How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
How does a media company focused on cooking 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: [0:01] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset
Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today, I’m speaking with Andrew Mannone.
Andrew, how are you? Andrew Mannone: [0:09] I’m good, Henrik. How are you? Henrik: [0:11] Great. Andrew, how are you involved with Digital Asset
Management? Andrew: [0:15] Well, that’s a great question. When I was first hired at America’s
Test Kitchen as an Imaging and Color Specialist, we were really at the beginning
stages of bringing all of our production work in-house for color correction,
proofing. We had some established processes and workflows already, but it was
all rather informal, to a certain extent. Production, my department, is kind of
like the central hub. All of the print projects that my company produces flows
through our department in one way, shape or form, sometimes twice in the life
cycle of a project. [0:54] I was given a really large degree of latitude to completely
rebuild the imaging workflow, from the ground up, which was awesome.
That’s really where I started getting involved in Digital Asset Management,
especially in how we think of it today at the company.
[1:15] Ever since then, production has established itself as the go to place for
anything that the company needs, in terms of retouching, compositing, silhouetting,
proofing, anything prepress, and, of course, Digital Asset Management.
[1:32] Since that time I have a new role at the company as the Workflow and
Asset Manager. Primarily, my goal now is to develop and support the workflows
for the existing products and publications that we have, but all the new initiatives,
the kind the business picks up, whether it be some sort of online social
media initiative or whatever.
[1:59] Like a lot of other publishers, a component of our business model revolves
around repurposing content. In America’s Test Kitchen, we’ve got some,
what I would describe as, unique challenges, one individual image of a plate of
food. That image might have, through its life cycle of going through different
products, up to six to seven output color modes, based on whatever the requirements
are for that publication it appears in.
[2:31] Our job in production is to be able to track all of those assets, where they
came from, what app that they were dragged from, where they were used, back
to the source digital negative file, whenever we need to create a new output
color space. Henrik: [2:48] Just to clarify, when you mean outputs do you mean prints versus
web versus other? Andrew: [2:53] Yeah, exactly. Our flagship magazine “Cook’s Illustrated” relies
heavily on duo tones. Whereas some of our other magazines or books use
quad tones in addition to standard CMYK full color images. Then of course, the
web has its own requirements. To support all of that we had to come up with a
metadata driven automated work flow that not only ties desktop applications
together, but ties together our DAM system. Henrik: [3:21] How does a media company focused on cooking use Digital
Asset Management? Andrew: [3:26] We think about what it is that we do. We’ve got not only our
TV shows, our magazines, our books, and our online websites. We all generate
images and design layouts, PDFs. We need a way to track it all. We use DAM
as a two prong approach. There’s the repository quality of it, storage of our
finished assets. [3:52] There’s also a work flow component of it. That’s really my
focus on DAM. Is using DAM as work flow from the start of an asset’s life cycle
all the way to it goes into the repository side of DAM. When we started using
our DAM system we ultimately decided to go with Cumulus, put out by Canto. It
threw us for a loop at first.
[4:18] We approached it thinking it was an out of the box solution ready to go,
kind of like Adobe Bridge but with a big database backend. After a while it
was like, “Something’s not right here.” Then I started to realize that it’s not just
an out of the box solution. What we got when we chose our system was really
a platform.
[4:46] That’s when the real power of what we got was fully realized. My favorite
way to explain Cumulus to people not familiar with DAM or some other departments
is to think of it like a Lego set. A Lego set for that really awesome
medieval castle, but you threw out the directions. You’ve got all the pieces
there, but you need to figure out how they fit together to build that castle.
[5:14] It will take a while but it’s a puzzle that you have to solve. Once we got the
hang of it, that’s when really good things started to happen. It falls into one of
two categories for what I’ve been trying to use our DAM systems for. Solving a
workload problem or to better communicate information to a user.
[5:35] There are some simple things that you can do on the web front ends,
tweaking the CSS to convey the company branding so it has a consistent look
and feel across all of the different other online systems that we have at our company.
Presenting information to the user in a way that makes sense. Like if you’re
searching for various recipes.
[6:00] Are the recipe elements grouped in a logical fashion? Recipe name is a
part of a book chapter, what’s the book project name? Then there’s the work
flow component. Sometimes it’s really simple things like Cumulus will capture all
of the excess information from the digital camera but it doesn’t always render it
in a completely human consumable way.
