0100 Tribal Story of DAM

I went, “Huh! A new asset class on corporate balance sheets.” Then the top of my head just blew off: This could lead the way to creating hundreds of billions of new wealth, just by being good custodians and librarians of reusable and retrievable digital media files!

At that point, we gave it the name, “media assets.” Later, when Apple picked up the idea, we changed it to “digital assets”, expanding the category to include publishing templates with stylesheets, copy-text in FileMaker databases, automation scripts, color profiles, and SMPTE time codes for video and audio files - all about 1997.

Apple then commissioned us to develop two seminal white papers and a three ROI TechBriefs, creating a strategic case for building digital brands using reusable digital asset and Apple core technologies. In the course of that, we pioneered an activity-based payback model by which we could document the cost and cycle-time savings from the automation of one task. We also invented a general model for benchmarking knowledge work productivity that had sufficient power to explain with precision the difference in economic output of Mac and PC users in graphic arts, publishing, and new media.

This led us into publishing an annual market report that provided the platform for launching and support the Henry Stewart DAM Symposium in June 2000.

Over the course of the years, I have served the Chair Emeritus for the Henry Stewart Events, suggesting new categories to develop from our core of DAM. This led to our defining the next big category, “marketing operations management.”

Not to bore you will another digression, you might want to know why I recommended and, ultimately, Henry Stewart rejected the idea of MRM or marketing resource management as the name for the category and its symposium.

It just comes down to a career track and a job title. If you’re currently a director of something, you probably want to become a VP of something.

In all my years, I have not seen a Director of Marketing Resources. In fact, just the sound of it oozes with a Dilbert-ism. Ugh.

Now, I have seen hundreds of folks with the title, Director of Digital Asset Management and more than 50 with the title, VP of Digital Asset Management. So, we have begun to see the same evolution of job titles, Directors of Marketing Operations becoming VP of Marketing Operations.

In 2003 or so we helped define Marketing Operations as the convergence operational marketing tools such as budgeting, analytics, campaign management, and procurement with DAM and media supply-chains that support global marketing efforts.

Now we have almost caught up. In 2007, we began to work with clients and how they can use social media in the brand and marketing efforts.

My presentation today, Long Tails Wag Big Dogs, addresses a new class of digital assets that multimedia asset repositories will start managing — what we now call Social Assets and, specifically, viral videos, blogs, and other kinds of forms of user-generated content.

Long Tails Wag Big Dogs addresses how we as an organization and an industry can start managing social media assets from an operational perspective. How do we manage all this user-generated stuff as a digital asset — i.e, tagged, controlled, managed in a DAM framework.

TITLE:
Long Tails Wag Big Dogs

SUBTITLE:
How the synthesis of professional and user-generated content will continue transforming media, entertainment, publishing, and marketing

KEY TOPIC:
How digital asset management speed convergence of professional and user-generated content

PRESENTATION DATE:
12 May 08

VENUE:
Henry Stewart’s DAM and MOM Symposium, New York, NY USA