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: [0:00] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today, I’m speaking with Margie Foster.
Margie, how are you?
Margie Foster: [0:09] I’m good. Thank you. How are you?
Henrik: [0:11] Great! Margie, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
Margie: [0:16] I work as a Digital Asset Management Librarian for a global semiconductor company. My position is within the Marketing Department. I’m responsible for all the rich media that is involved with the marketing collateral. I have everything from large banners that hang at events over our booth, to video files, to print collateral, to anything that goes out on dot com.
Henrik: [0:49] Why does a global semiconductor company use Digital Asset Management?
Margie: [0:54] A semiconductor company, especially a global one, is no different from any other global company in the sense that it needs to reach as many of its customers as possible. Such is possible in a Digital Asset Management system is a key, keys in…Certainly, the marketing group being able to reach out to their customers.
Henrik: [1:19] What are the biggest challenges and successes you’ve seen with Digital Asset Management?
Margie: [1:24] As far as challenges go, initially, I started with Digital Asset Management back in the day when it was just beginning. What I’ve seen over the years is that Digital Asset Management system themselves are becoming more and more accepted as something that is integral to a marketing function. We need to be able to access whatever, whenever we need to buy, whomever needs to see it.
[1:51] Certainly, the systems do that. Where I’m seeing the challenge, it continues to be in the positions that work with the systems, specifically something like my own Digital Asset Management Librarian. There is a constant challenge to prove the works where we tend to be victims of our own success, and that we make it look easy. Looks like the information just falls into place, all the files are where they’re supposed to be.
[2:24] And sure enough, some cost‑conscious manager is going to start asking herself, “Do I really need a professional person to do this? Can I get my admin to do this? Or better yet, can I get the users of this system to just update things as they go along?” The answer, of course, is no because they won’t, as far as the users go.
[2:49] What they will do is the best they can, when they can. Frankly, they have full‑time positions that don’t require the management, the care and feeding of the system.
[3:02] One of the biggest challenges then becomes how to defend the position, having at least one person with the overview that may help maintain consistency. Frankly, I think the consistency should be spread across the company. Anybody that’s responsible for metadata, or tagging, or any kind of SEO, there needs to be a comprehensive, cross‑functional team there in place.
[3:36] So that the person with the Digital Asset Management system is speaking with the people that are keywording some of the graphics under the website or something. Because that position is also about training, and access, and speed, you wouldn’t think that the proving the worth of the position is that much of a challenge, but it really, really is.
[4:02] I like to think that it’s a part of a slow process of acceptance. It took a while for people to get their heads around the idea of a Digital Asset Management system. Now, more and more, that’s becoming accepted. We’re dealing with whether or not we really need someone dedicated, at least one person, dedicated to the maintenance of that system.
[4:32] As far as successes go, it’s good to…What I’ve seen, as far as successes go, is I have been able to empower users to find what they’re looking for when they need it. I have prolific users that I rarely hear from, unless they have some sort of issue that hasn’t come up before, which is great. I consider that a major success, the people I don’t hear from.
[4:59] I consider it a success whenever I get budget allocated for the upgrades when I need them. My system happens to be proprietary and third‑party, so there’s always an issue of renewing licenses, and expanding functionality, and so on, and so forth. Every time I get to do that, that’s definitely a success.
[5:20] The other factor that I would consider a success is when I get people coming to me and saying, “Hey, so and so, told me about this.” That happens because I work for a very large company, where we have thousands of employees. I depend a lot on word of mouth, in addition to whatever promotional exercises I can take to put out the word that the system is there to help you, and so on, and so forth.
[5:49] In addition to regular users who do that marketing collateral, I also hear from PowerPoint users that are making presentations, they may or may not be part of marketing. They may be part of one of the business units to do presentations to whomever. When word gets around to people I wouldn’t normally deal with and they’re coming to me and saying, “Hey, I’ve heard you got this.” That’s a success.
