Another DAM Podcast

Audio about Digital Asset Management

Category Archives: Marketing


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Another DAM Podcast interview with Steven Brier on Digital Asset Management

Here are the questions asked:

  • How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
  • Why does an international hotel chain 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 Steven Brier. Steven,
how are you?
Steven Brier: [0:10] I’m just fine. How are you?
Henrik: [0:12] Good. Steven, how are you involved with Digital Asset
Management?
Steven: [0:15] I’m the Product Owner, for lack of a better term, of the Marriott
Digital Asset Management System, and several applications that leverage the
DAM to activate brand voice, and automate marketing and sales efforts for 11
different brands worldwide.

[0:34] In this role, I develop a strategy. I prioritize
the development. I manage all the internal and external resources. Whether that
be our development shop, advertising agencies and others. I serve as liaison
between the business and what we call the tools, which includes the DAM and
any of the other applications that link into the DAM. I also project manage any
integration efforts between other applications in the DAM which is extremely
important.
[1:05] We’ve made the DAM accessible through an API. That makes it much
easier for other applications to tap into those assets that live there, further
gleaning and pulling value out of those assets.
Henrik: [1:23] Why does an international hotel chain use Digital Asset
Management?
Steven: [1:28] Marriott uses it to secure the investment that’s made in digital
assets from a property standpoint and also, from a corporate standpoint.
Whether we have assets for brand and brand marketing, human resources, internal
communications, we use the DAM to secure that investment. Also, to glean
the maximum value we can out of those assets.

[1:56] Before we actually had this
thing, assets were stored on servers in hard drives and disks. You really couldn’t
access them, not in a global fashion, and certainly not even a cross department
way. This now allows people to use these assets, and to actually get them out
to people.
[2:18] The reason why we initially built it was to help build our brands. We were
going to a strategy of brand distinction. We really needed to categorize assets
that would be used specifically for each brand and not cross pollinate, if you will,
so that we could get a distinction.
[2:40] I guess the final thing you could say is just to save money, because they’re
specific. We collapsed nine different databases around the world, and I wouldn’t
even say that was all of them.
[2:56] We did that in a formalized way, but then I think there have been other
teams, groups, and organizations throughout Marriott who have since found our
tool and added their assets to the system, as well.
Henrik: [3:12] What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and
people aspiring to become DAM professionals?
Steven: [3:18] The first thing is, if you’re going to be taking something on like
this, you’ve got to have some thick skin, [laughs] because it’s very sensitive.
Everyone has their own ideas how it should be done, and then they’re very
protective as to their assets and the control of those assets.

[3:38] In large corporations like Marriott it is, as I like to say, a house to house battle. It’s pretty rare that you see a company that scopes out to centrally fund an enterprise like
solution, because many times it’s millions of dollars, you have to fight through all
of the systems, and there are misunderstandings.
[4:00] A way that we were able to do it was we built small. We proved it out, the
concept to do a certain set of tasks, or to solve certain problems. Then, as we
proved that out, we started to evangelize the system to build that support and
get others to take ownership of their slice of the pie.
[4:24] In a sense, I guess you should be a salesperson, too. That’s not always
something that people in this position really aspire to or have the skillset to do,
but it’s just a matter of getting out, talking to people, and helping paint the picture
for them so they can see what the Digital Asset Management System can
do for their group, and what centralization of that, the value of centralization,
can have to their organization.
[4:57] The other thing is just to be open and solicit feedback, even criticism and
complaints. This is somewhere all the good ideas for our system have come. I
always like to say that, when people stop complaining, [laughs] I don’t have a
healthy system, because it means people are starting to disengage.
[5:15] I have really fostered this open door policy so that people understand that
if they have an issue with the system, if it can be solved. We’re perfectly willing
to do that.
Henrik: [5:28] Allowing people to complain, but taking those complaints and
seeing what challenges can be resolved to make the system better. That’s a
great piece of advice there as well.
Steven: [5:36] Right.
Henrik: [5:38] Thanks Steven.
Steven: [5:39] You are quite welcome.
Henrik: [5:42] For more on Digital Asset Management log onto
AnotherDAMblog.com. Another DAM Podcast is available on Audioboom,
Blubrry, iTunes, and the Tech Podcast Network. Thanks again.

