Crafting a Winning DAM Strategy

Chris Lacinak: 00:00

Hello, welcome to "DAM Right, Winning at Digital Asset Management." I'm your host, Chris Lacinak, CEO of digital asset management consulting firm, AVP. The topic of focus in today's episode is DAM strategy. It's almost easier to talk about what strategy is not than to talk about what it is. Strategy is not hopes and ambitions. For instance, it is not a strategy to say that we want to maximize the value of our digital assets. Strategy is not simply the opposite of a problem statement. For instance, it is not a strategy to diagnose the problem as no one being able to find the assets they need, and then to simply say that your strategy is to ensure that people will be able to find the digital assets they need. Strategy is not an observation or a statement, such as our organization will be the premier example of what effective digital asset management looks like. Strategy is not a priority. It's not a strategy to say that user satisfaction is your main focus over the next 12 months. And strategy is not a goal or result. It's not a strategy to say that we will have 10,000 users or 1 million assets in the DAM by such and such a date. It's not that there's anything wrong with any of these statements, of course. They all have a place in the process and messaging. It's just that none of them are strategies. But statements just like these get used as strategic language all the time. And the outcome of having a bad strategy, or even no strategy, is that it leaves the organization unable to harness its power in a focused and cohesive way in order to achieve goals, dreams, and overcome challenges so that it can thrive and succeed. So what is a strategy, you might be asking? And more specifically, what is a digital asset management strategy? I'm so glad to have Kara Van Malsen with me here today to help answer that question. Kara is someone that thinks deeply about digital asset management and the organization that surrounds the practice. Kara is a thought leader, an expert practitioner, and an amazing communicator. She's the creator of the DAM Operational Model, which we use in our work at AVP routinely, and which is available for free to anyone who wants to put it to use for themselves. And most recently, Kara has created the DAM Strategy Canvas, along with a guide on how to put it to use. This most recent piece is why I've invited Kara to join us today, so that we can better understand why a DAM strategy is important, what a DAM strategy is, and to help you create your own. Kara has been working in digital asset management since 2006, and is one of the leading thinkers and practitioners in this space. Of course, I'm biased, because Kara is also a partner and managing director at AVP, but that doesn't make it any less true. You'll hear it for yourself in this episode. Kara is driven by a passion for helping organizations build impactful DAM programs with deep expertise in systems thinking, user experience design, library science, and business analysis with extensive DAM experience. Her portfolio ranges from Fortune 500 powerhouses to esteemed cultural heritage institutions and transformative nonprofits. Beyond her consulting role, Kara frequently shares her insights at conferences and workshops around the globe. She has taught at NYU and Pratt, and has been involved as a trainer in a number of amazing global initiatives, including ICROM. Also, she's just simply an awesome person, and I'm thrilled to have her launch the inaugural episode of DAM Right with me. Let's jump in, and remember, DAM right, because it's too important to get wrong. (upbeat music) Kara Van Malsen, welcome to the DAM Right podcast. I'm so excited to have you here today to talk about a topic that is near and dear to your heart, digital asset management strategy. You've just written a piece on this that we're gonna dive into in depth, but one of the reasons that I'm so excited to talk to you about this today is because I think in the conference circuit, surprisingly, strategy is a topic that doesn't get talked about much. So I think it's really important, and I'm glad that we have someone like yourself who is a thought leader in this realm and is an expert practitioner to talk to us today. So thanks for joining me, I appreciate it.

Kara Van Malssen: 04:03

Yeah, thanks, Chris. I'm excited to be here, and looking forward to talking about DAM strategy.

Chris Lacinak: 04:07

Before we dive in, I'd love for you to just tell me a bit about yourself. What's your background? What's your history? How did you get into digital asset management? And to give us some insight into what your approach is today.

Kara Van Malssen: 04:19

So my background is in archives and specifically moving image archives. So I have a master's degree in Moving Image Archiving and Preservation from NYU. And so my intention was to go into film and television preservation archiving. This was in the early 2000s, so this was really pre-YouTube, pre-internet video, but kind of started in the digital space early on. And so I was working in that kind of around 2005, 2006. And, you know, it's fast forward some years that we were kind of working on, how do we get all these things into digital form? What's gonna happen when everything's shot digitally and file-based media? Few years later that happened. So everything was digital. And it was, you know, kind of, it was no longer the case that there was such an enormous difference between the needs of video content versus other kinds of content. It was just going into big pools and buckets of content in general. And so that all needed to be cared for in a way so that it could be leveraged by organizations to help them kind of fulfill their mission or whatever they needed to do with it. And so it just evolved from there. It was just like, well, it's all digital now, let's figure out what to do with this stuff. So that's kind of how I got into it and I'm still into it today.

Chris Lacinak: 05:42

Do you think that that background gives you a different perspective than maybe folks that have come at it from a different angle? Do you think that that gives you any particular, you know, unique insights?

Kara Van Malssen: 05:54

I think there are several places that people come from that are in this field. So it could be that they have an archive or library science background like me. Some people come to it from the production side, the creative operations side, and they sort of realize, you know, this could all be done so much better if we just had a better handle on these assets. I do think those two perspectives are very different. Those of us who have library science type backgrounds are kind of standards driven. We're very much about, you know, just making sure that the librarian side of things is all right. Whereas the other people coming from a creative background are gonna see it from the perspective of the creative team and the kind of the operations and sort of the end product of the marketing collateral that you can produce from these assets or kind of other product related collateral. So I think we come at it from different perspectives. And as you evolve into the career, you start to broaden your understanding of, you know, the perspective. So at a certain point, I don't know, it all blends together. I think I have other interests that I bring to this space. But things like user experience design is something I'm very interested in and passionate about kind of just in strategic thinking in general, which is I think how I ended up landing on let's do something about DAM strategy. So.

