Mission Matters Podcast Host Adam Torres Interviews Lindsey Hawkins
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LOS ANGELES, Calif.—Adam Torres, host of the Mission Matters Podcast, recently was joined by the dynamic Lindsey Hawkins, Founder & CEO of Blue Trail Digital. In this episode, Torres and Hawkins dove into the discussion of digital asset management (DAM) across business functions and how it empowers a stable brand ecosystem. Hawkins shares what businesses need to know about digital asset management.
Torres started the interview with the question he always likes to ask guests: “Lindsey, what mission matters to you?” Hawkins quickly jumped in with her answer. “The mission that matters to me at Blue Trail Digital is to enable happy and successful working experience when it comes to creative content operations.” She said that since it is so hard to manage content, her firm enables organizations with lots of brands to improve their lives and the value of their digital assets.
Hawkins, who is a designer and artist as well, said her entire career has been dedicated to arts, design and the education of both. After getting into consulting for digital communications and learning more about DAM, she said she was hooked and “really passionate about it.” She was amazed that DAM helps creators design and get their jobs done faster. She feels her background in design gives her an empathetic view that can help others.
Torres asked Hawkins to dive deeper into what DAM actually means for those who are new to it. Hawkins explained that DAM is both a noun and a verb. As a noun it is a technology solution where you can store content files, and as a verb it is the process of how to get files into the system so there are better ways to gather, search, distribute and store content.
Torres and Hawkins discussed the evolution of content management, where there used to be rooms at agencies that had physical files of client content, including discs and mockups. Now that everything has become digitized, there are still many hurdles companies face.
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Hawkins said the digital evolution creates different problems. “The biggest challenge is keeping up with the demand of content,” since there are more channels starting daily to post content on. The ecommerce world has boomed in the past few years, and that poses problems for some companies. Teams need to accurately and quickly create more content to fit the various social media platforms and ecommerce sites, which means understanding of what is expected for each platform, production time for content, and a way to also store it all in a DAM.
“At the beginning of the digital revolution, you would worry about a TV spot, you would worry about print, you would worry about a billboard and all the images that go with that. Now, you have to worry about multiple channels that are media.” The various media platforms now include the digital apps for TV, social media (which is continuing to grow) and other platforms to show off content. Hawkins said that there could be hundreds of thousands of types of content that a house of brands will need to create. Hawkins also said that there is a genuine disconnect when it comes to what some companies think they should create, and what they need to create to keep up with the various online demands. She stressed that it isn’t intentional, it is merely something that happens due to the constant growth of the digital world.
Hawkins discussed the return on the investment for various companies. She explained that DAM can help with reuse of content, and in addition, they can share their content with other brands, so they do not need to recreate content that can be reused and shared. In other words, the DAM system pays for itself when a client looks at their content in this way.
Torres asked Hawkins about the introduction of artificial intelligence (AI) and how that can change the scope of work and DAM. Hawkins said that AI can help sharpen the metadata on the back end of content creation. “There’s definitely opportunities and if it’s focused properly it can be great,” she said when sharing that there is still a lot to learn and the evolution of AI will be interesting for DAM and content creators. However, as AI is implemented and it learns more, it can become a very efficient and useful tool for companies. Hawkins is still unsure how AI can help with the quality of content, but she is happy with its use on a smaller scale and she has hope that it will continue to get better.
