Interview

MM: That gets to an underlying theme of what it takes to produce great creative. Oftentimes people operate under what I think of as a misconception: creative is some guy off in a corner with a ponytail and a Mac making up something that looks cool and in a flash of insight goes, “Ah! That’ll work!” Then, they storyboard something and off they go to the client and sell it.

More often than not, you start off with a germ of an idea that might become something. Then comes communication, collaboration, and interaction with a whole bunch of different people, including the quantitative side of the house that’s looking at analytics (customer demographics and trends like that) retail or Web site traffic reports with the questions of what kinds of people show up, where, and when.

Out of this kind of really rich “soup” of communication and interaction comes a creative product that reflects not only a good marketing focus, but also a way of really engaging very specific customer groups as influenced or directed by the retailer or brand marketer.

So communication and collaboration tend to be much more a part of great creative. It’s only exacerbated or multiplied by the question, “How do I get great creative into print and online?”

JK: Yes. I agree with everything you say, Michael. I think in the future, this will be taken to new levels of collaboration.

Using some of the Adobe tools and using Canto Cumulus as a DAM system, I’ve noticed that the collaboration—in my opinion—has gotten much better.

So think about it. You don’t have to take paper proofs of a concept or a storyboard to an advertising director or the AE. You might just shoot them a link that ties back to the Cumulus database and they’ll look for it themselves and annotate it themselves.

That type of collaboration is only going to become greater and greater as the tools get more sophisticated.

MM: If I understand you right, James, many of these changes that you’ve described show that Newsday, in particular, and perhaps publishers in general, will become full-service marketing and creative agencies.

JK: Yes. I have found that to a significant and increasing degree.

MM: And that technology allows the agency function to exist as a node on the network. Depending upon where you have an account executive, you’ve now got the ability to deliver creative and production services without necessarily having a lot of bricks and mortor.

JK: Yes. I’d agree with that, Michael. I think that’s very valid.

At the end of the day, it all comes down to the creative and how happy the creative makes those clients. But certainly the technology and getting that creative to the client in a very timely fashion—with good interaction and good visuals—is certainly helping us tremendously.

MM: Vince, as the lead consultant on the project, would you give a quick survey of how this works?

VDP: First the graphic artist ingests the newly created ad into Cumulus. When they are ready to have the ad reviewed, they simply select the Publish to PDF option from a custom Moksa-created menu. This triggers a process that sends the ad through an approval process that first creates a PDF of the file and then publishes it to a Web catalog. An email is then generated by the system, addressed to appropriate sales and clients needing to approve the ad. The email contains a link that logs the user into the Web catalog, and places them right at the ad review screen. Here it can be approved or edit comments can be collected for modification requirements. If edits are necessary, the comments will be collected and forwarded to the graphic designer, together with a link to the original InDesign document, via email. This loop may continue until the ad is approved.

JK: The digital revolution has certainly streamlined the process and truly benefits our customers by getting them what they need faster, and giving them more time to make any necessary changes that they may need.

MM: Taking that a step further—let’s get away from print and talk about interactive and video for a moment. Everyone seems to be very excited about the potential for video. In the past, I guess you’d have to have a client come in to do the presentation or work hard to get an artist to go out and visit the client.

JK: We are shooting several videos. And we’re doing a bunch of Flash ads for the Newsday.com website. Again, we put those Flash ads and videos into the Cumulus digital asset management system and when a sales rep is out on the road visiting a client, they could use the Web browser to tap into the system. They could then download the video and show it right at the client’s place of business. Or they could show the Flash ad and say, “This is what your cube ad would look like on Newsday.com.” Very exciting thing!

I think it gives us an advantage over the competition.

MM: You talked about how publishing in general and newspapers in particular continue to undergo significant structural changes to their business models and sources of revenue. Could you expand upon some of those changes and how digital technology continues to provide a platform for innovating and driving some of those changes or addressing some of those market forces?

JK: Sure. Historically, when we would work an ad that would appear in print, it would be very common to work the ad, make paper proofs, and have the sales rep—the account executive—swing by and pick up the proof to take out to the client.

Through digital technology, we have taken that to the next level. Using a system like Canto Cumulus, we can work through the ad and publish it. Then instead of us having to make paper proofs and have a sales rep swing by to pick that up and take it to the client, the sales assistant who’s in the building can log into the Cumulus system via a Web client. They can search on the client name and look at the proof themselves. From there, we can email it to the client or the account exec—whoever wants it.

MM: Could you describe a little more of what goes on in terms of ad operations—both in terms of the clients and the advertisers that you serve and the kinds of ads that your operations produce?

JK: We serve any and all advertisers. If we have a small business on Long Island and they need help building their ad, they don’t have to pay an agency. We certainly will do that for them. It’s part of the price of the ad. Then we’ll do campaigns and we’ll put together presentations for someone like Target—which we did last year.

