How Bynder Creates Better Digital Experiences for Marketers

Intro: Welcome to the In The Clouds Podcast. In The Clouds is a marketing cloud podcast powered by Lev, the most influential marketing- focused Salesforce consultancy in the world. Lev is customer experience obsessed, and podcast hosts Bobby Tichy and Cole Fisher have partnered with some of the world's most well- known brands to help them master meaningful, one- on- one connections with their customers. In this podcast, they'll combine strategy and deep technical expertise to share best practices, how- tos, and real life use cases and solutions for the world's top brands using Salesforce products today.

Bobby Tichy: Welcome to In The Clouds podcast. This is Bobby Tichy along with Cole Fisher. Thanks for joining us. We have a really exciting guest with us today. Bred Kofoed, SVP of Channel and Alliances from Bynder. Brad, if you wouldn't mind, just do a brief introduction of yourself and then we'll get right into it.

Brad Kofoed: Well, Bobby, Cole, first, I want to thank you for inviting me to participate in the podcast. I'm really thrilled to be here and to work with Lev as a partner and looking forward to the conversation. My background, I've been with the company Bynder for almost seven years. Actually, I was with a company previously called Webdam that was acquired by Bynder. Post- acquisition, I took responsibility for Global Channel and Alliances for Bynder. So I've been in the digital asset management space for about seven years. I've been in the martech space for probably longer than I should admit, but close to probably 15, 20 years. And I was very early stage SaaS leader back in the day, when SaaS was brand new. In fact, there were only a couple of companies, including this early stage company called Salesforce, that was blazing the trail in SaaS at the time when I started in this space, so been doing it for awhile. This is the third company that I've built the global channel alliance program for. Really excited about the partnership. Partnership with Lev Digital and with Salesforce.

Bobby Tichy: Awesome. Where are you based?

Brad Kofoed: So our company is headquartered in Amsterdam. We have offices around the world. The office that I'm based out of is in San Mateo, California. Of course post- COVID, people are pretty much based wherever their laptop sits. So at the moment, I'm in Colorado. But we are all remote at this time. We will start going back to offices though here in the near future. In fact, I'm flying to Amsterdam on Monday, which they have just opened up now to American visitors again. So it's going to be pretty interesting to get on a plane and be flying overseas and entering a country that's been shut down for awhile.

Bobby Tichy: You've probably this joke before, but I'll say it again. Can you do a 30- second overview of what a DAM is for those people, including myself, who don't know a DAM other than the Hoover Dam?

Brad Kofoed: So, I have heard that joke once or twice. And I'm very happy to give you that overview. So DAM is an acronym for digital asset management, and what it's referring to is a platform where companies store and manage and distribute, from which they distribute their digital content. That is their digital assets, their videos, their PowerPoints, their images, whether those will be used for salespeople, for dealers and partners, for distribution into social media websites, wherever those assets will be used, they are actually stored, meta- tagged, and managed in the DAM as that central source of truth of all the digital content that's used within a marketing organization.

Cole Fisher: Thanks, Brad. That's helpful. So can you elaborate a little bit on the differentiation between a DAM and a CMS, and then how they actually work together as well?

Brad Kofoed: Yeah, that's a great question, because it comes up all the time. There is a bit of I think a misperception as to what a CMS is principally used for, as it relates to management of digital assets. DAM tends to be the place where the assets as I said, are stored and managed and organized, and you can have permission controls so that different user groups can have different levels of access, or access to some assets and not to others. So that can really be the repository for all that content across the entire enterprise, so that you can give access to the people to essentially any assets that they should have access to. The CMS is different. The CMS is typically the distribution point, the website, where those assets are pushed out for public view and historically, some people, some companies have used their CMS as that repository for their digital assets. The problem is that typically, only the people that have access to the CMS have access to those assets. And so they end up having to use second or third systems just to get those assets to people that actually need to have access to them, because they don't give everybody access to the website, the system that powers their website. So the DAM plus CMS has become a very important alliance or integration, and everybody expects by the way, systems to integrate today. The promise of SaaS has actually arrived, and that is these different systems can be integrated. And so when you look at an organization that is maturing their digital experience, they typically have a DAM integrated with their CMS, so the assets live in the DAM. And then those assets that are to be used in the CMS are then essentially referenced by the CMS through a link. You can have those assets still live in the DAM, see them in the CMS, but you don't have restrictions to who else in the organization can have access to all of the digital content within the DAM, because they can still access that content even if they're not users of the CMS system. And it's really part of this whole third wave that we're seeing, what we're referring to at Bynder, and we like to think of ourselves as leading this third wave of DAM. And that is the DAM is really powering this overarching digital experience that now people have come to expect, especially post- COVID. So, you have the assets pushed out to the CMS, but then as you look at the broader implication of that, those same assets can then be utilized in other systems as well as part of a mature digital experience. Does that make sense?