[6:25] For example, exposure mode. It renders it as an integer and in most imaging
applications, you would see something like aperture priority, or auto exposure,
but in Cumulus it shows up as zero. I wrote a really simple formula to parse
the integer into an auto exposure. It’s simple things like that that give more
context to the information that’s already there.
[6:58] It helps the user interpret what they’re seeing when they’re viewing the
various records in the DAM. When it comes to solving a work flow problem, a
lot of what I do is getting Cumulus and Photoshop to talk to each other. Most
DAMs have some sort of way or method to convert asset X format into asset Y. I
need this JPEG into a PNG. Most of the times that’s fine.
[7:28] For us, it’s not as sophisticated as we need it to be, because our publications
have some really not mainstream print outputs. Like duo tones or quad
tones. We need to harness Photoshop to get everything the way we need it for
a particular publication. I was able to use the tools that Cumulus provides and
some scripting to select images in Cumulus, route them to Photoshop, process
them based on metadata that’s embedded in the image, then save out the
result and catalog it back into Cumulus.
[8:11] That lets us track where an image has been, what other output mode it’s
come from very easily. Henrik: [8:19] You mentioned earlier that you didn’t have the instructions for the
castle but you were able to build your own castle. Andrew: [8:28] I’ll wager to bet that another user using the exact same DAM,
it won’t look anything like what we built here at ATK. We’ve got tons of formula
fields that pull information out of a file path to display a project name and a lot
of nomenclature that’s specific to America’s Test Kitchen. When people first
start their eyes glaze over because we have so many acronyms that we throw
around. [9:01] We joke that we can talk in complete acronyms and have it make
perfect sense to the people in the know. We’ve incorporated that into our DAM.
It’s familiar to the people who have been here. One of the other things we were
able to do is now that more than ever cross media publishing is important, it’s
just growing exponentially.
[9:28] We needed to rewrite our web CMS and our internal web development
team rewrote the CMS that drives all of our websites and we took that opportunity
to integrate our Cumulus DAM into the CMS with the web services API.
That has saved countless hours for the web editorial department. Saving off
hours from load times for each magazine content load cycle.
[10:02] That’s actually set us up to do some really great things in regards to the
cloud. I can’t get into details right now, but we’re looking to putting a lot of
assets into the cloud, using the DAM to control who can see what. It’s going to
be exciting. Henrik: [10:23] Sounds like it. What advice would you like to share with DAM
professionals, and people aspiring to become DAM professionals? Andrew: [10:29] I thought about this one for a little bit. It occurred to me, I’ve
been working specifically in DAM for three years, and I still feel like I’m just starting
out. I still feel like I’m in that aspiring to be a DAM professional category,
but I’ve learned a few things. [10:50] Having a natural curiosity is really one of the
requirements to do this type of work. You really need to enjoy solving puzzles,
finding a solution to a challenge, and being detail oriented.
[11:05] Once you get past that, read up on some of the industry standard
groups, like Adobe’s XMP, IPTC, Dublin Core, PRISM XML. These are all really
great resources that you can take and figure out, “What’s the best way to
structure my metadata? Can I use something that’s already existing for developing
my taxonomy, instead of having to start from scratch?”
[11:32] Then learn all you can about XML. Whatever your operating system of
choice is, learn the scripting language that’s native to that platform. We’re an all
Mac shop, so AppleScript is my goto for scripting.
[11:53] We’re doing a lot of web projects now. Cumulus has several web front ends
that we use. JavaScript has become one of those languages that I kind of
knew, but I’m learning a whole lot more of.
[12:09] If you can find any sort of professional organization to connect with, to
find people that are in your field, doing what you do. LinkedIn is a great resource.
If your DAM system has a user forum, get involved on that. I’ve met a
lot of great people and made some really great contacts by participating on the
user forum for Cumulus.
[12:31] Read a lot of books, blogs, whatever you can get your hands on.
[12:36] Have fun. Play with stuff. See what works, what doesn’t. The way I learn
the best is to kick it around, see how it works. Possibly break it, and then try to
put it back together. I was the guy who took apart all their toys as a kid, and it
drove my parents nuts. That’s kind of the way I approach working with DAM,
and it’s panned out so far. Henrik: [13:02] Excellent. Thanks Andrew. Andrew: [13:03] Thanks Henrik. Henrik: [13:05] For more on Digital Asset Management, log on to AnotherDAMblog.com. 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 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.
Another DAM Podcast 