Chris Lacinak: 07:20

Yeah, it's interesting. Anybody that knows you knows that you are always creating and thinking and trying to improve on things that are done. And interestingly, things like operational models and user experience design and strategy are almost certainly not in film studies or archival programs or digital asset management programs. So you've shown that you're bringing your interests to the table outside of your background and kind of formal studies, which is great. So let's talk about the digital asset management strategy canvas. You've created this piece. It's a kind of one page piece and it's got an accompanying guide that explains like how to use it. So, you know, I'd like to focus on it as a way to talk about strategy at large, like what strategy looks like and how people should approach it. So could you tell us to start, could you just give us an overview of what the canvas is all about and kind of how it came to be?

Kara Van Malssen: 08:24

Yeah, so the canvas is kind of, it's a nod to those great canvas creators out there, like the folks that created the business model, the Business Model Canvas, the folks at Strategizer and things like that. So I sort of love those types of simple visual kind of thinking and idea generation tools. So I'm really drawn to that sort of thing. So that's, first of all, where some of the inspiration came from. But in general, the idea behind the canvas is just to have a tool that's going to guide you in thinking about your DAM strategy and kind of give you a place to jot down and kind of generate ideas about what should be in your strategy. So it's not like the strategy is the canvas, it's more of a thinking tool to help you plan, ideate and kind of have conversation around the creation of a strategy for digital asset management. So it's just a way of organizing your thoughts and ideas and kind of being able to work with those in a way that's sort of flexible and fluid in a visual sort of form. You can use it in person, if you were to kind of be in a meeting, you might have it in a larger form printout or people could have their own copies, but it's also nice, something you can throw in a virtual whiteboard in a Zoom session and throw sticky notes on it and things like that. So that's kind of what it is at its heart. It's a planning tool and a thinking tool.

Chris Lacinak: 09:55

Thinking about using it as a tool, should someone who's putting it to use think about the steps that you lay out on the canvas as a way to arrive at a strategy itself is these individual components are not the strategy, they're helping you arrive at your strategy. Is that the right way to think about it?

Kara Van Malssen: 10:15

Yeah, I think that's fair to say. I think what you'll ultimately come up with and document in that canvas will amount to a strategy, but a strategy and the success of a strategy comes down to how it's articulated, how it's communicated, how it's shared, how you're kind of managing conversation around it. So I don't think you can just say, we made a canvas, we're done, we have a strategy, let's go. So ultimately you'll have to synthesize what you have there, get it in a form that's meaningful to your stakeholders in order to generate buy-in and support and trust and things like that. So just to help everybody align, but it's a great conversation starter. So if you're working with stakeholders as you're generating a strategy, it's a way to kind of help guide that conversation. It's really what it's for. But the totality of the things you'll capture in the canvas should make up the DAM strategy. These are the things you really need to think about and be concerned with making decisions on as you're creating a DAM strategy.

Chris Lacinak: 11:16

For people who don't have the DAM strategy canvas in front of them, haven't seen it yet, could you walk us through kind of what, and this might be too big of an ask, but kind of what some of the salient steps are, how someone would work their way through it, like what are the components of the canvas?

Kara Van Malssen: 11:33

Yeah, I'll try to do that kind of succinctly since yeah, I could go on and on, but it starts with the question of what is the challenge that we're addressing here? So if you think about strategy in general and kind of go back to like this strategy, kind of big thinkers, strategy comes out of military originally, and then in the late 20th century, mid to late 20th century is kind of adapted to corporate strategy and business strategy. And both of those cases, the question is how do we win? So if we're in a military context, we're thinking like how do we win this battle, this war? In a corporate strategy, it's like how do we win this category or how do we differentiate in this market? And so people now apply strategy kind of at different layers of an organization, but the ultimate thing is it comes down to identification of a problem that you need to overcome or a challenge or an opportunity that you're presented with, how you're gonna go about overcoming that, and then what are the action steps you're gonna take? And so that is how, that is kind of the root of the Digital Asset Management Strategy C anvas is kind of thinking about it that way. So if the first thing you need to think about is what is the challenge or problem we wanna overcome? That's the first question you would work through on the canvas and try to get alignment around what really is that problem. The next set of things that we recommend that you work on, and this is all laid out in the guide that accompanies the canvas, but I would say the next step in my suggestion would be to think about the use cases. So that's kind of the heart of this DAM Strategy Canvas. If you think about a strategy being a response to it, a particular challenge, diagnosis of a challenge, a guiding policy, and then a set of actions, what we're arguing with this DAM Strategy Canvas and this approach is that the guiding policy piece is the use cases you're going to be addressing. So that's a really critical part of it, which use cases, and this is, in this case, we're talking about high level use cases. And that's important. It's like not who needs to do what with digital asset management technology. That's not the question you should be asking. It's more about the assets and what they need to do with them. And then the accompanying piece of that is which assets and which metadata allow them to answer the questions they need to use those assets effectively. So that's kind of the second step is thinking about those use cases. And then we get into the prioritization of those use cases. And then finally, the next question is, is to enable those use cases, what are the actions we're going to need to take? And so the canvas has a bunch of prompts to get you thinking about the different things you're going to have to be thinking about in order to deliver on those use cases. So that's like, do we need technology? Do we need in process improvement? Do we need data quality improvement? Do we need governance? See things like that. So it's kind of guiding your thinking around which actions are going to be important to deliver on those use cases. And then the final step is what does success look like? And I think that you could do that early, but I like to think about that kind of coming at the end once you've gone full circle from this challenge you're addressing to, okay, what does success look like? What does it look like if we win, if we achieve our goal? So that's the overview of the strategy canvas in the nutshell.

