PvT: Which marketing solution providers are top-of-mind for you? And why? Again, that’s a broad question, but considering some of the challenges that you’ve just mentioned, can you think of solution providers that address customer engagement?

MM: Well, I have the delectable challenge that many of the vendors—technology OEMs, ISVs, marketing service providers, and solution integrators in the DAM, MOM, and related publishing technology markets, are my clients. So I am little biased towards my clients!

Now, that all said, I’m also a category champion: My job is to cheer, lead, and create energy around the next big opportunity; energize and bring new companies into the larger category of DAM, marketing operations, engagement platforms, and open-innovation processes.

That all said, I’m a little bit like a mother with a whole bunch of children. You know, mom loves all of her children. Now she might love one more than the other, but she never says. It’s really important that all of her children feel loved.

PvT: Yep.

MM: Now, so I’m not gonna be namin’ names; however, I can outline some general attributes of the leading vendor or ‘gorilla’. Probably first and foremost is that they have an integration strategy that links explicitly or implicitly to the customer-making process. So they’ve got technologies and capabilities related to pre-sales and post-sales across the customer-making lifecycle. Boom, one.

Two, that they understand that fundamentally the Web does not constitute a channel but a business eco-system. And an eco-system requires a business strategy that anticipates and rewards contributions to the ultimate end-user customer from third and fourth parties. So a business eco-system strategy really comes down to how well you understand the needs of business partners; not just strategic business partners, but perhaps most critically independent consultants and small niche boutique solution providers – 3, 4, or 5 person firms.

The third thing that really distinguishes the real gorilla or market leader is the company that really understands that purchase of its technology represents barely 10 percent of the overall commitment and value that you bring to the customer; that really is about a structured service fulfillment methodology in the spirit of satisfaction assurance. That really is an agreement by and between the vendor and the customer to build or to facilitate the customer developing or building new operational capabilities within the firm.

So that you bought my stuff and make it shelfware is unacceptable. I’m not gonna let myself off the hook until you’ve bought my stuff, you’ve deployed it, you’ve undergone all of the change management and disruption-mitigation processes, and that fundamentally you’ve created new accountabilities around the care and feeding of my technology, and that you’re now using my technology to drive strategic growth. Top line growth, be it with existing customers, or incremental business in new markets with new customers, and that I’m generating sufficient profit to offset the investment that you made in not just my technology but in my service fulfillment methodology.

Those are the 3 hallmarks, if you will, of the vendor who will succeed in this marketplace.

PvT: Fantastic. A very comprehensive answer!

How does the customer benefit?

MM: Cool! Love doing it. You know, I’d like to expand on what we just discussed, emphasizing the levels of good, better, and best—or the simple, moderate and, you know, the Mercedes version—of DAM as business strategy in global marketing operations.

PvT: Okay.

MM: Let me start by saying that enterprise DAM supports a marketing supply-chain strategy for sourcing marketing content as well as an expanding array of services for engaging customers throughout a life cycle.

PvT: Okay.

MM: Next, let’s address how firm innovate new processes within the marketing operations. I put that under the rubric of bottom-up innovation in global marketing operations. This perspective reflects some of our most current work: how companies innovate new processes using small executive peer-workgroups to create 15-day project plans that single person or small group can execute with existing resources and constraints. Specifically, this emphasizes the creation of a master project roadmap for driving innovation into operational capability.

Third, and the one that directly relates to our new white paper on operational capabilities for managing engaging customers for across an entire lifecycle.

So it would be kind of a über roadmap for how all these technologies integrate to a customer-making process model, the various integration points of these various technologies and disciplines, what are the things that you should do now, next, or later, and specifically answering one question over, and over again: How does the customer benefit?

You know, hey, this is a really cool social media technology…uh, how does the customer benefit? Oh, this new analytic tool…oy, how does the customer benefit? Oh, this new web content managr…yes, but how does the customer benefit? Oh, this new email system…how does the customer benefit?

So that’s my mantra, that’s the organizing principle, how does the customer benefit with very specific proposals from the vendor community?

And, of course, that requires that you have an integration mindset, a customer-making process model, and an innovation-services platform by which to accommodate and integrate these new technologies to new or enhanced operational capabilities.

Finally, DAM becomes integral with that innovation-services platform. In fact, digital asset management with its extreme emphasis on process and procedure for ensuring the integrity of metadata, media, and user experience (findability, usability of what you found, and permissions to do what you need to do with what your found) enables a firm to reengineer its processes of creating content and interactive services.

PvT: What type of competitive gains can companies expect from digital asset management?

