As a marketer, it’s difficult not to scrutinize marketing content from other companies. You might find yourself asking questions like: How does this brand present themselves? Where do they target their customers? And the golden question: is their marketing compelling?
We all wear different lenses though, especially when you think about what type of industry you are in and what type of customer you are targeting.
For oil, gas, and energy companies, the marketing lense is clouded by industry volatility and a time of rapid transition to renewables and clean energy. In addition to the change caused by digital transformation, these companies are facing changes in the market that affect the bottom line and the world.
Customers are paying close attention.
Why do oil, gas, and energy companies need digital asset management?
For marketers working in this sector, the focus is on increasing productivity and optimizing operational efficiency. Digital asset management is a fundamental marketing technology that helps these marketers realize those goals.
PwC writes that it’s time for oil and gas to “double down on digitization” efforts, which can mean anything and everything from leveraging new processes and practices all the way to the “utilization of drones to inspect offshore platforms.”
But before you bust out the drones, marketers need to lay the groundwork for a truly-scalable digital infrastructure. Solid foundational digital infrastructure to support marketing and brand operations (like DAM) helps companies safeguard brand and increase operational efficiency.
DAM for these companies isn’t always just about safeguarding brand and reducing costs by increasing operational efficiency. For some companies, it’s also about preserving rich corporate memory and heritage in a single source of truth. Consider that some of these companies are well over a century old and contain vast troves of heritage content in need of a central source of truth.
In addition to preserving heritage, oil, gas, and energy companies also utilize DAM to:
- Centralize content for globally dispersed teams in a multi-media content library
- Increase operational efficiency by streamlining content creation with Studio
- Protect brand reputation and increase branding consistency with Brand Guidelines
Marketing and branding problems that oil, gas, and energy brands face
The major players in the oil, gas, and energy industries are large, global organizations with many subsidiaries. Ensuring brand consistency across departments, offices, and lines of business is no easy feat. These companies also face difficulties when it comes to streamlining the process of content creation including reviewing progress for digital asset creation, oversight, and visibility into content creation workflows.
Example: Major oil, gas, and energy company runs a multi-million dollar campaign and rebrand to regain trust after a major disaster. Brand reputation is really not something you can entirely control, but you can take proactive steps to communicate externally in a consistent way.
How do oil, gas, and energy organizations use digital asset management?
Let’s dig into how these companies utilize DAM. Key uses for oil, gas, and energy companies when it comes to digital asset management include:
- Asset library for centralizing content
- Brand guidelines for communicating how to use brand assets globally
- Creative workflow for streamlining approvals and content creation processes
- Brand portal homepage for communications
- Brand templates for quickly creating onbrand content
- Single sign-on through applications like Okta for enabling easy access to the DAM and assigning user profiles in an automated fashion
- Archival instance/brand portal for historical assets (Some companies have a separate instance for historical or archival materials for corporate memory.)
Who uses the DAM at oil, gas, and energy companies?
DAM users include:
- Agencies
- Photographers and videographers
- Brand managers
- PR and media
- Marketing managers
- Suppliers
What types of metadata, filters, and taxonomies do oil and gas companies use?
Taxonomies may vary depending on the scope and type of DAM that companies utilize. (i.e. marketing assets, brand assets, product assets, and historical assets.)
Common similarities seen in taxonomies across these types of DAMs include fields like:
- Brands (For multi-brand companies)
- Products (For companies with multiple products)
- Business function (To illustrate the purpose of the asset)
- Market (To provide information which market the asset was created for)
- Partner (To provide information about what partners the asset pertains to)
- Lines of business (To show what line of business or department an asset pertains to)
- Events (To highlight an event that an asset is associated with or created for)
- Channel (To show what channels the asset pertains to)
- Asset Types (To quickly identify the asset by type or format)
- Places/Location (To show the location an asset pertains to)
- Campaigns (To highlight any campaign the asset may be a part of)
The most common DAM integrations for oil and gas companies:
- PIM: To enrich product assets with specific product attributes
- Drupal CMS: To easily publish assets from the DAM to the CMS
- Sharepoint: Custom-built per use case
What does it all boil down to?
Companies are under pressure to mitigate risk where they can and create a solid digital foundation by organizing the digital chaos for future innovations.
While there certainly is a fair amount of overlap in how oil, gas, and energy companies utilize digital asset management compared to other industries, the risk and rewards feel somewhat elevated due to the state of the industry. Customers are paying close attention to the marketing and brand content coming out from these organizations and that’s why these organizations must put branding and marketing consistency at the forefront of their marketing strategy.
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