Archive for October, 2009

In this state of a Solution Lifecycle most buyers confront the real and threatening issues of change, disruption to ongoing operations, loss of stature or respect resulting from a bad business decision, how to justify the purchase of a product or service. However before they can move forward, they must answer several essential questions:

Disruption-recovery issues
What types of workflow or organization disruptions (resulting from deployment of your product or service) would key decision makers need to understand and proactively solve before committing to a purchase?

• Who is going to own the asset repository and level/role of resources required to implement solution
• What metadata schema is going to be used and who will own it
• Who can access the asset repository. Permissioning is key. Is it just for internal use or will it be available to outside vendors too?
• How quickly can it be deployed?
• What sort of training will we need to get up and running. Who will provide the training?
• Changes to workflow that result from implementation
• Changes to staff roles and levels that result from implementation
• Changes to Agency contracts

What else have you found in your experience?

MM: You have more than your hands full just bringing your whole direct group into the system. Anything else on your wish list?

BG: Yes. Oh, a few other things that we are looking at including in the DAM workflow is being able to send someone or a vendor a collection of images, and them being be able to download them in bulk versus one at a time. Our vendors are getting 8 or 9 images at a time to retouch. It’d be nice if they didn’t have to download them file-by-file. Even though they have the high-speed file transfer with Aspera to make it fast, it would be nice to be able to download that folder in bulk. That’s something that we’re looking at developing now.

MM: We have just begun seeing that function in DAMs, staging and provisioning particular assets with its metadata and workflow information into a hot folder. At which point in time, when the vendor logs on, they see the stuff in their hot folder.

It looks like it’s a scripting function on the DAM side. But it uses a zipping or Stuff-it application, where it takes those high-resolution files and compresses them all into one nice package. That also seems to make it a little less prone to getting corrupted in the file transfer process.

BG: Not being the most technically savvy about all that, I don’t know if we need to do that, zip them up and put them into some “hot” folder. We create the folder in the DAM and then e-mail the link to the suppliers.

MM: It’s the same idea, but the point is that by putting all these assets in a folder and zipping it into a package, you’ve reduced the size of the package considerably, and you’ve also done essentially the bulk transfer in terms of being able to move 5 or 6 or 10 really large files economically in one transaction or one interaction.

BG: I wouldn’t even think about that kind of integrated technology. I know that Industrial Color is fantastic. I think they would probably already be looking at that if it were going to make the GLOBALedit system full proof and not lose data. I’m sure that they’d be zipping that up.

MM: In the grand scheme of things, it’s a pretty trivial technical problem to solve. They should probably have an easy fix to that.

BG: Ok, good. Some further challenges for the having an integrated DAM with the Direct Channel is if there is an image we both used. Let’s say we picked up from their photo shoot, then we would have different image rights usage for that one image. Usage rights for the Direct Channel may be 6 months, and we may only buy it for 2 months. So now, what do we put in the metadata as the expiration date? Can the metadata track on two levels? Which one is it going to refer to when it expires an image? I don’t even think we know how to tackle that yet.

MM: There are a couple ways you can approach that. You can do it with the facilities of a DAM—to manage multi-class permissions. Or you can then say, “Look. Let’s have the DAM do what it’s really supposed to, which is manage metadata and the workflow.”

We’ll bring in a policy server such as the Adobe LiveCycle or other sorts of policy servers, and that will be the way by which we will be able to link an asset to a policy library or a policy server. Depending on who’s touching the asset, there will be a policy in place to then tell them exactly what they can or can’t do.

Again, while it may not necessarily be cheap, it’s a fairly straightforward, easy thing to do. Especially if you’re already using the XMP. Because XMP will have the ability to put embedded links in it. Specifically an embedded link back to a policy server.

So while conceptually it looms large on your horizon, from a technology perspective, it’s a fairly straightforward integration. It’s a “Do it now—get it done,” sort of thing.

BG: Fantastic. Up until now I have kept this project under the radar and didn’t have to invest a lot of money in developing the DAM, buying software, etc. I want to try to keep it that way for now so I will see if we can figure out something within GLOBALedit or come up with a new internal process between VICTORIA’S SECRET and Victoria’s Secret Direct.

If you say this policy server is quite expensive…

MM: You could rent it, as well. There are ways. The technology is called a “policy server.” There are lots of different ways to get it into your organization. Including going back to your organization Industrial Color, and saying, “Hey—I need a policy server. Go get one, and I’ll rent it from you.”