To learn more about Lindsey Hawkins, visit https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindseyhawkins/.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of mission matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to mission matters. com and click on be our guest to apply. All right. So today is a special episode. We’re bringing on Lindsay Hawkins onto the show. She’s founder and CEO over at blue trail digital. Lindsay, welcome to the show. Oh, thank you. Thanks. Happy to be here. All right. So these are some of my favorite interviews. When I hear that the launch box is working with another company, they have another leader here when, when Bill said to me, someone over, I get excited cause they’re always great interviews. So no pressure there, but it’s good to have you. Yeah. No pressure following Bill. No pressure. All right. Well Lindsay, as you’re aware, we’ll start this episode the way that we start them all with what we like to call our mission matters minute. So, Lindsay, at Mission Matters, our mission is to amplify stories for entrepreneurs, executives, and experts. That’s our mission. Lindsay, what mission matters to you? The mission that matters to me and Blue Trail Digital Initiative is to enable a happy and successful working experience when it comes to creative content operations. You know, it’s already hard to manage content, so we just, we want to actually enable these large organizations with lots of brands to get it right. It’s great. Love bringing mission based entrepreneurs on the line to show, you know, why they do what they do, how they do it and what we can all learn from that. So we all grow together. So I guess just getting us kicked off. Like, like where this idea for blue trail digital come about. I mean, I understand you’re a designer and artists, like, like how do all this, how this all come about? Yeah. So my entire career has been dedicated to the arts and design and education of arts and design. And got into consulting and helping with visual communications and written communications, and even got into some change management. And I was at an enterprise and was on a project explaining damn. And I was like, what’s damn. And this is over a decade. You were upset or no, I had to do that joke at least once. Come on. Yeah. It’s like they kept cussing and the client kept cussing and I was like, why are you so wound up in this meeting? And he laughed at me so hard. He’s like, it means visual asset management. And when I understood the operation behind that, I, I just was hooked of like, wait, wait, wait, wait. So we can actually help designers and marketers get their job done faster. And I, I just, I’ve been in it ever since then really passionate about it. And have an empathetic view as a actual designer. Yeah. For those that aren’t familiar with DAM and exactly kind of what it entails, maybe just let’s start pretty basic, like give an overview of even what that means. So DAM means digital asset management. And what that means is it’s both a noun and a verb. So as a noun, it is an actual technology solution where you can store your files and you can say, yes, you have permissions to use this or no, you don’t. But as a verb, it’s the process of how do you get those files in there? What is the data behind there? So you can actually search and find your stuff. Then how do you distribute from there and get it to the channels like Amazon or Google or a retail store, for example, or even a print like a printer. So it’s the experience of moving our creative assets. Digital space to get it where it needs to go. And I feel like as as, as time has gone on, whether you’re a small company at our large company, middle market, whatever, like the quantity of digital, like once, if we go way back when, like maybe like your asset, your digital asset management system, it probably wasn’t that it was just an asset management system was a file cabinet. Maybe you had a couple of brochures, like, let’s go way back. You maybe had a couple of brochures. And then, you know, it grew from there, right? It grew from there. And then maybe you’re, you’re cleaning it out. Like just to think about the physical side of it was, Oh, those are, those brochures are old, we’re getting rid of them again, we’re going way back. Right. At one point sitting in an agency, there’s a, there’s a back room in your agency, and if anyone from agencies listening, you’d be laughing at this. That you would walk in and it would be from floor to ceiling files. Of of client work. And in there you’d have like a CD or a zip disk or a floppy disk, and then you’d have the actual printouts of the mockup and everything from there. So yeah, that’s. So take that. Yeah. I want to only take it one step further. We’re going to get into AI and all that later, but let’s just get in. Let’s let’s do the evolution a little slowly. Cause I want people to wrap their head around this one. So, so we go from that to now, you know, the digital revolution, right? Everything’s online. So now you have the combination. Like, so now what, what, what, what challenges does that pose? Oh, so the biggest challenge is keeping up with the demand of content. So there’s more channels. I feel like every week there’s some new social channel or retailer, digital retail experience. E com has boomed, especially since COVID hit. So now we need more content because we have more channels. And some of these channels are so new, for example, e comm, well, for some marketers or designers, they aren’t accustomed to what are the actual expectations of how big an image is on Amazon. Sorry, Amazon, I’ll just be a great example. So getting that right