Henrik de Gyor: This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today, I’m speaking with Stacey McKeever.
Stacey, how are you?
Stacey McKeever: I’m fine, Henrik. How are you?
Henrik de Gyor: Good. Stacey, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
Stacey McKeever: To just give you some background, I have a Masters in Library and Information Science, so I’m an actual Librarian, and the way I’m involved with Digital Asset Management. Currently, I am the Manager of Digital Asset Management at Team One. I worked in some sort of digital asset management for 20 years, and I fell backwards into it from library school.
I found out I was a latent techie, and I like that side of libraryship, information, professional situations, whatever you want to call it. It’s been a natural progression from librarian into doing things like cataloging, indexing, and just making sure that people can find assets. Also, my undergrad was in social psychology, so it really ties in together.
Henrik de Gyor: Great. Stacey, how does an advertising agency use digital asset management?
Stacey McKeever: It depends on the agency. My particular agency, we use it as a delivery system for our art creatives, as well as a repository, so that people can review and take a look at assets and repurpose the collateral that we created in previous years. It’s also used in some parts of an archive, so we can go back and pull up previous assets from many years ago in order to be able to reuse them for anniversary pieces or other types of case studies, things of that nature.
Henrik de Gyor: Great. What are the biggest challenges and successes you’ve seen with Digital Asset Management?
Stacey McKeever: The biggest challenge I see with Digital Asset Management, in some ways it’s moving from its infancy into adolescence, and people still seem to think of Digital Asset Management in the same way that they can manage their iTunes or, I think I’ve just dated myself, or Spotify or their files on their desktop or anything like that, that anybody can do it.
Really, Digital Asset Management, part of it is a mindset because the way I see it is I have to be able to understand my user and be able to think like they think, and so there’s that point where it’s seen as it can be tacked on to the very end, as opposed to really thinking about it as the robust portion of the company that can support the workers much better, as well as, in some cases, possibly be a monetary stream that can be used to help go to their bottom line.
Some of the biggest successes I’ve seen is that it’s starting to grow and that people are starting to understand that, “Oh, wait, the assets that we have are really important, and we can use them and they can be re-purposed, and we can put them out and hold onto to them, more or less, ad infinitum.”
Another big challenge I see, I keep going back and forth, is that in some ways because we’ve been Googlized, everyone thinks that Digital Asset Management is as simple as putting just a couple of words into a system and it’ll pull up exactly what you want, and that’s not the case. The big challenge with Digital Asset Management is for people to understand that there is work involved when you have a digital asset system or when you are doing Digital Asset Management. There is that human portion of it. It’s not just all technology.
Henrik de Gyor: Good points. What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and people aspiring to become DAM professionals?
Stacey McKeever: Some advice that I would like to give is that you need to have in some ways pretty thick skin. People will underestimate what you can do and what type of benefit you can bring to the situation. I like to say that as part of my training as a librarian, I have a very high tolerance pain level for searching, and so that’s one of the skills that you’re able to develop. This ability to be able to search as well as being able to conceptualize what the DAM needs and what your user base needs.
As for aspiring DAM professionals, whatever you have in your background, bring it into your DAM life. It’s part of your toolkit. It will keep you in good stead, and it’ll come up in very strange and odd ways, so don’t forget what you know, just bring it into what you’re doing to enhance what you know.
Henrik de Gyor: [0:01] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today I’m speaking with Victor LeBon. Victor, how are you?
Victor LeBon: [0:10] I’m very well, Henrik, how are you?
Henrik: [0:11] Good. Victor, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
Victor: [0:15] Henrik, I’m the Director of Marketing Technology at a company called ICP.
ICP is a company that started in advertising production which is we still do today. That’s my background and why I joined the company.
[0:28] Advertising production relies on the key principle of reusing and repurposing contents. In essence that its core business, but doing so in a way that is compliant and it complies with legal, regulatory, and brand guidelines as well. That’s the key principle of Digital Asset Management as well.