We literally go from the small local retailers all the way up. We’ll do work for the national folks if they want us to get involved with helping them.

We have a full creative staff, and any creative needs of the company on the advertising side are handled by that group. Then we have a full production staff. So they’ll handle any of the production needs that arise when customers send in their digital files.

Masterclass interview by Michael Moon of James Kober, Newsday Corporation: how a multi-channel advertising operation uses Canto Cumulus to drive process innovations, cost savings, and faster cycle times

BACKGROUND

MM: We’re here with James Kober of Newsday. Let’s start off with a little bit of background, your current position, and a little bit of your career highlights.

JK: My name is James Kober, and my current job title at Newsday is prepress area manager.

I’ve been with the company almost 19 years. I went to Queens College in the City University of New York system. I was looking for a job right after school. I came to Newsday and I took an entry-level job.

I’ve been through various jobs from clerking in the ad layout department to actually honing my prepress skills and becoming an ad operator/imaging technician and an assistant supervisor. I’ve worked my way up to the point where I now am supervising 144 people.

I have all of Newsday’s prepress/ad layout folks from the front end—interactive or print—all the way up to output to plate. I also have the Newsday subsidiary, Star Publishing. They produce 183 weeklies.

So there’s a little bit about my background.

NEWSDAY MEDIA GROUP

MM: Would you give us a little bit of an overview of Newsday as an organization—the approximate size, number of employees, and information like that?

JK: The Newsday Media Group, as they now like to be known, now has about 2,200 employees. It started out in a garage, in Garden City—60-some odd years ago. I believe it was 1940. Newsday was founded by Alicia Patterson. Her father was involved with the Daily News.

Obviously, the last several years, there’s been a sea change in the newspaper industry. Folks are moving more and more toward the Web to get their news. People are very busy in their lives—finding less time to read the newspaper.

But the recent encouraging and exciting news is that Newsday was purchased by Cablevision—the sixth-largest cable operator in the country. That deal was closed approximately 3.5 months ago. Everyone here is hopeful that with Cablevision’s programming and advertising structure, we can cover all of our customers’ needs between print, online, and television.

So we’re excited about the future, and we’re just starting—with baby steps—to move into that area, right now.

MM: I want to again thank you very much for the interview. Any last comments you’d like to say about our interview today?

BG: To expand on that last comment about the Henry Stewart Symposium. Since those two Henry Stewart conferences, I have spoke with many people from Fortune 500 companies who still after attending the shows can’t figure out how to start their DAM system. They are at the stage I was at a few years ago but they can’t even figure out where to begin to build their asset management system. I still feel that the conferences are really good technically however they could even be more helpful if they take it back a notch, to my level. Not so technical, and the give them small steps to follow for starting.

People want to go out and wrap their arms around every part of their business, and get everybody involved and onboard with DAM. Then it just gets confusing because everybody has different needs, different people they want to work with. Right? You get stuck on how to start, where to start and who to use. You just can’t get it off the ground. At that point, they probably think they need IT. Yikes!

If I would’ve gone out and tried to get the Direct channel onboard with me it would have been really confusing. Our uses, needs and workflow are different. I never would’ve gotten this off the ground. Now, it is easier to loop them in, layer on their needs and workflow after our channel is up and functioning.

I stay in touch with those companies that have not started yet and although I’m not technically savvy, what I’m saying to them helps. I think that those shows need a couple of courses more for people that are coming there to want to know how to get it started.

MM: In the course of specifying the system, IT says, “Oh—we’re going to build it ourselves.”

That’s the last thing that you want: an IT person or department creating a rich media DAM. Of course, they don’t believe in anything called Macintoshes. So everything gets dumbed down to Soviet-quality media-production standards. Then they’re surprised that nobody uses it.

That was the perfect lead-in to what we’ll be launching in 2009. It’s a social media portal called, “Masters of Digital Assets.” It’s going to have an academy section to it of certified consultants. It’ll also be a place that we’ll be able to append interviews like this, or portions of them, anyway. So as to tell the journey of DAM, from the point of view of a practitioner such as yourself, as opposed to reading it from a journalist’s point of view.

BG: Yes. That would be fantastic

MM: Well, let’s wrap it up, here. Thank you very much BJ, and Andrew.

Author Bio: BJ Gray

Marketing Resource Management Specialist with 15+ years’ production and operations experience. Expertise in producing 2-D and 3-D projects, developing workflow solutions and managing complex and multifaceted projects. Known for process innovation, creative integrity and value engineering, skilled in leading multifunctional and cross-cultural teams, leveraging large budgets and delivering profit optimization for leading industry players such as Victoria’s Secret, Oracle, and Saatchi & Saatchi.

