Digital Asset Management and The Marketing Technologist

The combination of DAM software and a marketing technologist brings an organization the skills needed to achieve maximum efficiency,
relevance and engagement in marketing campaigns.
Copyright 2012 Widen Enterprises, Inc. All rights reserved.
The combination of DAM software and a marketing technologist brings an organization the skills needed to achieve maximum efficiency, relevance and engagement in marketing campaigns.
Digital Asset Management and the Marketing Technologist.

The combination of DAM software and a marketing technologist brings an organization the skills needed to achieve maximum efficiency, relevance and engagement in marketing campaigns. By Mark Davey, Founder, DAM Foundation With so many channels, verticals and devices, its no wonder a new breed of marketer is taking over with real-time analytics and dashboards tracking campaigns across traditional and user-generated content portals all offering insights, statistics and full campaign feedback metrics. Digital asset management (DAM) has always been an enabler of productivity and a flexible framework to get things to market without bugging IT departments. As DAM has evolved to meet the new demands of marketing activity in an always-on-demand generation, new workflows, products and services have pushed digital asset management to the forefront of all campaigns. Before DAM, it was far more difficult for marketers to execute campaigns using digital assets without help from coders and programmers. Though DAM systems come in many shapes and sizes, their overriding purpose is to serve as central repositories for marketing assets and other digital materials (images, documents, video, etc.). Once those assets are ingested, a modern DAM system will make the re-purposing and re-use of digital assets on multiple devices and in multiple formats far easier to handle all without the need for a call or meeting with IT. The ability of marketers to perform more technical tasks without tech support or hand holding helps the productivity of both departments. It also enables quicker reactions to market conditions on any channel the product or brand is operating in. Marketing technologists cant replace the work, compliance security and integration efforts of IT departments nor should they. On the contrary, having a marketing technologist means IT can focus more time on hardware and software issues.
IT is the master of information. Marketing is the master of exploiting information

~ Michael Fischler
In 2008, Ion Interactive CTO Scott Brinker was inspired by an article written by Michael Fischler called Marrying IT and Marketing. Fischler had clearly identified a problem, namely that IT and marketing seemed unable to bridge the divide between them. Fischler proposed an answer in the form of the Chief Marketing Technologist (CMT). Scott has championed the CMT role as a means of aligning IT and marketing efforts, which is an easier task to take on with a good DAM solution in place.
What is a Marketing Technologist? someone who has a hybrid between business and technology, a strong background in engineering and IT, is an early adopter of technology, but someone who also understands the pragmatic realities of scaling technology. But most importantly, someone who brings those skills and combines them with a deep love and passion for the marketing mix. This is a technologist that reports to the CMO, not the CIO.
~ Scott Brinker, Co-founder & CTO, Ion Interactive
Scott recommends that the C-suite be staffed with a CMT and that that person sit squarely between the CMO and CTO, for me perhaps that role could be the remit of future CIOs and CMOs) yet in todays marketplaces I think he is right and it is called for. In fact, Microsoft has started to publicly discuss the rise of another acronym: CMIO, for Chief Marketing Information Officer.
Lines between CIO and CMO are blurring. Todays CMO needs to view technology as both a delivery tool and as an analytics/ measurement tool. The CIO needs to think about buildingout Big Data and actionable analytics capabilities to support marketing. Technology is the bridge between the two functions hence a new title: Chief Information Marketing Officer (CIMO).
~ Rik van der Kooi Corporate VP, Advertiser and Publisher Solutions at Microsoft Corporation
Its worth noting that marketing technologists do not have to have a degree in programming to do the job effectively, but it helps with development the more they understand what makes computers and software systems work.
A marketing technologist can bring your organization a wide variety of technical skills and that are directly applicable to your communications strategies.
DAM as the foundation for your marketing technology strategy IT is the master of information. Marketing is the master of exploiting information. But ... these two organizations, traditionally mongoose and cobra, are at perpetual odds with each other. Chronically battling for budget share, chronically fighting to do things their way. Chronically misunderstanding that they have the same goals.
- Michael Fischler
Fischlers proposed solution is that these two groups be consolidated through the creation of a new department: Marketing Technology, led by a chief marketing technologist. This group would consist of technically-savvy marketers and marketing-savvy technologists. DAM relates to both Fischlers and Brinkers ideas about what makes someone with a background in IT passionate about marketing. To maximize the benefits of digital assets in one central repository, the system needs to be built around the workflow of the marketing department and should engage all stakeholders, partners and suppliers. Though the skills required to be a marketing technologist need not always be founded in an engineering, programming or code background, it certainly helps. The marketing technologist needs to have the ability to look under hood of these platforms and find connections that increase productivity. Marketing technologists need a framework in which to play and examine new technologies. Looking for problems, trends and new ways of achieving things takes time, patience and an ability to see or intuit connections and correlations. By combining an inner knowledge of how the component parts work and knowledge of how marketing is woven into the fabric of digital communications will help inform better decisions and more sophisticated tools come into the marketing landscape.
Looking under the hood of DAM

