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 in place — like a brand manager — to ensure it succeeds.

Your company’s brand is the culmination of every experience a person has with your organization. It tells the world who your company is, and what you do. It is a differentiator that identifies your products or services as distinct from others in your market. And the world’s strongest brands stand out by building and maintaining brand consistency.

A range of elements — both tangible and intangible — contribute to a consistent brand experience, including tone, voice, and visual design. And each of these elements are thoughtfully and strategically developed over time, using your brand assets.

Successful businesses are able to adapt, flex, and adjust to unforeseen changes and challenges. This agility requires the right people, processes, and technology...as well a lot of thoughtful planning. Widen’s Consulting team partners with companies to create custom, detailed strategies that articulate how digital asset management (DAM) can support their ever-evolving business goals, and help them move confidently toward success.

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 audiences. 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. For example, there are over 4.2 million blogs written each day. Pair that with the nearly 1.8 billion websites out there — and you have a lot of content to contend with.   

To break through the noise, you need to add some horsepower to your content marketing efforts by incorporating visual content. To help you do this effectively, it’s important to know the what, why, and how behind it.

You’re putting your brand at risk when you don’t use a centralized system to store and manage your digital assets. That risk comes from crashed hard drives, missing metadata, and the slow creep (or disastrously fast explosion) of inconsistent brand experiences. If you want to avoid unintended damage to your company’s lifeblood, it’s time to learn how to protect your brand with a digital asset management (DAM) system.

There’s no denying that we live in a digital world. From the millions of websites and apps at our disposal to the internet-connected phone in our pockets, the evidence is all around us. According to the 2020 Global Digital Overview from We Are Social and Hootsuite, the average internet user now spends 6 hours and 43 minutes online every day. 

After the changes in behavior brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, we rely on the web for just about everything. Whether we’re shopping, researching a new product, or communicating with a business, we often turn to the convenience, practicality, and safety of digital channels.

So, given the digital nature of today’s consumers, how should businesses approach branding? And, furthermore, what role does digital asset management (DAM) software, like the Widen Collective^®, play in a brand’s quest to win the attention, loyalty, and dollars of these buyers?

If you want to achieve success as a brand in this day and age, it’s time to fully embrace the reality that you’re in the experience business.Transactions are no longer a simple exchange of money for goods or services; consumers demand more. They expect you to win their affection and loyalty by delivering consistent, memorable experiences at each and every interaction.

Because of this, the digital assets and content you use to tell your story, educate your audiences, and represent your brand, are more important than ever. To thrive and grow in the experience economy, more and more successful brands turn to digital asset management (DAM) systems.

Every marketer knows that brand management is important, but not everyone agrees on the reasons why. That’s because the strength of your brand is dependent on customer perception, and influencing how you’re perceived by a market is extremely complicated. To build a brand that customers choose over competitors, you need to start with a clearly defined brand vision, organizational self-reflection, and company-wide discipline. 

The start of the pandemic in 2020 forced consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies to streamline their e-commerce experiences. And unexpected changes in customer behavior brought with it expedited digital trends that are disrupting the consumer-goods industry forcing them to shift away from traditional success models. For example, online sales of food and beverages reached an all-time high of $66 billion in 2020 and according to NielsenIQ, online CPG food and beverage sales could reach as high as $109 billion in 2021. What once was a shopping trend embraced by a select few, is now a common occurrence for many households. 

However, this kind of rapid growth also brings with it some challenges. It demands that companies scale along every part of the value chain, and marketing is no exception. Widen customer HARMAN International, a global consumer electronics company, found their marketing communications tools and processes became a hindrance to delivering products to market, so they invested in a product information management (PIM) system and then a digital asset management (DAM) system. 

Let’s take a closer look at what HARMAN has achieved with their DAM and PIM investments.

Producing and utilizing digital media files — like images, logos, and pdfs — is an everyday occurrence for most marketers. And many have a digital asset management (DAM) system to help keep this content organized and accessible. Video files, however, are much more dynamic and complex. As a result, we are often asked, “What’s the best video format to upload into my DAM system?”

Let us introduce you to the word “mezzanine.” No, we’re not talking about the middle floor in an office building. In the video world, mezzanine files are compressed videos that take up less space than the full-resolution files, but are high-res enough to be used on the web. They can allow you to conserve storage space without sacrificing the quality that your users need.