Enabling Global Marketing: The Use of Digital Asset Management in the Automotive Industry. January 5, 2011

Transcription

1 Enabling Global Marketing: The Use of Digital Asset Management in the Automotive Industry January 5, 2011

2 Introduction The automotive industry is in transition. An economic recession, new demands for fuel efficient, hybrid, electric and clean diesel vehicles, maturing manufacturers, concerns and perception about vehicle safety, and the restructuring of the US and global automobile manufacturing landscape have increasing global competition and changed the complexion of the automotive industry world- wide over the past couple of years. To remain competitive or gain advantage, auto manufacturers continue to cut costs, streamline operations, increase efficiencies across all parts of the organization. At the same time, especially in a recession, developing, maintaining and expanding brand equity and customer loyalty is critical. Those who do it best will emerge stronger. The Marketing Challenge While the Internet offers automotive marketers a variety of cost efficient opportunities to reach and engage customers and build their brands, including several new and interactive approaches, traditional media such as television, radio, and print cannot be abandoned. Auto marketers are constantly challenged to do more with less and now are challenged develop consistent, increasingly global, cross- media campaigns, that involve both regional agencies and internal marketing teams, while reducing costs, boosting productivity, and maintaining brand compliance. How do you maintain the brand across geographies, campaigns, media and devices and launch them all in parallel? What tools do you have to successfully meet this challenge and deliver these benefits? This challenge defines the core of the business case for Digital Asset Management or DAM in the automotive industry. What is Digital Asset Management? DAM is defined as both a process and a tool for organizing the creation, management, production, distribution and archiving of rich media assets. The term asset generally refers to rich media files such as images, photos, animations, video and audio as compared to , documents, records or scanned images. While creative agencies, publishers, broadcasters and media outlets have long realized the value of utilizing DAM to realize cost and productivity benefits in the production and distribution of their rich media assets (the ad, book, video, or movie), automotive marketers are just starting to realize its value in the creation, production and distribution of theirs pictures, product shots and videos, photo- realistic CAD images, logos, brochures, ads, and promotional materials. it allows you to manage the increasing volume of rich media content: to create it faster, collaborate globally easier,

3 and deliver it to more channels and devices, in more regions simultaneously. DAM is the new global digital assembly line. North Plains TeleScope DAM North Plains award winning TeleScope DAM system enables the core processes around digital assets. During creation, TeleScope brings order and efficiency to fundamental iterative, multi- step marketing and legal review processes that involve teams of people distributed around the world. It allows team members to search for assets, check them out of the system to retouch images, or edit photos, video and accompanying text. Afterwards, it allows users to check them back in for review, discussion and approval. For example, Ford Motor Company acquired TeleScope to unify their global marketing teams and to streamline their global product launch activities, including the next- generation Ford Focus. Ford s regional teams in the US, across Europe and in Asia/Pacific, utilize the same core asset (e.g., a photograph of a car from a particular angle) touching it up as needed for the region (e.g. one region may have different headlights or mirrors than another). TeleScope will coordinate collaboration among Ford s global teams. It allows anyone with a browser to participate and collaborate in these edit and review/approval processes. Team members can securely find, view and make annotations on the asset for other team members to see. TeleScope allows side- by- side image comparison for shot selection and ranking facilitating early stage review processes. It also provides image zoom allowing creatives to accurately see details in very high resolution images. TeleScope also provides company defined business rules on the assets to provide intelligent security or to enforce processes around the assets. For example, business rules enforce an approval process, embargo assets until a specific release date, or expire assets such as at the end of the current model year so that they re no longer accessible, used in other materials or distributed. To facilitate edit/review processes, TeleScope allows privileged users to check out an asset to make changes to it and then check in the modified version. TeleScope stores the related versions of the image, tracking their derivation (from master images) and facilitating these required regional changes in a controlled manner. Using TeleScope in this manner, Ford saves money because images of the vehicle are not reshot by each region. It increases the value of the asset through reuse, and achieves brand consistency for each car model. This is a key part of how Ford is approaching their global marketing challenge to enable global teams and partner ad agencies to collaborate more efficiently and quickly.

4 The TeleScope DAM also enables new distribution processes. Once the creation processes is finished, TeleScope houses and manages approved assets some for immediate use or incorporation into another marketing asset, or, as with an archive, retained and offered for historical value, and made available for future sale, licensing or retrospective use. In Ford s case, TeleScope provides facilities for distributing assets directly to marketing teams and agencies, to partners, suppliers, or dealers reducing nearly 90% of physical distribution costs, and it does so instantly speeding collaboration and reducing time- to- market. It can also assist in automating the distribution of images and videos directly to corporate web sites and popular social sharing sites, like YouTube or Facebook by both automating the conversion of the image into the appropriate file format or resolution, and pushing the content directly to the sites. TeleScope relieves marketing teams of time consuming fulfillment and conversion costs, and enables distribution of consistent brand assets across all common Internet communication channels. As the TeleScope DAM becomes the single- source for storing approved assets and for publishing them out to different media and channels, it can be utilized by complementary partner tools, such as automated brochure and ad builders. These tools provide regional dealers with a self- service tool to rapidly and easily create consistently branded brochures and ads using approved images, but with the ability to localize and tailor specific parts of the ad (e.g., dealer name and logo, address, price, and specific fine print) as appropriate. This approach automates the fulfillment process, empowering dealers to create effective local marketing materials that are globally brand consistent. Using TeleScope as the DAM, brand images, logos, brochures and other assets can now be easily protected, distributed globally, controlled (in both their release and expiration) and automatically provided for use in appropriate formats for different media. Assets can be reused across geographies, across media, and over time, deriving additional value, reducing the cost of recreation or reshooting, and possibly creating new revenue streams in the case that they re sold or licensed. The Impact of DAM North Plains TeleScope DAM is a powerful enabling technology for automotive marketers. By facilitating the creation, management and distribution processes, it enables automotive marketing teams to more easily and cost effectively develop and deliver cross- media, regional campaigns to meet consumers everywhere they get their information. A digital asset management system like TeleScope, automates workflows, enhances collaboration and streamlines complex, time- consuming manual tasks. It provides distribution efficiencies by eliminating physical distribution costs, reducing time- to- market, and providing regions with consistent, localized on- brand images, video and content.

5 But the impact of TeleScope and digital asset management goes beyond extracting cost from the creation and distribution processes. By addressing media creation and distribution processes, much like changing core manufacturing processes, automotive companies fundamentally enable new corporate strategies such as Ford s simultaneous global vehicle (product) launch, personalized, targeted regional marketing, and enhanced dealer relationships. DAM can also be used beyond the marketing department. It is often used by training and product service departments in the production and distribution of training and repair videos to reduce training costs, increase dealer maintenance consistency and quality. It is used by corporate marketing and shareholder relations departments for managing and distributing internal and external corporate communications, recorded interviews, and excerpts from video recorded shareholder meetings. It can also be used by HR departments for development and distribution of on- boarding videos, training materials, policy and procedure training, and other internal HR communication needs. So while DAM is often first used in the marketing department, it frequently spreads to other areas of the company, as a corporate platform that provides greater leverage and reuse of corporate assets, and enables better collaboration, internal and external communication and message consistency. Join the growing number of automotive manufacturers, including Ford, Chrysler, and Hyundai US (via Innocean) that are using DAM automation as their new digital assembly line for global product launches as well as to increase their marketing efficiencies, reduce cost, speed time to market and consistently manage their global brand. The time for DAM in the automotive industry, is now.