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Another DAM Podcast interview with Paul Garrison on Digital Asset Management

Listen to Paul Garrison talk about Digital Asset Management

Transcript:

Henrik de Gyor:   This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today I’m speaking with Paul Garrison. Paul, how are you?

Paul Garrison:   I’m good, thank you. How are you?

Henrik de Gyor:   Good. Paul, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management?

Paul Garrison:   I’m currently a Digital Asset Management Supervisor for McCann World Group here in Detroit. Previously, I worked as an Account Manager for the Getty Images DAM product called Media Manager and I had several accounts throughout the Midwest. And then on a personal note, I’m also working towards my Master’s in Information and Library Science at Wayne State here in Detroit with an emphasis on digital content management. So my involvement goes a little bit deeper than my 9 to 5 job.

Henrik de Gyor:   Paul, how does a marketing and advertising company use Digital Asset Management?

Paul Garrison:   Well, we’re an agency and obviously in advertising, an agency creates campaigns and those campaigns create assets. We have an internal DAM system here for our in-process creative assets and this DAM holds our photoshoots and purchased stock images, things like that for our creative department to access and use.

Henrik de Gyor:   Paul, what are the biggest challenges and successes you’ve seen with Digital Asset Management?

Paul Garrison:   Yeah, there are several challenges I’d like to talk about. The biggest of which that I’ve seen is migrating an existing system to a new platform. I’ve been involved in this a few times and the big underlying question is who is making the choice of which system to purchase and how are they deciding that. There are so many systems available now and how do you discover which is best for your installation? That’s frustrating to go down this path and then later discover that the specific features you highlighted or needed in your RFP are weak or not offered at all. So do you backtrack at that point or are you financially committed and have to go with what you have?

Paul Garrison:   Another challenge is having serious competent people working on the system. Quality metadata is so mandatory and the saying ‘garbage in, garbage out’ is so true in DAM. Metadata differentiates the assets. So if you just tag 100 assets with all the same information, how can you find the one asset that you need? So often just the minimum information is provided and this does a disservice to users of the community. Another challenge is system adoption by end-users. Often, development is focused on what the developers can do or think is best and this does not always coordinate with what the end-user community understands or can navigate. It really benefits the whole system to engage the end-user before or during development to make sure that what you are building is compatible to their thinking. And so surveys, interviews, and focus groups will to better understand the user’s mindset and to build towards that as much as possible. The user also has to understand that the DAM is not Google. So there is training that is necessary to properly and successfully use the system without frustration.

Paul Garrison:   And the last challenge that I’d like to mention is governance. There needs to be someone monitoring this site, especially an enterprise site to make sure that the information is clean in quality. Someone to uphold best practices and train when necessary to make sure the sites succeeds. That person must have the backing of a corporate champion as governance flows from the top down and without backing it is very difficult to enforce the necessary rules for the site.

Paul Garrison:   Successes… I would like to say that I’m very interested in reporting and analysis and we monitor our KPIs to see if any trends are happening month to month on the site, either good or bad and we’ve noticed a surge in certain product images and since then we’ve gone farther to increase their availability, especially in domestic and global dealer markets to maximize their usage. That particular classification of images now our second most popular on a site that has over a half a million downloads a year, so paying attention to what works or doesn’t has been very helpful and for those looking to develop a DAM, involve with an professional from the start. This is not work for an administrative assistant to do in their free time. Someone knowledgeable about library science, assets and taxonomy who can work with the departments of the organization to understand their pain points and gather their feedback to build into the system. You need someone to spearhead the project and work with IT to make sure all the technological aspects are covered. Picking a system is difficult and working your way through all the RFPs, demos and sales pitches. It takes understanding and knowledge. You have to do your homework to begin on having successful footing.

Henrik de Gyor:   Paul, what advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and people aspiring to become DAM professionals?

Paul Garrison:   Sure. As a wrapped up in the daily work as we all get, it’s always key to consider the end-user of the system. Is Your taxonomy consistent with their jargon? Can they find the great assets that you just uploaded for their sales push? Do they understand the layout of the interface and how to use the facets to search and filter? Talk to them when you can and listen to their comments, successes and failures. I like to make job aids [brief task-specific PDFs] for issues that come to my attention. If one person is having difficulty, I’m sure there are many other silent ones who are as well. I tried to distribute them [PDF job aids] when possible or at least have them easily available to send out with an email. This gives the issue a visual and walks the user through it step by step for potential DAM professionals.