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Another DAM Podcast interview with Karuana Gatimu on Digital Asset Management

Here are the questions asked:

  • How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
  • Why does a footwear company use Digital Asset Management?
  • Is it about the technology or strategy when it comes to Digital Asset Management?
  • What advice would you like to share with DAM Professionals and people aspiring to become DAM Professionals?

Transcript:

Henrik de Gyor: [0:02] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset
Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today I’m speaking with Karuana Gatimu.
Karuana, how are you?
Karuana Gatimu: [0:11] I’m excellent. Thank you for inviting me.
Henrik: [0:14] Karuana, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
Karuana: [0:17] Digital Asset Management came into my life actually as an offshoot
of Enterprise Content Management. I’m an Enterprise Content Certified
Practitioner. I spent about 20 years in the business doing different sorts of
custom apps and helping organizations find their information. As I moved into
the video world and live events and doing web production and print, Digital
Asset Management was a logical offshoot of all of my history.
Henrik: [0:44] Excellent. Why does a footwear company use Digital Asset
Management?
Karuana: [0:49] Skechers USA, which is a global footwear company, needs
Digital Asset Management because we produce literally thousands of product
images. We have commercials. We have archive clips of conferences and events.
[1:02] A lot of content that we used to tell the story of our company, at different
times during the year. Being able to locate that information, put it together to
be able to create new content, and keep people getting to the information efficiently,
is really important to us.
Henrik: [1:19] Sounds like it. Karuana, is it about the technology or the strategy,
when it comes to Digital Asset Management?
Karuana: [1:24] You know that’s my favorite subject.
Henrik: [1:26] Of course.
Karuana: [1:27] I know that’s why you asked me that question. I really feel it is
about the strategy. Every day, I get about 50 vendor voice mails on my line at
work. They’re all telling me about how they can increase my revenue or give
me this wonderful piece of technology that I desperately need for my customer
experience. [1:48] At the end of the day, I’m in charge of knowing what the business
needs actually are. I think that for anybody in the DAM community, it’s very
important for us to be able to separate what are true services and features that
we need to deliver to the enterprise, and what is the fluff.
[2:05] Nobody can define that. A vendor can’t define that for you. A consultant
can help you. A research agency can help you but the vendors themselves, have
their own agenda. It’s very important that you plug those very worthwhile vendors
into your over reaching strategy.
[2:22] For a company like Skechers, for instance, because we don’t have a monetization
model, we’re not a broadcast network. Consequently, the information
and the services I’m trying to deliver are different than if I was A&E or HBO or
somebody like that.
[2:36] I think it’s really important that we have to know our own business. Devise
our strategy based on the needs of business and the evolution of our business
and partner with people out there in the partner ecosystem, that understand
those needs as we articulate them.
[2:53] I think in that, it really gives us a good foundation in which to continue to
build because it’s never done. The work is never done. There’s always more to
do. There’s always more services I can deliver, and the technology is evolving. If
you take a look at what’s happened recently over the last few years with social,
and how that’s changed marketing operations and the needs for assets and
what have you, we can anticipate that more of that is coming.
[3:17] So knowing our strategy is a really good thing.
Henrik: [3:20] What advice would you like to give to DAM professionals and
people aspiring to become DAM professionals?
Karuana: [3:26] If you are an existing DAM professional, keep the faith. We’re
moving. Don’t lose your enthusiasm. This is an iterative process, and we just
have to keep moving forward. Because as more user generated content, corporate
generated content, and social generated content comes to us, it’s going to
become very important for us to build really well thought out systems. [3:50] So
if you’re already here, then stay. Because the people who are coming are going
to need our experience, strength and hope, as we move forward. I think that if
you’re interested into getting into Digital Asset Management, you have to think
about what you are really passionate about.
[4:07] Is it the technology side, in terms of for instance, database architecture or
technological implementations? Is it the strategy side, in terms of how Digital
[4:16] Asset Management affects business and can be used by business? Or is
it the marketing and creative side, or licensing in the sense of the monetization
and reuse and repurpose of creative content?
[4:28] I think it’s really important to know where you fall within the different layers
of DAM, and then develop your expertise as you move forward. It’s a great segment
to be in. It’s growing by leaps and bounds. There’s a tremendous amount
of exciting content, and vendors out there are doing unique things. It’s a real
great time to be involved in DAM.
Henrik: [4:49] Great. Thank you so much.
Karuana: [4:52] I appreciate it. Thank you for inviting me, and we will see
you later.
Henrik: [4:55] Great. For more on Digital Asset Management, log onto
AnotherDAMblog.com. Another DAM Podcast is also available on Audioboom,
Blubrry, iTunes and the Tech Podcast Network. Thanks again.