Chris Lacinak: 15:07

That's fantastic, thank you. That's a great description. And it strikes me as you're talking, I wonder if you would agree with this statement or not. It seems to me that that success, what does success look like, might for many people be the only thing that their strategy is, right? We want to be able to have assets in the hands of the right people at the right time, whenever they need it with the right information, right? That's kind of what success looks like maybe, or we want to leverage our digital assets to increase revenue, something like that. But I love that you, before you get there, you're actually kind of laying out this process that says, how are we gonna get there, those actions and broken into categories. Does that sound right? Am I thinking about that right?

Kara Van Malssen: 15:57

Absolutely, and actually, my thinking on strategy in general derives a lot from Richard Rumelt and his book, "Good Strategy, Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters." And he criticizes a lot of what he calls a social contagion of the way strategy has been deployed in our society today, which really is just a set of ambitions. Like exactly like you said, it's just those success things. It's just, we want to do X. And so he, that idea of the strategy is a diagnosis of the problem, a guiding policy and a set of actions to get you to that goal. It's a lot more concrete and tangible. It's not just, we want to reach this goal. We have this set of ambitions. And also what can tend to happen is people get very lofty about those ambitions and the action steps to get there are lost. And they're not part of, if they're not part of that conversation, it becomes really hard to see what it's gonna take to achieve those. And so forcing yourself to think through this in a more kind of diligent step-by-step way to some extent will kind of help, I think drive the success of actually reaching some of those ambitions, rather than just being kind of out there as lofty goals that we keep trying for and not somehow not hitting. I think that's the risk.

Chris Lacinak: 17:21

I love that it's rooted in action. That's fantastic. So I wonder if you could tell us why now, why did you create the DAM Strategy Canvas now? What was the need that you saw or the impetus for making it happen?

Kara Van Malssen: 17:35

It comes from our experience with our clients. So on the one hand, we have certain clients who will come to us and say, "Can you help us with the digital asset management strategy?" And so that's kind of forced my thinking around this topic. But then we also have some organizations we work with that come to us that just say, "Can you help us implement this tool?" And there's not a lot of strategic thinking around it, a lot of prioritization that's going into it. And so in those cases, we almost have to force the conversation around strategy. So if we, and again, we kind of come back to the core of what strategy is and what it does, it helps you scope, it helps you figure out how to use limited resources, and it kind of helps you figure out how to set priorities so that you can achieve goals. So we have to do some of that thinking with our clients, even if they're not thinking about it. And so that just is a recurring theme in the work that we've been doing over the years. And so I wanted to kind of create a succinct and repeatable method that we could use in our work with our clients to help kind of guide these conversations, as well as provide that as a tool for anyone else who'd like to use it. So that's the sort of why now is like building over time as we just continue to run into the same issues over and over again. Again, lofty set of ambitions, very short timeframes to reach them, which were quite unrealistic in many cases with some of those implementation projects that we were doing. And so we would need to start and say, well, what use cases are we solving for? And what is this end state we're trying to reach now? And see if we can set some priorities within those parameters to help make it more tangible and achievable.

Chris Lacinak: 19:30

Yeah, that makes sense. So again, it's rooted in kind of your own work, very pragmatic and practical. So you've been putting these concepts to use for a while before creating the canvas.

Kara Van Malssen: 19:42

Yeah, absolutely. I think we've been using some version of this for a while. So this was the codified edition of the work that we've been doing.

Chris Lacinak: 19:51

When I look out at the landscape of organizations that are procuring and implementing digital asset management systems, for many of them, the implementation of that digital asset management system, they may think of as the end point, that that is the achievement of a strategy or their goal, as opposed to wrapping a strategy around the actual utilization and operation of that digital asset management program. In your work with organizations, how many do you think come to the table with a digital asset management strategy versus not having a strategy at all?