BG: Exactly. There’s a creative way. Thank you!

MM: Yes.

We are also working and wanting to put custom watermarking on our images, so that we prevent unauthorized reuse of our images.

MM: Is that visible watermarks? Or invisible watermarks?

BG: They are developing a visible ghosted watermark.

MM: Sure. Have you been identifying particular vendors for that? Is it something that you also want to have as a service, or specifically tracking unauthorized uses of images once they leave your website or firewall?

BG: I haven’t thought about it and I haven’t been told that we could track our images after they’ve left the system. At this point, I do not really have a desire to track them. If they were downloading something that was expired, or they didn’t have the rights to the high-res and used the low-res, then this watermark would show up that would be the indicator that they violated the use. That should make them feel bad enough for now.

MM: Kind of a time-sensitive watermarking device that would message or indicate that this image is now expired. In terms of proper use.

BG: Yes. And if PR or somebody put it up on e-Entertainment’s website and there was a ghosted little mark on it, I think that would be a big red flag. I haven’t been told that we could track our images after they’ve left the system. I don’t know if our DAM system has that built in yet.

MM: None of the DAM systems have that built in. Usually it’s an add-on or a bolt-on type of service. For example, a company up in Oregon called DigiMarc offers something like that.

There are other firms—like Cyveillance, that kind of track brand images as a function of a Google-like spider that crawls through all of the websites and blogs and forums and looks for your stuff.

BG: That’s really interesting. I’d possibly be interested in looking at that. I’m not sure how much time we have to be the police of it.

In this state of a Solution Lifecycle most buyers confront the real and threatening issues of change, disruption to ongoing operations, loss of stature or respect resulting from a bad business decision, how to justify the purchase of a product or service. However before they can move forward, they must answer several essential questions:

Lack of internal resources
What evidence or set of facts would convince a decision influence team that they lack the internal resources to solve the problem without external assistance?

• Sponsor would be able to give multiple examples of when they requested IT resources and were turned down. IT managers would communicate a delayed timeline for any implementation.
• Marketing will not have an IT contact for help to implement DAM systems
• IT does not show any leadership in understanding the problem space, technology options or suggestions on solutions
• IT may simply not have the resources to help out

What else have you found in your experience?

MM: What do you anticipate as the next step of your journey?

BG: It’s like opening Pandora’s box, now.

MM: Why do you think they call it Victoria’s Secret?

BG: I know! I think the next part of the dream would be definitely to get the web and catalog channel’s content posted up to the GLOBALedit DAM.

We have so many images that we actually share between the two channels. I really would like to see them play on the system so that we have quick, easy access to each other’s assets.

MM: Do they have their own system at this point?

BG: They do. And it’s offline. Part of it is at their print vendor. It’s kind of embedded into their print workflow.

MM: That’s over at Quebecor or they are now called Worldcolor. Right?

BG: Yes. It’s built into their publishing. I do not believe they post all of the images from the photo shoots there.

MM: No. They only post production items. Production photography. I think that reflects also on the billing relationship that Quebecor/World Color or what used to be the old World Color Group. That reflects the contractual details of their relationship.

BG: Right. I am 95% sure that they also have an interim DAM system that is on their server up in New York. So they kind of have a two-folded DAM system.

The dream would be to have us all on one. They are looking at it, which is pretty exciting.  They are right now meeting with Industrial Color, and at least talking about letting it be their base library. If they have to connect out to their own asset-management systems at their printer, that’s fine.

The second dream is to have greater metadata functionality. A little more automated workflow for the metadata. If you make a change in the metadata, it would be easier to undo it, have more individual field control. Just a little bit more ease for the library managers to work with the metadata. It’s the tool that we’re basing our whole system on so you want it to be the most robust.

In this state of a Solution Lifecycle most buyers confront the real and threatening issues of change, disruption to ongoing operations, loss of stature or respect resulting from a bad business decision, how to justify the purchase of a product or service. However before they can move forward, they must answer several essential questions:

Groundwork issues

If no one has declared clear accountability for the problem, what groundwork must take place (usually done by a Solution Evangelists within the account)?