MM: With respect to the Henry Stuart DAM Symposia… I take it you’ve been there before.

BG: Yes. To the New York one last year, and to the LA one in November.

MM: What was your experience of being there as an industry peer?

BG: New York, I really went to observe, listen and meet people. So I got a lot out of the New York show. I thought it was great. I met some really interesting people from MRMLogiQ, which is a marketing resource management company over in Europe.

The LA show, I came in just to speak on Andrew Salop’s panel. I think my whole energy was just focused on being on that panel and getting out. But I did hear the LA show was really interesting and went well, from friends of mine that had attended and had booths there.

MM: What would’ve been a couple of takeaway, “Ah-ha” insights that you would’ve gotten from either of the shows?

BG: Well, I am not very technical. That New York conference on DAM was heavily weighted in the technical realm of building a DAM. So I’ve met companies that have explained more about the technology of DAM and not as much about how you go about getting one started.

There were a few sessions I attended where they were actually too technical and I didn’t understand. And a few sessions where they discussed a little how they got their DAM systems off the ground. I took away a few tools to use to get mine off the ground, and to do it under the radar. Those are my biggest “A-has.”

MM: Ideation is really kind of about workspaces for instant ad hoc collaboration. Then the next piece is scheduling. That’s, “How do we manage a whole bunch of different conversations with our supply chain?” That goes into the editorial copywriting workflow management system.

If you do it right—which is to say, if you think about it as tagged XML data or tagged XML content… so the content is going… all the copyrighting is happening as tagged XML content within a database or a data structure. Then you also get the delicious opportunity of being able to pour liquefied editorial content into print, online and POP formats, as well as being able to speed the localization—which is the translation and regionalization of stuff.

BG: Yes, essentially we are flowing the copy from Adtrax into designer layouts. But as you mentioned we are not making catalogs full of copy.

Localization Comes Next

MM: I’m not sure that localization is a big deal for Victoria’s Secret now, but I’m sure it’s something that will be.

BG: It will be, we are expanding next year internationally.

It’s very, very interesting how we work here. It’s like no other place I’ve ever been. What you just mapped out in is something I could see happening at other companies I’ve worked at. CKS—a design firm—or Apple or Oracle. I can easily see that. Especially Oracle because it’s marketing is localized in so many countries. They have a more traditional set up for the marketing department.

MM: I understand. And it’s retail.

MM: It seems to me that the route to that integrated system will be through your catalog and web team. That’s because the point of integration oftentimes starts with editorial and copyrighting workflow that precedes the actual publishing process—be it print or online.

So the point of integration would answer the question, “How do we have one Marcom editorial platform, copy database and project management platform?

At least in large global brands that we’ve either interviewed, they tell us that the editorial workflow becomes the critical handoff of marketing plan and the creative brief to content execution. Not surprisingly, this editorial and copyrighting workflow represents one of the messiest and most inefficient part of that whole Marcom operation—copywriting become the beat-up go-between of poorly defined strategy and you’re-always-late creative execution.

BG: It is here too. It’s the messiest part.

MM: What makes strategy execution messy is that it’s circular and iterative–not linear and sequential. It has a fundamentally different kind of focus in terms of knowledge worker interactions. Its primary focus entails discovery. “Ah! That’s what we need to do!” We speak of it generically as Ideation.

So there’s a whole bunch of communication, interaction and collaboration that goes into the big, “Ah-hah!” Then “Ah-hah” crystallizes into a strategy and the basis of a marketing plan that bridge to scheduling and a marketing calendar. Project management comes still later.

The best way to think about the scheduling piece is like an air traffic control system. You’ve seen these on CNN or one of the cable news networks, where you see 20,000 airplanes in the sky. Somebody’s keeping track of all of those, and keeping them in their own kind of traffic lanes.

They’re coordinating their landing at any number of airports. Think of airports as vendors and/or operation groups. There needs to be a certain number of landing gates with ground crew to be able to deplane folks. Those are all the worker bees in various operating groups that do stuff.

Part of an overall planning or scheduling tool is to make sure that as we launch new products and/or launch and/or create new material, throughout the entire supply chain, there are people ready, willing and able to do something with that. To do their job within a particular set of time and financial constraints.

Those tend to be the big issues, when you move upstream.

BG: Agreed. We have a different department outside of marketing that manages that entire process holistically called Business Strategy and Execution. They map the project from product design, to testing, determine time of year to launch, to planning sales and merchandise orders, then to marketing strategy and creative. So you are saying that the challenge is getting those discoveries upstream communicated or cascaded to all the other teams working on the launch. How so we keep the them informed? Is there a central portal with all this information?

Hmm, we are not there yet on the retail channel side.