Kara Van Malssen: 20:30

I mean, if we take the idea of strategy as, there's formal strategy, like big S strategy and little S strategy. So if I'm looking at it from either perspective, I'd say a very small percentage have really thought about it in either a big way or a small way. And so what will tend to happen is, there is some problem. That's why they decided to invest in digital asset management. And maybe it's a problem with an existing DAM solution that needs to scale, or that needs to be expanded to, beyond one team to a larger group or to the enterprise, or we need to consolidate multiple siloed asset management system. Whenever there's a major initiative around digital asset management, I think that's when strategy for that work tends to become important. So it's not like the day-to-day work needs its own strategy, it's kind of the major initiative. So at that point, you're investing resources, time, money, everything. You're going to make an investment in some kind of initiative. It's a response to a problem, but it's not DAM for DAM sake. There's some other kind of end state or goal you're trying to reach. So it depends on where you are, I think in a hierarchy of DAM outcomes. So the very first level is, let's just create a single source of truth. We need all this stuff to be in one place. It's all over the place, it's scattered around different file sharing systems and siloed systems and people's personal Dropbox, and it's on people's desktops or videos all over hard drives. And so that's usually the first kind of goal is let's just get a single source of truth. So just even acknowledging like, that's what we're trying to do here is kind of an initial step in that strategic thinking. So it's not just implement the DAM by X date, 'cause that doesn't connect to the outcome. So I think making that connection is really important. And then I also want to draw the distinction between a strategy and a roadmap or a kind of a detailed implementation plan. So if your strategy is kind of guiding the decisions that are gonna drive the implementation plan, the implementation plan is like you said, it's just get the thing launched. That is part of the plan. That's a milestone that you need to hit in order to kind of work toward that bigger goal of single source of truth or whatever it is. But yeah, I think you need to kind of approach this as in a way that again, sequences, how you're gonna focus on that and try not to do too much at once. I think organizations that are especially new to DAM don't realize how much investment is gonna be, how much it's gonna take to get to success. And I think they kind of end up getting stuck sometimes if they just go, let's get to launch by this date, then we'll have succeeded.

Chris Lacinak: 23:34

Let me recap a little bit. And I'm wondering if you can expand on it a bit more, but for someone who's listening who thinks, why do I need a DAM strategy? Some of the things I've heard you say so far are, it sounds like it solves a problem. That's kind of the, it sounds like that's where you start, right? What's the problem we're solving for? So it's gonna solve some pain points. It's gonna help you overcome some challenges. It also sounds like a part of the why would be to enable action as you've outlined it. It gives you some concrete steps that you can take and by you, an individual, a team, folks within an operation, DAM operation, folks outside of. What are, are there other whys that you can answer about like why should an organization implement a DAM strategy that I haven't touched on or does that summarize it?

Kara Van Malssen: 24:30

Those are, I think those are the main, those are the key points. So I think we could flip that question on its head and say what could happen if you don't have some form of a strategy. If you're undertaking a major initiative with regard to digital asset management, there can be a lot of, a lot can go wrong if you are not aligned with, the stakeholders aren't aligned on what it's supposed to solve for. And this is also change management theory 101. It's like what problem is the change trying to solve? So that's kind of the same core question. And then, so if you're not kind of aligned on that, it's easy to take on way too much. It's easy to kind of lose time, lose money, go way off track and start to lose the buy-in and support of the stakeholders. So it's kind of why should you do it? Well, why shouldn't you is because there's a lot of risk involved in this type of investment and you wanna get it right. So you've got to kind of get that buy-in. And the other, the end result of this is often some form of organizational change. You're gonna ask people to change their behavior at the end of the day. Once you have this thing kind of implemented, launched or evolved to whatever state it's gonna be. And those people need to be brought along in that process. And so that strategy is also really important for thinking about how are we gonna communicate what this is for, what's the benefit to the organization, what's the benefit to the individual and what should they expect when? Because that's another thing is if you don't have a strategy that's guiding the prioritization and the sequencing of the work, 'cause that's really what it comes down to, people are gonna have lofty expectations about what it means to them, when they're gonna get some benefit from it. And if you can't deliver on those assumptions, they're gonna start to lose their support for it. And so this is when the tides start to turn and people kind of, they're not gonna support the thing once it does come around, 'cause I've been expecting this or that and you're not delivering that. It can generate a lot of frustration. So it helps you be clear with the organization and the stakeholders too.

Chris Lacinak: 26:58

So it sounds like it gets people to work cohesively in alignment to overcome problems, to get return on investment, that return being probably different for each organization depending on what the value is. Thinking here about, obviously in most, if not all organizations, digital asset management is one department, one operation, one thing out of many within a larger organization, right? You might have marketing, you've got sales, you've got production or operations, other operations, you've got executive, an overarching company strategy. How have you seen or how do you think about a DAM strategy kind of working with, integrating with other strategies throughout a company?

Kara Van Malssen: 27:48

Yeah, it's a really good question. I think a DAM strategy has to align with the broader strategy that it sits within. So that could be that the DAM strategy aligns with just the departmental or business unit or org strategy that you're in. So if it's marketing, kind of the DAM strategy is aligning with the marketing strategy. But if it's, let's say it's an enterprise DAM, then you are looking at the full business strategy. And what is this organization kind of trying to achieve? What's its goals and what is it that this particular initiative around digital asset management is going to do to enable or support those goals? So there's a strong connection between those things. So there's some, like I said before, there's some ambition or dream outcome for this DAM, that is what's gonna have that connection to this broader strategy. So if it's, so let's take like an apparel company that is shifting to digital product creation. So they're gonna use 3D modeling in order to kind of create, have faster time to market, reduce their carbon footprint by moving away from physical samples that are typically the way that products in that space are done, shipping them all over the world between providers in Asia, US or wherever, to kind of this 3D model. And there's a, so that is maybe a kind of more corporate level strategy. We're gonna shift to digital product creation in order to improve our time to market, reduce our carbon footprint, and create tailored experiences for our customers. So if you think about that bigger picture strategy, and then you step back and say, well, where does DAM fit into that? It has a huge role to play because it's, all the files that are gonna go into that process of creating the apparel now are gonna be digital. They're gonna need to be organized. They're gonna need to be put into a data pipeline that allows for that information to kind of flow through the production process down to marketing and sales and kind of ultimately e-commerce and end user experience. So it's incredibly closely connected. And I think you can take a similar type of example. Let's take a museum. So a museum wants to, you know, their broader strategic goal is we wanna reach new audiences, engage with them in new ways, both in-person and online. So that's like a, you know, a kind of the big picture ambition. So how does digital asset management fit into that? Again, it has a huge role to play because the museum's digital assets are its collections, you know, images of those collections, and it's how are we going to reach our audiences, connect with our audiences. We're gonna need those assets in order to achieve that bigger picture goal and the data that accompanies them. And again, it's getting these digital assets, they're just a form of data into a data pipeline that kind of allows this bigger picture strategic vision that the broader organization has. So, and you can kind of take that down levels as well if you're, you know, you're the marketing department, it's the marketing DAM, and the marketing's overall strategy is to, you know, increase the, you know, targeting of campaigns. We need to measure the impact of our campaign and kind of hype, we need high performing, and we need more kind of feedback loops and insights and measurement as we go. So the DAM is again, a piece of data in that pipeline. It's gonna help you with kind of getting that content out in an efficient manner. It's gonna help with capturing data and insights about performance kind of on the other side and allow for more insightful and kind of smarter production moving forward. So there's just a lot of ways it all connects, I think.

