Article

Michael Nutley
Michael Nutley 29 September 2021

How DAM Software Can Give Your Creative Team Back Their Thinking Time

Creativity has never been more important in helping your marketing messages to cut through, but the increasing number of channels and the need for personalisation means creatives have never had less time for creative thinking. A new webinar from London Research and Bynder looks at why creativity matters, and how digital asset management can tip the balance back in its favour.

Do you know what your creative department is doing right now? If they’re sitting around talking, or staring at the wall while chewing a pencil, that’s good. If they’re typing furiously on their laptops and shouting at each other, on the other hand, that’s probably bad.

One of the biggest challenges facing marketing creatives is just finding the time to be creative. The proliferation of channels and the increased demand for tailored (let alone personalised) messaging mean more and more of creatives’ time is being taken up with boring, repetitive tasks like reformatting content or tweaking it for different audience segments.

How technology can help solve this problem is the subject of a recent London Research webinar run in partnership with Digital Asset Management software specialists Bynder; Unleash actual creativity with DAM to boost business growth.

It looks at the key areas where DAM software can take routine manual tasks away from the creative team, giving them back time to do the interesting, challenging work they trained for (and that you’re paying them for).

These areas are:

  • Re-using existing content; almost two-thirds of marketers say updating and repurposing existing content is one of their most effective strategies. By bringing all the organisation’s content together in one place and making it easy to search, a DAM makes it easier to find material that can be re-used, and also prevents different teams creating similar assets.

  • ‘Atomising’ content; the construction of marketing assets can be accelerated by creating frequently-used elements – such as branded video intros and outros – and storing them in the DAM for when they’re needed.

  • Templating; if you make campaign assets available as templates that only allow limited editing, the task of tailoring them to particular audience segments can be passed on to the relevant marketing team.

  • Adopting one-to-many content creation; for many brands, personalisation of marketing communications actually involves making quite minor changes. Many of these – such as translation into the local language, reformatting for different platforms or channels – can now be done automatically within the DAM.

How to Choose a DAM System

DAM systems started life in the desktop publishing era as a way of bringing all a company’s content assets – i.e. text, video, photos, logos– together in one place and making it easy to find. Since then, they have become hubs that integrate systems for content creation with those for content delivery, managing and automating the process from the first draft to the final version seen by the customer(s). 

Along the way they’ve also become a vital tool in delivering a consistent brand experience across channels and geographies, and in helping the organisation meet its legal responsibilities around content.

Once you’ve identified how and where DAM technology can help you, and used that to build the business case for investment, the next challenge is to make sure the technology you buy meets your needs. This is also something London Research and Bynder have examined, in their Digital Asset Management Vendor Selection Guide.

The guide outlines an eight-step selection process, beginning with building the business case. After that, it suggests:

  1. Defining internal DAM requirements; this includes understanding the needs of all potential users, and cataloguing all the types of content used by the business. 

  2. Agreeing whether a partner is needed to help with implementation; this will depend on the size and nature of your business, the complexity of the deployment, the IT resources at your disposal, and whether you opt for an on-premises or a cloud solution. 

  3. Circulating a Request For Information document to vendors;

  4. Deciding on the vendor short-list based on responses to the RFI;

  5. Sending the Request For Proposal document to the short-listed vendors;

  6. Evaluating the short-list on the basis of your own requirements, the suggestions of your implementation partner (if you have one), the support offered by the vendors, and their product roadmap;

  7. Selecting a supplier.

Of course, at the end of all of this, there’s no guarantee your creative team will produce better work. But by giving them back the time to think, they’ve got the best possible chance.

You can watch the London Research/Bynder webinar Unleash actual creativity with DAM to boost business growth on-demand. The Digital Asset Management Vendor Selection Guide can be downloaded here.

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