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Another DAM Podcast interview with Tony Gill on Digital Asset Management

Tony Gill discusses Digital Asset Management

Here are the questions asked:

  • How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
  • What challenges do you face using Digital Asset Management within a marketing organization?
  • What advice would you like to give to 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 Tony Gill. Tony,
how are you?
Tony Gill: [0:10] I’m good. Thanks Henrik. How are you?
Henrik: [0:12] Good. How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
Tony: [0:15] My job title is Global Director of Library Science and Information
Management. I work for an advertising agency that is part of one of the large
global advertising conglomerates. [0:28] We have a single client which is a very
large technology company. My role is theoretic quite general.
[0:35] In practice, I spend the vast bulk of my time running a large multi server
Digital Asset Management System that’s shared between us, our client, and
about a dozen of our sibling agencies within the same conglomerate, all working
on the same account.
[0:53] After defining the initial information architecture for the system such as the
metadata schemer and the control vocabularies, the folder hierarchy that we use
for storing the assets, asset ingest and work flow procedures.
[1:10] I now manage a team, a small team of Digital Asset Librarians who perform
the day-to-day act of managing the flow of assets throughout the system and
throughout their life cycle.
Henrik: [1:20] Great. Tony, what challenges do you face using Digital Asset
Management with a marketing organization?
Tony: [1:26] The challenges are many and varied. One of the biggest challenges
we face is just the sheer volume of assets coming into the system all the time
from a wide variety of different sources both from within our agency groups and
also from the client and from beyond. [1:43] We do have fairly well established
asset ingest procedures that require metadata to be provided with the assets.
But because there are always new users and new communities wanting to
upload assets to the system, it means there’s a constant need to keep training
people and keep bringing them up to speed on the ingest procedures. That’s
fairly challenging.
[2:05] Another factor of my job is that we have a very demanding client and
often times they will make requests to have assets organized for their particular
needs.
[2:18] Often, it’s down to me to say politely but firmly that we can’t do that because
the system has to meet the needs of a very, very broad user community.
We have something like 3,500 users on the system globally, at the moment.
[2:31] We can’t just reorganize areas of it for one group, or one individual’s requirements.
Sometimes I have to be able to politely and tactfully say, “No,” and
explain why we can’t change the structure of the system for individual user’s
needs because of the whole broad range of different user needs.
[2:55] Obviously, rights management is a perennial problem in this field. We have
to make sure we have detailed usage right information for anything where the
usage rights are not just straight forward global unlimited usage rights.
[3:13] Communicating that to people that are uploading assets is also sometimes
challenging because sometimes they haven’t even considered the usage rights.
[3:23] You have to end up doing a little mini tutorial about copyright and usage
rights and explaining why, as the publisher effectively of these assets, if we
publish them and we don’t have the correct usage rights, then we’re effectively
liable for copyright infringement even though we may have had no part in acquiring
these assets in the first place. Of course, that’s also a challenge.
[3:47] Then, the general symptom of working in the advertising industry is that
deadlines are always very short and often missed. People tend to wait until the
last minute and tend to get very anxious when we say that things are published
in a timely fashion.
[4:08] They often leave things to the last thing on a Friday night before they
upload them. We often find ourselves scrambling at the last minute to get the
stuff posted that’s urgently needed by teams all around the world right at the
last minute.
Henrik: [4:21] Sounds like a bunch of challenges there.
Tony: [4:23] Yeah.
Henrik: [4:27] What advice would you like to give DAM professionals or people
aspiring to become DAM professionals?
Tony: [4:33] From my part, if you want to come work on my team, you will need
a Library Science degree. That’s a graduate degree in Library and Information
Science. That’s a really good grounding in the kind of disciplines that are very
good in the Digital Assets Management field. [4:51] It teaches you the importance
of information architecture and information management. It teaches you
to be rigorous and to follow standards. It also teaches you an observance for
finickiness and attention to detail.
[5:05] In the job description that I wrote recently for the Digital Asset Librarians, I
said, “An almost obsessive attention to detail would be a useful attribute in any
of the successful candidates.”
[5:20] I tend to find that there are certain people that are drawn to the librarianship
role, and they also make very good digital managers. Those are the main
things that I can think of just off the top of my head.
Henrik: [5:31] Great. Thank you, Tony.
Tony: [5:33] You’re very welcome, Henrik. It’s been a pleasure talking to you.
Henrik: [5:36] Any time. For more on Digital Asset Management, log on to
anotherdamblog.com. Thanks again.