[0:46] I started working on the advertising production side. My first opportunity with DAM, was helping a client with their migration they wanted to have from one system to another. Then, I worked as a Business Director for Unilever ‑‑ one of our key clients in this area ‑‑ supporting their asset management solution.
[1:02] These days, I look after all of our clients here at ICP and any services supporting marketing technology, of course, of which DAM is a central part. My day-to-day role these days focuses around digital transformation. How to integrate asset management effectively within the wider digital transformation ecosystem.
Henrik: [1:21] How does a marketing communications production company use Digital Asset Management?
Victor: [1:26] That’s a great question. We use DAM in all aspects of our business, both the advertising production and marketing technology services. For the marketing communications and production side of things it’s essential for the work that we do. We have to ensure we reuse and repurpose the content for our clients. Effectively reuse their assets.
[1:47] We have to be compliant. We have to provide our clients with visibility and transparency both on the creative process, the review and approval process, as well as the final output.
[1:58] Touch points with DAM, is restricting master creatives, downloading those key assets, the whole MRM aspect which is approval and work flow, as well as uploading the adaptations, which we ourselves produce. Then of course, distributing it to the end points.
[2:14] ICP took a slightly different strategic direction from other marketing communication production companies in the sense that we don’t develop our own software. We very much wanted to remain agnostic and ensure we use whatever solutions best suited for our client needs.
Victor: [2:30] If a client has a solution, a DAM solution which they themselves have chosen, that’s best suited to their needs in our production areas we can also make use of that. We have a solution that we use in‑house but we are not wedded to it. We can make sure that whatever we chose and recommended is aligned to our client needs.
[2:46] For example, for one of our clients Diageo, we offer both production services and marketing technology services. That works really well because we have an overall understanding of the end‑to‑end process for the assets that we work with for our clients and both the creation thereof and the management thereof in the systems as well.
Henrik: [3:05] Victor, how do you see the role of Digital Asset Management in correlation with digital transformation?
Victor: [3:10] I think this is something that’s changed very much in recent times where digital transformation initiatives are happening everywhere we see. Prior to digital transformation, asset management was happening. It was really about finding ROI and finding efficiencies in the clients process. The key change now is that DAM, or Digital Asset Management is now no longer really optional.
[3:38] If a company wants to go through a digital transformation program, they really have to have DAM as part of their core pillar of their capabilities. You need to look at the end‑to‑end states, with digital transformation.
[3:50] You have to start off with sometimes what might be a very mature DAM system. Or if you’re starting at this from scratch, you might need to go on and start an new DAM system or consolidate, but you can’t have services that operate in silos. You can’t have technology that operates in silos, as well.
[4:06] No matter what your technology or supplier landscape in, digital transformation is really about bringing those together and providing a consolidated ecosystem, both of services, and technology, and capabilities to offer that seamless experience for the clients and customers.
Henrik: [4:23] What are the biggest challenges and successes you’ve seen with Digital Asset Management?
Victor: [4:28] I’ll try not to be too controversial here. One of the biggest challenges that we’ve seen and I think this is probably the same thing for many companies like ourselves, is internal stakeholders at our clients, and working with lots of different parties. Indeed, they all have their different priorities, their different agendas, their different KPIs and the key things they need to try and achieve.
[4:51] That brings different requirements to the party, and different perspectives, I say, as on what is critical for success. I think the bigger the solution, first of all, the more stakeholders you have to involve to ensure success. That brings in itself its own challenges in getting those individual stakeholders to align. Of course, looking at the reward at the end of that is the bigger the solution, the more the stakeholders, the greater the potential benefit.
[5:16] One other key challenge which we’ve seen as well is technology never moves as quickly as the requirements. Everyone wants something and they want it now. By the time it’s available, they want something different. Looking at change, how technology is implemented, and how support around that technology is implemented, that will stand the test of time.
[5:37] Providing support to the business, and to the various department who uses this technology whilst at the same time continually improving the solution is a big challenge which I think we’ve got a lot of experience in doing. We’re quite excited about delivering that.
[5:52] In terms of successes, again, I’ll be slightly controversial and say that for me the biggest success is when we can get clients to the stage when we can step back and a lot of our core services are no longer required. We will have achieved our goal of embedding that solutions part to business as usual processes.
