library or
information professional might consider keywording items is not necessarily
the way that an art director or a designer would search for the items. [1:20] It’s
really helpful, as in any case, to do some kind of user analysis to figure out and
to know your clientele, to figure out how your user base is searching for things.
And how to intuitively keyword things and create a vocabulary that’s tailored to
the users, more so than a 100 percent kosher library science management thesaurus
or vocabulary. While structure is lovely and consistency is great and one
of the reasons that a vocabulary is important, that vocabulary can be flexible
and it can be tailored to your users.
[1:57] One of the other huge issues that comes up a lot in creative agencies
is the licensing and rights associated with different creative assets. Whether
they’re images, video clips or audio clips. Usually, especially with stock images,
when an image is purchased, it is purchased for a particular usage if it’s a rights
managed image. That usage can be very specific. It can be something as specific
as, “We’re buying this image once, for three months, for 10 publications in
North America, with a print run up to a million.”
[2:34] If that is not communicated jointly, with the asset, in a way that users can
see and notice, there can be some legal ramifications and infringement can
occur. One of the things that’s important is to look at whatever DAM system is
being used and figure out how you can best flag images or assets that have particular
restrictions. Is there a way to create permissions only for certain users?
[3:04] Is there a way to create an HTML popup that wants people that, “Hey, this
image has some particular restrictions to it. If you’re not using it for X, Y and Z,
you shouldn’t be using it.” Because generally, the users, especially in a creative
agency, aren’t legal professionals. Nor do they have regular access to legal
professionals. But they can get a company in a lot of trouble by using things that
they’re not supposed to use.
[3:35] Often times, especially in the stock industry, the fees for infringing on use
or using something that you haven’t licensed properly, are much higher than
the costs for just licensing the image properly and using it correctly. That’s a
big thing. Henrik: [3:52] So rights management and permissions management, as far
as licensing and permissions for the use of any asset. That’s a very key thing
to reduce liability as much as possible, as far as appropriate use of assets.
Great point. Tracy: [4:07] Yes. And what can be challenging is not only educating the users
that licensing restrictions exist. But also helping them, by using the system to
the best of your ability to make it easy for them to discover what the rights are
that are associated with the asset. It shouldn’t be hidden in 64 metadata fields.
It should be easy for them to find out. Henrik: [4:30] What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and
people aspiring to become DAM professionals? Tracy: [4:34] It’s interesting. The way that I got into this, originally, was working
at a particular advertising agency. I was doing a lot of project management and
production kinds of things. I was very familiar with the clients and with the workflow
in creative services. So I was asked to do, as a consultant, a freelance project
to organize all of the client assets at the agency. At that time, the workflow
was changing. [5:04] It was right when you were able to buy like four terabytes of
storage really cheap. Suddenly, everybody could use super huge, high-resolution
images.
[5:24] So we had literally file cabinets full of CDs. This is how crazy it was.
Where those images were the high-resolution images that corresponded to the
low-resolution images on the server. No one [laughs] had any way to match anything
up or find anything.
[5:42] So the company purchased a very basic DAM product, and I was asked
to actually put everything in there for the first time. It changed our workflow. It
changed how people needed to use things. I realized at the time, this was about
six or seven years ago, how much I still needed to know.
[6:03] I created a vocabulary on the fly and realized that I needed to know a lot
more about metadata and tried to figure out ways to customize the search fields
and so forth so that we could get a prompt when an image license was about
to expire and stuff like that. I was a little over my head, so what I did was I went
back to library [laughs] school.
[6:27] I got an MLIS , and I found that that program really helped to fill out for me
all of my questions about different kinds of technology, backend database programming
stuff as well as the very basics of SRS [?] vocabulary development and
a lot about metadata. So my advice is not only to network, which is a wonderful
thing, but also to figure out what kind of additional education you may need.
[6:57] There’s something to be said for being in an organization and realizing
that maybe you have the aptitude to organize their assets. There’s another thing
to be said for making sure that you actually can back that up a little bit with
some tangible courses, workshops, or whatever form they take. It really helped
me to formalize the way that I think about how I work on DAM now.
[7:24] That’s my advice, and it seems to be a very much growing field as the
amount of digital assets grows. Certainly companies finally realize the value in
retrieval and the cost effectiveness of allowing people self-service access to
DAM systems. There’s more and more of a need for DAM professionals. Henrik: [7:43] Very true. Did you want to share your blog with the audience
as well? Tracy: [7:48] Oh, I would love to. It’s modlibrarian.posterous.com. https://modlibrarian.wordpress.com/ Henrik: [7:55] For more on this and other Digital Asset Management topics log
onto AnotherDAMblog.com. Another DAM Podcast is available on Audioboom, Blubrry, iTunes and the Tech Podcast Network. Thanks again.
Another DAM Podcast 