As a creative agency, are you spending long hours dealing with the logistics of getting your creative work to other people, getting it approved, converting files, etc.? All this taking time away from what you do best: CREATE…
Your life without DAM
A new product has been developed. A client sends a request for digital asset creation to the Idea team to create a concept, look and feel for the assets. The Advertiser, Concept Engineer and Designer work on the concept sending concept drafts back and forth between themselves.
“Who has the final concept version?”
“I think John has it.”
“John, do you have the final version?”
The idea/ concept is generated and sent via email to the Creation team. Photographer, writer and graphic designer begin work on the assets, along the way they employ a freelance videographer to shoot some product videos. The assets get emailed back and forth between Creation team and Freelancers for approval and collaboration.
“Wait a minute – I needed the image of the product in blue, not red.. can you change that, please?”
“I did. And I emailed it to you.”
“I can’t find it, can you please resend?”
The finished version gets emailed to Review team and Client for approval. Changes and improvement requests get emailed back to Creation team. A new version is emailed to Review team.
“Where is the latest version?”
“Was this version approved?”
“Why can’t I download the latest version?”
Final version is emailed to Production team. Product is being produced and the created marketing assets are being used. However, they would like to use the version 2 of the asset.
“Where do I find version 2?”
Manufacturer adds its logo and would like to set brand guidelines for using the assets.
“How do I make sure everyone follows our Brand Guidelines?”
“What about the copyright?”
“How can I control who sees and accesses these assets?”
“I would like this asset to expire in three months, how do I manage that?”
“Where is that high-resolution image?”
The assets go to Distribution team. Partner needs high-resolution image. “Could you please send me a high-resolution image?” Retailer adds a little message to the asset. If Employee wants to share an asset on social media he needs to download it on his computer first, no copyright, permissions applied.
Along the way, all versions of assets are stored in an archive (it could be a cloud storage service, a shared drive, a file server, or even an email inbox). It is not organised nor controlled. If a Salesman needs a particular asset, he needs to contact someone at the Creation team who then contact the Idea team to locate the asset. If the asset cannot be located it needs to be created, going through the creation process again.
Your life with a Digital Asset Management (DAM) solution
What is DAM?
It is a central repository that an organisation uses to manage, organise, search, edit, store, secure, and distribute its digital assets. Digital assets might be images, documents, video files, presentations, PDFs, audio files, and spreadsheets.
How DAM helps
With a digital asset management solution, you will have a tool to streamline your digital asset production processes – from idea to distribution, allowing your staff to concentrate on their main responsibilities.
You will save money by allowing your creative and marketing teams to focus on their projects instead of answering endless email requests.
DAM will increase your return on investment by repurposing already existing assets and eliminating lost files.
Improve organisational efficiency through a central, searchable repository for assets that support and power your marketing efforts.
In the end, a life without a DAM can end up being more costly than the investment in a DAM solution that controls asset permissions, asset ownership and usage controls.
