The world is becoming increasingly visual – across industries, geographic locations and platforms. To this end, it’s no surprise that marketing, sales and other departments have turned to high-quality, visual content to attract attention and achieve business goals. In fact, visuals can increase someone’s desire to read a piece of content by 80%.
While it’s undeniable that original, visual content can contribute to tangible business results, the creation of this content can put a considerable burden on the creative department. With an increased pressure to continuously release creative, well-designed visuals, it’s more important than ever to ensure this team can put its hours towards initiatives that move the needle. This means reducing any unnecessary administrative and tedious tasks.
While easier said than done, there are a few kinds of requests that are slowing down your creative team considerably – that are quick and easy to fix! Here are three we frequently hear about, and how they can be addressed with a digital asset management system (DAM).
Assets Requests
Where’s our most recent logo? Do you mind re-sending me the social images for our spring campaign? Which sales brochure is the most up-to-date? These are the kinds of questions your creative teams get almost daily.
When other teams don’t have access to your company’s most up-to-date campaign and brand assets, your creatives get bogged down with requests for logos, images, videos and more. While this usually only takes a quick 5 minutes, the minutes can quickly add up – not to mention the break in their creative flow.
The fix: Aggregating your assets into a single, centralized library is the first step to reducing these kinds of requests. Small organizations, working with only a few assets, often get by using a file-sharing system, like Dropbox. Larger organizations, however, require a more advanced solution, like a digital asset management system, which can provide additional search and permission capabilities.
Some DAMs, like MediaValet, also offer the ability to make Branded Portals for frequently requested content. Using portals, creative teams can make branded, well-organized “micro-sites” for logos, campaign-specific assets and more. They can then share the portals with departments or partners, using a public or password-protected link.
Reformatting & Resizing
Even when people do have access to assets, all too often they’re in the wrong format. Collaborative departments, like marketing, often need to send logos, print materials, digital ads, etc. to partners, tradeshow organizers and other stakeholders – each in a specific size and format. While there are online converters and workarounds, many don’t work well or adhere to the organization’s security policies.
When this is the case, creatives are often the ones that take the brunt of these requests. In addition to slowing down your team, this can also risk the relationship between your marketing and creative teams. The creative team will be frustrated that they constantly need to make these small updates, while the marketing team will be frustrated that their project is bottlenecked by the request.
The fix: Teams outside of the creative department need to be enabled to reformat the organization’s brand assets, quickly and on-the-fly. With a digital asset management system, users can convert JPGs to PNGs, word documents to PDFs, Mp4s to MOVs and more – all in any resolution they need! Never again will creatives need to waste their time on these small changes.
For certain use cases, cropping capabilities can also help reduce requests considerably. With an easy-to-use cropping solution, teams are able to make quick dimension and size changes without needing to ask a designer for help. For example, social media teams can quickly crop a single image to meet the optimal dimensions for each social channel.Â
Small Updates
All too often, the creative team is relied on to make insignificant updates to pieces of content. Whether it’s updating the contact information on a business card or changing a logo on a brochure, a significant amount of a creative’s time can be spent on activities that don’t drive much business value.
More often than not, these requests come because the other individual lacks the technology that’s needed to make the changes themselves. And with good reason – creative software can run anywhere from $10 - $30 per month. Multiply that by every person in the office, and it becomes very pricey. This challenge also increases ten-fold for people that don't have a high level of design expertise and education. While it’s not a perfect solution, it makes more financial and efficiency sense to keep this software to the creative team.
The fix: Teams need the ability to make simple changes to branded content, without relying on the creative team. Template editing software, like PrintUI, enables creative teams to provide other teams with customizable templates – all without putting a significant dent in your budget. These templates don’t require any design expertise and are incredibly easy to use.
What’s more, templating software can connect directly into your DAM, so your users can make quick edits without needing to leave the platforms they use already. For example, a salesperson can access a brochure in your DAM, and quickly edit the contact information to their own – all without leaving their DAM!
Get Started with PrintUI and MediaValet
MediaValet’s integration with PrintUI allows teams to create customizable and easy-to-use templates for their team. Users can easily access templates on-demand, within MediaValet, and make changes without asking for designer support. Learn more about the new integration here.
MediaValet is a leader in cloud-based digital asset management that helps organizations manage, organize and share their digital assets, improving productivity and increasing ROI. See MediaValet in action today.