Chris Lacinak: 31:42

Thanks for painting such a great picture in different contexts there. It's interesting as you're talking, you know, you're talking about kind of problems of, I mean, goals and problems of an enterprise, of different departments. And thinking about the person who sits down with the canvas and we've said, you know, start with the problem. What's the problem you're trying to solve? And from what you've just said, it makes me wonder, you know, the person who sits down, and you kind of pointed to this earlier 'cause you said, you know, it's about not what can you do with the DAM, it's what can you do with the digital assets? The DAM is like a means to an end. And the problem, I guess it makes, this is a question, I'm just thinking out loud here. The problem that the person who sits down with the strategy canvas might aim at is not the problem of the DAM operation, but rather the problem of the company vision or strategy that they can help overcome. Is that the right way to think about that? Or have I got that wrong?

Kara Van Malssen: 32:48

No, I think you're right. The problem in this case, it does relate to the digital assets. So digital asset management is a solution. It's not the problem. I mean, maybe you'd say, oh, this DAM sucks and it's a problem. Okay, maybe that's true. And we can kind of go down that path. But the problem you're trying to focus in on and identify is the one of the digital assets themselves and their use in kind of delivering on some bigger goal or success criteria. So that's generally the starting point. And so, again, that's why I said earlier as well, like when you're thinking about use cases, it's not use cases for a DAM system, it's use cases for digital assets. Who needs them and what do they need to do with them? That's where the thinking should kind of live because you can get stuck in thinking about, again, it's sort of like looking inward at DAM as the problem or as the solution or as the thing. And it's all kind of inwardly focused. But if you're not connecting the digital asset management solution to the business needs, I don't think you're doing it right. And so that's why this canvas is trying to guide the thinking around that. What problem are we really talking about here? Which use cases are we really talking about here? So that you can, again, prioritize and make sure that you're kind of solving the right thing.

Chris Lacinak: 34:20

Again, just thinking pragmatically about the person who goes and downloads those DAM strategy canvas to create their own strategy. What do you think they need? Let's say it's the DAM Manager or the Director of Creative Operations or something that goes and does this. They sit down. Who else do they need at the table for this? What other information do they want to be sure to have in order to be able to create something that's going to be useful and meaningful? What should folks be thinking about kind of as the prerequisites or preparedness that they need to come to the table with? You might be listening to this episode and thinking this sounds awesome, but how can I do this for myself? Lucky for you, you can download AVP's DAM Strategy Canvas for free at weareavp.com/free-resources. That's weareavp.com/free-resources. The DAM Strategy Canvas is your roadmap to creating the perfect DAM strategy all on one page. If you're enjoying the DAM Right podcast, please rate, like, follow, subscribe on your podcast platform of choice. And stay up to date with me and the DAM Right podcast on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/clacinak. That's linkedin.com/in/clacinak. Again, just thinking pragmatically about the person who goes and downloads this DAM Strategy Canvas to create their own strategy. What do you think they need? Let's say it's the DAM Manager or the Director of Creative Operations or something that goes and does this. They sit down. Who else do they need at the table for this? What other information do they wanna be sure to have in order to be able to create something that's gonna be useful and meaningful? What should folks be thinking about kind of as the prerequisites or preparedness that they need to come to the table with?

