The Adoption Gap: Getting More From the DAM You Already Have

Most DAM adoption challenges aren't technology problems. They're usability problems—and when working outside the system is easier than working within it, teams take the path of least resistance.

For brands managing content across regional teams, affiliates, and retail partners, that path is familiar: assets manually reformatted for distribution, requests submitted through portals that live entirely outside the DAM, shared links that are nearly impossible to govern at scale. When these become the default, metadata integrity, usage rights, and brand consistency all erode quietly—often before anyone notices.

But this isn't a session about what's broken. DAM delivers real value, and the organizations getting the most from it have found ways to close the gap between how the system was configured and how creative and marketing teams actually need to work.

Debbie Kiederer and Madi Bjorgvinsson of ChalkDust Consulting, and Sal Hakimi of Tenovos, share real-world scenarios from global retail, beauty, luxury & CPG organizations—examining where adoption breaks down, where DAM is winning, and what it takes to bridge the gap.

Key takeaways:

• Why teams default to workarounds and how to spot them before they stick
• Lessons from retail, beauty, luxury, and CPG content operations—what works and what doesn't
• What it takes to build a DAM experience that serves creative and marketing users
• How automated taxonomy and metadata enrichment can make the DAM a system teams want to use
• How AI and content intelligence can reduce manual effort and feed the content pipelines teams depend on