Digital Asset Management and Creative Management Platforms — Similarities and Differences

There’s a good reason that Creative Management Platforms (CMP) have become increasingly popular. That’s because they come with a number of capabilities that make it possible for you to make better use of your existing marketing assets. These features include built-in banner builder and video builder tools. In this post, we’ll explore the differences between Create Management Platforms and Digital Asset Management (DAM) platforms. In brief, DAM Platforms make it possible for you to store your creative assets. Creative Management Platforms import assets from your Digital Asset Management system and let you use those assets to build new content for all your marketing channels.

That means that you can quickly and easily create content for e-commerce sites like Amazon, Walmart, and Target. You can also create content for social media sites like Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook and Tiktok, and even for e-mail marketing and direct-to-consumer web sites.

Here are five key ways you can use a Creative Management Platform to do more with the assets stored in your Digital Asset Management platform.

1. Leverage pre-made templates

With a Creative Management Platform, you can leverage pre-made templates to create banner ads for retail media on Amazon, Walmart and other retail e-commerce sites. Build shoppable videos with call to action text (CTAs). Build image tiles with testimonials, ratings and reviews for product detail page (PDP) image carousels. What’s even better is that you can do all this without years of design experience.

A Digital Asset Management system stores your image and video assets. That makes it a great source for marketing images to be imported into your Creative Management Platform. From there, using a Creative Management Platform, you can take those assets, drop them into pre-built templates and build all the creative you need for your different marketing channels. When it comes to E-Commerce, Creative Management Platforms will update their pre-built templates to reflect the latest changes and requirements from e-commerce retailers like Amazon and Walmart, so you don’t have to. Anytime a retailer launches a new format, changes a template size, or updates their branding, style guide or font requirements, the latest templates and design guidelines will automatically be updated in your Creative Management Platform.

2. Scale the creation of product detail page image carousel images

When it comes to engaging shoppers on e-commerce sites, image carousel images and videos receive 10 times the attention from shoppers that other parts of product detail pages do. And with more shoppers shopping on their mobile phones or tablets, it is more important than ever to have engaging, compelling images and videos in the image carousel. With a Digital Asset Management platform you can store marketing assets–but you have to use a number of other tools to create image carousel images that adhere to each retailer’s requirements. Some retailers don’t allow text in images, while others do. Some retailers require images that are 1500×1500, while others require 2000×2000 or 3000×3000 size images. As a result, creating image for image carousels can be complex and time consuming. What’s more, if there’s a product packaging change, you have to create new image carousel images–which normally requires a complete design process. A Creative Management Platform can take the images stored in your Digital Asset Management system and swap them into your existing image carousel templates so you can have new creative ready in minutes.

Another great example of how a Creative Management Platform can scale content creation is mobile ready hero images. Building one mobile ready hero image is easy. But let’s face it–building multiple mobile ready hero images, or refreshing existing mobile ready hero images with new product shots, is difficult and time-consuming. Fortunately, with a Creative Management Platform, you can automate the creation of mobile ready hero images. Many Digital Asset Management systems do not store product images, let alone enable you to create mobile ready hero images. In contrast, a Creative Management Platform can process dozens or hundreds of existing product images, and drop them into retailer specific templates for e-commerce sites like Amazon, Walmart, Kroger, Target and more.

3. Easily refresh content for seasonal events and occasions

Creative Management Platforms make it easy to refresh content for seasonal events and occasions throughout the year. Digital Asset Management systems store your raw marketing assets; by feeding those assets into a Creative Management Platform you can refresh that content to keep it relevant throughout the year. It can also ensure that your top-of-funnel marketing assets like display ad banners, and your bottom-of-funnel assets like product detail page image carousel and below-the-fold images are consistent. A Digital Asset Management system will store the latest photo shoot images; you can use a Creative Management Platform to update messaging, headlines and CTAs to be relevant for seasonal events and occasions.

4. Use AI-assisted content creation to accelerate your workflows

Creative Management Platforms incorporate the latest technologies to help streamline your content creation workflows. This includes capabilities like headline creation, updates across templates, and image generation. Creative Management Platforms combine workflow optimization, content creation automation and AI capabilities to activate your marketing content. In contrast, Digital Asset Management systems store your content, but don’t make use of these technologies to accelerate your content creation workflow. Faster content creation cycles means you can do more with your content. You can A/B test multiple variations of your content, or free existing creative resources up to focus on more creative aspects of the content development process.

5. Use built-in proofing, review and approval capabilities

Creative Management Platforms make it easy for you to get feedback on new creative designs or get approval on creative before it goes live. They come with built-in built-in proofing, review and approval capabilities for images and video. Once a design is ready, simply click the Share button and a link will be generated to a proof page for your creative assets. On the share proof page, your colleagues and partners can leave comments, upload sample images and even draw on the proof. Notifications are automatically sent to the content creator, so there’s no need for endless email back and forth.

Summary

Creative Management Platforms make it fast and easy to scale your creative development process by leveraging the raw assets stored in your Digital Asset Management system. They come with built-in templates for e-commerce web sites, social media platforms and direct-to-consumer web sites. They incorporate the latest automation, workflow and AI capabilities to streamline your content development process. Creative Management Platforms help you activate your existing marketing content across all your channels. Book a demo today to learn more about our Creative Management Platform.