Feed the virtuous distribution cycle
If you know your DAM’s “why,” and are using data, pushing adoption, and distributing creative, you have a production cycle. What you do next determines whether that cycle is virtuous or villainous.
This is where we draw the guide back to where we started: with a conversation about how not everything is within your control, and most DAMs tend to devolve into unmaintained archives. What’ll decide whether yours improves with time or degrades is how cleverly you’re able to turn your DAM’s outputs into useful inputs, to make things better and better.
Take your DAM’s purpose, or “why,” for example. If you revisit that document and revise it to be even truer based on what you’ve learned, and it becomes even more inclusive of what most people using it feel, your rubric gets better. You’re better able to use it to decide what features to adopt or not adopt. If someone comes to you wanting to incorporate video asset reviews, and you know that it conflicts with your DAM’s narrowly defined “why,” you can feel confident (and justified) in telling that person no, because it’s not more productive.
The DAM cannot be everything to everyone, and when it starts to be, that’s how systems develop ‘featuritis’ and become so complex, it’s difficult to onboard users or keep everyone using it correctly. A well-defended DAM is a long-lasting DAM.
A well-defended DAM is a long-lasting DAM.
You can also use the outputs of your data in ways that may seem obvious. Good insights can lead you to build better dashboards, and inform the DAM deployment. Is measuring the outcome of campaigns important to how you value assets? Would knowing help your teams operate more efficiently? If so, that belongs on your DAM roadmap. And if you achieve that, and it leads to data, that’s a virtuous cycle that leads to even better insights.
Or you can use the creative itself to build better creative. A well-organized DAM where creative is easy to discover, repurpose, and importantly, recall and revoke, is a DAM that’ll attract users to that process. The more users rely on the process, the more you learn about how good creative is made, and the more you stockpile good examples. Better creative begets even better creative.
Everything you do with the DAM should reinforce:
- A better “why”—documented uses and a stronger consensus
- More convenient automation
- Stronger insights and better decisions
- A higher adoption rate
- Greater overall DAM success
