Digital Asset Management Perspective on Trends

Nick Felder on Digital Asset Management Trends

Hey everyone this is Jarrod Gingras from the Real Story Group coming to you from Henry Stewart DAM LA where it’s the final day of the conference. We’ve had a really good week so far and I’m here with Nick Felder from Coca-Cola and we’re gonna chat, just briefly about some trends you’re seeing being on the front lines working for one of the biggest, most complicated companies in the world.  From a DAM perspective, what are you seeing for trends as we approach the new year? Wow, going forward, I see this more and more with my colleagues and with friends I talk to in the business, the making of stuff is harder and harder to do without anticipating the management of the stuff because the better that stuff is managed, the more media it’s gonna find, the more screens it can be found on and more and more of those screens are throwing up data that go back and inform the thing you made in the first place. So, that little cycle is informing to me from what I see so much of platform architecture. RFP requirements going into things. It’s companies like us and agency partners are realizing production, the making of stuff, has gotten so complex that until they really invest in a platform where three years ago people would push it away like they’re not going to get to the apps, the API’s, all those other things they want to stand up data-driven creative. Most of that data-driven creative is going to be beyond them until they get their act together and get control of the stuff they’ve made already and continue to make. So Nick, when it comes to Digital Asset Management, what are the things you’re most worried about? What keeps you up at night? That’s a good question, there’s not a lot that actually keeps me up at night but when I look at where the industry is going? I definitely start to see more of a demarcation and an understanding, almost a respect for what DAMs can do and where we still need human involvement, right? A lot of people are… there’s a lot of fear out there for AI, bot culture, this kind of stuff and I think….so a couple of examples. For example, rights management that we do, there’s a lot that technology can ,but it’s only gonna get to about 80%. There’s never gonna solve for every use case, so there’s always room for some human brains to be applied. I think the same thing could be said for dynamic content delivery. The future of that may just be very retail oriented applications, functional applications. I think it’s much more challenging when you start getting into the space of emotionally resonant narrative storytelling. I think that’s it, that presents problems for dynamic content delivery that will probably never be addressed in my lifetime, going forward, so that stuff doesn’t keep me at night. It actually gives me confidence that there is I think a clear line what machines can do and where humans pick up the slack. 

Video Credits to: Henry Stewart