A Day In the Life of a Marketer Without DAM
DAM in automotive, and how a day looks like for Debbie, a marketing manager in automotive, without a DAM
Three key takeaways from this blog post:
The automotive industry is becoming more digitalized as a result of changed consumer behavior
Automotive manufacturers need to have a proactive content management strategy to meet the demand of the consumer and ensure efficient workflow in the marketing team
Without a digital asset management platform, marketers’ day job will be filled with tedious tasks and human errors that could just have well have been automated.
The increasing importance of brands means that we live in an era of content.
In this era, brands need to create exciting and engaging content for each customer journey stage.
Consequently, brands need a thorough content strategy, and the marketing team needs to deliver high-quality content across several channels.
A McKinsey report on modern marketing reveals that:
"a modern marketing organization has systems that allow for large volumes of messages and content to be constantly created, monitored by performance analytics, and then adjusted as needed."
To accommodate the increased content demand and manage large volumes of content, marketers must rethink how to efficiently scale their content supply chains to secure a seamless customer experience.
Content management in the automotive industry
Due to increased digitalization and transparency in online shopping, multiple industries compete to deliver the best customer experience.
Consumers search for information, watch videos, and read online reviews before deciding.
And this is no different in the automotive industry.
Digital retailing helps grease the wheels of the deal, not just the price.
Consumers are willing to get the deal done online, but only if provided with the content they need.
In our blog post "Digital Assets Management for Automotive Branding", we explained how 70% of potential buyers view videos on YouTube at the earliest stages of the car purchase process.
And research done by Autotrader shows that two-thirds of shoppers are more likely to purchase a vehicle 100% online today than pre-pandemic.
This emphasizes the important role of marketing teams in the automotive industry, creating the content required to allow customers to experience and purchase cars.
Even though this changing behavior can be regarded as a significant business opportunity, it also poses a challenge due to the complexity of a growing need for content.
The content complexity makes it essential to have a reliant system that can easily organize, distribute, version update, etc.
And that is the raison d'etre of digital asset management (DAM).
Why DAM is damn good
A digital asset management platform manages content, enabling marketers to efficiently manage and effectively deliver content in an omnichannel way.
All by decomplexifying the content supply chain.
Below are some of the features that a DAM platform can assist with:
BRING ALL YOUR MARKETING CONTENT TOGETHER
A centralized asset library that assists internal and external teams in finding an approved version of media assets.
SEARCH FOR THE CONTENT YOU NEED - FAST
DAM has powerful AI and search functionalities that can assist in quickly finding content for campaigns, websites, e-commerce, and more.
CUSTOMIZE ASSETS FOR THE RIGHT CHANNEL
Based on any given set of metadata, user, group, or distribution channel, DAM can set up a limitless number of proportions, resolutions, and asset formats.
GET EVERYONE WORKING TOGETHER
Workflows in DAM enable internal and external teams to work smarter and faster.
FROM DIGITAL ASSETS TO CHANNEL DISTRIBUTION
DAM can orchestrate data from different sources before distributing them to different channels.
LOCALIZATION TO GLOBAL MARKETS
DAM supports AI translation including, but not limited to auto-tagging, to multiple languages.
ENSURE DIGITAL RIGHTS MANAGEMENT
DAMs metadata engine makes it possible to enrich assets with origin, rights owner, sponsor, photographer, and date of expiration.
Let's experience how a typical workday would look for a marketer in the automotive industry and understand the challenges and annoyances such a day can bring if DAM didn't exist.
Let's call this marketer Debbie.
A day in Debbie's life
The high-pitched tone from Debbie's alarm is sounding beep beep beep.
Still half asleep, she turns off the alarm and looks at the clock on her phone – it's 07.05 AM. She notices an e-mail from her boss, Brad, the marketing director, through her tired, squeezed eyes. The subject line says:
URGENT!!
Suddenly she is wide awake.
Debbie quickly gets up, gets dressed, eats breakfast, and is soon on her way to the office.
While in her car, Debbie reflects on her last two years as a marketing manager at CARMA. An automotive manufacturer.
While eager to see what's in the URGENT e-mail, she wants to take the car ride to work without worrying about what is so urgent.
Instead, she thinks of the multiple times she has received a similar e-mail and that something must be done or changed to end this perpetual cycle.
At 8.30 AM, Debbie arrives at the CARMA office.
She takes the elevator to the third floor, walks to her cubicle, and turns on the computer.
She opens the e-mail and reads the urgent e-mail.
Debbie can't help but feel annoyed.
She has made a clear structure on the server and marked all the assets with "updated version," and made folders named "videos", "pictures" etc., so Brad could easily navigate these.
She even sent a link to the files on Slack.
