Henry Stewart DAM London 2023

We often forget to pause and reflect on experiences that we encounter, especially now that we are fortunate enough to be back at empowering events post-covid, allowing us to learn, grow and network.

Following the experience at the Henry Stewart DAM conference, we took our findings back to talk with our teams internally, and have highlighted the key points and takeaways that we found interesting and/or useful within this article:

Governance

Lisa Welchman kicked off the talks with an excellent presentation on working and building together, which established the recurring theme of the importance of digital governance for the rest of the conference.

Having a good governance framework in place at the beginning is key to the progress of any project, it can bring together different stakeholders into a more collaborative model, helping them stay focused, manage risk better and allow for more creativity rather than less. Governance is often one of the last aspects to be considered when building a framework, and it is vital to keep this in mind.

Lisa used a graph to discuss innovation scaling and where governance usually appears; she took us through the following 5-point curve: Innovation > Organic growth > Chaos > Governance > Commodity. Illustrating that by the time teams introduce governance, “things are difficult to shift because of scale”, noting whatever the innovation “it will scale as you do.” This clearly indicates that it is vital to keep digital governance in mind from the inception of any innovation, and that there is no single team responsible: we are all responsible.

Whether discussing the delayed invention of the seatbelt safety innovation 80+ years after it should have existed (see image 1), or the recent vast adoption of AIin organisations and consumer homes (within DAM and beyond), it is clear that governance must remain front and centre of innovation as it scales, and to not be an after thought.

Amanda Spence, Senior Platform Manager at Reckitt, had a great line that resonated with most; “It’s important to enable “freedom within a framework”.”

Ecosystems

“DAM is an ecosystem not a product, you can’t buy it, you build it” - Theresa Regli (DAM Industry Analyst & Director & Chief Strategist, Vox Veritas Digital)

The DAM doesn’t exist in isolation, along with all the other capabilities with the MarTech stack, and it’s now more important than ever to focus on purpose-built ecosystems. Theresa took us through a personal extended metaphor, comparing the DAM ecosystem to nature in her recent safari trip, providing various examples, of which the termites were the clear favourite. The example demonstrated the value of termites and their mounds to the wider environment, causing the spread of the phrase ‘I’m a termite’ throughout the other talks. Data feeds into the Content Hub (inflows) and then moves through the Content Hub to the outflows. As Lisa mentioned earlier and Theresa emphasised in her talk, Governance is key to the success of the connected ecosystem. Understanding the ecosystem and how it is developed and built is key as this will determine its efficiency, and with more understanding, we should see less waste and more reuse of all our content.

Although the concept of an ecosystem is becoming more and more evident within the MarTech community, it’s clear that it still needs to be grasped within wider business teams. Several conversations throughout the two days, which on the surface were regarding metadata, were actually discussions around ‘how do organisations ensure when building ecosystems that they are not only understanding the same things, but can communicate efficiency?’

Purpose & Sustainability

Why do you need a DAM, what problem is it solving?

Victor Lebon’s the “why and the what of DAM” was a great reminder that the why and what should not change often, as these are strategic anchors, especially as “the how is hard”. In an environment where the ‘who?’, ‘how?’ and ‘when?’ are required to remain in an agile state, it’s fundamental you are grounded in a ‘why?’, whether it be cost avoidance or even risk management, as without the ‘why?’ you have no agreed foundation.

You should prepare your DAM for the future. This can be achieved by understanding your users, and keeping on talking to them. What do they need? Understand how your users search for something, and understand what searches are failing and what are the most popular searches. Make people aware of future developments and what is coming, and build clear and informative reports.

Ensuring Greater User Experience and Asset Security – Simplifying Processes and Procedures in an Ever-Changing Environment

Jacqueline Yu (DAM Application Owner, Canon EMEA), stated in her talk that understanding ‘who should get what at the right time?’ is key to the success of the DAM. As well as making sure that you effectively manage all the redundant policies and user groups as the business and the DAM systems evolve over time, do not avoid updating these changes in the DAM because everyone is too busy.

Although sustainability was not as explicit as expected, the underlying theme was present. In the tri-agency DAM platform talk by Lynette Conlon from Tourism NI, she demonstrated the value of organisations harmonising their tech stack and sharing resources. In addition, Theresa Regli discussed the opportunities across social (fostering a sense of belonging among customers), environment (educating others on the connected MarTech ecosystems merits and ROI), and economic (understanding the monetary and brand equity value of assets + metadata) categories.

AI

AI Day 2 wrapped up with a focus on AI. Theresa Regli, Lisa (Executive Consultant, ICP) and Noz Ubrina (Omnichannel Content Solutions Lead, Urbina Consulting), held an insightful talk on “DAM and AI: What you Can Leverage Right Now”. Theresa shared a fantastic breakdown on the over-usage of the term ‘AI’ and what is factually AI vs a marketing term to capture what is currently relevant. The definition scale spanned from basic pattern recognition, through to dynamic assembly, finishing with the end goal of Intelligence. It became very clear quite quickly that context is everything when it comes to AI. Noz followed up on the importance of context through the requirement of clear definitions and structures to train the relevant models. He discussed semantic AI, as well as the requirement of understanding all the component parts of content, going as far as a brand potentially requiring brand vocabulary and other brand structures to be successful in using AI.

AI will also come with its challenges; a specific ‘watchout’ flagged for future challengers of the DAM within organisations was “why do we need to store images, we can just get AI to do it?”. Identified as the new “we can just pay an agency to do it”.

Following the event, AI continues to remain a headline topic, with the recent 1st time appearance of NVIDIA’s Founder and CEO (Jensen Huang) at the famous Cannes Lions festival for Marketers. Jensen was interviewed by the WPP CEO, Mark Read, in which they discussed the current and growing impact of Generative AI on creativity within Marketing, plus the vast benefits expected as it is adopted by Brands and their agency partners.

In summary, the conference was a fantastic opportunity to hear the latest thinking from key experts, whether it was remembering fundamentals such as the ‘why?’ of DAM, or the importance of introducing governance from the beginning of any innovation.

However, we believe there is a need to expand the subject matter of DAM Europe 2023, including more representation across wider capabilities (such as Content, PIM etc), as we continue to focus on large dynamic ecosystems, and not individual capabilities in isolation.

Ben Smith & Grant Duedney, Team 6ix

At Team 6ix we’re always happy to discuss DAM and the wider MarTech Ecosystem, feel free to reach out for a chat.

See the Team6ix blog for more news, case studies and industry insights