Kara Van Malssen: 36:20

Yeah, so I think if you're a lone DAM strategist, more power to you, but you're gonna wanna talk to other stakeholders. At minimum, if not fully engage them in the process. But sometimes you don't wanna go overboard with the formalities of this. Like we're doing a DAM strategy and you're all invited and come to my workshop. That could be great, but it may just be, you're gonna need to talk to people, interview them, learn about them, ask the right questions to understand how they're thinking about it. If you're tasked with, and let's assume that the person we're talking about here is tasked with some kind of digital asset management initiative. They're leading it, they're supposed to kind of see it through. There's some other people that are aware of that or that kind of made a decision to invest in that. So those people you need to talk to or bring them to the table. Those are kind of critical thinkers in this space. So that's probably the sponsors of this, whoever kind of made that decision or gave the green light to do something about it. Maybe you don't have a green light yet, but they're the ones that are concerned with it. So somebody in the kind of more senior leadership picture at whatever level that makes sense, that's critical 'cause you need to get their alignment and buy-in. And then also, because we're talking about data, we're talking about assets at large volumes, usually that have to be stored and use technology to manage them. You're probably gonna need your technology partners in the room too. So somebody in IT, whoever your business liaison is there to your group is gonna be important. They also don't like it when you make major investments in technology without their input. So they're the ones that are gonna have to deal with the technical debt down the road. So please involve your technology partners. And then I think the other group to make sure you include is the stakeholders who are the beneficiaries or those impacted by the DAM initiative. So those are probably the users or the people who are gonna be creating or contributing the assets or the ones that are gonna be downstream using it. So representatives of those who this is for, they need to have a voice in kind of setting priorities, making sure we're clearly aligned on the challenge we're trying to solve for and what a success looks like. So I'd say those are the three main groups, senior leadership, technology, and your major kind of stakeholder partners that are gonna be affected by it.

Chris Lacinak: 39:01

The picture you painted for us earlier makes clear that digital asset management exists in all types of forms and fashions within organizations. It can be multiple DAMs and multiple departments. It could be an enterprise DAM. It could be no DAM Manager or kind of centralized operations around the DAM. It's a distributed team that shares ownership or it could be a DAM operations that serves as like a centralized service to the rest of the organization. Are there models that you have seen which tend to lend themselves to being more successful at creating and executing on strategy rather than less?

Kara Van Malssen: 39:42

Yes, this is a fun topic that I enjoy very much. What does the DAM literal operational optimal model look like? I think that the best model has some element of a clear sponsor or sponsors or like tightly aligned if it's more than one person, some knowledgeable experienced kind of product owner of this system. And ideally in some, maybe it's the same person but somebody who's creating the rules, the guidelines, the standards and all that stuff. So at some level, a central set of thinking and kind of guideline and guardrail creation for the system. That works best when it's like a small team, at least like a minimum. And then again, it depends on the scale. But so I think hub and spoke models can work really well. So you've got that central DAM team who are kind of like making the major decisions around the system and its evolution and how people should use it and what's available to them and taking input from users around feature requests. And they're the ones that interface with the vendor, et cetera, et cetera. And then maybe there's for, if this is a large enterprise kind of model, let's say, there's individual teams or business units who are sort of tenants of that system or users of it. And they probably have a point of contact that's kind of the lead on their side. And that person is the liaison with the central team. I really liked that model for a very large organization. So at a very small level, if you're just kind of in a working group and like the DAM is just for like a very small, creative team, I think you can get away with a shared kind of contributor model where, everyone who's gonna be adding assets sort of collectively manages it, but that falls apart really fast. If nobody's sort of mining the store and kind of, so if you took your like grocery store and you just let all the vendors and suppliers just put whatever they want on the shelves, however they want, and maybe they forgot to put the price tag on some stuff and like hook it up to the register, it would be chaos pretty quickly. So I don't love it. I know it's the reality in a lot of cases where you just need to have, nobody has the time to sort of be the oversight person and it's just a small DAM and you're not a very big team. I think you can get away with that for a little while. But as it grows, as it scales, and these things tend to do as we're kind of more in the space where audio, video, image, is the predominant form of content over text, and that's kind of what our organizations are producing as well, then we're only gonna need to kind of increase the kind of operation around these assets. And so some kind of smart expert thinking to guide people in how to use the system I think is always gonna be critical.

Chris Lacinak: 43:06

For folks that are in that less than ideal scenario that you painted, it sounds like mitigation of the risk that comes along with that could be in the form of thorough documentation. I mean, it points right at the heart, really your whole response points right at governance, it sounds like. Does that sound right?

Kara Van Malssen: 43:25

Yeah, that's true.

Chris Lacinak: 43:26

For folks that are in that situation and they can't change tomorrow, like what would be the words of wisdom that you would give to them about how to help ensure that it doesn't lead to disastrous outcomes?

Kara Van Malssen: 43:39

If they're in that situation of sort of a shared contributor model and they're thinking about it, that means congratulations, like you're the one that's gonna get stuck with the DAM problem, but that's okay 'cause you care. So you've identified this isn't gonna work. I'm talking to you like this person that you just talked about, 'cause you had that insight and you realize it's not working and you're kind of gonna push for some change now. Doesn't mean you're gonna get stuck with it forever, but you're the one who as a user, as a beneficiary of the tool are saying, raising the flag of, hey, this isn't working, this is not right, we need to do something different. We really need somebody who's in charge of this thing because it's a big mess, no one can find anything. It's not working, it's not fulfilling the goals we set out for this. People are still misusing assets or whatever it is. So as that kind of whistleblower, you're gonna be the person that's gonna have to advocate for something different, but I think you also know best what the problems are and what's happening as a result of that not working. And it's probably just, what's happening is you're ending up in the same place you were before you had the tool. People are still squirreling away their assets on their personal DropBox and then on hard drives and whatever, they're not contributing to the DAM and they are misusing them and they're not complying with brand guidelines and they're not using licensed assets appropriately and they are reshooting things that you already have footage of. So yeah, I think, raise that alarm, beat the drum and try to paint the bigger picture of what's at stake, what's the impact. Again, if you put on that strategist hat, think about what is it we're trying to achieve as an organization, what does success look like and how we're not gonna get there if we leave this as a status quo. We need to do something different. So hopefully you can kind of inspire your kind of leadership, connect with what's their concern, what are they thinking about, what's keeping them up at night, what are their, again, that bigger picture strategy they're trying to work toward. That's the best way. I think if you try to, if you just kind of whine and complain, I say this to my son all the time, stop whining and complaining. It's not effective in getting me to give you what you want, but I guess sometimes it is 'cause he does it a lot. Anyway, don't just do, kind of complain about what's not working, try to figure out what does, provide the kind of constructive ideas and input and what could success look like. So yeah, if you're that person, it sounds like you're, you got stuck with that job and you've got to be the one to be the loud voice for change.

