Introduction
Hi, I’m Cory Schmidt from Canto and this is our Tech Talk.
I’m the head of marketing at Canto, a cloud-based Digital Asset Management system that helps teams easily organize, find and share images, videos and other creative assets.
With all the new creative tools at our fingertips, it’s never been simpler to make and share digital media. But with this flood of content comes an increasingly pressing problem: how do we store, manage, and share all this new material?
Creative teams often face a tangled patchwork of hard drives, servers, and online sharing services. Files get lost, assets become outdated, and teams spend their time chasing down files when they could be making work they’re passionate about.
And with the changing nature of the workplace today, it’s more important than ever that teams can access the files they need and collaborate seamlessly from wherever they’re located.
Market Problem
As the head of marketing, I lead a global team of content creators dedicated to helping creative teams work more efficiently and more effectively with their digital media.
Canto has the privilege to work with an array of customers from around the world, from ecommerce platforms and retailers, to consumer brands and manufacturers as well as NGOs and academic institutions.
And we’re helping those organizations face the challenges all marketing teams face today.
Data showing market problem
Did you know that 80% of marketers say it’s hard to find the right files when they need them?
Every year more than 10,000 files go missing, and 7,000 files are left improperly organised. And that’s just an average for a single, mid-sized marketing firm.
According to a new study by Sapio, an independent market research institute, one in five marketing teams spends close to $100,000 per year on content production.
And that content production makes up a full 32 percent of their marketing budget.
One in five companies also admitted the content they produce is only used once or twice.
That’s a lot of time, money and effort invested in creating content with such a short shelf life.
Introduce your technology
Canto is a Digital Asset Management system that makes teams’ investment in content more efficient and effective.
All of a team’s images, videos and other files are in one place, accessible from anywhere, so they know exactly where to start looking.
The advanced organization and search features means they can effortlessly track down exactly what they need.
Collaboration is a breeze with notes, and a version history makes sure everyone’s on the same page with the latest version.
Files can be delivered in many ways, from a basic share link to a seamless integration with any preferred sharing platform.
Most importantly, with Canto, teams are no longer spending their time chasing down files, so they can get back to making content they’re passionate about. Digital assets can be repurposed so they can be used more efficiently instead of getting lost somewhere.
And finally, with an intuitive, user-friendly interface, any member of your team can get up and running in no time.
History of tech/company
Digital Asset Management systems have been around since the first digital images found their way to a hard drive. If you’ve ever imported photos from a digital camera, you know how challenging managing images can become. Imagine this, day in and day out, at the scale of a large organization.
At one time, a DAM system would have been installed on a local computer or maybe a server somewhere in the office.
DAMs have historically been elaborate and complex systems, requiring specialised training or even a dedicated IT or DAM professional to manage them.
But with the adoption of cloud technology, Canto has rewritten how a DAM functions. Canto’s Software-as-a-Serve model made enterprise-grade features available to teams of any size. Canto’s intuitive, user-friendly experience means there’s minimal setup and training, and no need for a dedicated specialist to manage everything.
Who do you best serve
Canto serves any organization with users who need easy access to a central database of up-to-date brand assets like images, logos and other brand files. These organizations may be based in one location, but often have teams working remotely, or even distributed around the world.
Often these organizations are looking for a way not only to organize assets internally, but also share media with outside collaborators and clients in a simple, professional way.
How do you solve the market problem
54% of employees surveyed by Sapio said that searching for digital content was a frustrating waste of their work time.
While a DAM system is great for keeping files organized and easily accessible, Canto solves an even more important market problem: it frees up your team’s time and lets them get back to the work they care about.
Instead of sending off a flurry of emails to see which colleague has what file, or digging through old hard drives, or hunting down some shared folder, your team can already have the assets they need at hand, ready to do the kind of work they’re passionate about, spending time on the important projects that make a real difference to the bottom line.
What is your USP?