Paul Garrison:   I personally have a lot of patience. Patience for users who contact me and for the system that typically will hiccup just when you don’t want it to. I have attention to detail, obsessively so, and that makes me want to do it right the first time and not to cut corners. I’ve learned a lot going back to library school, even with 15 years of DAM experience, many existing resources have been brought to my attention. Things like the Library of Congress subject lists, the MARC standards and these resources that standardize values across many mediums. If you plan to eventually work and integrate with other systems, these resources are important to know and to utilize. And lastly, I know myself and what makes me tick and I enjoy this work. It will bore some people and drive other people crazy, but I enjoy this work and seeing the results by analyzing reports from the system and I track it year over year for performance.

Henrik de Gyor:   Great. Well, thanks, Paul.

Paul Garrison:   Yeah, you’re welcome.

Henrik de Gyor:   For more on this visit anotherdampodcast.com. If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to email anotherdamblog@gmail.com. Thanks again.

If you are interested in attending the Insight Exchange Network’s DAM Practitioners Summit on January 30-31, 2020 in New York City, you can find more details here. Use the discount code M131ADC for a 15% discount on registration (applicable to the early bird pricing rates too).

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Another DAM Consultancy can help. Contact us today.


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Another DAM Podcast interview with Kristine Petermann on Digital Asset Management

Listen to Kristine Petermann talk about Digital Asset Management

Transcript:

Henrik de Gyor:  This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today I’m speaking with Kristine Petermann. Kristine, how are you?

Kristine Petermann:  I’m good. How are you?

Henrik:  Great. Kristine, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management?

Kristine:  So I am currently a digital asset manager with the company called Innocean out in Huntington Beach, California. We work with an auto company called Hyundai and I am in charge of running their asset management site here.

Henrik:  Kristine, how does global marketing communications of an auto company use digital asset management?

Kristine:  So we use it to basically hold our content that we create for our auto campaign. So we create images like still images, photography files, CG assets, CG images, and we have to have a way to store that… those images somewhere. So we create a DAM site to store that content so other users outside of our company can come in and potentially look at those images and see if they want to use it for their part of their campaign.

Henrik:  Kristine, what are the biggest challenges and successes you’ve seen with digital asset management?

Kristine:  Biggest challenge would probably be usage rights. Making sure that all users understand what they are grabbing, what the usage rights for that particular image is, and if they’re going to use it properly. And I think having a DAM site has succeeded in that. So you have people looking at metadata through the asset management site to see, okay, can we actually use this image for our purposes? Or is this purely for social media only and we can’t use it for something for like a print ad. Success is more people understanding what metadata is and understanding what usage rights of an image is.

Henrik:  What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and people aspiring to become DAM professionals?

Kristine:  DAM is very important for any company that creates content. You have so many internal users as well as external users that want to use your content. So you need to have a location, a repository to house that content that you are creating. You need to have a good DAM site to share your content whether it’s a person who is internal or an external user.

Metadata is very important. Knowing what the metadata is, whether it’s still asset or a video asset, knowing who created that asset, knowing what the usage rights is and any particular product information, especially if it’s a vehicle or say a consumer product, you need to know exactly what that product is so internal and external users can actually do keyword searches and search by that on your DAM system.

Henrik:  Great. Well, thanks Kristine.

Kristine:  Thank you.

Henrik:  Visit anotherdampodcast.com. If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to email me anotherdamblog@gmail.com. Thanks again.

 

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Need a Vendor Neutral Digital Asset Management Consultant?

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Another DAM Podcast interview with Yaochong Chen on Digital Asset Management

Listen to Yaochong Chen talk about Digital Asset Management

Transcript:

Henrik:  This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today, I’m speaking with Yaochong Chen. How are you?

Yaochong:  How are you, Henrik? Nice to meet you.

Henrik: You too. How are you involved with Digital Asset Management (DAM)?

