Time and time again, the words of “CONTENT CRISIS” are projected across social channels, evangelised in summits of the digital and marketing communities and flashing at you in every media blog on the world wide web. Upon a little bit of reflection, using the word ‘crisis’ to describe too much content to manage effectively is probably in poor taste in the current environment… so let's just call it the ‘The Too Much Content to Keep Track of’ annoyance, albeit, it doesn't quite have the same ring to it. Nonetheless, having been asked to deep dive into Sitecore’s latest offering, Content Hub, the ‘Too Much Content to Keep Track of’ annoyance could have been completely avoided and inefficiencies transformed into profits with this Digital Asset Management System (DAM).
Having a strong previous affliction with a digital media agency, producing hundreds of ads a month across every medium; from small strip banners on Google to large banners across famous strips in Sydney… the content we produced was astronomical, and that was just the ones that I briefed… add in ten more Account Managers (AM), the output of creative was enormous.
With each AM having their own filing system that best suited how they worked, some ranging from a meticulous assortment of folders, requiring hours of admin upkeep and many late nights. Then the AMs that filed by hoping the ‘find’ feature of Outlook would return the results they seek… I was very guilty of this. But the essence of the story is that, with all the produced creative, we would often duplicate extremely similar ads for the various campaigns over the years and we had no idea we were doing it. We simply didn't have a tool to categorise our work, this meant designers were constantly developing new artwork with every new brief. In contrast to quickly searching a content library and altering an ad from one to two years ago, in order to make it relevant to the client. The result being that a two hour design time was slashed to thirty minutes and still sold for the same price. I wish we had Sitecore’s Content Hub!
Although I could deep dive into each and every feature that would have made my life in an advertising agency so much easier. There is only one key theme to why a company should invest in Content Hub, and it is driving revenue through efficiencies.
So how is this achieved? With a DAM. The DAM feature of Content Hub prevents a user from having to search through their inbox, a local drive or a shared server, in the hope to find that one piece of creative produced a couple of years ago by a designer who has long left the company. With a centralised solution, all your content including: stock photos, artworks, video, source files and more is easily searchable using META data, the team will be able to view, even ZIP files from all of your created content. This means before they even brief a new element into a designer, they can simply discover an unused artwork that perhaps never went to market, or even something that can be altered in order to present a brand new design, whilst only requiring a fraction of the effort. This ultimately leaves your design team with a whole lot more time to work on new briefs and projects.
My previous experience in a marketing agency is just one example of The Too Much Content to Keep Track of annoyance. The reality is that organisations struggle with their coordination and even just locating their content every day for their marketing initiatives. By using Sitecore’s Content Hub, agencies and corporations alike will have the ability and flexibility to maximise their content efficiencies and ultimately increase their revenue through correct digital content management.
— Harry Hillis
