Warner Bros. Tackles Asset Retrieval

Phase Zero of the MARS roll-out began around budget time two years ago, after several Warner Bros. business units made requests for funding to create and implement an asset management system to catalog and distribute the studio’s advertising and publicity materials. The studio began investigating its options during a seven-week planning and feasibility stage, when it sought to determine whether an enterprise-wide solution was advisable, or even viable. "At that point, we knew just enough to be dangerous," recalls WB executive VP of distribution & technology Darcy Antonellis. "It was our first shot at handling a DAM solution of this scale, and we went into it fairly naively. We didn’t have any preconceived notions of what we should or shouldn’t do. We tried to take a ground-up approach."

That’s why WB turned to Accenture, a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company, to work with members from WB’s technical operations division, business units and the MIS division.

"The approach to programs of this nature is very different from a traditional back-office financial or accounting system," notes Accenture partner David Wolf, describing the role of the company throughout the project. "We brought detailed requirements to the table, which jumpstarted the process. We started with a blueprint that we refined working with the various business units, and then we laid out a roadmap of multiple releases of how to implement this. When we went into implementation, we brought in people who knew how to configure and install the application and people who knew how to build and design the technical requirements, including designing the storage architecture in a cost-effective manner."

Talk about asset-management accidents waiting to happen. Warner Bros. released The Matrix Revolutions on 18,013 film prints simultaneously in 107 countries, with DVD and VHS releases following six months later. To boot, the studio had 44 "consumer products" licensing contracts in 15 countries. To pull off a global release on this scale, solid asset-management systems were essential.

The first major realization was that creating five different solutions to serve five business units would not be the most efficient path, which prompted a greenlight for the enterprise-wide MARS project. From the beginning, representatives of each of the business units impacted by the results were involved. "They were stakeholders in the entire process," says Antonellis. "We were and continue to be very sensitive to the fact that each business unit needs to be able to focus on its business and have its own‘brand,’ as the first of view to their licensees and clients. It was critical that, while the asset repository was common, each business unit had their‘branded’ Web site or portal that accessed it."

The business units involved included Warner Home Video Worldwide, international theatrical, international television, consumer products, corporate marketing and advertising, and corporate image archives. More recently, additional units have been brought into MARS, including domestic theatrical and the WB Networks.

" Warner Bros. needed a solution not only to be used across multiple divisions but also offering easy installation, robust functionality and configurable features," says North Plains President and CEO Hassan Kotob. Kotob ticks off the specific DAM needs for each WB business unit: "Consumer Products Licensing needed a B2B Web-based distribution mechanism to serve 2500+ global licensees; Warner Home Video needed an external vendor-collaboration system and legacy B2B portal integration functionality; Marketing and Advertising Services wanted an internal print and video workflow and collaboration tools; International Pictures needed a global distribution solution; and Corporate Image Archive wanted to migrate its 400,000 images and 1400 users to an enterprise solution."

North Plains offers what Kotob calls a "hybrid solution," using the patent-pending TeleScope Hybrid File System. "Stand-alone asset repositories quickly become departmental level silos- and catalog systems rapidly lose database synchronicity," Kotob adds. TeleScope also offers a Look Up Broker for consolidation of diverse data within one simple interface, Digital Rights Management, Workflow Automation and the XML Gateway, which provides a seamless way to share assets with other systems. TeleScope also supports all metadata standards with MIMiX (a metadata container) and offers full support of Adobe XMP (XML metadata platform), which enables users to transfer assets from one system to another and retain the metadata. North Plains’ I-Piece Technology (similar to Photoshop plug-ins) enables North Plains, the company’s clients, or third-party developers to create additional support for unique or proprietary file types or metadata standards- protection against files becoming orphaned.

Piracy issues were foremost in considering a digital asset management program and, for Warner Bros., the core business justification for moving ahead with the MARS program was the elimination of the distribution of physical assets. "There’s a risk in doing nothing," Antonellis says. "Physical distribution simply won’t be capable of supporting new release models and accelerated timelines. At least, now we have the ability to track who has access to certain assets and who has access to the system. We have better control over our universe, where we didn’t have that in the physical distribution world." Antonellis says that, as the system’s use changes and evolves, Warner has plans to incorporate higher levels of security and protection that are appropriate to the sensitivity of the distributed assets. "As you deal with marketing campaigns from their early inception, the advertising and publicity groups manage the assets in terms of what is being distributed and when," she adds. "Those rules haven’t really changed. It’s just a different method of administering those rules."

After conducting vendor evaluations, WB settled on a North Plains TeleScope enterprise system. Founded in 1994, the Toronto -based North Plains introduced TeleScope, its flagship product, in 1995 and has since installed it at over 400 client sites.

WB next built customized interfaces into the various business units’ portals or Web sites for delivery, enabling users to make requests on a portal which, behind the scenes, is fulfilled by North Plains TeleScope. This seamless integration was key to the adoption of MARS, notes Antonellis, who stresses that great effort was made to keep it simple. "The system itself is fairly complex under the covers," she says. "The goal has been, to the extent we can, to make that view into the system easier from the user side."

Phase One of the roll-out brought Warner Home and Consumer Products online, followed by international theatrical and corporate marketing & advertising, and Phase Three with international TV, Corporate Image Archives, domestic cable distribution, WB Television and domestic theatrical.

Currently, the system handles files up to 1 GB, with broadband connections definitely recommended. "If it took too long to download, there would be a high level of frustration," says Antonellis, who reveals that WB is now implementing short-form full-motion video- such as trailers or promos- as a supported asset. Even licensees with a dial-up connection can use the site, however, since much of the photography is in the 50 to 100 MB range.

The learning curve for MARS has been relatively gentle. In addition to direct MARS users, Antonellis says, there are many worldwide users, including press organizations that, with proper authorization, can download images. "The key to access to the system via the web is fairly straightforward," she says. "The average time to learn to use the system is less than half a day. For the people who work on the creative side and have more access to functionality, it’s a longer learning curve, but they pick it up pretty fast. Use of the system is proof. We measure that through the take-up rate and that’s continued to increase." The numbers show clearly how use has exploded: today, the system boasts 515,000 assets with 415,000 downloads, 6600 direct MARS users and 23,500 portal users.

In the planning stages for the MARS project, the team drew up a "straw-man" architecture for future applications. But Antonellis stresses that any future developments will be based on the same philosophy and strategy that drove the MARS project from the beginning. "We’re looking at business requirements, either strategic ROI or immediate financial ROI, and that’s what our approach will continue to be," she says. "The one thing we do know is that we’re not going to try to build out one system to be all things to everyone. We feel pretty strongly that it’s fairly difficult to do and a risky proposition."

She has other words of advice for others delving into enterprise-wide DAM solutions: "Think globally, implement surgically. You have to keep your eye on scope and what the business units need. At the end of the day, if it doesn’t meet their requirements, you’ve just spent a lot of time and money to create a great archive."