Henrik: [6:16] Margie, what advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and people aspiring to become DAM professionals?
Margie: [6:21] I would strongly recommend that anybody looking to get into Digital Asset Management, is first, they need to consider whether or not they’re going into a for‑profit environment, or a nonprofit environment. They really are two very different worlds. There’s a lot of opportunity in the nonprofit environment.
[6:43] My experience, however, is with the for‑profit, and that’s what I’d like to speak to. I would say, for those in place, always start with the users, go back to the users. They’re going to be the key to really making the system a success. It’s basic questions. You want to do an inventory of your users. You want to know what they need. You want to know, “Can the users, themselves, be categorized?”
[7:12] Of course, that helps when you’re setting up your system because you’re going to have some power users with more privileges than the occasional user, and so on, and so forth. Also, it’s going to help in terms of helping them come up with essential keywords. Words that they… how they think. How they use the system.
[7:34] I’ve learned, especially when I came over to marketing, that most of the different departments within a corporation have their own lingo for the products, essentially. Whether or not that spreads at the company, almost doesn’t matter, because If you’re considering a certain business group and you need to factor it in the system to keyword accordingly, they use different terms.
[8:02] You need to make sure that, that user group their terminology, how they’re thinking. For example, I have one user group that likes to use the internal code word for products before those are actually launched. They become something else once they’re launched, their official name. I make it my practice when I’m keywording anything related to them, to also include those internal, sort of informal references.
[8:30] It all goes back to the user. As long as someone, either within the field, or just starting in the field, or looking in the field, remembers that. I think, they’ll be fine. The other strong, strong piece of advice I recommend is there’s two groups in particular, the for‑profit environment that you want to partner with. That’s the IT group and the legal group.
[8:54] They’re essential because there’s so much information out there, especially with IT, that even if you’re coming to the position with a relatively strong background in IT, unless that’s your major function to stay abreast of the latest things, you’re going to need all the information you could get.
[9:19] These folks, the folks in IT for example, know what works best with the existing systems and they often know what’s the planned systems. They’re in the best position to be able to assist. It’s like, you want to always be on the good side of your car mechanic, right?
[9:40] This is not somebody you want messing with your car, your engine, or whatever. You always want to stay on the good side of IT. It also helps to stay on the good side of legal, because you want to be very conscientious about rights and permissions, especially if you’re dealing with any kind of stacked imagery, or any sort of restricted material.
[10:05] You want to make sure that you’re doing exactly what legal is telling you to do. Another factor that I have found to be very helpful that I would strongly recommend is to whether or not your manager asks for it, have your dollar value reports ready and current at a moment’s notice, because you’ll never know when you’re going to need to turn around and say, “Oh, yeah. Well, this month, I saved for our group X amount, and by the way this is how I factored that.”
[10:38] A lot of times, there’s folks that just hear those dollar values. It’s important to remember that. It’s impassioned as you may be about the need for Digital Asset Management that all has to be backed up in the for‑profit environment with why it as a cost-saving, or what is the value, how is this going to pay off in the immediate term, and also going forward in the long term.
Henrik: [11:08] Thanks, Margie.
Margie: [11:09] My pleasure. Thank you.
Henrik: [11:10] For more on this and other Digital Asset Management topics, go to AnotherDAMblog.com. For this podcast and 170 other episodes, go to AnotherDAMpodcast.com. If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to email me at AnotherDAMblog@gmail.com.
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: [0:02] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset Management. I am Henrik de Gyor. Today I’m speaking with Beth Goldstein.
[0:10] Beth, how are you?
Beth Goldstein: [0:11] I’m good. Thank you. How are you?
Henrik: [0:12] Great.
[0:13] Beth, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
Beth: [0:16] I’m the International Digital Asset Manager for my company. I train and evangelize our DAM to all our business partners across the globe.
Henrik: [0:24] How does an American healthcare company use Digital Asset Management?