can be intimidating if you’ve never done that before. So that’s one of the biggest challenges is just how do you keep up with all the different expectations and all the different specs that you have? Across these channels when you’re building a really large campaign. And so numbers, so once it would have went from maybe at one point, what for a campaign to what, like, I mean, throw it out there. I know that’s a broad question, but I want to wrap my head around this. So I’ll say this. I don’t have like the exact number of that question. Yeah. Yeah. No, of course. And it could be any campaign. So it could vary. I mean, like use that picture example, just build on that one. So you might’ve put that picture in five places originally, and there was only a couple of areas and a couple of formats. Now that could be, you know, X. So previously, before You know, at the beginning of the digital revolution, you would worry about TV spot, you’d worry about print, you’d worry about billboard and all the images that go with that. Now you have to worry about multiple channels that are media, which we don’t even call it TV anymore. Right. We see the internet, we say YouTube. And then you have to look at all of the actual web content that’s going to. So the volume of these brands, and we tend to work with like a house of brands and I’ll explain It can be hundreds of thousands. And so when you say that, that’s why I’m like, no, and I wanted, I wanted to say that on purpose. And the reason I say that too, is because I feel like, and I’ll pick on myself. I’ll pick on me. I we’re not the hugest media company. We’re at CNBC, but you know, we’re scrapping. We get, we have, we have, we put out a lot of content, but that being said sometimes I’ll be talking with our designers, the back office, and I’m already out of touch with how much we’re doing. Because, and we’re not even, you know, we’re not CNBC, but I’m out of touch on how many formats you need for a picture or something else when I’m doing a photo shoot or something else, like I’m already out of touch on it. And I’m like, wow, wait a minute. What channel are we on? Like somebody the other day even asked about social media and otherwise. And I was like, I don’t, I don’t know where that’s going. Like that’s going to be in this, this, and this, and that’s why it needs to be done. And so my mind was blown. So I, I have a feeling there’s a little bit of disconnect at times in the C suite for like these, you know, large corporations and what that entails. To go to go to hundreds of thousands of pieces of content, you know, event and possibly on a campaign. Absolutely. There is a bit, there is a really genuine big disconnect. And I don’t think it’s intentional. No, it’s not. No, it happens. And, but the big thing that we really emphasize when we are talking to a C suite or an executive, who’s maybe a little disconnected, is the return on investment on average, it can be about 30%. Yeah, so you, if you actually are efficient, the digital asset management program, it could even, I dare say, pay for itself because you get a return on reusing content, having reference points. Use an example of that. Like give us when you say that, like, I hear the number, but it doesn’t mean anything to me. So like, like give an example of maybe inefficiency and how it could be done efficient, more efficiently. Just, it could be made up. It could be a real client, whatever you like, like that, that could lead to saving. So we can kind of get this clear in our head. Sure. So I’ll give a real example without naming names here. Working at a large enterprise. We wanted to prove that digital asset management was going to be worth it and would pay for itself. Well, how do we do that? It was kind of like, we just stuck our hand in a hat and pulled, just pulled one campaign. I like that. You’re feeling like we’re feeling lucky. Come on, we’re feeling brazen. Like we, we know, we know we can prove this. We pulled one campaign and then we pulled one campaign. Video. Okay. And it was for a TV commercial. And then we, we studied that one video. Well, we all agreed that the blue sky over Atlanta was something that could be recycled into other, not only other pieces for this, this particular brand, but actually they could share it with other departments and brands. So we wanted to prove it. So we took some time and we went and looked at all the other media TV ads that had big blue sky images. And we found. I think 40 different reasons you could have recycled this one clip of the skyline of Atlanta and we estimated the company could have saved. It was eventually we got to over a million and just not built. So instead, what happens is those 40 different clips we found. Those are 40 different projects that got remade over. Wow. That’s how inefficient. These, these big house of brands can be and then just to elaborate to make sure I’m understanding that correctly so that they would, you know, you’re they’re going to hire a crew. They got to get all the production staff. They get all that done. They’re going out there. They’re shooting one particular segment. They’re not thinking about the B roll or all the other stuff. Stuff that they already paid for, right? So they paid for this. They already have that. They own those assets and now where those go or whatever their management system is for it. So now that project’s done. Now, when they go to another project, it’s like, all right, time to start over. Nobody’s looking at, Oh, we already got that. Exactly. It’s that simple. So now you start over again, you do the exact same thing. And you’re like, I mean, that’s chaos, right? Like that’s it’s complete