• Somebody needs to offer up a real example of best practices from a relevant business
• Such best practice would highlight an ROI that resonates with the above listed executives
• Evangelists usually need to present to multiple groups – This obtains buy-in to the solution
• Evangelists need to build ROI model – to get buy-in from business and finance
• A clear articulation of strategic marketing initiatives, and how to resolve bottlenecks/difficulties in delivering. Also need to get them to recognize the true cost of the inefficient methods they use now. They don’t always see that there is a cost attached to the problems. Get them to think about what they could be doing if they weren’t doing this boring/time-wasting stuff – like more snazzy marketing. Create some scenarios where things could be so much better using our solution. Help them to identify how much they can save.

What else have you found in your experience?

MM: I take it in the GLOBALedit system that you have today; it has some enabling services for workflow?

BG: Yes. The workflow starts from the very beginning – the photo shoot. We can do image capture at the photo shoot, move the selected images from the photo shoot to retouch vendors with comments attached, and move them back into DAM system into retouched folder, then also, flowing them back out to the end-users or the printers. It has a pretty comprehensive workflow capability.

MM: In that workflow specifically, does your system really support online review and approval of the asset? Or is the review and approval process kind of an overlay to the asset?

BG: The approval and select process is all done in the workflow within the DAM. You can select or kill and use a star rating for the images that are selected. Different designers and creative directors can go in and pick which ones they want to select and then they can be reviewed or approved by the Chief Creative. There is a way to track who selected the images or rated them and then who killed or approved them.

AS: BJ, you might want to talk about the evolution of your vision since the project kickoff, for the central library into how it’s evolved. I think that’s an important point. [NOTE: Andrew Salop joins this interview. As a consultant, he worked with BJ Gray in implementing the DAM at Victoria's Secret]

MM: That was really more of just a basic library function. Right?

BG: True. Very basic library function. My thought at that point was, “Once we get this library up, wouldn’t it be great that everybody can connect to it as cross-functional partners?”

Victoria’s Secret is broken up into different sub-brands. There’s a sub-brand called “Beauty,” and a sub-brand called “PINK.” Then we’ve got several cross-functional partners—a real estate team, another creative team that’s at the Limited Brands level. I was thinking, “Wow! Once I get this library done, I’ll be able to share this library, and everybody will see how useful it is. They can now have access to look themselves for images that Victoria’s Secret specifically—the store channel—had created.

While meeting with Industrial Color about GLOBALedit, I heard more about the GLOBALedit functionality, the workflow capabilities, and then the intent of what I wanted the system to do really evolved.

That’s when we got into creating an online tool for the designers to use for image selects and approval, where they could review the images, approve them or kill them. Having it web-based was a huge plus as many of our creative directors are out of the office, at photo shoots, working from home. Having easy access to review images saved time in getting the images in play to work on.

In addition, many, many requests come from the Victoria’s Secret enterprise for the same high-res images that are completed through retouching because it’s going to be deployed for multiple uses. For instance, each campaign our production team sends the images out to many different print vendors they work with so the same asset might go to 10 different vendors to be printed in a digital format or an offset format. I really wanted a tool where those images could just be moved in and out of so we didn’t have to ask or get charged by the retouchers each time we needed a download of final images. I wanted those final images to be ingested back into the DAM, and then pushed out from the DAM by us.

Then for the front end I wanted the workflow to be in place so that the photographers could easily upload their images from the photo shoots. This would make all the difference in the time it takes to edit and select the images. Because there are thousands of images taken at the photo shoot, editing down the images instantaneously or each night—on GLOBALedit—is just a lifesaver.

We’ve really increased our efficiency in time in getting projects done and images selected. We’re not in the dinosaur ages anymore of moving the images on a hard drive—having the art director upload them onto her screen—picking which ones she likes. It’s really being done instantaneously on GLOBALedit.

As we thought about putting all the images up, the art buyers started getting really nervous about, “Well, then everybody can download these images at any time. They might not have rights to download them. We may not have bought enough usage rights for those images or they are expired.” We needed to build in some sort of image rights approval workflow for all the images. In the XMP compliant metadata, we set the expiration date for that image. So the expiration date would determine if the user gets approval to download or needs to request access to the expired image. Part of the workflow is that the requests are generated in the DAM and sent out via email to the image rights managers who will approve or deny.

This was a big thing that we talked through. It took a long time, processing through how an image would flow through the system automatically to get approved—either via the art buyer or the library manager. This became part of the evolution of developing the DAM.

Which brings up another big thing to figure out: the Metadata Schema. We wanted to create a simple metadata schema that would make sense to the users. How are they going to want to search for images? What key words are they going to use in the search? Let’s make those words part of the metadata and enable the user to search using metadata. That was another evolution that came about. I wanted the metadata to be the working tool for finding the images.