Bobby Tichy: Yeah, for sure. And I think that just to put it practically, so your DAM is where you might house all of your images, all the different sizes, renderings, all that kind of thing. The CMS then would pull those different assets in, based on for example, the device they might be viewing a website on, for example.

Brad Kofoed: Exactly. You're going to have that. And actually, it's a pretty exciting thing you just alluded to, because within Bynder, we have just launched a new capability called dynamic asset transformation, another acronym, D- A- T, DAT. But dynamic asset transformation enables the viewer to have a very good experience, because as you mentioned, if that asset lives in Bynder DAM and it's being referenced in the CMS, and that consumer goes and hits that image, Bynder's going to recognize if they're looking at it on a cell phone, if they're looking at it on a laptop, and then what Bynder's going to do automatically, and on the fly, it's going to deliver the optimally- sized image for the device type. So that not only improves the user experience because they're going to get the most efficient download speed because of the device not having to adjust the image, but it also takes a lot of burden off the backend, so you're not always delivering the highest resolution image to every device. You're delivering the size that's necessary for the device. So it removes burden on the bandwidth as well.

Cole Fisher: Yeah. It sounds like you crosstalk on content performance. That's really neat.

Brad Kofoed: Yeah, content. Everything is getting faster, and that's part of this digital experience. Everything's getting faster. It has to be personal. And this is the technical side of personalization. We're personalizing the delivery of the asset based on your device.

Bobby Tichy: And you mentioned something earlier around digital experience and how DAM and CMS are powering that digital experience. I think especially on our podcast, what we focus on, Salesforce Marketing Cloud is certainly doing that too. But what other tools are powering this overall digital experience that you guys are seeing?

Brad Kofoed: Well, when we look at the digital experience, you're really looking at how are you getting the content out to the user? And now users are experiencing content in many, many different places. They're viewing images on an e- commerce site. They're viewing images in social media sites. They're viewing content in email campaigns, and the list goes on. So all of these tools are a part of the delivery aspect on the digital experience. That's what the customer experiences is. On the backend, of course you have your DAM, but then you also have other tools such as business intelligence tools and there's a whole slew of capabilities that are there that are being used to optimize that digital experience. But when we think about how it practically works for the customer and what the digital experience means, of course the experience is the customer's experience, or the end user's experience. And when you have a mature environment, you have that content living in one place, but then that's being pushed to these different destination points. Another example is the Salesforce Marketing Cloud. So we have an integration with the Salesforce Marketing Cloud as well. And if you think about what that means, when you have a company that is sending out campaigns, they can now improve how efficient they are at using and accessing brand- approved content by simply reference. Because now, through the integration, Bynder is a content block in the Salesforce Marketing Cloud. From within the Salesforce Marketing Cloud, you can search find crop assets right there in Salesforce Marketing Cloud, and incorporate them into a campaign. And of course, that's so important, because personalization is everything. You have to get the right image in front of the right person at the right time. And so being able to search and select and modify an image right there, it adds tremendous efficiency. And of course, because all of the content lives in the DAM, you know the brand police have the ability to maintain brand integrity. So you know you're using brand- approved content.

Cole Fisher: You mentioned customers using this and integrating with Marketing Cloud right now. Can you give a couple examples of how that's working, or a couple of teams, whether you can mention them by name or not, is irrelevant. But expound upon that a little bit in how they're using that.

