Digital Asset Management for
Destination Marketing
A comparison of 3 leading contenders Crowdriff, Simpleview and Brandkit

by David Vaassen 16 June 2021.

Summary

This is a comparison of capabilities of the three leading DAM software services for DMO’s (Destination Marketing Organisations).
There are three main competitors in the DAM designed for Destination Marketing space. These are Simpleview, Crowdriff and Brandkit. Two of them (Simpleview and Crowdriff) incorporate a lightweight DAM and focus mainly on delivering images and video to B2C websites.

Crowdriff ranks highest for UGC capabilities, while Simpleview is pretty good across the board but not a stand out in any particular area in this comparison. Dropbox, whose capabilities are well known, is used by many organisations before investing in a DAM, is shown in this comparison for reference purposes. Brandkit is the only full DAM here, and also the only one originally designed specifically as a B2B solution for DMOs to support the tourism trade, stakeholders & partners, and the media, rather than consumers. Brandkit consequently rates highest for DAM features, Metadata management, Collection Management, Brand Management, Media Centre capabilities, Distribution options, Stakeholder Generated Content, Multilingual, Price, and top equal on Access, Storage, Search, Brand Portal and Reporting, and so wins this comparison.

Our Comparison Results

Criteria Dropbox Crowdriff Simpleview Brandkit
Managed Access 1 2 2 2
Scaleable Storage 3 2 3 3
Search Engine 1 4 4 4
Rights Management 0 2 2 3
Brand Management 1 0 1 2
Collection management 1 3 2 3
Metadata Management 0 2 1 2
Brand Portal (Media Hub) 0 1 2 2
Media Centre 0 0 1 2
Distribution Options 2 2 2 4
Multilingual 0 0 0 2
Stakeholder Generated Content 1 1 1 3
User Generated Content 1 3 1 1
Reporting 0 2 2 2
Price 4 2 1 3
Total Score 15 26 25 38

CRITERIA for this comparison

This is how we came up with the scores for each criteria.

We awarded 1 point for each factor that was met, based on public knowledge and our understanding of each product at the time this comparison was written. The exception is pricing where we instead rank the 4 vendors from 1 to 4 based on price.

ADMIN RIGHTS AND EASE OF ACCESS

Working in a multiple stakeholder environment and giving appropriate access to your content for each individual can be challenging. It’s extremely important that the platform chosen has admin and user group rights to give easy accessibility to those who need to access the content.

Factors considered:

1. Can permission settings manage who can and can’t see content within the organisation?
2. Can the system manage a large number of users, user groups, and organisations?

SCALABLE STORAGE

Above all else a DAM should be able to handle most if not all your files from storage capacity to supported filetypes.

Factors considered:

1. Elastic storage capacity - Is the content management system able to scale up as the asset library expands?
2. Is the base level of storage reasonable?
3. Are all filetypes supported?

SEARCH ENGINE

Searching/Find content assets is a key requirement easily and quickly is a key requirement for the Marketing team but also for staff and external users and stakeholders.

Factors considered:

1. Is it easy to access the assets in a large library of images, videos and other assets?
2. Does the system guide users to appropriate content for their needs.
3. Can users easily sort and filter search results for relevance.
4. Is it easy to tag and identify assets to make them more searchable?

RIGHTS MANAGEMENT

Factors considered:

1. Is there the ability to identify the right use for each asset and for what length of time?
2. Is there the ability to attribute rights to assets (e.g., a photographer name)?
3. Does the system notify users when rights change?

BRAND MANAGEMENT

Factors considered:

1. Does the system have the ability to manage Brand Identity Assets filetypes and design files ?
2. Does the system support automatic communication of Brand Guidelines?

COLLECTION MANAGEMENT

Factors considered:

1. Does the system support the creation of dynamic collections of Assets?
2. Dos the system support the creation of explicit collections of Assets?
3. Does the system support the creation of customised pathways to collection discovery?

METADATA MANAGEMENT

Factors considered:

1. Does the system have the ability to add and manage sophisticated metadata and manage consistently across all assets?
2. Does the system include AI/Machine Learning base image recognition and auto tagging?

BRAND PORTAL/MEDIA HUB

Factors considered:

1. Does the system provide a Brand Portal that supports B2B users who want to download high res images, video and other story telling content?
2. Is the Brand Portal fully brandable and customisable, does it allow creating custom pages?

MEDIA CENTER

Factors considered:

1. The system supports text based content Assets such as Press Releases and Story Ideas?
2. The system supports searching of text based content, articles, etc?

DISTRIBUTION OPTIONS

The provision of multiple distribution options is another vital consideration when selecting a DAM.

Factors considered:

1. Does the system it support self service access?
2. Does the system support access request workflows as an alternative to self-service access?
3. Does the system support sending/transferring large files without requiring the recipeient to register?
4. Does the system support RSS?
5. Does the system support posting to social media from within the system?

MULTI-LINGUAL

Factors considered:

1. Is there the ability to support multiple languages in the Brand Portal
2. Is there the ability to support multiple languages in Admin?
3. Are user able to select their preferred language?

STAKEHOLDER GENERATED CONTENT (SGC)

Factors considered:

1. Is there the ability to communicate with stakeholders and partners through the software and aggregation of SGC assets within the platform?
2. Is there the ability to easily embed galleries of user-generated content into the website from the asset management system?
3. Is there the ability for users to upload high res SGC content in an upload page?

USER GENERATED CONTENT (UGC)

Factors considered:

1. Is there the ability to communicate with social media users through the software and aggregation of UGC assets within the platform?
2. Is there the ability to easily embed galleries of user-generated content into the website from the software?
Is there the ability for users to upload high res UGC content in a upload page?

REPORTING

Factors considered:

1.Does the system track usage of Assets by Users?
2. Does the system measure engagement with content assets?

PRICE

Price or return on investment is hard to determine. So we consider the subscription costs here and we'll let the reader decide who offers the best value. We ranked the 4 providers from 1 being the cheapest to 4 the most expensive.

Factors considered:

1. What are subscription costs relative to the other listed providers out of 4?

Strengths and Weaknesses of Each

Simpleview

https://www.simpleviewinc.com/digital-asset-management/features/
(referring to the DAM ex Barberstock component of their offering only)

Key strengths:

Simpleview was originally a system to manage membership in Tourism promotion organisations for the purpose regional destination marketing. Today it sells a solution specifically for destination marketing organisations with wide ranging capabilities (including CRM, CMS and DAM). The system supports hundreds of DMOs around the world and therefore keeps its functionality relevant to the industry.

Key weaknesses:


Crowdriff

https:/crowdriff.com

Key strengths:

Key weaknesses:


Brandkit

https://www.brandkitapp.com

Key strengths:

Key weaknesses

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Statistics above last updated 1 March 2024