Debbie knows that Brad is unstructured and messy, and that is why she clearly marked the assets with dates and types.
However, Debbie politely replies to the e-mail with a link to the folder on the server and resolves the problem for now.
DAM as a single source of truth
Even though this case is fiction, it is not an unrealistic scenario for most marketers.
However, Debbie could have had a relaxing morning if CARMA had integrated a DAM system.
With strong search capabilities, Brad could search for the files he needed through auto-tagged metadata.
He would rest assured knowing that he was searching and working with the right assets.
And he wouldn't have needed to message Debbie, to begin with.
And for Debbie, she would have avoided date stamping and categorizing all the assets and assisting Brad.
Oh well, back to Debbie's day.
Later that day…
Debbie just finished her lunch and chats with her colleagues at the lunch table.
When she gets back to her computer, the time is 1.00PM.
She looks through her unread e-mails that she received during lunch hours and sees one from one of CARMA's licensing providers.
CARMA had recently collaborated with this provider and paid a tremendous amount in license fees to obtain the rights to use their brand in a campaign.
The e-mail concerned Debbie.
Debbie could not believe it.
She had made sure that the local marketing representative at the dealerships knew the expiration date of the assets by sending out a notification e-mail where everyone had to reply to confirm – and they did.
How could this happen?
Debbie immediately contacts the licensing provider and found out where the asset was used. Susan points out two places on the website where expired content is still published.
Luckily she resolves the issue because of her excellent relationship with Susan and gets a warning instead of having to pay additional royalties.
Debbie hangs up and, with no hesitation, writes back to all the local marketing reps to point this out and lets them know she took care of the situation.
She gets immediate responses from her colleagues with sincere apologies.
But Debbie can't help but feel that more expired content is out there…
DAM as a rights management tool
This example is not without precedent but could have been prevented.
With a digital asset management platform, marketers can see and manage rights information so other stakeholders know which content to use, when, where, how – and notify the right people when content rights expire.
Debbie could have avoided the risk of losing a partnership and losing money from this misunderstanding.
Additionally, she could have saved the coordination of e-mailing all the marketing representatives and saved their time.
And she would rest assured that all expired content was removed. She wouldn’t know for certain without a DAM.
At the end of the day…
It is 4.00PM, and Debbie is thinking about what to cook for dinner.
But before closing down for the day, she promised Michelle, the new VP of Corporate Communications, to publish a social media post announcing her new position in CARMA.
Before Debbie was promoted to marketing manager, she was a social media manager, so she still had access to the social media account for CARMA.
She had e-mailed the current social media manager countless times to review, approve and publish the content, attached as a PowerPoint file in the e-mail.
Yet, she had received no response.
And she was getting several Slack messages from Michelle to post it ASAP, as Debbie had helped Michelle create the content of the announcement.
Nonetheless, Debbie knew all social media content had to go through the social media manager.
It was late. Debbie had to get home.
She felt she had no choice and decided to publish the copy and image announcing Michelle as VP in Corporate Communications on CARMA's Facebook and LinkedIn pages.
Debbie drives home, eats dinner with her boyfriend. Before she's about to go to bed, she gets a meeting invitation for tomorrow.
It's titled "Regarding Michelle's announcement announcement" from the social media manager.
And Brad, her boss, is also invited.
Perfect…. another troublesome day tomorrow is Debbie's first thought as she tucks under the duvet, knowing her mind will wander all night.
DAM for workflows
This is an example of unclear roles and responsibilities and a lack of transparency.
Throughout the content supply chain, from ideation to creation, management, and distribution, very few people, like Michelle, understand who is responsible for what.
Especially in larger organizations, it can be impossible to get a clear picture.
With a digital asset management platform, it doesn't have to be so confusing.
With robust workflow management and approval roles, everyone can see who is responsible for what.
With a DAM, Michelle would know where the bottleneck was (the social media manager) and Debbie wouldn't stress about getting the announcement published, despite it not being her responsibility to begin with – and actually get some sleep.
A concluding note
This concludes Debbie's long day.
We can learn from this case that decomplexifying content load and optimizing content management is the essence of a successful marketing workflow.
For an automotive manufacturer to navigate a large number of assets, a DAM solution is a proven system to assist in streamlining this process.
It enables automotive manufacturers to:
Control and structure an asset library containing multiple media types and ensure the latest versions
Search for content quickly for campaigns, websites, e-commerce, etc.
Manage rights and expiration dates
Streamline content approval through workflows
Distribute assets to internal and external teams to work smarter and faster
Having the same issues as Debbie?
Contact us today for a free, personalized assessment of where you are today, and we'll be happy to share our expertise and insights on how you can help your business.
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