chaos and it’s unnecessary chaos you know, agencies that are, they can still do great and be a great partner to their clients and still recycle content. So maybe save some money. And from then on those savings, I mean, obviously a company can do whatever they want with it, but it just gives more opportunity if they keep it in that budget, if they want to, to create more things, better things, get more creative, experiment, like there’s just so much more they can do with that, right? Absolutely. And it’s not just about money. It’s also about brand integrity, being consistent being consistent matters for your consumer experience. And that’s, we do know that we can have an impact on that as well. So let’s say that we’re going, we’re going down that continuum. We started in the in the back room with all the things. And then we went to digitization. Now, now we have the gasoline on the fire known as AI. We didn’t already have so much to deal with. Now, what do we have to deal with? And we bring AI into the picture. Yeah, I had a great conversation last week in Austin. Actually, we had an event and have some wonderful people in marketing and content there. And we start talking about AI. And I love this one point. We all agreed on is right now. AI as a solution is being forced a lot into companies initiatives and to even content management initiatives. And it’s being forced because it’s there and it’s cool and it’s a new toy. What really does work and it can work where AI can be wonderful if it’s focused. So if we take that as a tool and we just focus on, can it help us sharpen the metadata that goes behind a piece of content on a digital file? So we can find it faster. Can it be leveraged for some type of visual search engine solution? So users can find things. Consistent and faster. AI is going to be very helpful in the industry and it already is, by the way, it’s been around for a while. Just, it hasn’t been so popular to talk about, but there’s definitely opportunities if it’s focused correctly, it can be great. If it’s not focused right now, it’s still like a toddler with markers that you’re like, ah, that’s cool that you can use markers, but that wasn’t what we were looking for. So when it comes to workflows, things like that, like what you’re talking about, can you give an example of maybe how like AI can help with a workflow or cut down time or inefficiency? So in particular, you can actually do what’s called a robot learning and you can help the, an AI program actually learn what you as a team are looking for on a particular brand. So if it starts to always see that yellow goes with that package of candy, It can say, Oh, okay. When I see that yellow, it most likely is this candy and it can start to sort that way. You can even program it to do searches by color. Like let’s say, you know, there’s a particular purple. That you use on your brand, you can just type in purple and everything that’s purple, that looks like that brand’s purple will come up and that’s all robotic learning leveraging AI to make some short, you know, make some shortcuts and processes in particular, search and data placement, we’re noticing that is it’s genuinely helpful in those two areas right now. How do you see it affecting like quality of creative? Like, how do you see it playing in that role? Cause this is to me, as I’m having these discussions, which are super fun. I love having creative people on here. I, cause I have both sides. I have both sides of the stories pretty often, which I have the technologists on here that are all technologists. I have the creatives that are all creative that I have some people that are kind of in the middle. So what’s your stance on like quality of the creative? I’m not really excited about the quality of creative. I’m excited about the process support. They get it right now. It’s getting a thumbs up. Okay. That’s great. The creative process. I’m not feeling it yet, but I’m, I have hope. I think it’s going to get better and better. The reason it’s, it’s still concerning is that it doesn’t, you have to teach it. It doesn’t know the rules of the road. So you really have to teach it. And as designers and creators you’re giving control over something that. It’s not the human experience. So how do you leverage it? I’m not quite sure yet and be successful. I have not. I’m sure someone’s gonna try proving it wrong after saying this, but I have not been incredibly impressed. With the creative process of it just yet. I’ve even tried to leverage it so I could test it out. And I yes, I’ve leveraged it as a, like maybe a, a mock up of an idea. So to give it credit, that can be helpful if you’re trying to think through an idea and you want to show it digitally to a client, I’ve used that. And now, ironically, I will be. Billing it from scratch because it just didn’t really take, but it did help me get the idea across. So there, there’s my credit card. I just, and it’s moving so fast. So if you’re watching this in the future, hey, we’re doing this April, 2024. We’re doing this in April and then, you know, give it a, give it a. Five months. And there’s going to be like, Oh, by the way, did you see this? So for now, by the way, I actually agree with your, your sentiment right now. But what, what it has done is it’s given the novices. And I don’t mean novice in a bad way. I just mean just who haven’t spent their life. Creating creative and work with the clients it’s given them. I feel like it’s broad in the market for people to even have that kind of concept of what it is to be creative and to, to create ideas in the test things. And even if it’s just at the, Oh, this is pretty cool stage. At least