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Another DAM Podcast interview with Michael Hollitscher on Digital Asset Management

Michael Hollitscher discusses Digital Asset Management

 

 

Here are the questions asked:

  • How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
  • Do you find yourself often closely linked with both the creative and technical side of your business?
  • You recently started a meetup group called NYC Digital Asset Managers. This has been quite successful in its first year. When did you first start this group?
  • What advice would you like to share with DAM Professionals and even 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 talking with Mike Hollitscher. Mike,
how are you?
Michael Hollitscher: [0:08] Good. How’s it going?
Henrik: [0:11] Good. How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
Michael: [0:16] I am the manager of Digital Asset Management for a digital marketing
agency called Digitas. When I first started here, we were an independent
company, national in scope. In the past two or three years, we were purchased
by Publicis Groupe. We’ve become part of the global digital arm of, I think, the
third largest media and advertising company in the world now. [0:58] My job basically
revolves around trying to ingest and organize all of the digital assets that
we are creating and receiving from our clients.
[1:09] In addition to that, I’m also involved in a bunch of other technology issues,
just trying to see where we’re going for the future.
Henrik: [1:20] Do you find yourself often closely linked with both the creative
and the technical side of your business?
Michael: [1:25] Oh, absolutely. In the end, I end up being the liaison between
those two. Not only just creative, also our marketing people, our delivery
people, our creative…Really, when you get right down to it, DAM is much more
of a marketing tool than, I think, a creative tool. [1:48] I end up having to speak
both languages, the core group’s language and also, to a certain degree, IT. I’m
not an IT person. I’m still confused as an IT person all the time, but, basically, I
interface between those two groups quite a bit.
[2:08] That’s kind of where it comes in that I’m trying more to see where we’re
going and where the pain points are in our Digital Asset Management strategy
and just our content strategies at this point.
Henrik: [2:26] You recently started a meetup group called NYC Digital Asset
Managers. This has been quite successful in its first year. When did you first start
this group?
Michael: [2:35] I can’t really claim ownership of, say, starting the group. That
was really on Chad. Chad and I actually met at a Henry Stewart conference at
Davis. I believe it was two years ago now, and it’s interesting how it springs out
of, I think, a lot of people’s experiences going to Henry Stewart and various
DAM conferences over the last six or seven years. [3:03] I was actually presenting
on some of the strategies we’ve used to tag photo libraries, or other sort of
assets, with XMP metadata, and how we were looking to…Basically, our nuts and
bolts process, and then pushing it out, and where we’re going for the future.
Afterwards, Chad came up to me, and he was really excited because he was
basically doing the exact same stuff that I was.
[3:32] It just so turned out that we share a Digital Asset Management platform.
We use the same vendor. We also share an integrator. We had a great conversation,
and one of the things that’s always been interesting about going to DAM
conferences since…The first one I went to was probably in 2003 or 2004.
[3:54] It was just that back then, you were always working in this sort of vacuum,
and you’re flying blind a lot of times. Maybe you had an integrator, maybe you
didn’t. You talked to your vendor, but there wasn’t a good amount of standards,
and there weren’t really a lot of people to talk to. At that point, Henry Stewart
was the one time a year you could actually go somewhere and talk to people,
and not feel like you were absolutely, totally alone.
[4:31] We had shot emails back and forth, and Chad was interested in setting up
a meetup group, he mentioned. He said he started one, and he asked if I would
help out, and I was able to provide a few different ideas, and a few different
resources to really start it to get it going. After a while, I was basically billed as a
co-organizer.
[4:49] We’ve basically just been bouncing ideas back and forth to each other,
and coming up with good people to bring in, to present.
[4:59] I think it goes back to what I was saying about how it was six or seven
years ago, that it’s like…I think what we’re really providing is an opportunity for
people to come in and just actually have a chance to talk to other people in
their realm, in their field, because, in general, when you’re doing Digital Asset
Management, you’re the only guy there.
[5:24] Maybe you have some contacts with other people in your office, but there
really aren’t any other people who are sharing your experience.
[5:34] There’s just so much to pull in and there are so many different directions
you can go with it. It’s a very holistic career where you are looking at the entire