Brad Kofoed: Well, I mean, if you think about it, it's not terribly different than what they have always done in that they're accessing content. The difference is if you look at an organization and there are many customers that are doing this, but if you look at an organization that has content that they use for emails, it's probably similar to content or iterations of content that they use for other tools or other places as well. So by having that asset in the DAM, they're not storing the same assets in all these different systems. They're not having to send assets to each other by email to get them into these different systems. And so, again, it just brings that efficiency that increases the efficiency dramatically. Let's say you have a B2B campaign, but you may also have B2C campaigns as well that you want to run. You can store those assets. Those same assets may be repurposed. And by the way, this is another big advantage that this whole digital experience model brings to bear. And that is being able to repurpose and leverage content. After all, the demand for content is enormous right now. And one of the things that creative teams are challenged with is how do they actually make use of content that has already been created? And how do they reuse content? Can they atomize different pieces of content and use it for different things? So they can take a video and they can shorten the video and use it elsewhere, or they can atomize different pieces of content that perhaps they're using in one campaign, but then they can modify it and use it in another, such as let's say, a social campaign. So again, it's just bringing that efficiency to bear. So it's not rocket science, frankly. It's just being able to power that email campaign by accessing that content easily and efficiently.

Bobby Tichy: One thing you mentioned at the beginning that I think all of us have seen the pain points over the years with software as a service is this promise of being able to stitch together different products or different platforms, and really leverage them in a way like you're talking about with Bynder and Salesforce Marketing Cloud. But what are some other examples and some other really good wins that you all have seen with integrations, whether it's to CMS or other technology providers that have helped customers?

Brad Kofoed: Well, it is. It's really interesting what's happened. This has really come to pass in the last... In my experience, the last three, four years, where when I was early stage in DAM, DAM was... I would say we were in the second wave of DAM at that time. And that was people were using DAM as they were the people in the corner, the librarians that were managing the assets. It was fairly horizontal. It wasn't vertically specific, vertically market specific. And we started hearing questions, " Hey, can you integrate DAM with my CMS? Or can you integrate it with this email system?" And it was always an ask, but it was never a requirement. And what has happened over the course of the last... I would say three years, it has become not just a requirement, but now an expectation that these integrations have been thought through. And that they're out of the box, and easy to implement. At the same time, you've seen an abundance, an explosion of these middleware companies that do integrations as a service as well. And so we in our business have seen it. It has become essential to have an answer to the integrations. And again, this is part of that whole digital experience issue, to be able to take the systems whether it's on the content creation side and management side to the content organization and augmentation, to the distribution of the content. And all these systems, whether they're workflow tools or social tools, or CMS tools, or email marketing tools, they have to be able to stitch those together and deliver on that. Again, what was the promise of SaaS when I started in this some 20 years ago, that now, it has come to fruition. And so giving an example, we have a customer of ours that is also a Salesforce customer, Herman Miller. And they were very prominently highlighted in the Connections event recently. And it's a really fascinating use case, because this is a company that has... I think they're amazing. They've taken a scenario where they sell very high- end office furniture. Well, how do you sell high- end office furniture if you can't get people into the warehouse because of COVID? They have done amazing things with creating digital showrooms and so forth. And when you look at their environment, they have Salesforce Marketing Cloud, they have Salesforce Commerce Cloud, they have Adobe CMS, and they have all these different tools. And essentially, they've been able to with Bynder as the repository of all their approved content, they had been able to integrate into these different systems and really been able to create and there's still to improve. And that's what's exciting. They're so innovative over there that there's still room to improve. And so we're seeing more and more of those types of scenarios, where you're just building this true digital experience and leveraging all these super powerful marketing tools.

Cole Fisher: So you've mentioned a little bit about how these marketing tools are evolving over time, some of the integration capabilities and even digital asset transformation. What are the other innovations on the roadmap, or what's the next step for you guys that you see in this space or the opportunity that are upcoming?