Chris Lacinak: 46:37

So whining and complaining is one tool in the toolbox, but not the most effective.

Kara Van Malssen: 46:42

I don't think so.

Chris Lacinak: 46:43

The other thing that the focus in on governance makes me think about is you have another creation, the DAM Operational Model. And I wonder, there will be people who look at the canvas and the model, could you tell us how to think about those things as, how would you plug those together? How do they work together?

Kara Van Malssen: 47:03

So the DAM Operational Model is kind of what we came up with that it's all the things that you need to have a successful DAM operation. So it covers technology, of course, but also you have people, which people, stakeholders do you need, which are important, which processes or governance, of course, around things like decision-making, standard setting, policy creation, processes, I think I said, measurement, and of course, like goal setting and tracking in general. So, and then there's the centerpiece, which is like the why of all this, that's where the strategy lives. So the DAM strategy kind of sits in the, in our model it's a circle with these seven competencies and like there's one right in the middle. And that's the strategy, 'cause it's, the operational model can be used at any kind of stage of development or maturity. So you can use it one way, if you're just starting out, you can use it another way, if you're kind of on a business as usual path, you can use it another way if you're on a scaling path. So, but the center part of that is always going to orient where your focus is, where your prioritization is, and sort of in that goal setting category, which guides everything, it all leads it from the strategy. So once we've decided our strategy, we can then create a roadmap, we can track toward it, we can measure against it, we can report on it, and we can enable and optimize all the other things around, you know, the people, the processes, the governance, the technology to deliver on that strategy. So they fit together, I guess I would say that. Strategy is the center of the entire thing that guides all of the rest.

Chris Lacinak: 48:56

So I imagine that some people might take the DAM Operational Model, and there's like a self-assessment or a DAM health score sheet that we have, and they might score their health on it and say, "Okay, I'm not doing so great on governance "and technology and processes." I could imagine that someone might take that then and say, "Well, where do I need to improve in those areas? "How do I need to improve?" And think that that is my strategy. That's, you know, if I can answer those questions, how do I do better at governance? How do I do better at technology and the areas that I'm not strong in in the DAM Operational Model? That that would be my action items towards achieving my outcomes. Is that, what would you say to that? Does, what would you say to that being, you know, how does that play off those action items in the DAM Operational Model to improve your health play off of the action items in the strategy?

Kara Van Malssen: 49:51

Yeah, I mean, it's not wrong, and there's action items and then there's action items. I think when I think of the strategy, it's not action items like this task, this task, this task. I think that's the, again, the implementation roadmap. And if you're identifying problems with, you know, the process or the governance, and you want to fine tune them, that goes in the roadmap. And, but the initiative or in the investment in those areas is what's going to show up in the strategy. So in the canvas, we call them key initiatives and actions. So it's not necessarily an action item list, but it's a set of key actions that like, or initiatives that are going to be, they're going to enable the strategy to work. So again, it's at a different level of granularity. So if you want to, if you're fine tuning, what's already there, I think that's, again, it's important. You want to optimize, you want to continue to, you know, continuously do that. And that's why in the operational model, we kind of call one of those areas continuous improvement. And that's sort of our ongoing optimization. That should be in your roadmap, but you probably have a bigger picture thing in your strategy that's all of those fine tuning actions are working towards. So it's just kind of, again, like it's a different level of granularity and thinking. So the strategy itself doesn't have, you know, individual dates necessarily for each action. It's more like we want to achieve X and we're going to invest in Y to do that. And so that's really what that looks like.

Chris Lacinak: 51:33

The analogy that comes to mind for me as you're talking about the DAM Operational Model versus the canvas is if we think about like a car, your car running and how well it runs, who's like, it might be the DAM Operational Model, you know, is the engine running well? Has the oil been changed? Is your windshield wiper is good? And the strategy is more about, do you know where you're going? Can you get to your destination? Does the, you know, are you steering the vehicle in the right direction? Is that a way to think about it that works?

Kara Van Malssen: 52:05

Yeah, I think so. I mean, yeah, I think I had not thought of that analogy, but yeah, totally makes sense. Yeah, the car and it's kind of inner workings is one thing. It's trying to get you somewhere, but yeah, the strategy is more like, where are you trying to go? And what are the steps you're going to need to take to get there? Like, we're going to have to get on the interstate and we're going to have to, you know, take a left here and this and that kind of thing. So I think that works. Yeah, I like that analogy actually.

Chris Lacinak: 52:32

I wanted to touch on one thing that's in the, what I'll call the guide that accompanies the strategy canvas. You use a statistic in there that comes from brand folder and demand metric that says, "77% of study participants were satisfied with their digital asset management solution when deployment was completed quickly." And there's other stats in there that say about how many people were basically dissatisfied when it took longer than six months. I'm wondering, why do you think that is? What's going on there? Why do you think deployment time is such a strong determining factor of success and user satisfaction?

