A lot of hard work goes into launching profitable products. Many teams and stakeholders are involved — including product management and product marketing. These two roles kind of sound like different ways of saying the same thing, like Gershwin's tomato and tomahto. But they actually are more like apples and oranges...they are separate disciplines with distinct responsibilities.

So where exactly does one role stop and the other start? This can vary between companies, but there are some key areas of focus that make each role unique.

Impactful visual imagery — from photographs to logos — are crucial to today’s brands. What would Nike be without the swoosh, or Frosted Flakes without Tony the Tiger? Well, they wouldn’t be the same brand. Marketers need to have easy, secure, and reliable access to these assets. And this is possible by using image metadata.

Business environments today are tough. Things change fast. From a new competitor on the scene to shifting market conditions, technologies, and buyer dynamics, there’s a lot that’s simply out of our control. Because of this, organizations are putting more and more emphasis on the things they can control — like their brand. 

Brand management, once a practice reserved for the Coca-Colas and Nikes of the world, is now a commonplace practice for any organization looking to win the hearts, minds, and spend of their target audiences. And, just as you see with other business priorities, it helps to put a dedicated person like a brand manager in place to ensure it succeeds. 

If you want to get somewhere in the quickest way possible, you map your course. The same is true for metadata. 

Metadata powers search within a digital asset management (DAM) system. Without it, your assets become unfindable and ultimately, unusable. But we know entering metadata can be time-consuming. So how do you ensure you’re entering metadata in the quickest way possible? Metadata mapping. 

Building trust is tricky. And as the saying goes, trust is hard to earn but easy to lose. So what does that have to do with digital asset management (DAM)? A lot!

Each year, the Widen Summit focuses on concepts that are key to DAM success. 

In 2017, we honed in on what it takes to set better goals. Expanding on that in 2018, we learned how to tackle those goals using a strong strategy framework. This year though, we took a step back to realize that in order for people to believe in your goals and strategy, you need to first earn their trust. And this theme carried throughout our three days together — taking center stage in workshops, sessions, and keynotes. 

Change. You can run from it. You can dodge it, fight it, deny it, or sprint headfirst into it. Whatever the case — love it or hate it — it’s coming. It is, as they say, inevitable.

But, you know that. You’ve been through it a thousand times. And the assumption, at least in business, is that change is inherently “good.” It’s that shift in strategic direction that finally gets you where you need to be. It’s new leadership that comes in and blows the dust off things. It’s the introduction of a new technology that’s sure to absolutely, positively make life easier. 

However, what people don’t always realize is that change is hard. And not for the obvious reasons. The actual implementation of it — the software rollout or the project management of it all— isn’t usually where teams get tripped up. It’s the people side of change where all the trouble happens. And the reason? Organizations too often neglect what’s called change management. 

The Best DAM Contest is always a highlight of our annual Widen Summit. Four exceptional Widen customers showcase how they use their Collective^® site to meet unique user needs. Each contestant has a different use case, a different strategy, and a different winning approach to their DAM system.

These days, you can do some pretty impressive things with content. However, you’re not the only one using content to win the attention and mindshare of consumers. Thanks to the success that content marketing has seen over the years, there’s a lot (and we mean a lot) of competition out there.

To break through the noise, you need to add some horsepower to your content marketing efforts by incorporating visual content. But, to do this effectively, you need to understand what visual content marketing is and how to create a winning strategy. 

For over a decade, video has been the rising star of marketing. First gaining speed back in 2005 alongside the launch of YouTube, video has managed to climb the ranks to near-celebrity status with enterprises around the globe. With 87% of businesses now using video as a marketing tool — up from 63% in 2017 — it begs to question why video is so popular.

Are businesses just blindly following trends or are their investments in the creation, management, and distribution of video assets more deeply rooted? Let’s have a look. 

Accurate metadata allows users across your organization to find and retrieve assets quickly. With rapidly growing libraries of content, keeping metadata up-to-date can be a time-consuming challenge. Digital asset management (DAM) admins are often tasked with applying metadata for large batches of assets from activities like photoshoots, product updates, and rebrands.