I think that’s about it. Those were the main things that came about, as we started brainstorming. They really enhanced the system from a basic library and actually put a lot more exciting energy into the product.

In this state of a Solution Lifecycle most buyers confront the real and threatening issues of change, disruption to ongoing operations, loss of stature or respect resulting from a bad business decision, how to justify the purchase of a product or service. However before they can move forward, they must answer several essential questions:

Institutional Accountability

Who in the organization has clearly established accountability for the effects of the current situation?

• Chief Marketing Officer – overall responsibility for brand stewardship and marketing effectiveness
• Marketing Operations (VP or Director) – responsible for driving efficiency of marketing process
• Brand Manager or Director – responsible for the integrity of brand-voice: keeping the marcom on brand
• Creative Services or Marketing Communications (VP or Director) – responsible for marketing communications and the execution of campaigns. Responsible for budgets as well as creative
• Line Manager, Project Manager, Art Director – responsible for the creative execution itself
• IT – responsible for systems

What else have you found in your experience?

At this stage of a Solution Lifecycle, most buyers find themselves “lost in the fog” of issues, problems, conflicts, and general dissatisfaction with the status quo. However, before they can move, they must answer several essential questions.

Underlying Business Problem
What is the real, underlying business problem that when addressed will eliminate most if not all of the current symptoms?

• Lack of single repository for marketing and brand assets. Existing tools such as network drives and FTP simply don’t work
• Lack of single metadata model for assets in repository, including information about license and usage restrictions
• Lack of ownership or governance of the repository
• Inflexible permissioning makes it hard to open system up to many different users
• Total cost of ownership considered too high, particularly in terms of up front costs

What else have you found in your experience?

MM: We have seen other DAMs in similar businesses using what we’ve called an ROI dashboard. People log onto it and there’s a little admin panel. It basically says, “Here is the total volume,” to-date, year-to-date or whatever. “We estimate that it eliminated 595 DVDs at a fully-burdened cost of $74.00 to burn and ship and receive.” The data summarizes year-to-date savings: x-amount of money or x-number of hours in reworking or redoing preexisting pieces that they couldn’t find. This would’ve been based on historical baseline information that you would’ve gotten prior to deploying the system.

BG: Prior to moving forward I worked up a return on investment, obviously, to sell it to my boss—so that I could embark on this venture. Although our main goal at the onset was for protection of assets, a library that held everything and was accessible to finding images for layouts, etc. However, I did think that it would save designers time and I wanted to put a value to it. After asking several people throughout the firm how much time they spent tracking down hard-drives, looking at web-native systems we came up with about a fifth of their time each week was spent searching for images. This was the case for many people in the company. So if it were a 50-hour week, maybe 10 hours a week could be saved.

I also put a cost savings to the many downloads that we get charged for from vendors and FedEx shipments which probably end up being $350,000 a year in savings.

MM: As you begin to look at some of the baseline data that you gathered to build your business case, that will probably help inform what kind of reports you’d like to have on an ongoing basis.

BG: Yes, agree.

MM: One of the other things that we’ve learned from other people in situations similar to yourself is setting up departmental benchmarks. In terms of basic asset reuse as well as who creates more reusable stuff as opposed to less reusable stuff. It’s just simply a report card for your asset creator communities, in terms of who creates the more reusable stuff. That kind of starts to set up a game to create more reusable stuff.

In some cases, we’ve seen companies put incentives in place for asset creators to want to create more reusable stuff as a function of how they do layers and PhotoShop files or Illustrator files. How well they’ve done meta-tagging, et cetera.

As you were talking about some of the technologies that you really appreciated in a state of the art DAM platform, you’d mentioned the XMP metadata piece. The flexible user interface. The high-speed data transfer and the reporting functions. Were there any other features of a DAM system that you wanted to have?

BG: I think the workflow capabilities were something always in the back of my mind. A couple of the vendors that I looked at had workflow capabilities built in, but it wasn’t my initial criteria for going out and embarking to build an image library. If they had workflow services, it was a plus.

AS: DAM customers are increasingly realizing that having a secure yet accessible content archive is only a first step. There is a growing premium connected to the availability of integrated tools and services that drive and optimize key workflows. [NOTE: Andrew Salop joins this interview. As a consultant, he worked with BJ Gray in implementing the DAM at Victoria's Secret]