AVP

Are people misusing brand assets in your company? If people persistently misuse brand assets or licensed images despite your DAM system’s permissions being configured, check for these issues:

Test the system permissions – are people able to access and download things they shouldn’t? If they can, update the user groups and/or system permissions.

Clarify asset usage rights within the metadata if not already doing so. Lack of clear information may lead users to incorrect assumptions about permissible actions with the content.

Are all assets stored in the DAM? It may be that people are getting access to content from file sharing tools (that could be outdated and/or lack metadata about usage rights). Sometimes enforcing compliance requires leadership intervention, including support with policies and/or sunsetting legacy systems.

AI tools for working with audio are much fewer and farther between. But there are still methods available that can help you with your digital assets!

💬 Speech-to-text (STT) – Speech-to-text, also called automatic speech recognition, transcribes speech into text. STT is used in applications like automatic caption generation and dictation. Transcripts created with speech-to-text can be sent through text-based processing workflows (like sentiment analysis) for further enrichment.

🎵 Music/speech detection – Speech, music, silence, applause, and other kinds of content detection can tell you which sounds occur at which timestamps in an audio clip.

👫 Speaker identification / diarization – Speaker identification or diarization is the process of identifying the unique speakers in a piece of audio. For example, in a clip of an interview, speaker diarization tools would identify the interviewer and the interviewee as speakers. It would also tell you where in the audio each speaks.

Just because you’ve figured out how to tie DAM to strategic projects and goals doesn’t mean you’re done building your digital asset management business case!

It’s almost a guarantee that leadership will ask you how your system is saving the company time and money. This question is what trips up a lot of DAM managers—there are so many ways to answer it! Ultimately, you want to go beyond saying “DAM increases productivity” or “DAM reduces content spend.” Instead, go deeper with details on how, and try to quantify wherever possible.

Reducing content spend

Creative teams often incur significant expenses licensing content and frequently overlook the reuse of their original, unused footage, leading to unnecessary costs and a growing backlog of potentially valuable assets. Digital Asset Management presents a solution by organizing and repurposing a company's existing content, thereby reducing expenses on stock footage and enhancing the uniqueness and quality of creative projects. Implementing a DAM system not only saves money but also maximizes the return on investment of content creation efforts, aligning with executive expectations for cost-effective and high-quality output.

Boost efficiency and time savings

Implementing a DAM system can significantly streamline content creation processes, saving weeks of work by providing a centralized, easily searchable repository for digital assets. Without proper DAM system, creative teams waste time recreating assets or navigating bureaucratic delays to find or validate them, often compromising on quality or reverting to overused or generic stock options. By understanding the current inefficiencies in asset management from the creative team's perspective, businesses can better quantify the time and cost savings a DAM system offers, while ensuring better governance and use of high-quality, unique content.

The cost of inaction

Framing the importance of a DAM system in terms of the costs of inaction can be a powerful approach to secure investment. Highlighting the potential savings from avoiding unnecessary video reshoots and reducing the risk of costly license violations demonstrates the significant return on investment that DAM offers. This perspective can make the decision to allocate budget towards DAM more compelling, emphasizing the financial wisdom in preemptively solving these costly issues.

You aren’t getting your DAM budget because you aren’t using the right formula.

Imagine you're standing in your stakeholder's shoes—what's their biggest challenge right now? Start from a place of empathy, align with their goals, and then propose a solution. Here’s a powerful way to frame your pitch:

We understand that achieving [goal] is a top priority for [org name], as highlighted by [the timely primary resources consulted]. We are confident that implementing strategies [x, y, z] will advance this goal by [list specific benefits here].

The right framing can go a long way.

A great DAM system relies on a great strategy.

A good strategy consists of a diagnosis of the challenge that you are responding to, a guiding policy that describes the approach you will take to responding to the challenge, and a set of coherent actions designed to carry out the guiding policy.

We can adapt this framework to data and digital asset management this way:

The diagnosis is the identification of the problem an organization has with digital asset management, use, and delivery. Specifically, the diagnosis details what impact this issue is having on people (e.g., users waste time looking for assets, assets are misused)

The guiding policy is that a use-case centered approach will be taken to solve these challenges.

The coherent actions are the key areas of investment that you will make to solve the challenge and meet users’ needs.

That’s how great strategy is done.

Comment below how your organization does their DAM strategy!