INTRODUCTION

Digital media—photos, audio files, video clips, games, advertising, consumer package designs, streaming television programs, the thousands of music files on your mobile devices—are a significant part of your everyday experience. Both your everyday consumer interactions and the way that organizations market to you are driven by mostly nontextual media. The digital world is more visual, more auditory, and more experiential than it’s ever been.

This book is intended for creative media and marketing professionals who know the power of the written word is enhanced and far more effective when accompanied by a commanding image or a piece of moving media. Digital asset management (DAM), the art and science of managing media, marketing, and brand assets, is what makes such experiences possible. Today, DAM is no longer the spotty teenager lurking in the corner of a silo, understood by none other than its contemporaries. DAM is now firmly established as a business-critical application, which is vital in delivering on-brand content to multiple devices and garnering increased user engagement. The imperative to deliver marketing technologies and engaging media at a cloud-enabled scale has resulted in DAM sitting firmly at the feet of the C-suite.

Having long worked in the realm of managing Web content, I was drawn to DAM in 2008, when it seemed clear to me that textual content would soon be eclipsed by online visual media, streaming, and shorter, more marketing-oriented content. I’ve stayed in DAM for more diverse reasons than that:

• DAM is a creative pursuit: More so than the other niches of technology I worked in previously, DAMers are a group of creative, whacky, and truly eccentric people. They run the gamut from representing the realm of artists who want to create beautiful images for nonprofits to marketing professionals who passionately believe in the products and brands they promote.

• The world needs more DAM: It’s not just big companies that need to manage and deliver media and marketing content effectively; it’s also all of us as individuals. I’ll never forget one father of five who sent me an email asking for advice: “Two of my kids are off to college, and I want to set up a photo and video sharing system so we can all share our experiences remotely as a family. What would you recommend I use?”

• DAM enriches our lives: As a patron of the arts in my hometown of Philadelphia, I have attended the concerts of the Philadelphia Orchestra since my mother took me as a little girl. Today, thanks to DAM, I can read about, listen to, and immerse myself in any piece of music I wish before or after those concerts. Thanks to DAM, a child can have a more interactive educational experience by listening to a poem in the language she’s learning. Thanks to DAM, we can watch just about any movie we want whenever we want.

This book will help you understand how you can use DAM for the benefit of your career, yourself, and the organizations you work for.