Brad Kofoed: Oh, man, it's pretty phenomenal. Well, what I should say, preface at by, is we were moving down this road with creating this third wave already. But then COVID really kick- started or accelerated that whole process, because customers all of a sudden, everybody went digital. Even some older school companies that digital was not a big part of their business have had to go digital over the course of the last 12 months. And so we've seen tremendous pressure, but that's led to also tremendous innovation in that area. Already mentioned one of the things that we're most excited about, and that is this dynamic asset transformation. It's somewhat of a game- changer for us and for DAM. The other things that are coming, improved intelligence. Customers now expect to have content recommended. The same is true when people want to go into the DAM, and they search for something. They want to have other things recommended that they might also want to take advantage of. You're seeing increasing pressure and demand for people to know how assets perform out in the wild. So those are areas that you're going to see innovation in. And I think also with video. There's so much going on with video and we've launched our video brand studio, which includes a feature such as video templates. We're seeing customers get tremendous gain by creating video templates. If you imagine a company creating let's say promotional videos, that they want to push out onto social media or elsewhere, and they do business in 20 languages. Well, historically, being able to recreate that same video for 20 different times is going to be extremely costly, because of all the historical production costs. With our video template solution, not only is there no additional video production involved in creating 20 iterations or creating one iteration, but it also can be done. We had a customer who they pushed out holiday greetings using our video template solution in 13 languages. And it took them a couple of hours to create the additional 12 iterations in the other languages. So, you're going to see more and more with video as well. And that plays really nicely with all of these distribution tools. Again, whether it's going out through email, or out to the CMS, or to the e- commerce site, or wherever. So I think those are some of the things that I see coming, and that are the most exciting. And it's obviously being all pushed by customer demand, what customers want, and what they expect.

Bobby Tichy: Well, Brad, we can't thank you enough for joining the podcast with us today. We really appreciate it. It was really helpful for us to learn a little bit about Bynder and DAM, and the differences between a DAM and a CMS. So really appreciate it. This last portion of the podcast is called Completely Unrelated, where we just talk through something that's completely unrelated. So, Cole, I'll start with you. Favorite summer activity?

Cole Fisher: That's pretty nice. I actually love some of the staples of summer. So I was lucky enough to spend most of my summers on a lake in Southern Indiana, slightly larger than a pond. But I think just boating, being out in the sun, maybe going for a lap skiing. That's it for me. That or the taste of Big Red, which we've covered off on before. That pretty much means it's officially summer for me, just the nostalgia as a kid. You know what I mean? What about you, Brad?

Brad Kofoed: It's interesting. You've piqued a memory for me, because I spent my childhood summers on a lake in Minnesota. And so I have a tremendous affection for summers on the lake. Although I tend to spend or enjoy, I guess, most getting out to the beach, being in California. Although I also like travel. So perhaps my travel will include a beach in South America this summer. That's one of my goals.

Cole Fisher: That's not a shabby setup. Bobby, what about you?

Bobby Tichy: Well, I didn't know this was the bragging part of the podcast. Everybody's talking about their great childhoods on a lake. Boy, I missed out. I'm pretty easy, and any activity including Busch Light, Natty Light, or Hamm's, I'm happy, so.

Brad Kofoed: Hamm's? I haven't had a Hamm's...

Cole Fisher: Bobby's low maintenance.

Bobby Tichy: And if I'm feeling like I want to step up the game a little bit, maybe we want to have a nice evening, I might jump up to a PBR, but for the most part, you keep it across those three. You'll be set.

Cole Fisher: You're one classy fellow, Bobby.

Bobby Tichy: Well, I like to keep the classy, Cole. Awesome. Well, thanks again, Brad. We really appreciate the time and the contributions here. If anybody has any questions for Brad, you can certainly reach out to him directly on LinkedIn or through Bynder, or reach out to us at InTheClouds @ LevDigital. com, and we'll shoot it over his way.

Brad Kofoed: Well, Cole, Bobby, thank you so much for including me. This has been great. And appreciate the partnership, and look forward to hearing the podcast and working with you guys.

Cole Fisher: Thanks, Brad.

Bobby Tichy: Thanks.