MM: Well, first of all, digital asset management’s not a thing, it’s a strategy—that evolves through various what I call “process maturity stages.” For most enterprises, DAM entails operational digital asset repository. So that means you’ve got workflows by which to ingest digital assets and content, and tag these them correctly.

That means that you have content specialist, “cybrarian“, or asset services group who maintain overall quality of the both the metadata and source files—content, digital media, publishing templates, fonts, color profiles, and user accounts.

It also means that you have well-maintained metadata, descriptive taxonomy, and perhaps faceted taxonomy, by which to support very specific users in finding and retrieving what they want; and when they retrieve things, it means they’re getting the right file in the right format, including the correct permissions to use or alter the retrieved item.

Second a DAM-as-a-business-strategy entails automating activities, tasks, and workflows of digital asset creation. Automation both accelerates core business processes and lowers operational costs.

A more detailed examination of workflow reveals sub-systems for scheduling, collaboration, project management, (job jackets), review and approvals (online proofing systems—such a ProofHQ—that enable all approvers to use at one centralized commenting system, so everyone else can see everyone else’s comments), and dynamic rendering of images or database publishing of content to Websites or printed collateral. In more advanced DAM systems, firms use specialized XML databases containing product claims and pre-approved copy of marketing communications and packaging to further reduce time to market of products and promotional campaigns.

Third, DAM-as-a-business-strategy may include large file distribution, and more specifically large smart content distribution—automated packaging and publishing of finalized content into websites or microsites. Or it means that a firm can send a PDF file containing an ad to optimized for a particular magazine or newspaper—that’s been cleansed and scrubbed of all the bad PostScript data, funky TrueType fonts, and all of the pixel discontinuities or artifacts of vector and raster artwork files.

So, DAM-as-a-business-strategy become essential in orchestrating multichannel and multimodal marketing processes. Multimodal? The ability to pour content and services into engagement frameworks, engaging the particular criteria, means of consumption, and preferences of individual consumers.

Realignment of Sourcing Process in Marketing Supply Chains

When senior marketing executives really get DAM-as-a-business-strategy, they recognized smarter ways of buying creative services and marketing content as well as a whole new class of creative partners—small, nimble, and very innovative creative or customer engagement agencies—with whom to outsource or partner.

This oftentimes means renegotiating long-term contracts with advertising agencies and marketing service firms. This includes specifying the technical parameters by which creative partners will submit finished artwork, upload mastered digital assets into the DAM repository, affix the right metadata as a condition of payment.

So creative realignment—how a procures digital masters of marketing materials, ads, or online content—becomes the next phase of the process maturity model. We recently published a comprehensive white paper on collateral factories and how progressive levels of automation pay what what call productivity dividends.

At this point, many global firms punch into pan-regional localization factories such as Adnovate in The Netherlands or Arizona in Brazil. So that instead of having to manually localize or translate files in country, firms can centralize localization with highly automated systems.

This means instead of taking 7 to 11 weeks to localize print collateral for a reseller or retail channel across EMEA, I can now get that done in five to seven working days. Fabulous!

PvT: Okay. Talk a little bit about digital asset management and whether or not that’s a feasible way for global organizations to manage their corporate brand identities, photos, and videos—their brand assets?

MM: Sure. Well, just for a little bit of a history on that. My firm invented the term “media asset management” in 1994 in our work with Aldus and MediaStation.

Later in 1996 or so, we expanded the term when we wrote the white paper for Apple Computer as part of their Masters of Media Program—a brilliant industry-wide marketing framework that included Adobe, Agfa, Kodak, Quark, and Xerox conceived and executed by Jeff Martin, then the Director of Marketing for their Advertising, Design, New Media, and Publishing division.

Apple commissioned an executive white paper to make the business case for their line of Apple servers. IBM picked up from there and commissioned another white paper and international roadshow—also to make the case for the IBM Content Manager.

In 1998, my partners and I wrote the first full market report on DAM and continued with the reports until 2002.

In 2001, we began our long-standing partnership with Henry Stewart Events and their DAM Symposium.

In 2003, as the Editor in Chief, I started the Journal of Digital Asset Management—with which I continue today.

Strategic Capability

I say this all as preamble, do I consider digital asset management strategic capability? The short answer is, emphatically, yes. You can’t manage a global brand and a pan-regional marketing operations without some form of DAM. In fact, we have published a series of executive white papers on the subject.

Now DAM has a lot of misinterpretations, or misunderstandings in terms of what it constitutes.

