Day #1: The Show Must Go On

With the onset of COVID-19, working remotely became the norm overnight. This is the biggest global shift to remote working in modern history.

While some people have been working remotely for years, all of a sudden working from home has become mainstream. As a result, how each marketing division manages and resources this shift is paramount.

For those marketing teams who are not yet armed with an online marketing operational capability and are grappling with the fallout of losing brand control against their new “work from home” workforce, we have created a new blog series called “The Show Must Go On”.

The series chronicles how marketing teams across the globe can make informed decisions on how they best can adapt to the “work from home” revolution as they continue to execute their brand story.

In this series – for the next 10 days – we will provide insight and considerations on how brand owners can virtualise their marketing operations with ease while being fully compliant.

Blog Post #1: The Show Must Go On

DAM: The Single Source of Truth

There are many things that make remote work possible.  Having a single source of truth where you have access to the files and marketing assets that you need when you need them, is a core component of digital asset management.

Digital Asset Management (DAM) system

But it’s not just about having access, it’s also about retaining control over your marketing, ensuring that the correct and approved content is used.  A Digital Asset Management (DAM) system is an online solution and acts as a single source of reference for your marketing assets. It acts as a gatekeeper to all content, making it easy to manage usage and reduce compliance risks while saving you time.

We all want to get maximum mileage out of our content, pushing it to the far corners of the digital realm. But with so many images, videos and files flying around, managing, monitoring and tracking usage of assets is difficult and updating creative is a nightmare for all marketers.

Avoid drop box & shared drive roadblocks

To store assets and files, many marketers rely on their company’s shared drives and/or a drop box.  For those who store their archives in the depths of the company’s shared drive, these files often become too hard to find and are sometimes outdated.  In some cases, these pieces are never found by staff or even third party agencies and therefore have to be re-created. As you shift your capabilities to remote working or operating from multiple geographic locations, these tools become significant roadblocks for your team.

To remove these barriers of access and end the re-creation of assets, we suggest considering a single source solution by introducing a digital storage approach.

Find assets through the use of metadata & tagging

A Digital Asset Management system not only allows you to easily search for and find assets through the use of Metadata and tagging, but it allows you to manage these files through version control and alerts by providing access to the content in the way that you need.

Publicly share & embed assets

When files are publicly shared from IntelligenceBank, they can be used on websites or inserted into EDMs, simply by sharing and embedding links. You no longer need to download assets from IntelligenceBank to upload them to other platforms, especially with on the fly transformations, allowing you to add custom parameters where needed.  In many cases where expensive creative licenses were used by marketing to re-size, compress and edit assets – this can now be achieved from within the DAM.

Assign access through permissions & file types

But where file downloads are needed – such as during the creative production process – they can be accessed by those with the correct permissions, or where required users can request an approval to access these files. Users can then download them as the type of file they need – if it’s an Illustrator file they can download it as a JPEG, PNG or GIFF.

Share directly from your platform

Sharing directly from your platform reduces the time spent uploading content across your MarTech stack, as edits and updates need only be applied to the master file. Imagine for a minute that your logo has changed and needs to be replaced across all sites and online content. When shared publicly, you will be able to add a revised version which will automatically update the asset wherever it’s been used, within minutes.

Being able to easily update assets when usage rights expire or when strategy changes and having a view of your online presence makes this one of your most powerful marketing tools.

Remove risks by following the correct chain of command

Certain features have been incorporated specifically to remove risks associated with having centralized online assets.  Files can be ‘checked out’ by main administrators, meaning that only users with specific permission can update or remove public files. Workflows can also be put in place as an added measure, to ensure changes follow the correct chain of command.

Access to key metrics & insights

This ‘one to many’ feature consolidates the usage data of all assets, giving you access to key metrics and allowing you to make informed decisions. From here you will be able to view how many impressions each public asset has had and who has been downloading content. Such information can be used to determine what kind of content is performing well, decide on future strategy and when to remove or re-design assets.

We hope you found this blog useful and that the “The Show Must Go On” sentiment resonates with you. It’s a theatrical philosophy that was first introduced by William Shakespeare and has since been adopted by show business. As brand owners, marketers and storytellers, the notion of “proceedings must continue regardless of unfortunate circumstances” certainly echoes with us too. It’s our job to set the stage by producing, executing, and scheduling valuable brand narratives and activities.

For those marketing teams who are not yet armed with an online marketing operational capability and are grappling with the fallout of losing brand control and managing a remote workforce, we would be happy to stage a virtual demonstration. Please feel free to connect online or over the phone.