Post-HS DAM NY Reflections on Today’s Content Demands
Did you know that there are creative teams across the country who are producing a million assets a year? It sounds crazy, but producing content at that volume is a reality for more groups than you might think. What’s crazier still? These millions of assets are also being produced in a variety of different forms, and at an intensely high velocity.
At this year’s HS DAM conference in New York, this new industry standard was one of many hot topics for discussion. (For more takeaways, check out this post from our Enterprise Sales Executive Brian Ondrako.)
The truth is, in today’s always-on world, consumers have the option to engage with more information channels than ever before, from web and mobile to social and beyond. For marketers, these different platforms present seemingly never-ending opportunities to message. And that means demanding more unique content from creatives at a faster rate. But with those demands comes a unique challenge that most creative teams haven’t been faced with before:
How do you produce content at a higher-than-ever volume, variety, and velocity, without compromising quality?
After all, as one panelists at the conference put it, “If marketers are looking to fill an empty channel, their instinct is not to say, ‘Oh, we don’t have the right asset for that.’ Instead, they’ll just put in any content that works.” Some messaging is better than no messaging, right?
This is an especially challenging situation for industries like retail, where omni-channel communication has become a priority. If the goal is to speak to the consumer in one voice across all channels and campaigns, a level of quality needs to be established—and consistently met. Balancing that with production volume and speed-to-market rate has more than a few industry leaders scratching their heads.
The good news is, the only thing expanding as fast as the demand for content is the technology landscape. There are more DAM, marketing, and workflow automation solutions out there than ever before. And that’s a great thing, since a solid process is essential to operating at the rate the industry currently demands.
It all boils down to this idea of creative production agility, something repeatedly echoed at this year’s conference. That’s because it’s what will separate the most successful teams from the rest in the coming year. Technology can help foster agility by patching inefficiencies that slow down the creative production process.
But at the end of the day, it’s only one part of the equation.
As another panelists put it, “If a creative team’s process isn’t working efficiently, then any technology solution they select isn’t going to feel efficient either.” The most important step towards meeting the ever-increasing demand for content is to identify the barriers preventing creatives from continuously producing at a super-charged volume, variety, and velocity.
And then? Remove them.
Brian Ondrako is an Enterprise Sales Executive at inMotionNow. Since joining the company in 2014, Brian has worked with tons of creative and marketing teams to streamline their creative production process and improve their workflow. Follow him on Twitter at @ondrakogolf.