{"id":1153,"date":"2025-01-26T13:22:41","date_gmt":"2025-01-26T18:22:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/harttalbot.com\/?p=1153"},"modified":"2025-01-26T13:22:41","modified_gmt":"2025-01-26T18:22:41","slug":"unconventional-dam-applications-exploit-your-dam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/harttalbot.com\/index.php\/2025\/01\/26\/unconventional-dam-applications-exploit-your-dam\/","title":{"rendered":"Unconventional DAM Applications: Exploit Your DAM!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Have you applied DAM technology to anything other than asset sharing and distribution? Here are a couple of innovative DAM applications that present opportunities for organizational efficiencies and cost savings!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Compliance:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The New Detroit Motors Hybrid Car gets 65 miles to the gallon!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To make that claim, a team of knowledgeable resources — compliance experts — must validate this information before it ever gets advertised. Evidence, like signed affidavits from automotive engineers, needs to be tracked and presented to defend against potential legal challenges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Several years ago, I was assigned to a task force to investigate ways of making our advertising agency more efficient.  During conversations with our compliance team, I was intrigued by the number of sources that these resources accessed to get the information they needed: engineers, lawyers, technical experts, and, of course, creative people. The information received was stored in a variety of folders and on websites, and the compliance team was spending as much time locating<\/em> the needed artifacts as they were in reviewing the materials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A DAM was the obvious solution.  Working with the compliance experts, our small team developed the metadata required for the project. Much of our existing DAM metadata could be used, describing model, style and brand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Specs, brochures, affidavits, and a plethora of other compliance related material was assembled and ingested into the DAM.  In a few months the compliance team began using the library.  Acceptance was a struggle at first, because the resources had integrated the process of locating the artifacts as part of their daily work routine.  However, as more experts began utilizing the system, they recognized its value, offering suggestions of what additional documents could be added and how metadata could be tweaked to better facilitate searches. The \u201cProduct Information Library\u201d is now the go-to tool for the team, reducing the critical time required to validate advertising claims.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Content Planning:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Planning content creation for various channels is a significant challenge in the advertising world.  Each channel team \u2013 broadcast, print, social media, online advertising, out-of-home \u2013 has its own specific needs for copy, images, video, and other creative work. Traditionally they would develop their own content plans with little cross-channel communication.  Was there a way to better facilitate this communication to take advantage of asset re-use?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of our agency strategists had a great idea. He wondered if the DAM could act as the repository for planned<\/em> work.  Working with the creatives, an idea for content coordination was developed, based on each channel\u2019s planned creative or shot list.  The approach would use \u201cplaceholders\u201d, that is, temporary DAM entries for assets that had not been created yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, two metadata fields would be added:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
  1. Channel: Identify which channel was producing the asset.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. Status: Identify that the asset was planned, versus executed. Any planned asset would display a common thumbnail image marking it as planned<\/em>.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    Existing metadata would be used to describe the asset during the ingest of the placeholder:<\/p>\n\n\n\n