The digitization of processes and practices has been steadily becoming the norm across most, if not all, business categories and verticals. Still, over the past three years, COVID has pushed organizations even further in this direction.

In order to ensure clients enjoy a streamlined experience both on- and offline, brands have had to create more and more digital assets, says Sebastien Bardoz (pictured left), the VP of North American sales and operations for Wedia, a global SaaS and consulting company headquartered in Paris, France. Wedia is dedicated to supporting marketing and communication departments, and specializes in digital asset management (DAM).

Wedia started providing DAM solutions and services in 2010 and is now considered one of the top 10 DAM leaders globally, one of the top five in Europe, and the number one provider in France.

The company just opened its first Canadian office in Toronto this past June, led by Bardoz. DAM adoption is growing significantly worldwide, Bardoz says, noting that Canada, while close to the U.S., has a lot of growth potential, making it an ideal market to focus on.

Across the board, however, a Gartner report indicates that while DAMs are widely adopted, “high utilization lags,” perhaps indicating that many marketers haven’t had the chance to fully realize the value and benefits DAM platforms represent. All told, the global DAM market is projected to grow from 4.2 billion USD in 2022 to 8.0 billion USD by 2027, at a CAGR of 13.6%.

HOW DAM IS SOLVING GROWING BRAND CHALLENGES

As far as what the driving force behind this adoption is, “brands are investing more in content,” Bardoz says, and by more, he means a lot more. Some assets require over 100 renditions, “and some of our clients have over eight million assets,” he explains.

Consumer behaviour is evolving as well. A recent MarTech Intelligence report indicates today’s consumers and business decision-makers “expect content from brands to be relevant and personalized to them, regardless of where they encounter it,” noting that over half of consumers surveyed say “they’re more likely to make a purchase (51%) or become loyal to a brand (49%) if the brand’s content is personalized,” and 34% say personalized content would “spur them to make an unplanned purchase.”

On the business end, simple storage alone for the millions of renditions required for online storefronts or VR applications, along with digital and traditional advertising campaigns, has considerable implications.

Add to that the need to make all media available from creation to distribution (sometimes worldwide), in different sizes, formats, and languages — searchability alone (finding the right video or audio file, in your language, suited for your location, the format in question) can be difficult — and the value of a comprehensive DAM solution becomes clearer.

One Wedia client—Decathlon, a sporting goods retailer—carries more than 7,000 unique products on its Canadian ecommerce platform and is growing globally, which blew away the capacity of its in-house multimedia library.

It needed a DAM platform that could integrate into a more global information system, while interfacing with an enterprise resource planning platform, a marketing product information management (PIM) system, and 73 different websites powered by various CMS.

In short? Decathlon needed something that could centralize, distribute, index/search, seamlessly integrate, and provide rights management monitoring to avoid media duplication across all of those channels.

It also ensures various levels of compliance by appending each asset with metadata indicating what rights exist on the asset in question, what market(s) it can be used in, whether a legal team has approved it, and if it has been checked for brand standards compliance.

In other words, the question isn’t whether you should use a DAM platform, but which one?

MATCHING YOUR MARCOM NEEDS

There are important factors to consider, Bardoz says, and out of the gate, it’s about the number and variety of assets under management and the files the platform can support.

Add to that, not all DAM solutions support all file types (although Wedia does). What files does your business work with on a regular basis? These include text-based files like presentations, or rich media files like videos, audio content, animations, and graphics.

Configuration isn’t just about compatibility. Metadata, naming conventions, and searchability are often unique considerations for each organization.

Scalabilityis also a significant factor. Where you start versus where you end up will look much different as your organization and its needs, along with the team tasked with managing it all, grow and evolve.

After that, it’s also important to acknowledge what your constraints are. What does the current martech stack look like? Is the DAM adaptable, and can it integrate with our system?

Due to the complexities and varying systems and strategies inherent in creating and managing media assets, enterprise solutions aren’t, and shouldn’t be, plug-and-play, which is why Wedia emphasizes the ability to customize its platform integration.

Does your current or future team have experience using digital asset management solutions? This will play a significant role in determining how effectively you use and scale the platform.

Another Gartner report (The State of Marketing Budget and Strategy 2022) indicates that over the past two years, while budgets may shrink or grow accordingly, the allocation mix remains fairly consistent. More specifically, marketing budgets are evenly split across agencies and services, paid media, labour/staffing, and marketing technology.

Ultimately, your DAM platform should be the core of your content experience. It reduces content creation costs, improves efficiencies at the operational level, and ensures your rights management and other compliance factors are in line, acting as your “single source of truth” for any and all assets under management.

All of which makes sense, but Wedia decided to take things even further. At the end of May this year, the company announced the acquisition of Tripnity, to layer in that company’s product, Iconosquare, an analytics and scheduling platform that will help close the loop of an organization’s marketing efforts with a global turnkey solution.

While it is still early days, the big picture has Wedia’s DAM platform introducing operational efficiencies across marketing and social channels, with Iconosquare measuring the effectiveness of those efforts, Bardoz explains.

Moving forward, Bardoz says Wedia is expanding across Canada, adding to its roster of Canadian clients like Decathlon, Hydro Quebec, and Michelin, and will be announcing new additions to the Canadian team soon.

For more information please contact Sara Jabbari, Marketing Manager at Wedia – sara.jabbari@wedia-group.com