Beth: [0:29] Even though we’re based here in the US, we really are extremely global. We as a company use our DAM internally to save time, money, and better leverage our investments in all of our creative content.
[0:41] We call our DAM, the e‑Library. The e‑Library is only one component of our greater and smarter digital initiative that we’ve been rolling out, to our marketing teams across the globe for the past three years.
Henrik: [0:54] What are the biggest challenges and successes you’ve seen with Digital Asset Management?
Beth: [0:57] Honestly, the biggest challenge is moving the business partners and marketers from the old way of doing business. Some of them believe in shared drive, SharePoint sites, USB drives, FTP sites, and many times all of these at once. Then seeing the value of going to a cloud‑based stand, where everything works harmoniously together.
[1:17] I believe that change management is a huge part of my job in engaging businesses, partners understanding I will just save them time and money. I think that change management is always going to be a problem whenever you’re dealing with lots and lots of people.
[1:31] But if you can show them in big steps, if you get one group together that has a big part of your digital asset like a global team, and get them lessons first and show that they’re uploading files, it tends to get the smaller teams excited as well. I believe our biggest success to date has been the adoption, since our launch last September, 2014.
[1:52] Currently we have over 41 countries trained and using, over 800 users, and over 10,000 digital assets in our e‑Library right now. Our biggest push was going to the global teams that create massive amounts of material like I was talking about, and showing them how easier they can create and distribute materials to country marketers.
[2:12] It was a big win for everyone in that conversation. Most of big companies have a lot of little countries like Malaysia, or Taiwan. They don’t have these big marketing budgets. But the global in US teams has much bigger budgets, so it’s easier for them to make these big pieces.
[2:26] iPad apps or big inactive PDFs, or videos, and be able to put them into our DAM. Then the countries can bring them down, localize them at a cost that is right for them, and use them.
Henrik: [2:39] What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals, and people aspiring to become DAM professionals?
“…be relentless, but gentle…”
Beth: [2:45] The advice I would give is to be relentless, but gentle with your business partners. I think that any new process people have to get used to the fact that they’ll be doing something different, or in a new way. Embrace that by making it fun.
[2:57] Have a naming contest for your DAM, which we did. The e‑Library was actually named by one of our employee, who wanted to make sure that it had a positive connotation and that it was brought in across the business, and that’s what we did.
[3:11] We also had a contest to see which team internally could have the most assets uploaded by a certain time. Our time frame was September to the end of the year, and we just got done with that contest. It created a lot of excitement and competition, which marketers are very competitive. It was a really great thing.
[3:27] I think that with my job here, a big portion of it is you have to believe in what you’re doing so that other people believe in it, to get them to buy in. If I don’t believe that what we have is amazing and is going to work for so many people, then no one else will.
[3:41] Believe in your DAM with your business partners as well. Also communicate. My DAM users continually hear about me, whether they like it or not. It’s not just something that we launched in September, and then just continue something that went into the background.
[3:55] I have weekly DAM Monday emails, and I kind of tongue in cheek say, “Again, it’s DAM Monday.” I give to them a tip or trick, or communicate to them that something big is coming, or training, or just asking for feedback.
[4:08] This is a really great way to be, but to continually keep it in the back of your mind that you have these tools out there, and you need to remember to go into it because it’s a new process. I also have every other month email communication newsletters that I send out, and that gives actual updates to integration, new things that are out there, new training, new team members, all that kind of stuff.
[4:30] If you want to become a DAM professional, definitely get into understanding how you can be a great business partner. I think that the job sits between a business partner and an IT. If you have a good background of both, then you’re able to be a good business partner and saying that you can communicate to the rest of the business.
[4:49] Not just the technical aspect, but what will be the benefit to the entire company. I think that you’re going to go far.
Henrik: [4:56] Thank you so much Beth.
Beth: [4:57] Of course.
Henrik: [4:58] For more on this and other Digital Asset Management topics, log onto AnotherDAMblog.com.
Another DAM Podcast 