DAM, first and foremost, constitutes business strategy for accelerating operational processes within media, entertainment, and publishing, and marketing content processes within global brands. So it’s reducing cycle time, reducing cost, and having a process that’s far more agile or flexible in adapting to change.

I contrast digital asset management with content management. I used to say somewhat tongue in cheek that content management is really ‘crap management’.

Content management deals with more or less self-descriptive files—documents or Web pages for which you do not need a lot metadata to describe its contents, meanings, semantics associations with other content and, more specifically, who owns the content or images—from where did the editorial or copywritten material come, when does it expire, all that.

Digital asset management, in contrast, deal with non-descriptive files, hence the emphasis on metadata and the systematic reuse and transformation of preexisting digital media files. This entails the creation and management of metadata associated with findability, reuse standards, and permissions or digital rights management.

Now a reusable digital file may represent an image, photograph, or publishing template. Digital assets may include text or product claims used in marketing communications, or video clips, MP3 podcasts, and type fonts, or Flash animation. Or elements that contribute to immersive virtual world experiences 3D and 2D models or primitives.

A digital asset might also include software code assets—scripts and programming—and things like IT service management policies and business rules or software libraries and software objects. Or learning objects or reusable pieces curricula that flow into books, instructional DVDs, or online courseware.

So, digital asset management is really about reuse and creating metadata that give you competitive advantage: Cost reduction, time to market, higher quality, greater process agility, and the ability to maintain transparency or governance across an entire marketing supply chain.

As a business strategy, digital asset management starts with a DAM repository—where you put all those bits—and begins to really payoff with an operational group—a DAM service group—that maintains the integrity of metadata, digital asset files, and user productivity.

This brings us to the current state of the art in DAM:  Managing a supply chain for continuous improvement and reduction of cost, cycle time, defects, and opacity of key business processes.

So, I do not consider digital asset management an option, nor a luxury. Just like you have an email system, you must have a DAM. It’s just not an option.

Key challenges marketer face today

Peter van Teeseling: Michael, in those firms with whom you consult, what do you consider as today’s greatest challenges in marketing?

MM: Well that constitutes a fairly open-ended question. So let me respond with a kind of a similarly open-ended response and then we can build from there.

Most organizations drive their businesses against a strategic plan with pretty clear objectives and quarterly milestones against those objectives. In one way of looking, that means that most organizations really represent executional systems—where most of the roles and responsibility, and more specifically, the clarity about who does what, relates to activities and tasks directly related to execution of annual objectives and quarterly milestones. And that’s all great so long as the strategy and objectives remain aligned with customer requirements or congruent with the realities of the world; however, increasingly that’s not the case.

In today’s world, customer requirements and preferences continue to change more, if not transform, in ways not easily predicted. Paraphrasing the cyperpunk novelist, William Gibson, “The future arrives unevenly distributed.”

Increasingly, many global organizations find themselves not well-aligned with customer requirements, including a broad range of capabilities and/or offerings, and/or services of the organization. In particular, customers seek deeper, more interactive, and personalized communications, flexible interactions and mash-ups, and collaborations with brands AND the community of brand users.

Next, generally, and this is a distinction I draw between what I’ll call senior marketing executives and junior marketing executives. Junior marketing executives think in terms of programs and campaigns, and what I’ll call easily defined, easily recognized wins in their particular market, and that’s all good, that’s why we have junior marketing executives.

Senior marketing executives don’t think in terms of tactical wins, they think more in terms of a broader front – in the language of generals, you’d call it a theater – and more specifically building operational capabilities by which to monitor the execution many programs and campaigns. Do get me wrong, senior executives want to achieve short-term wins; it’s not their primary focus; it is the primary focus of their subordinates.

Senior marketing executives watch the measurable progress against objectives. Increasingly, the data has become real-time and granular—specific to a market or segment. These granular or detailed data become proxies or suggestive of larger patterns of execution and marketing effectiveness.

If we examine the idea or underlying assumptions of an operations capability and say, “Well, what does the term really mean?” I think that it means that senior executives understand a hard won lesson in their career: You can manage people or you can manage systems, with the one caveat. People are unmanageable! So operational capability really means that senior executives know their sustainable success directly correlates to their building systems, process, and accountabilities by which to execute strategy – by which to marshal available resources for competitive advantage.

And so senior executives, for the most part, grapple with working through which of their existing operational capabilities should be enhanced which ones they build from scratch, which ones to secure through acquisition, and which ones to secure from partners, understanding that the operational aspect of marketing drives major global organizations forward, and more specifically, gives them competitive advantage.