Sharing Digital Asset Management Success in NYC
Henry Stewart DAM in New York is a yearly gathering of the best and brightest minds in the Digital Asset Management industry. From software vendors and consultants, to brands and agencies on the cutting edge of technology, the show attracts leaders in the marketing technology space to Midtown Manhattan for two days of seminars and case studies.
This year, two of Pica9's customers shared how CampaignDrive by Pica9 delivers consistent value for their brands by ensuring brand consistency and distributing marketing assets to dealers and franchisees. Speakers from Polaris Industries and Marriott Hotels highlighted how Pica9's local marketing automation platform has helped their brands control and empower thousands of local marketers across the globe.
Both companies highlighted the crucial role that software solutions must play in distributed marketing environments, and the keys to balancing field marketing relevancy with a consistent brand voice.
One Person Managing Global Marketing for Polaris? No Problem.
Polaris Industries is the leading American manufacturer of off-road vehicles. More than 3,800 dealers across the globe sell motorcycles, snowmobiles and ATVs from one of the company's 29 brands. As Nikki Nielson, Corporate Marketing Specialist at Polaris, explained, these dealers require the latest photography and marketing collateral to sell Polaris' vehicles.
Corporate Marketing Specialist, Nikki Nielson, describes how CampaignDrive helps Polaris provide marketing support for thousands of dealers worldwide
With their legacy asset management platform, Polaris was lacking the scale-factor required for a global manufacturing powerhouse. "When we were using the old system, there was very little control," Nielson explained. "Marketing materials and photography had no expiration dates, there was no reporting on what assets dealers were using and there weren't any marketing templates for them to customize."
Once Polaris began using CampaignDrive for digital asset management, the manufacturer was able to look holistically at their field marketing for the first time. Where previously dealers would use outdated branding elements and photography, now the brand identity for the company's best-selling brands could be updated and controlled from a centralized hub.
With a central repository for marketing assets, the brand marketing team can ensure brand guidelines are being followed with far less effort than before. In fact, Polaris is able to release an entire model year's worth of photography and marketing templates to their dealers in a single week.
Nielson explains how Polaris uses the asset tagging features in CampaignDrive to make it easy for dealers to find and download the very latest model year photography
"Now that we have CampaignDrive, we can manage an entire global marketing system with a hyper-lean internal team," said Nielson. "We can be more agile, with easy go-to-market solutions at a moment's notice – it really gives us an edge on the local level."
120,000 Local Hotel Photos, Perfectly Managed by Marriott
For Marriott International, the digital asset management challenge was not so much how to distribute marketing assets to their 3,000 properties, but rather how to ensure that the marketing assets the properties acquired for themselves were properly sourced and rights managed. Organizing photography properly so the pictures of the right hotel always appear on Marriott.com was a huge priority. Similarly, ensuring that the licenses for the photography were properly documented to avoid costly royalties was a second major concern.
Marriott's Director of Digital Assets, Michelle Haas, explains how Pica9's DAM software simplifies rights management
Michelle Haas and Susan Pleiman explained how even with Marriott's history of marketing technology innovation, the challenge of standardizing digital asset management for franchisees was considerable. An extensive A/B test of properties with new hotel photos against those without proved the value of relevant, local photography. But giving every hotel the opportunity to have updated photography required a completely new solution, beyond Marriott's existing infrastructure.
Systems Manager, Susan Pleiman, explains the challenge of controlling usage rights for properties all over the world
Using the core features in Pica9's digital asset management platform, Marriott was able to turn a completely manual program for managing hotel photography into a scalable, international workflow. The corporate taxonomy structure that Marriott created ensured that the right images always appear on the main booking site.
Not only did the CampaignDrive-powered system improve the relevancy of hotel photography, contributing to significant revenue lift in the process, but it also transformed the way Marriott worked with its hotels' photographers. Rather than the myriad different license agreements that existed before, the Marriott team has been able to standardize usage rights to simplify the brand's relationship with its many photographers.
To learn more about how CampaignDrive has helped more major brands with their digital asset management and local marketing needs, read our customer case studies. Check out how Polaris uses CampaignDrive to distribute marketing assets or read how Marriott has empowered its franchise marketing efforts.