process of how your company is doing their work. Most people don’t. Your average
worker at a job is just like…They’re focused on their small part of the puzzle.
[6:02] I would say, without sounding maudlin, it can get a little lonely at certain
points where it’s like, “Who can I call upon? Where can I learn how to deal with
video assets better? How to set up a taxonomy? Who’s doing stuff that’s really
exciting and cool?”
[6:22] That’s really what we’re trying to provide, sort of a knowledge base. But
also because I’m finishing up a master’s at Pratt in library and information sciences,
one of the things I’ve been trying to do is a lot of outreach to other LIS
programs in our area.
[6:45] We’ve been getting a pretty fair amount of students coming in who, in
a field that is becoming vastly more digital. They can really start getting their
feet wet and get an idea of where everything’s going, whether this is a good
career choice.
[6:53] A lot of times, those are who the best ideas come from. We’re very egalitarian.
We’re looking…If you’re a member, you can present because we have a
lot of experts but we also have a lot of people, even if they’re just starting out.
They’ve come up with fantastic ideas or they have great internships. We’re looking
for knowledge from everybody in that way.
Henrik: [7:19] What advice would you share with other DAM professionals and
even people aspiring to become a DAM professional?
Michael: [7:26] That’s a good question because…It’s interesting how the whole
field, the space has changed because, again, if you’re going back to the early
part of the last decade, you could go around and ask 15 different people who
are managing a DAM how they ended up in that job. It was really like a company
bought a system and they looked around the room and looked at one
guy or one girl and said, “That person’s running it.” [7:58] Invariably, they came
from some print field, usually production or something like that. There are a
lot of people, like myself who were just thrown into the breach and they just
had to learn all the different aspects of how to make this happen, how to do it
on the fly.
[8:23] I’m cheering for the home team here, but I think having a library science
degree is a fantastic way to do it. It’s a great way to get a grounding in it but I
think it’s kind of a specific type of person, in a lot of ways, too.
[8:38] In the end, what we’re talking about is classification. Classification is,
again, another really holistic concept and it’s a very basic concept because it’s
like when…It’s so inherent in our human experience because the one thing all
humans do when they look at something…After they look at something, they
classify it. They put it in a particular box or a particular category.
[9:05] It’s really taking an organization’s assets and trying to…Not only to classify
it but also to figure out how they move and what are the best states for them to
move from. It’s a bunch of different complimentary, somewhat what’s the term
I’m looking for sometimes competing skill sets.
[9:29] Being able to be very granular but have that holistic sort of overarching,
big picture view at the same time. Having a lot of focus but also having to be
incredibly gregarious and willing to be very social and just always trying to find
a way to develop stuff in a new, different way. You have to be very patient and
very impatient at the same time.
[9:57] I would say it’s an interesting field to get into if you want to be the hub of
everything. If you have a lot of ideas about content and where the web is going
and where digital content is going, as well.
[10:19] I was reading a really interesting “Wired” article on the train coming in
about how we’re moving into more of an application model again, in terms of
the Internet with apps, with mobile. Everything is becoming little pieces rather
than the free, wide open web anymore.
[10:45] One of the things that got me thinking…This kind of goes back to the
whole of Jonathan Zittrain throughout the…We’re really going back into a
stage in computing that’s based around appliances again. That’s where DAM
fits in beautifully as, really, the content delivery device for all these different
applications.
[11:12] At the same time, what it really comes down to…You just have to be a very
good communicator, I think. Somebody who’s really willing to just roll up their
sleeves and try and iron out a problem that you’ll probably never completely
iron out because everything moves too quickly.
[11:34] You just really have to be willing to build as many bridges as possible and
love technology, but also hate it a little bit, too, in order to find where technology
stops and where culture starts and how to fix those culture issues, as well. I
think you’re building bridges not only through technology, but also through just
getting people to talk to each other.
[12:04] In the end, you’re more a personality type than you are somebody who
has a specific set of skills at the beginning of it.
Henrik: [12:15] That’s fair. Thank you, Mike.
Michael: [12:16] No problem.
Henrik: [12:18] For more on Digital Asset Management, log on to
anotherdamblog.com. Thanks again.

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