[6:12] We’ve helped work with software developers and business to make the system more refined or work towards making data gathering process much more efficient. We’re really starting to see success now as when that DAM system achieves a certain level of maturity, that it can really be integrated effectively, within the wider ecosystem.
[6:35] It’s like a well‑oiled machine that operates very effectively on its own sometimes and very independently from us. We’re happy to embrace that because we work almost sometimes to develop ourselves and the services we have into obsolescence because we want to deliver value for our clients at every stage. We know if we deliver value there and demonstrate that to the clients, then they’ll find something else for us to do.
[6:57] That’s something we are quite excited to work in partnership with our clients to deliver.
Henrik: [7:02] Victor, what advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and people aspiring to become DAM professionals?
Victor: [7:08] First of all, I’d like to say that this is a really exciting industry. I’m massively passionate about this. I get to quite excited thinking about working in this area. So much is happening in this space and this is going to be so fundamental to the growth and success of organizations everywhere.
[7:24] My advice would be have a passion for what you do and for delivering value and quality. Start by delivering value in your role in your job, in your company or whatever. Whatever area of the DAM industry that you work in, whether you’re on the client side, or the software vendor side, or the services side as we are.
[7:42] Then the opportunities grow. I think taking that approach of doing the job you’re been asked to do. Doing it really well and passionately, then the opportunities come to you because clients and partners can recognize you’ve got a really good investment in getting it right. Then after, you can grow it from there.
[8:03] The other piece of advice I would say is never stop learning. Never stop asking questions and being curious about the world around you. The technologies change, organizations change, the relationship between marketing and customers has fundamentally changed.
[8:19] Big organizations are getting this now, that they need to embrace change and making it part of their day‑to‑day. Embracing change all together, with all the different parties working together and being OK, with that makes for a really exciting journey that we can go on.
Henrik: [8:34] Excellent, well thanks Victor.
Victor: [8:36] Thank you Henrik.
Henrik: [8:38] For more on this and other Digital Asset Management topics, go to anotherdamblog.com. For this and 180 other podcast episodes, go to anotherdampodcast.com. If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to email me at anotherdamblog@gmail.com. Thanks again.
Nila Bernstengel discusses Digital Asset Management
Transcript:
Henrik de Gyor: [0:01] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset Management. I am Henrik de Gyor. Today I’m speaking with Nila Bernstengel.
[0:08] Nila, how are you?
Nila Bernstengel: [0:10] I’m good. How are you today?
Henrik: [0:11] Great. Nila, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
Nila: [0:15] I have been involved on the job and also in library school. On the job, I have worked in the DAM field for almost 7 years and digital repositories for about 10 years.
[0:26] I also went to library school. While in library school, I focused on emerging technologies, how to create digital repositories, digital collections and how to implement metadata properly.
[0:38] On the job, I have worked the full cycle of implementing a system and upgrading a system. This generally has entailed creating user files, metadata scrubbing or as I like to call it, “untangling the metadata”.
[0:50] I set standards, cataloging, standards for terminology, create dictionaries and permission sets and also taxonomies. In total, I did everything to bring up a system and release a system.
Henrik: [1:02] How does a nonprofit educational organization use Digital Asset Management?
Nila: [1:06] The main objective was to have a centralized location for the company assets for the purpose of storage access and content distribution. Having a centralized location of assets allowed for the discovery of our assets as well as new collections for the creation of either content or product.
[1:27] Not everyone knew what was being created in the company. People would just ask for assets. They would either come to the Creative Resources Department, or they would just look around on the servers, not realizing there was much, much more out there that they could be using.
[1:43] For this reason, we really brought in a system for the centralization for access. There needed to be a place where everyone could go in, view and download without having to contact us. That means we set up a system that was based on permissions, which was really, really important.
[1:59] This really tied into our content distribution. We wanted a place for people to go in, see everything the company offered them, and nothing that was on there was out of their reach. Everything they see, they could use and we really did that by setting up a system that was centralized and was focused on permission sets.