So let’s quickly talk about the tools and features Canto offers that makes it best-in-class software.
Security with AWS
Version history
Portals
Branded experience
These combine into the real USP: Canto’s unique capacity to unlock your team and unleash your brand.
Demo of your tech (DEMO)
1. This is the Canto interface.
2. Everything is very visual and easily accessible.
3. The default thumbnail view gives you a great overview of your library. You can switch to list view to see more details, or to masonry grid view and increase the thumbnail size to get a better view of your files.
4. The powerful search feature helps you manage even the largest library.
5. Searching for a term gives you a list of related results. Canto searches within filenames, the text of documents, or even within pictures using Smart Tags, powered by AI.
6. When you want to narrow down the search you can use the filter that makes finding the right file as easy as online shopping.
7. With filters you can quickly narrow down a long list of results to exactly the right image.
8. Click on the image to get a preview, and see important details that help you identify the right image.
Overview of key functions
1. Canto is also a great way to professionally share your assets.
2. Just click the share button directly in the asset view.
3. Choose from a variety of services like social media, email or a direct link.
4. Canto gives you full control over who can receive your content, and what they are able to do with it.
5. Brand portals make it easy to offer public or protected access to your media files in an elegant, customizable branded environment.
6. And this is just a quick overview of some of the features Canto has to offer.
Examples of customers helped
When it comes to unlocking creative teams, we’re proud of how Canto has helped premium chocolate-maker Godiva transform their workflow. Godiva customers expect a brand experience that begins before even the first bite. It starts with package design.
With so many offices distributed around the globe, Godiva’s head office in New York was looking for a way to consolidate their package design, and get everyone on the same page.
What was before and after (the impact)
Godiva was looking for a more unified international identity. Working with Canto, which put all the right assets in the right place, accessible to their teams in every location, made that vision possible. Buying a box of Godiva chocolate became the same consistently beautiful experience all around the world.
Quirks or limitations of the tech
As with every martech tool it’s good to keep in mind that DAM is not a magic wand you can wave to suddenly make everything better.
Not every DAM system is suitable for all use cases but all real DAM experts will help you find out what’s the best option for your organization if you are looking into making an investment.
The differences don’t only concern user interface and features but also integrations with other systems such as CMS or ECommerce platforms. Other things to consider is having an API that enables you to integrate virtually any solution.
A very good point is also the availability of desktop integrations for users. With integrations for Adobe creative tools or Microsoft Office apps users will get a more comprehensive experience when the DAM is fully integrated in all of their everyday tools.
If you are not sure you should definitely ask your DAM vendor before you consider making a purchase.
Where does your tech sit in the MarTech stack
Canto is meant to be the central media library at the heart of your other systems.
I have already mentioned Adobe products and the Microsoft office suite. Those are really important for most marketing teams on an everyday basis.
Then there are content management systems. Canto offers integrations with all widely used tools such as WordPress, Typo3 and if you need to you can integrate your custom solution through the API.
Email marketing is still an essential tool, a lot of customers use our Mailchimp integration to send good looking and relevant content through mail.
Team solutions like Slack have become essential for a lot of companies and of course you can integrate Canto with Slack.
Video is becoming more and more important, that is why Canto supports a lot of different services here. And of course Social Media.
A DAM should always connect to everywhere you need your content to go and we develop Canto to make sure you have your digital assets always ready to go.
Pricing, onboarding, timeline of adoption
I encourage you to try Canto for yourself. Sign up for a free 14-day trial and start exploring what’s possible.
Our Canto DAM experts can field any questions you may have around DAM, or what configuration makes sense for your specific team.
We’ll determine pricing based on your requirements, and get you on-boarded as soon as possible.
Canto can be delivered almost instantly and we’ll help you migrate data from your local hard drives, cloud shares or other locations.
With the help of our customer success team you can expect to be going live within a few days.
Please reach out to me on LinkedIn or write me an email at [email protected] if there’s anything further I can help you with. Thank you.