Deciphering rights can be a complex nightmare even for the most digitally savvy organization! Companies that have invested in a digital asset management (DAM) platform to gain the ability to categorize, securely share, and organize assets in a very efficient matter, often fail to enforce proper governance on the assets’ usage and fail to maximize the return on investment (ROI) from the assets stored in the DAM system due to a lack of visibility on the assets’ rights. It is not uncommon for digital assets to have multiple contracts associated with them (e.g. – multiple talent releases, a location release, a license agreement for product placement and a license agreement for stock) and each contract may have multi-dimensional usage rights and restrictions. However, it is critical to know with confidence what you can use before and after a campaign is active. Otherwise imagine a celebrity talent photo being misused and leading to a multi-million dollar lawsuit for the company that is being played out in the press!
Unfortunately this is not an unlikely scenario as the $8.9 million jury award to Michael Jordan from Dominick’s super market chain and the more recent lawsuit brought against Chipotle Mexican Grill for $2.2 billion prove. And let’s not forget the story of Grumpy Cat, star of a thousand memes, winning a lawsuit against a coffee company that misused her images. Yet vigilantly protecting your brand is tougher in practice than in theory. As content proliferates and new channels emerge, there are more limitations on how you can use, where you can use and when you can use content. This complexity not only introduces compliance issues, but affects your ROI if you are not using content and your DAM platform to its fullest potential.
Manual management of digital rights have several implications such as:
- High level of risk. Digital assets rights contracts are complex due to different constraints based upon geography, format, usage, time frame, copyrights, talent management and contract management. Assets typically will have multiple contracts associated with them, all with varying multi-dimensional rights, causing the ability to decipher proper usage to be a major challenge.
- High cost of misuse. In case of assets rights misuse, legal fines alone can be in the range of millions of dollars, but companies should also consider the cost of reworking assets, compliance fees and overall impact on brand identity and brand equity value.
- Extended time to market. Lack of user visibility on the asset usage restrictions are often leading to approval delays and potential misuse which has a negative impact on the company’s ability to quickly release new marketing campaigns.
- Low utilization of available content. A lack of visibility also limits the ability to reuse and repurpose assets, therefore driving up the marketing and advertising costs and reducing ROI. The back-and-forth between DAM users and management or legal departments to secure assets usage clearance not only causes campaign delays, but also reduces productivity as content should be available across departments and rights should be available real time, on demand.
So, what can be done to overcome those challenges?
Coupling a DAM solution with digital rights management (DRM) is the answer as it brings together best-of-breed solutions, allowing organizations to be more effective in managing their content while reducing the risk of violating copyright regulations. In fact, a rights management solution fully integrated into the DAM platform maintains all of this information, ties it with the DAM assets and deciphers rights real-time for the DAM user.
To deliver on this vision, OpenText™ has partnered with FADEL, a pioneer in the rights and royalty management space, to enable digital rights management technology for OpenText Media Management, the world leading digital asset management solution. As a result, OpenText DAM users can have real time access to rights clearance information directly from the DAM UI – gaining full visibility into when, where and how content can be used.
The resulting solution is a powerful marketing technology that enables customers to gain visibility into their talent and license agreements and content usage rights directly from within OpenText DAMs, such as Media Manager and MediaBin, therefore completely eliminating manual right clearance processes. This allows marketers and advertisers to repurpose existing content, accelerate creation and campaign delivery, reduce overall costs and protect their brand from potential violations.
So, is your company digital strategy future proof? Now with OpenText & FADEL integrated DRM solution you can ensure that your DAM investment will be.
