That’s what the founder of a self-service creative tool recently asked as we were talking about brand systems and how different software fits in.  

Right now their primary users are non-creatives aka marketers, sales, CS, people people (??) that are creating assets. Most of their customers up until now have been startups who don’t always have the headcount or budgets to think about more software (or more process for that matter).

But this founder has a good problem—there’s upmarket demand. This means bigger teams and budgets. It also means more tools and integrations which is where the DAM comes in.

You need a DAM

What is a DAM?

First things first, let’s stop operating in acronyms. A DAM or digital asset management system is a tool that organizes your files. Technically Google Drive and Dropbox are DAMs but modern DAMs are built primarily for visual assets and include AI organization, reviews, feedback, image and text recognition, tons of integrations, and a more powerful search. Some even allow you to create assets like Canva does.

There are a number of players in the space: Air (this is what I use #notsponsored), Bynder, Brandfolder, Stockpress, Adobe has one. They all have various pros and cons but the fact of the matter is, they’re all getting used.

Air just had a pretty big release this week that’s worth checking out

Why do I need a DAM?

1. Organization. Think about how many tools you have at your company: Google Workspace (Docs, Sheets, Drive, etc.), Canva, your CMS, Capsule or Riverside, Notion, Asana, Slack, HubSpot and probably a dozen others. They all hold a bunch of different files, it’s unclear what’s where and what’s even still relevant. It’s a mess.
   
   Think about how often you see an old logo pop up because someone saved it to their desktop—this is what you’re trying to avoid.

2. Access. Like literally being able to easily understand and find what you’re looking for. That’s achieved via organization, user permissions, and maintenance. That desktop logo example exists because it was easier for someone to just download it rather than have to keep finding it somewhere.

3. Timing. You need a way to expire assets. It’s not just old logos. Think about short term campaigns or random experiments. Those things never truly disappear in most organizations but if you can make the assets expired and inaccessible then you may have better luck keeping campaigns appropriately timeboxed.

Who needs a DAM?

This is the question that took us down the rabbit hole and I think there are two answers to this question—the short-term answer and the long-term answer.

Small teams don’t use DAMs

In the short-term, it probably doesn’t matter for smaller or newer teams. It’s not that they don’t care about organization or access or timing, they just don’t have to think about it as much because the same people are generally doing everything. When the same person(s) is concepting, creating, and distributing, it doesn’t really matter. There are fewer handoffs, comments, and the like so why install (and pay for) another piece of software?

For smaller teams, the tools they use (Capsule, Canva, Webflow, etc.) end up being a repository for all of their assets. This works for a while but eventually leads to messy instances and duplicate files hanging around across tools. It also makes onboarding difficult because you have to remember what lives where. This doesn’t scale.

Big teams are siloed

Bigger teams are forced to collaborate at a different level because of how many people are involved in literally anything. You have strategists, creatives, marketers, product, sales, and more in the mix. Not everyone wants or needs to create, but everyone needs access to the work and that's where the DAM comes in

Instead of provisioning licenses for every piece of software just because a file might live there the DAM becomes the single source of truth for everyone. From there you build the processes and automations for ingestion. For example, Creative adds brand assets, exports, and template, PMM adds product guides and one sheets, Paid downloads the exports to run ads, Sales shares those guides and one sheets with prospects, and so on.

This is the picture I drew to show what this process looks like

Some users have push and pull access, some just pull but there are no more questions about where things live or who has access. It's just available to everyone and integrated directly into the tools they use* because you’re also plugging them into Canva or Capsule or Webflow.

So DAMs are only for big teams? No way, dude!

Smaller teams can and should be running this playbook for a number of reasons.

First, it helps build good habits early. Your company is going to grow, you’re going to add team members (and AI agents that need access to files as well). Start modeling the behavior that you want to see then.

Second, you’re likely working with agencies, freelancers, and contractors which means you’re potentially giving them access (and paid licenses) to 3-4 different pieces of software. Sometimes you don’t want to do that. You can use the DAM for all uploads/downloads, reviews, and approvals. I’m a big believer in transparency but sometimes you need to keep things behind closed doors (I couldn’t hire a dev agency at HubSpot for more than 5 years while we got our stuff together).

Third, similar to how project management platforms provide a single source of truth for progress, DAMs provide a single source of truth for files. When you’re spinning 10 plates at the same time, not having to think about what lives where is a small way to maintain your sanity. It’s as simple as exporting from Canva or Capsule directly into your DAM which is why to answer the question above is yes, bringing the file back into the DAM does bring value!

So if you’re a small team, think about adopting a DAM sooner rather than later.

If you’re a big team… you don’t have an excuse at this point. Google Drive and Dropbox just aren’t good enough. A DAM should be at the center of your creative process.

When Jenn and I started building out the core offering for OhSnap! we realized that not everyone was going to be ready (or need) a full brand system so we wanted to put together a mini-brand system as an option. We went back and forth and a DAM was the first thing we agreed was required (Canva was second).

If your team needs help getting organized and building processes that work for them instead of against them, you know where to find us.