Kara Van Malssen: 53:13

Well, I think it kind of goes back to something we were saying earlier around managing expectations and kind of getting that goodwill and support and buy-in. And when it takes too long, there's probably multiple things at play. One is, well, you probably didn't have really a well thought out strategy, the scope wasn't clear, the action items weren't clear, and most likely you took on too much. So the time to value is way too long. And I think that's the key with something like this is when the success hinges on adoption, time to value is absolutely critical because you need those people to adopt it, to buy into it, and have to kind of be in sync with what it's for, what's expected of them, and by when. And if you keep kind of pushing that can down the road and kind of muddling that communication and expectation, I think people just start to get fed up and lose trust in the whole initiative. I think that's my guess as to what's going on. So you're kind of poorly communicating, the execution's kind of getting all over the place, you're trying to do too much, you're not having any, the short-term wins aren't there, like the transformation that was proposed is not coming through. I think people just kind of get fed up and they just lose their faith in the entire thing and its ability to deliver on what it was supposed to. And I think that can have pretty severe long-term implications to the success. It's hard to right that ship once you've gone in that direction.

Chris Lacinak: 55:10

So time is important as a factor, but I'm also reading into what you just said that the duration when it lags or it takes an exceptionally long time could also be a symptom of a larger problem, it sounds like.

Kara Van Malssen: 55:25

- Yeah, I think it is a symptom of a larger problem. The problem is you didn't have a strategy.

Chris Lacinak: 55:30

Right.

Kara Van Malssen: 55:31

So you didn't have kind of a clear point of focus, clear use cases you're prioritizing, 'cause that's the key point is, what use cases are you gonna solve for in what order? It doesn't mean solve for all of them at once. If we have five main use cases, and these are pretty high level, they can be pretty big, doesn't mean do them all at once. It means they're sequenced in a way. So you start to deliver benefits and value to those use cases in a sequence, in an order, and they should be sequenced in such a way that each one lays a foundation for the next. So each subsequent one you solve for isn't like starting from zero. You've already got with the first use case, you've created a layer. And by the time you get to the end of all those use cases, you've solved for 80% of the needs that that particular strategy is solving for. What tends to happen in cases where it takes way too long, some cases, they just really don't know what goes into setting up, implementing, and making decisions around the DAM. And so that can just stall things. But even if you are more aware and you kind of do understand what's gonna go into that, that's the case where I just see people taking on way too much.

Chris Lacinak: 56:49

Well, Kara, I wanna thank you so much for joining me today. I think I'm really excited about people hearing this and putting the canvas to use. I wanna end with one final question that I ask all of the guests on the DAM Right podcast. And it's totally different than having to do with the strategy conversation. And that is, what is the last song that you added to your favorites playlist or liked?

Kara Van Malssen: 57:17

Well, I'm gonna have to say that there is a difference between my like songs and my favorites because my son who's eight years old rules the like songs playlist. That is his playlist. So I won't tell you what the last song that was added to that. My personal playlist of favorites, well, it's been a little while since I added a song, but kind of maybe earlier, a little mid to last year was the last time I put a song onto it, sadly. But it was "Kandy" by Fever Ray. And they're a Swedish pop electro artist that used to be part of the duo, The Knife, in the earlier 2000s. And this is their solo act as Fever Ray. And the song "Kandy", that was like the last song that really kind of got under my skin and I couldn't stop listening to. So that's the last one on the playlist.

Chris Lacinak: 58:14

All right, so listeners go find it and pump it up while you start working on your DAM Strategy Canvas. It'll be a good soundtrack to it.

Kara Van Malssen: 58:23

No, don't think that's the right sound.

Chris Lacinak: 58:25

Okay, well, what, all right.

Kara Van Malssen: 58:27

If it works for you, don't worry.

Chris Lacinak: 58:28

Here's a question. Give us a soundtrack, a song that would be good for filling out the DAM Strategy Canvas.

Kara Van Malssen: 58:35

All right, good question. When I was making it, I was listening to a lot of The Isley Brothers and things like that. So maybe give you some good energy, good vibes.

Chris Lacinak: 58:48

All right, interesting. Sounds good. Awesome, well, thank you so much for joining me today, Kara. It's been super fun and I'm really excited about folks being able to hear this. Thank you so much, really appreciate it.

Kara Van Malssen: 58:59

Yeah, thanks for having me. And if folks have any questions or feedback about the DAM Strategy Canvas, then reach out, let us know.

Chris Lacinak: 59:06

Great, I'll put that contact info in the show notes. All right, talk to you soon, bye-bye.

Kara Van Malssen: 59:12

Okay.

Chris Lacinak: 59:15

You might be listening to this episode and thinking this sounds awesome, but how can I do this for myself? Lucky for you, you can download AVP's DAM Strategy Canvas for free at weareavp.com/free-resources. That's weareavp.com/free-resources. The DAM Strategy Canvas is your roadmap to creating the perfect DAM strategy all on one page. If you're enjoying the DAM Right podcast, please rate, like, follow, subscribe on your podcast platform of choice. And stay up to date with me and the DAM Right podcast on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/clacinak. That's linkedin.com/in/clacinak. (upbeat music) [ Silence ]