DAM Driven Production:

Adding value with a new kind of creative intervention

Brands create more content, more quickly than ever before. Current models cannot keep pace with demand without unacceptable budget increases. We propose a solution.

Authored by

Kristen Martini EVP, Client Relationships, ICP

Dan Hunt Head of Production, EMEA, ICP

Contents (15 min read)

2. Breaking the Paradigm (5 min read)

Introduction

The current marketing and advertising environment requires a new kind of creative intervention.

You've surely lived to tell the tale.

A new marketing campaign is kicked off and your team is discussing the brief. Creative ideas fly back-and-forth, collaboration is in motion. Faster than you can say “what’s the budget for this?”, members of the team have sent out requests to agencies for product photo shoots, mood boards, and video filming sessions.

Tens of thousands of dollars later, you realize that you probably already have a 30 second spot of a happy person enjoying your product, or something that looks almost exactly like what your favorite agency just produced. Again. Wait -- why didn’t we look at what we already had? Did anyone look in the digital asset management system (DAM) before we spent all this money? If we are to produce more marketing and advertising at scale, we need to break this paradigm. The current marketing and advertising environment requires a new kind of creative intervention. Every loaf of bread cannot be freshly baked - rather, we need to be looking at what’s already in the bread box before we spend more. That bountiful cornucopia is the repository known as a DAM system - where, if you’ve done it right, you have a wealth of brand assets to re-use and re-purpose - costing you far less money than creating a campaign from scratch. Even if your DAM isn’t perfect, there’s likely plenty of hidden value that doesn’t require any major re-platforming or organizational changes to realize. Both you and your business are running at breakneck speed: the content engine must be fed, and inertia causes you to try and get a little more out of your team, eek a little more from your agencies, draw a tad more out of your tools -- and then something breaks. How long can this continue?

Breaking the Paradigm

A New Mindset of Re-use

Imagine the scenario this way, instead:

A new marketing campaign is kicked off, your team is discussing the brief. Someone with a keenly creative and brand-aware eye uses the multi-faceted search capabilities of your DAM system to find relevant assets of many types. She creates a collection of these assets and adds the brief to the collection, then shares it with the group. Artificial intelligence within the DAM may even suggest related assets that weren’t uncovered in the search process. Collaboration is in motion - not just among the team, but also among the group, across business functions, and the marketing technology stack. Re-usable assets are marked up. The previous rounds of photo shoots from numerous agencies are reviewed, as are the analytics of how assets performed. Your team then concludes that only a few new assets need to be created, because the essential added value of a brand librarian made sure that existing assets were considered first. A specific, targeted request is sent to an agency, with the golden goods already assembled - a model and framework for any new assets they’re tasked with.

A Re-use Checklist:

Joe Gaudreau, former VP, PIM Product Management at Salsify, recommends a re-use checklist for brands that are looking to drive more efficiency:

Does the asset we want already exist?
Can the asset be reused (and why not tag assets with this as metadata upon creation?)
Can the asset be reformatted (size, file type, etc.) - ideally by the DAM?
Which product variants will the asset be used for and on which digital isles / channels (Amazon, Ulta, etc.)?
Has the asset gone live?
Is the Product selling? → if yes, increase reuse

Increasing Asset Value

Marketers now want to increase the lifetime value of digital assets. For this to happen, we must end the era of disposable content.

Two photoshoots. 60 years of marketing assets.

Digital mass personalization at scale requires more templating of outputs and more interrogation of DAM systems, perhaps even using AI to find the best performing and most reusable assets. ICP has seen marketers from its client base being held accountable to the re-use metric - putting DAM and the quality of metadata front and center to their needs. The more an asset is used, the higher the return on the original investment.

In 1963, this iconic shot introduced The Beatles to the world. This infamous picture from the balcony of the EMI building served as the cover for their first album in 1963, then the cover of The Red Album in 1973, was then re-created for The Blue Album, and then, reaching back into that creative weel, both used for Peter Jackson’s GET BACK in 2021. One iconic photo; first time as an introduction, a decade later as a tribute and an update. 60 years later as an event.

The most iconic brands in the world have similarly embraced "stealing from yourself" not only to achieve higher ROI but as a source of creative inspiration. Marketing assets need to work hard, and need to endure. It’s expensive to make new ones—you’ve probably fought with agencies about how to find efficiencies and scale. You’ve battled with production partners about how many versions of something needs to be made for how many platforms in how many markets. It’s because your assets are IMPORTANT. They take your brand everywhere, and entice new customers, invite them in, close deals. And they should be delivering returns forever– they’re long-term assets with long-term value. How do you put them to work after they’ve left the stage? Your assets have value as parent to new ideas, as coaches and guides and muses. But in order to leverage them for creative inspiration and achieve their long-term value, you must have them at your fingertips, and their full power must be appreciated, and that is the intersection of technology, people, data and process.

Andy Hopkinson, Strategic Director with Adstream, points out that even higher return on assets can be achieved with a connected technology ecosystem.

Based on analytics of assets placed into their platform, between 18 and 48% of a client’s material never gets used.

Despite this, brand managers often still think they have to produce something new.

“One primary reason for waste is that global and local workflows aren’t connected,” says Hopkinson. “Creative logistics are a challenge, especially when hundreds of global markets, talent payments, and rights come into play. The workflow model needs to tie into the production and distribution. The data model needs to be lined up. Brands need to measure how well they unlock their assets.” Kristen Martini, Client Partner with ICP, reinforces Hopkinson’s point and takes it a step further. “Large global organizations often lack feedback loops. DAMs enable local markets to re-use content that they wouldn’t be able to create themselves. Instead they can spend their budget on localization and make their money go further.” Martini adds that when local markets within ICP’s global client base leverage managed services and in particular a brand steward, they can put their adaptation back into the DAM and inform global / central operations what’s being used and not being used, as well as help to inspire other markets with their adaptations. Ideally, production cost data would be mashed up with analytics about what got made and what got used. In a connected ecosystem, you can measure what’s being used and measure the return of your production investment. It can be as simple as storing production masters and being able to search and retrieve what’s performed well at the other end of the ecosystem - but even that is hard for most enterprises to get set up. “Production can and should be creative and innovative,” points out Victor Lebon, Chief Innovation and Strategy Officer with ICP. “How you adapt things can sometimes be even more creative than putting together the initial concept. Connecting production and DAM frees up more time to develop new concepts. Easy access to things that have already been done can also drive innovation.”