[2:21] Lastly, the content distribution part. This was key to bringing in a system because prior to this, we were mailing out assets, mailing hard drives, CDs, DVDs, even books in the mail and it became very, very costly and not time efficient.
[2:38] To cut down on that, we brought in a system to have something that was instant for someone to use globally and domestically. The system also allowed for the governance of assets. No more like, “I’m using the logo from 10 years ago”. It was up‑to‑date and current.
Henrik: [2:57] What are the biggest challenges and successes you’ve seen with Digital Asset Management?
Nila: [3:01] One of the biggest challenges I have seen is changing workflow. There are a lot of companies that had the same work flow for decades and all of a sudden we’re asking people to no longer use servers, no longer to use their personal hard drives. We’re asking them to change workflow completely and that was pretty hard because a lot of people resist change, especially when it comes to technology.
[3:24] It was something that was different. They had to think about it differently. It really changed how they retrieved assets.
[3:30] The big selling point was showing them the benefits of a system. All of a sudden, you didn’t have to look for hours for something or that one photograph you were looking for. Now you could go on to one place, just do a simple search and download it and that would always be there.
[3:46] One of the biggest challenges was changing people’s workflow, changing them to move away from a physical to a digital environment. One of the biggest challenges for a system was having a lot of duplicates and a lot of versions.
[4:00] A version would be something like have a master file and then there’s five derivatives and different file formats under it. People really still wanted that and I eliminated that because I really believe that the system has the capability to download file formats, whatever you need it for. That was a big challenge also. It’s just like training people to understand all the capabilities of a system.
[4:26] Another big challenge was naming conventions. I standardized the naming convention for the system and people wanted to make sentence structures out of a name, which believe it or not, really actually affects the search. It was a big thing, standardizing how files are named and how they’re presented to people.
[4:47] One of the biggest successes I’ve heard from an end user was how easy the system was to use, how the learnability was really low. This really communicated to me that it was not only easy, but this was something that they would go back to readily and keep using because it wasn’t complicated. The visual space wasn’t overpopulated. That was really good to hear.
[5:10] I think for the company’s success, the ability to reuse assets was key. This really cut down on costs. It also cut down on time. People could reuse the same assets for many different things, which really helps the company also just save money. It enhanced work flow because it cut down on time also.
Henrik: [5:32] What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and people aspiring to become DAM professionals?
Nila: [5:36] For people starting out in the field, I would recommend start small, something manageable and then use it as a model to scale up. What I mean by this is get your hands dirty a little bit.
[5:49] There was a couple of systems that people could easily download onto their own devices or machines. OpenRefine is a metadata cleanup program. It allows you to bring in a spreadsheet and really dive into cleaning up metadata and structuring metadata. That’s a really good tool for people to use who are looking to get into this field and also, understand the dynamics of metadata.
[6:14] A couple of systems they could try? I think SharePoint is really good. A lot of people use it. It’s pretty easy. I would really recommend going there. Try to create a collection, apply metadata and try searching. See how it works. See what it visually looks like once you apply metadata to it.
[6:30] Drupal is a system a lot of libraries use. It’s also open source. I recommend trying it. Create some pages, create a collection, apply metadata and then see what it looks like and see how it functions.
[6:42] I think just doing that over and over really clicks and makes people understand how dynamic the system is because we are moving from physical to digital and it’s basically a stratosphere of information that is being linked together.
[6:57] I think hands on is the best I could say for people. There is reading resources for people to supplement doing the hands on. I look at The Accidental Taxonomist quite a bit. I think it’s really great. It’s easy to understand and I think if you join, especially reading and a hands‑on experience, it will make you feel a lot more comfortable going into a company or going into an organization and tackling how to set up a system and how a system works.
[7:25] Another great reading source I also use is Real Story Group. They have great vendor information. They have really great white papers and documentation lists to look at because there is a system for almost everything.
[7:37] Different systems do different things. It breaks apart this idea that there’s just Digital Asset Management. There’s Digital Asset Management for a lot of different content types and a lot of systems gear towards different content types. I do recommend doing some reading and just doing a little bit of research on vendors.
