I’m beginning to believe that 2014 may be the pivotal point where product companies actually start evolving into media brands. The Lego Movie, which has to date earned more than $500 million worldwide, is also very likely to be the first movie produced and sponsored by a product company to win an Academy Award. Make no mistake, for content marketing, This. Is. Big.
Now, certainly the idea that consumers’ buying habits are shifting is nothing new. But, (as I discussed earlier this month), in many cases, we have yet to shift our approach to meet those new realities.
One of the more “traditional” processes that must shift significantly to serve the global enterprise is digital asset management (DAM). The process has long been characterized as an area that has moved slowly and in a “governed” way. But if the global enterprise is going to successfully transform itself to function more like a media company, the ways we manage our digital assets simply have to change, as well.
It’s not how quickly we do — it’s how quickly we can do more
Analyst firm Gartner reports that the IT operations that support digital are receiving an increasing share of the marketing pie. More specifically, the digital operations share has increased, “… with annual digital operating budgets totaling 3.1% of a company’s revenue in 2013, as compared to 2.6% in 2012.” This is an increase of 20 percent in one year.
This shift has been a positive disruption for companies that have been able to evolve and transform alongside, and into, the new era of multichannel, real-time, customer experience management. Successful marketers have realized that (duh!) digital content and asset agility is absolutely essential.
But remember: This goes well beyond content marketing and the areas we’re so focused on here at CMI. Real-time advertising and programmatic ad buys are just around the corner for many B2C companies: According to some estimates, it will move from 8 percent to 28 percent of digital ad spend over the course of 2015. This means that it’s not only content marketing that will require the enterprise to produce more digital content assets: More relevant assets will need to be published across all owned, paid, and earned media channels — and at a much higher velocity.
Look to media companies for a template
You can already see this trend happening with media companies as well. Movie studios are increasingly placing bets on “micro-budget” movies and investing in a much wider portfolio of films, as well as changing the process of how they create, manage, and license their assets. So, how do brands start to make this fundamental transition of their process? How do they integrate new DAM processes that enable them to produce blockbuster content that engages customers?
At CMI, we’ve found that there are three key processes that can help provide a much more effective means of managing digital assets: integration, optimization, and accessibility. These are the tickets to a blockbuster content marketing show, and if you use them all together, we like to think you’ll be able to (in the immortal words of Spinal Tap‘s Nigel Tufnel) turn your content marketing up to eleven.
We’re super proud to offer up two new downloadable articles on the topic of digital asset management as it relates to content marketing.
- Three Tickets To The Blockbuster Content Marketing Show goes through the three best practices we see brands following in order to prepare for and succeed in the new world of digital assets management.
- Using DAM To Turn Your Content Marketing Up To Eleven goes more deeply into the process of digital asset management — and the best practices that can help a brand get more out of moving to a more collaborative environment.
We hope you enjoy and that both rock your world!
Join Robert Rose as he takes the stage at Content Marketing World 2014 to present his keynote, The Rise of Content Creation Management. Tickets are going fast, so register today!
Cover image By Daniel Robert Dinu via Unsplash