The old saying, you do not need to know how a car works to drive it is a truism that also works for DAM. You have the ability to upload, re-purpose and share in simple ways, without understanding the basis of how this is done and how with an intimate knowledge of the workings can help you do so much more. Thats why we need to understand the principles and practice of workflow, taxonomy and metadata.
Workflows:
Some DAM systems enable you to map current business processes to technical workflows. Others are a combination of human and technical workflows, and some are rigid and based on adopted industry best practices. Whatever the norm is with a given provider, the end users should always walk the workflow. This helps them to understand how human and technology businesses processes can work as harmoniously as possible. Many a marketing group has purchased a DAM system without considering how the system is actually going to work with stakeholders. They later find out they need to do customization, which is expensive and time consuming. In some cases, the project never gets off the ground. Asking the system is going to work across an enterprise helps create the framework for a successful implementation. Walking the workflow to understand pain points (blocks, old technology, incompatible processes, etc.) will inform an understanding of what can and cannot be automated, and where a combination of the two (human and software resources) is an enabler of productivity and relevance. This is as important at the creative end as it is for sales and the content life cycle.
Here are some important things to consider when you walk the workflow:
1. What are you looking to do? End goal, mid point, not sure, other. 2. Who and how will your stakeholders interact with the system? 3. What are the pain points? 4. Choosing methodology around preferred platforms. 5. Where does a DAM system sit within my whole enterprise? Marketing Workflows:
Word cloud created from list in 131 Different Kinds of Marketing on chiefmartec.com.
The word cloud above was made from a list of all the kinds of marketing that Scott Brinker could think of when he built a list for this blog post. Its probably not exhaustive (check out the post for the rules he used to define marketing), but it shows that the different forms are vast in number, and each is another signal competing against your brand, product and message. With so many different kinds of marketing many or all of which tend to be undertaken by any given marketing team having a DAM system and a marketing technologist can go a long way in helping to bring order and coordinate all those activities. A marketing workflow should be at the forefront of a DAM decision, especially given the rapidly changing nature of marketing. Marketers who want the loyalty of their customers and networks need to not only participate in
conversations, but also listen and identify opportunity from the content engagement. This is all the more important at a time when people are always able to broadcast their opinions of a brand. User-generated content can quickly make or break a brand. Understanding where your customers are and what they are interested in and saying about you, your brand or your competition is an opportunity to participate in the conversations and engage. It takes on whole new skill sets and ways of looking at how you communicate and how people interact with your content. Monitoring the conversation around product and brand is part of what a DAM system should enable marketing, sales and customer services departments to do. A DAM system should be adaptable to marketing process, defined by the client and informed by the pre scripted workflow tools and processes. There is process that fits systematic marketing responses and/or automation that performs the human tasks of submitting data and assets to varying touch points (for production, web, print, TV, video and social media, to name a few). Workflow includes permissions, access and use of assets, roles for re-purposing and sharing alike.
Under the hood of Taxonomy:

A workflow should be informed by taxonomy. Seth Earley from Earley and Associates explains taxonomy as the classification of an organizations data, information, content, and expertise into a hierarchical structure. When this agreed-upon classification of terms, keywords, concepts and categories is applied to your organizations content as metadata, it becomes a powerful tool in making information work across the enterprise. Building your business operations, products, services, people and stakeholders directly around a qualified taxonomy schema will inform your strategic thinking as it relates to goals and technology. A sound taxonomy helps to structure business processes, search, segmentation and crossovers. Each part of the enterprise will have its own hierarchical metadata structures, which fit within the overarching business taxonomy. Building out a taxonomy takes skill and time and should be viewed as an investment for the future of your business. Doing a content audit is a great way to help inform the taxonomy. If you dont have the skills or resources to do this in-house, seek a specialists help.
Under the hood of Metadata:

Information is becoming increasingly digital and thus the role taxonomy and assigning quality metadata has increased in complexity as the data grows and the analytics become fine tuned at an asset level. Improving search and research and the same time. Not everything can be captured in a taxonomy. However, assigning metadata to the correct categories of the taxonomy is a very useful way of expanding the reach and depth of assets. Metadata is the glue that binds terms, knowledge, concepts, ideas and deeper meaning for search and research.
The common explanation is metadata is data about data, which is true, but also when you view metadata in terms of content it is data about content, or at least should inform the viewer and user at a deeper level of understanding, it drills into core keywords and terms and enables search to be better defined within categories and taxonomies.
Controlled Vocabulary:
A controlled vocabulary enables the right data to be assigned to the correct assets. Controlled vocabularies change over time, yet their main use is to enable automated metadata classification to digital assets. Controlled Vocabularies are made up of business terms and products, thesauri and taxonomies. Taxonomies, metadata and controlled vocabularies are synonymous with one another, each aid navigation and search and retrieval. When combined in a controlled vocabulary (specific terms relating to common business activities, products and services etc) the elements of workflow, taxonomy and metadata become clear identifiers of information relevant to the users needs and search requirement. Segmenting digital assets and their respective types into these classification tools helps speed up productivity and understanding of the value of digital assets within the business enterprise.
Taxonomy and metadata: the core elements of information management

Where possible, a taxonomy should be integrated into content management systems, digital asset management systems, search engines, websites, portals, and any other information management tool that benefits from the functionality, consistency, and efficiency of a controlled vocabulary. A well implemented taxonomy will make information in your company more accessible, easier to locate and re-use, and ultimately more valuable. Once the workflow, taxonomy and metadata are researched fully and created or documented, the purchasing decision will be based on the information architecture of the business. The marketing department should be at the forefront, driven by a marketing technologist.
How does DAM help the marketing technologist?

Any marketer looking at productivity, measurable outcomes and a central repository of all assets that make up the life cycle of marketing collateral needs a central space to ingest, re-use and re-purpose content on multiple channels.
DAM for marketing, sales, customers services, development.

Every asset has value and that value increases as an understanding of how and why assets are used, consumed and shared increases. This informs marketing analytics and leads to agility in the marketing department and everything it touches. Marketing technology is the deconstruction of information and re-purposing it into engaging content.
These are just some of the tools and channels that make up the the marketing technology landscape. A marketing technologist can help your organization make more informed decisions about which you need and which are right for you.
Social Media and the MT:

For the first time, social interactions and influence are measurable. This is a shift of huge magnitude in business communications. This ability to measure influence is moving the social tools and platforms into the professional communicators toolboxes. New tools are being built to capture knowledge with digital assets (images, video, documents, etc.) and peoples direct and indirect involvement in content. Those same tools are also useful in determining contents effectiveness. The role of the marketing technologist is the underpinning of technology and strategy to join the social media conversation with data supporting decisions on whether to continue activities in multiple channels. Social media is rapidly maturing into sophisticated technologies built on relationships, knowledge and the power of the network effect. Digital asset management will remain the bedrock for harnessing all the data and measuring successes and failures.
Whether its blogs, RSS, social media, news aggregation or video publishing, it seems platforms and networks are becoming increasingly mature. These services are also becoming tools of identity, trust and value. 2012 will see the rise of enterprise social media as a mainstream business tool. We are moving away from the first phases of Web 2.0, which has been characterized by the ability to publish directly into the appropriate networks. The original benchmark of network success was about follower count, a metric we now know is neither as useful nor as meaningful as we need.
The cloud and the marketing technologist:

Cloud computing connects a myriad of virtual environments, which are capable of talking to one another and generating their own data and value. The integration of social media networking into the business environment is creating a new frontier where the consumer and provider collaborate together via an exchange of knowledge and understanding about products, services and possibilities. Cloud based systems provide capability and scale for gaining valuable insights into customer preferences, and in real time will give them the market edge in developing new products which are tailored to meet the customers needs. We all know that word of mouth is the best advertising that anyone can have, but in the cloud word of mouth is the only advertising you need. The cloud opens up a number of new opportunities to the MT, not least the ability to expand their marketing portfolios across new marketing channels as they arise. Cloud based technologies that can be bolted on to or integrated via APIs (application programming interfaces) and webhooks. We are fast approaching the next wave of the web, the machine readable web and it is predicated on data, wrapped in sound taxonomy, metadata and workflows. And you still think this can all be done without the help of a DAM!
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The combination of DAM software and a marketing technologist brings an organization the skills needed to achieve maximum efficiency,

relevance and engagement in marketing campaigns.

Copyright 2012 Widen Enterprises, Inc. All rights reserved.