Yaochong:  Well, I was just graduating from King’s College London’s Digital Asset and Media Management Program. In the past one year, I’ve learned a lot about some basic concepts and also some practices used and ideas about how to, if that colleague managed assets. I think this program really helped me to understand how important managing rich media is and also give me a lot of ideas to think critically about how to help more people to better do so.

Henrik:  You started a new Digital Asset Management group. Tell us more about this.

Yaochong:  Okay, well the group I’ve found that is called Digital Asset Management China Connect. I founded this group in May 2018 with two of my friends. The reason why I started this group is because I really want to bring DAM to China. Although we have a lot of Chinese students in this program, actually for them it’s very hard to find a DAM career back to China, which is because most of us [are not] really aware of what DAM is. What I’m going to do is to bring an awareness and also persuade more Chinese companies and organizations to really ponder how to organize and manage their rich media content. In the past one year, what I’ve done is get connected with a lot of DAM experts in the western world and also I’ve held some presentations and meetings with some Chinese students and also some DAM experts. What I’m going to do this year is to do some interviews with some Chinese organizations, especially rich media content intensive companies, to know their conditions about managing rich media and also to think about really implement a digital asset management system or some friends.

Yaochong:  And also maybe do some interviews with some western expert to see if they have some reflections or ideas about the future of DAM’s development in China. So, next year my plan is about to launch a website is DAM China. I hope to use this website to get connected between western experts and the Chinese rich media intensive companies to let China’s companies to now the importance of DAM and at the same time to let in western experts and then maybe vendors and the people to do so to know that China really needs their help to really make their DAM condition better.

Henrik:  What are the biggest challenges and successes you’ve seen with Digital Asset Management?

Yaochong:  I think in my view, I think challenges are at the same time the potential success. And if we see the whole DAM world, I think one of the challenges is to how to face change and unpredictable things because technology is really developing fast these years. On the one hand, technology will bring more challenges to DAM management because they will be more multiple types of rich media contents and there will be more content devices. But at the same time technology can really help DAM to manage content better. But if we have a closer look about DAM in China, I think the biggest challenge will be to think about how to nurture a Chinese organizations awareness about DAM.

Yaochong:  And there are actually three points I really want to cover. I think they are really some reflections. The first one is about society and culture. I think in China, people with more experience get more priority, which means it’s really hard for some creative and the critical young people to raise their ideas. And I can imagine if some young people go to a company and to say like, “can we implement a DAM system? It will help a lot.” Maybe some more experienced leaders, they don’t really take [this seriously]. And the second one I really want to cover is that I know their are many like Librarian Degrees in Western world, but in China there are less, which means that they don’t really take [this seriously] about how to exactly manage their rich media and digital contents. The third one I think is about Chinese people are really concentrating a lot about developing technology like many hot treads like AI, AR, VR and blockchain things so that they don’t really have the energy at the efforts to really think about rich media content and how to manage them. So I think about this challenge, if I mean we can really think about some ways to persuade them to do so then there will be a really potential success and more footprints for them in the whole world.

Henrik:  What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and people aspiring to become DAM professionals?

Yaochong:  Well, I think I want to cover two points. One is the problem solving and critical attitudes. And the other is the entrepreneurial attitudes because I mean everything is developing and DAM will also to the future as well. So it’s very important to look forward and to see about the future like to really be open and see the technologies that is going to be developed in the future and to really think about how to solve the problems that are brought by all kinds of technology. I think the entrepreneurial attitude is what I really want to give to those potential DAM management people in China because I mean, we still lack the awareness of DAM at present and it is very important for us to stand up and raise the idea and get the courage to talk about this with all kinds of organizations and really bringing this idea there.

Henrik:  Well, thank you so much for your insights on this.

Yaochong:  Thank you. Thank you too. Nice to talk to you.

Henrik:  You too. For more on this, visit anotherpodcast.com. If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to email me at anotherdamblog@gmail.com. Thanks again.

 

Listen to Another DAM Podcast on Amazon Alexa, Apple Podcasts, AudioBoom, CastBox, Google Podcasts,  RadioPublic, RSS, Spotify or TuneIn

Need a Digital Asset Management Consultant?

Another DAM Consultancy can help. Contact us today.