it’s bringing those people into the conversation. That would have never been in the conversation before. We’re kind of on the fringe. So I feel that just the participation alone is going to elevate, like through that process, like creative across the board from humans to, I feel like, cause it’s going to give different ideas. Like what you just said, like it didn’t get you there, but did it spark something? Maybe not on that campaign, but maybe it does in the future. And the spark is what I’m giving credit to. I will say this, you know, my design education and also what I’ve taught my students in the past. No matter what changes, cause it will change design, the tools constantly moving, always moving. The theories of design are always the same. Those principles that you learned at the foundation don’t change. And I think that’s where even the novice, sorry, sorry, new designers. You need to get classically trained to really always have that foundation. Cause something else is going to come out after we get over the AI. Always something new on the horizon for the design industry. I’ll never change. So I’m trying to put myself in your shoes right now. Like you’re going, you’re going into an organization, you’re working with them. Either they have some version of a, of a dam system or not. Every different and everything in between. Like you’re working with their leadership. I feel like any new thing that you’re introducing an organization, whether it’s this or something else, like new concepts, right. Especially getting into the design team and you have to kind of, you know, To implement this like you’re you’re involved during this isn’t something that’s a plug and play so in the beginning so that being said like what is it like? Like how do you how do you communicate? Like and how do you kind of teach leadership in terms of how to communicate these things in these organizations? Because I know you’re big and you’re working with big teams Yeah, so the conversation usually tends to start within an it Atmosphere or maybe a creative operations marketing technology team that tends to be where You We’ll start a conversation or someone from one of those teams will reach out to us. And it’s never because things are okay. If something’s wrong, it either needs, there’s something in digital asset management space that needs to be corrected or activated. By the way, that’s fine. That’s exactly what we’re here for to help with those processes. Right. And it usually is something like this. They tried something on their own without a subject matter expert because they thought they could do it on their own. Been there, done that. I’ll pick myself. Been there, done that. I thought I could do it. Go ahead. And then a lot of times they end up making it worse. For example, a common thing we see is, and by the way, there’s so many amazing. Content operation. Absolutely. Absolutely. Great vendors out there. Yeah, absolutely. But it doesn’t mean every single one of those vendors is right for you and your company and your team. So a lot of times a common thing we’ll walk in is you just you pick the wrong tech stack. For what you’re trying to do. So that’s one thing that always stands out of like, I might not be the best tool, you know, like a flathead screwdriver versus like, I don’t know, you want to get the right one. And then the other thing, and very commonly we’ll find is they don’t have the right brains on the team. For example, there was one situation walked in, the company had hundreds of thousands of pieces of content across the world. And one librarian, wow. And they expected this one librarian to just figure it out. And I, how this person had not already quit. That’s a very big stress point. Yeah, they were very, very stressed. But we brought relief and the team now I think it’s still maybe. About 15 to 20 people, which was the accurate size for the volume of things happening. So a lot of times I just don’t realize how many hands it takes to get this done correctly and that it does take people and hands to get in there and actually get the content ready for, The system and make sure it’s in the right place. So those are the two things that always stand out to me when I walk in. And then the third is sometimes a flat out. We’ll be told like, I’m really scared. I’m going to be fired because of making decisions. So there’s fear, there’s genuine fear, like, cause the dysfunction is very real and it’s very noticeable. So just smoothing out even maybe some politics and. Some concerns of, all right, let’s, let’s investigate and let’s, let’s activate and let’s get stable so we can just be happy at work and do our jobs, find our stuff. So talk to me a little bit about the plan for for the business. So blue trail digital and the rollout, like give me a little bit more. I know. And also the working with the launch box, I love bringing one of their companies on, like give us a little bit of the business side of things and what you’re working on. So what we’re working on right now is. Is really marketing our services that we’re here and we’re ready to help. We’re focused on larger enterprises and what we call a house of brands. So meaning that, you know, companies that acquire lots and lots of different brands that’s, that’s our thing. Like we’re really, the bigger the mess, the happier we are. We love a big mess. We’ll, we’ll come and help you out. Amazing. So we’re going through and we’re on a road show. I just got back from Austin, Texas and from Dallas, Texas road show to meet the different communities of people who are experts in content management. And actually it looks like next month we might be in Orlando, Florida