[7:55] For people in the field, I would definitely recommend, even if it’s not possible, to reach out to the vendor of the system you’re using and really give them sky‑high expectations of something you want, because even if they can’t do it, they’re going to remember that and they’re going to probably try to put it into their core systems so it will be part of their system.
[8:17] Something like an example of that was we needed content pools. I needed a way to separate content by permissions without creating new portals. I wanted to use one portal for everybody to go into but not everyone saw the same content. Now that’s easily available in most systems.
[8:35] It’s really great if you really talk to the vendor, if you talk to people. It really advances the system. It advances our work flow, which I think is only beneficial.
[8:44] This is for people already in the field. If you’re creating a DAM team or a team that is going to tackle the DAM system, I really, really recommend having a dynamic from all parts of the company or organization. This means three or four representations of business IT, someone who can organize it, like a librarian and I would recommend having an end user involved in part of the process.
[9:09] IT definitely supports the company. They support the technology, but the business requirements and what the system is geared for and how it will used will come from business, because they are the ones who need to use it and they’re the ones who need this workflow to work for the company.
[9:24] A librarian or someone who can organize it is key. This is definitely a skill set people are trained to do. Organizing digital content is a huge task and there is ways to do it and ways to not do it properly.
[9:39] An end user are the people who are going to be using the system. They’re going to be the ones going into the front end and engaging in the system. They’re going to be searching, downloading. They’re key to how the system and the metadata is applied.
Henrik: [9:54] Thanks, Nila.
Nila: [9:55] Thank you.
Henrik: [9:56] For more on this and other Digital Asset Management topics, go to AnotherDAMblog.com. For this and 170 podcast episodes, go to AnotherDAMpodcast.com. If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to email me at anotherdamblog@gmail.com. Thanks again.
Henrik de Gyor: [0:01] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset Management. I am Henrik de Gyor. Today, I’m speaking with Julia Thompson.
[0:07] Julia, how are you?
Julia Thompson: [0:09] Great, thank you. How are you?
Henrik: [0:10] Great. Julia, how were you involved with Digital Asset Management?
Julia: [0:14] I’m the Digital Asset Manager at UNICEF, New York headquarters. Part of that role, I’m the administrator of our Global Digital Asset Management System. This includes things like configuring the ACLs, developing and maintaining metadata, working with the DAM vendor on issues, any changes we’d like to make, and features that would be useful to us.
[0:34] My role also includes the development of DAM workflows and advising on best practices, and user support and training.
Henrik: [0:42] How does an organization focused on long‑term humanitarian and developmental assistance to children and mothers in developing countries use Digital Asset Management?
Julia: [0:52] The DAM system that I manage contains just finished materials at this stage, rather than works‑in‑progress, although I see that being something that we may be using the DAM system for in the future. At the moment, it includes photos, videos, branding materials, publications and social media assets and things such as infographics.
[1:12] And also other related peripheral materials, mostly communication materials that are ultimately destined for an external audience. So we work in more than 190 countries and territories and we have content creators and offices all over the world. For us having a global DAM system helps us to break down content silos across the organization.
[1:33] It provides us a way to make rich media created all around the organization, available to UNICEF staff everywhere. The staff use the DAM system to locate materials for repurposing and reuse when they are creating new communication assets. So we offer B‑Rolls for creating new videos, photos that they use in new publications.
[1:52] We also use the DAM system to distribute editable versions of assets for localization. So that means that an office can create versions of assets in their local languages. We use the DAM system as a tool for sharing downloadable assets with news media and with our many partners and stakeholders.
[2:09] It also provides a source for high quality assets for publication on websites and social media, and other internal platforms and it’s integrated with unicef.org, for the publication of photos by the DAM system API. I’d say that one of the most important roles of Digital Asset Management for us is in helping to protect the rights of the children in our photos and videos, helping us to ensure that assets are used appropriately.
[2:32] So we have some assets, images of children at risk, such as children associated with armed groups, which requires special approval and particular care in their use. The DAM system helps us to handle usage approvals.
