In 2020, 85% of businesses use video as a tool in their marketing strategy. That’s because video works — it can increase traffic, leads, sales, and audience understanding. But, it only works at an enterprise level if you store and distribute your videos strategically.  

Video content continues to grow in popularity and importance among marketers. According to research from Wyzowl, 89% feel video marketing results in positive ROI — up from 33% in 2015 — because it has the ability to increase traffic, leads, sales, and audience understanding. Further, faster connection speeds and improved hardware make daily video consumption the norm.

Because video assets are increasingly vital to current marketing strategies, this content needs to be managed effectively throughout its lifecycle. Let’s take a closer look at how the right technology can extend the reach and value of video content across phases — including archiving.

When implementing a digital asset management (DAM) system, you begin by adding the typical mix of marketing assets, such as images, logos, pdfs, documents, etc. Most of these file types are familiar to the average marketer, until you get to video. Because video files are much larger and more complex than other media files, we are frequently asked, “What’s the best video format to upload into my DAM?”

Do I wait two weeks for a photograph request? Or do I use the same one I’ve already been using? That was a question many at the University of San Francisco (USF) faced.

When we interviewed Tressa Crozier and Candice Pinault Novak, you could feel the pride and importance behind the USF brand. Unfortunately, the cost of providing the assets that embodied the brand came at a cost of time and chaos.

A Google search for “digital asset management” will give you hundreds of vendors. Where do you start? Which vendor has what you need? What makes Widen different than other software solution providers? Why should I choose Widen? Our advisors field these questions every day, and our marketing team wanted to help answer them too. So, we embarked on a journey to capture the Widen Experience:

Nikki Lebenson Angulo is a digital communications manager at the Institute of International Education (IIE), which is one of the largest and oldest global nonprofit organizations that administers and manages programs to support international exchange, like The Fulbright Program. They also work with governments around the world to promote the benefits of exchange.

Nikki’s position is critical in helping communicate the value of these programs with visual content that is published on the web, social media and through more traditional methods like newsletters.

Serving more than 100,000 students, Indiana University (IU) provides broad access to undergraduate, graduate, and continuing education for students throughout Indiana, the U.S., and the world, as well as outstanding academic and cultural programs and student services. We recently had a chance to sit down with Eric Rudd, art director, photographer, and producer with the IU’s Communications and Creative Services department. Eric is one of the global admins for IU’s DAM site, and he shared with us their journey of replacing an old DAM system with the Widen Media Collective.

Widen has over 400 Widen Collective customers in a number of different industries, but few can compete with the fun and excitement of professional sports. The emotion, brand loyalty and fanaticism people have towards “their team” in whatever sport is often unmatched by other aspects in life. The popularity of sports is increasing at an unprecedented rate, largely due to the explosion of different channels fans can use to connect with their team.

Centria is a leading global manufacturer of design and architectural wall paneling used in the construction industry. They’re on the cutting edge of architectural system building technology with a wide variety of products touting advanced thermal and moisture protection technology. Chelsea Rommes is the media and content coordinator at Centria and is the global admin of their Widen Collective site. They rely heavily on their digital asset management (DAM) system to collect images of newly-completed jobs and tag them with the proper metadata so they can be easily found and repurposed by their sales team.

The University of Massachusetts Amherst (otherwise known as UMass Amherst or simply UMass) is the flagship of the University of Massachusetts system. With approximately 1,300 faculty members and more than 29,000 students, UMass Amherst is the largest public university in New England and is ranked the 29th best public university in the nation. The university has also entrusted the Widen Media Collective to manage and distribute its most important branded and historical visual imagery. We had a chance to sit down with Maile Thiesen, global administrator of the UMass image library, to talk about the university’s past journey in digital asset management (DAM) and where they hope to go in the future with the Media Collective.