FIGARODIGITAL.CO.UK
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t’s not often that rock legends Van Halen are invoked in a digital marketing context, but Robert Rose draws a salutary lesson for marketers from the band’s famously
extravagant touring arrangements. At the height of their success, Van Halen stipulated that their dressing room should contain a bowl of M&Ms from which the brown ones had been removed. The request didn’t do their cred much good; demanding colour- coded confectionary suggested a band enduring a strained relationship with reality. But in fact, explains Rose, it served a very strategic purpose. If the venue had read the rider and whipped out the
m that their complex technical and safety demands had also been met. If
brown M&Ms, the band could assume
there were brown M&Ms in the bowl, it meant they needed to inspect the entire stage set-up.
“The M&Ms operated like a canary in
a coalmine,” says Rose. “It’s a great metaphor for marketers now because as we set up more collaborative processes – from digital asset management to analytics and working across channels – we need to set up warning bells to ensure everything’s properly managed. When it comes to digital asset management, it’s all about the way we scale it.”
PUBLISHING AT THE SPEED OF CULTURE
Rose is a writer, speaker, Chief Strategy Offi cer at the US Content Marketing Institute, author of the Amazon bestseller Managing Content Marketing and recently produced a
m whitepaper on digital asset
management (DAM) for North Plains. There he sets out
Assets
W York our
Figaro Digital chats to author, speaker and Chief Strategy Officer at the
Content Marketing Institute Robert Rose about content, digital assets and adapting to constant change
a three-step plan towards a DAM strategy that rocks.
Top of the agenda is teamwork. It’s rare in any organisation that a single person conceives, creates and delivers the entire customer experience. The process relies on collaboration between a diverse range of partners, within the organisation and outside it. “The idea of managing
digital assets and content is nothing new,” concedes Rose.
“That’s been around for 15 years. What’s new is that as content becomes such a strategic aspect of marketing, the speed at which brands manage and use it becomes more important.
34 issue 22 october 2014
Traditionally, content and digital assets were managed with governance in mind: issues like compliance, workfl ow, rights and approval. But the omnichannel
environment means that everything has to be much more fl uid. The DAM systems we put in place need to be focused on de-siloing the process and making it easier for marketers to collaborate.” Which brings us back to Van Halen’s M&Ms and the need for joined-up thinking. ‘Publishing at the speed of culture’ is how Rose describes today’s marketing imperative. But that’s only achievable through rigorous planning and collaboration. Oreos’ famed ‘dunk in the dark’ Tweet at the 2013 Super Bowl, you’ll recall, was the result of 18 months spent planning for every eventuality.
“First, recognise that
content is a strategic asset and that it’s worth
managing,” says Rose. “Right
now, in most organisations, marketing, content and managing digital assets is everybody’s job and nobody’s. The marketing department is charged with creating content as a service to other parts of the business. Whether it’s sales, branding or PR, it’s the
content marketing people who create it.” What that means, says Rose, “is that the brand will say, okay, there’s Mary in marketing – she can handle this in her spare time. If the business thinks about content as something that creates value for
the customer, then it becomes much easier to create a function and measure it. Then it really becomes part of someone’s job.”
FEEDING THE MACHINE With that in mind, are there any errors Rose sees marketers making with their content marketing and asset
ARTICLE JON FORTGANG
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