[2:45] We are able to use the system to embed the usage terms and conditions and some asset types like images, to make users aware of the usage terms and conditions upon accessing assets in the DAM system.
[2:56] We use the DAM system to pull together packages of assets that relate to a particular focus area or a campaign, which makes it quicker and easier for staff to find the communication materials that they need and the DAM system also provides a definitive source for our branding materials, so that we can keep the UNICEF brands clear.
Henrik: [3:13] What are the biggest challenges and successes you’ve seen with Digital Asset Management?
Julia: [3:17] So in some ways our successes and challenges are fairly closely linked. Because the DAM system has become quite central in supporting our communication goals, our users are starting to see the benefits of the DAM system in their work, which is a good thing. It’s exactly what we are aiming for.
[3:34] One of the consequences that we found of having a system that people like and see the value in, is that we’re finding ourself needing to assess and culminate new needs that are arising, we’ve seen the emergence of new use cases, new demands on the system, which have created new challenges to address, new workflows to develop, additional metadata to add, changes in the way that we handle permissions.
[3:57] So these new needs have been a challenge to address. Some taking extra resourcing, requiring changes in the way that we are working with the system. But it’s also nice to see the value of Digital Asset Management in such a large organization. Another challenge that we’ve faced is balancing our shorter and longer term needs.
[4:15] We need our Digital Asset Management to support an often high paced flow of assets within the organization and to outside partners and news media. But we also need to ensure that we have full and accurate metadata needed for the long‑term accessibility of those assets.
[4:30] In an emergency situation such as after the recent Nepal earthquake, the DAM system was used to make photos and videos available to the organization and to the news media, which needed to happen quickly. So in a situation like that there’s not always time to spend fully cataloging an asset before publication and distribution.
[4:50] However, we do need full metadata to ensure that someone can find those assets in a few years and that they have enough contextual information to know what their looking at. So I definitely wouldn’t claim to have all the answers to that dilemma yet. That’s really something we are still working through. But I think in the future, it’s going to have to involve a staged approach to Asset Management.
[5:09] We have a workflow and a system that’s live and user‑friendly enough to meet their short‑term needs, combined with oversight by information professionals, maybe filling in the metadata and making sure that everything looks right at a slightly later stage.
[5:24] And also, I think accepting that good‑enough is sometimes the best you can do. There is really no question that Digital Asset Management in a large organization like that, operating in different time zones is a challenge.
Henrik: [5:36] I bet. What advise would you like to share with DAM professionals and people aspiring to become DAM professionals?
Julia: [5:42] One of the things I would recommend is the future proofing as much as possible, being aware of the importance of flexibility and scalability when procuring and configuring a DAM system because you will inevitably be making changes, particularly when working in a large organization.
[6:00] We found it really important to have a system that allows us to be really flexible, making changes to metadata, accommodating new asset types, new asset genres and supporting new asset cases.
[6:12] Related to that, I’d say that it’s important to keep talking to your users well beyond the initial planning and implementation stage, so that your system and workflows can evolve along with the new user needs that will emerge. We’ve definitely had a lot of changes with the way that we are using Digital Asset Management within the new organization, even over a fairly short period of time.
[6:33] For people aspiring to become DAM professionals, I would say that it’s getting hands‑on experience and so getting some exposure to Digital Asset Management in a real organization is super important.
[6:44] I would think that although getting a good handle on Digital Asset Management theory and best practices is key, it’s also really important to be able to navigate the unique culture of an organization to be able to successfully identify business requirements and end‑user needs.
[7:00] At least from my point of view that seems to be where the biggest challenges lie, but also the biggest opportunities for success in Digital Asset Management.
Henrik: [7:08] Great. Well, thanks Julia.
Julia: [7:10] Thank you.
Henrik: [7:11] For more on this and other Digital Asset Management topics, go to anotherdamblog.com. For this podcast and 160 other podcast episodes, go to anotherdampodcast.com. If you have any comments or questions please feel free to email me at anotherdamblog@gmail.com. Thanks again.
Another DAM Podcast 