at a conference. So not booked yet, but that’s, so we’re, we’re going on tour and we’re, I want to meet people in person. I want to hear their stories of how they get through managing their content. Really just Not only building a business, but also want to help build an educated community around operations. Just, it’s fun to do anyway. So what does that word community mean for you? Like how, how does that, how does that play into this? Cause I I’m a B I’m a big fan of it. I mean, for admission matters when we’re, that’s what we lead with. Like, that’s how we’ve been able to attract amazing partners. I’m just curious on your end for your vision on that as a leader. Yeah. My vision on that is to open up the silos. I think there’s. Experts who talk just in DAM, or they talk, they talk just in the creative process, or they talk just in e com, but they’re not all talking to each other. So what I’m trying to do is when I fill up a room of people, I want people who are on the user experience team. I want the CMO of a company. I want, I want to even maybe bring someone random, like someone who understands supply chain, how could we learn from them to do our operations better? So I really want to build a community so we can broaden our view of, we could do this better. Our world has changed. We have not caught up to the operational excellence it needs in the digital revolution. So I’d like to help us get there a little faster and just talk to each other. We’re not talking to each other yet. So that’s exciting to me because that, that leads to innovation too. Yeah. That’s how real innovation happens. It doesn’t happen in a silo. It doesn’t happen with just a one person. Like you need these types of environments in order to, in order to make things happen. Yes, absolutely. And it’s a lot easier to do when you have drinks and feeding food and let’s talk shop. Ah, we’re human. Yes. That’s the, that’s the human in us. Technologists are creative aside. So this is amazing, Lindsay I’m excited to have you on the show. Excited to get further into, and, and further my knowledge in dam as well. And, and, and to bring you in front of our audience I just have asked, I mean, what’s next, what’s next for you. What’s next for the company. Yeah. So what’s next is we, we have a webinar series that’s also going. So please join us next. We’ll see the next one’s April 25th at noon. Eastern. We’re going to talk about debunking operations. And how to bring the right blend of people into a team. That’s going to be really fun. I have a special guest I’ve worked with several times. She’s amazing at this. Her name’s Deanne Stock. So I’m excited to show off her amazing talent and knowledge and wisdom. And then, like I said, we’re, we’re on our little tour. So we’re probably going to be in Chicago this summer and in the fall, we’ll, it looks like we’ll be out in New York to say hi to everybody and talking to our potential future clients. And I’m really excited to see how we can help people. Enjoy their jobs and content. So for that webinar, you got, you got a little teaser for me. What’s one, cause you’ve worked with the person before, but I’m kind of putting you on the spot here. Like, what’s one of the takeaways that you feel somebody’s going to get? Cause I want people to check it out. So I, okay. I’m going to brag about her. I do that bragging. That’s what I want to hear. Don’t be scared. Lindsay. I worked with her and then I worked for her again, but she was my client. And I noticed something and it took, I can’t believe how long it took me to realize it, but she always has this just powerhouse team. Wow. I realized it’s her, she has something about how she leads a team that just makes them elevated. So I asked her about it over drinks one time, like, what are you doing? Like, what have you done to me? What have you done to them? Like, what, what do you do? What are you feeding them? Go ahead. Yeah, exactly. But she went into this whole philosophy. I’ve never heard her speak of creating the right environment seeing people’s talent, and also she has an ability to see who’s going to get along really well and who, who’s Who isn’t there’s two sides of that. I’m I’m in, he’s pretty accurate not a hundred percent accurate, but she’s, I’d say she’s like 91 percent accurate. But she’s going to discuss it with us and really tell her trade secrets of how she does this. And I sincerely think she’s one of the best. At it i’ve ever watched when it comes to leading a team and building a team So i’ve learned a lot from her and and I can’t wait to share it with the everyone else who wants to listen Amazing. So lindsey if somebody’s watching this or listening to this and they want to learn more about blue trail digital or the webinar Any or just follow the journey. I mean, how do they do that? Yeah. So you can look me up, Lindsay Hawkins, you can find me on LinkedIn and you can also find our group blue trail digital on LinkedIn, or just go to blue trail digital. com and our websites there. And you can reach out to us. Love to chat. Amazing. And for everybody watching and listening in, we’ll we’ll put all that information in the show notes. So you can just click on the links and head right on over. And if this is your first time with us and you haven’t hit that subscribe button yet, this is your very personal invitation hit that subscribe button or that. Follow button. This is a daily show each and every day. We’re bringing you new entrepreneurs, new experts, new leaders in their fields, and we don’t want you to miss a thing. Lindsay, this has been so much fun. Thank you so much again for coming on. I appreciate it. Thank you, Adam
