How to choose the right platform for your creative materials?

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As marketing teams and designers continue to deal with an ever-growing number of videos, images, and copy texts, the need for a reliable and efficient digital asset management solution has become increasingly important.

In this article, I've compared two popular digital asset management platforms, Google Drive and Focal.inc, to help you determine the best fit for your needs.

Google Drive

Google Drive is a popular file storage and collaboration solution widely used by companies of all sizes. It's free, cloud-based, and everyone in the organization can access it. However, while Google Drive is an excellent solution for storing any type of file, it's not designed for quickly browsing, reviewing, or collaborating on creative assets like images, video, or copy.

For people working on videos, images, and marketing briefs, the folder structure of Google Drive can be time-consuming, and finding the right files can be frustrating.

Key collaborative features

Google Drive's collaborative features include:

1. Sharing: Google Drive allows users to share files and folders with specific people or groups. The owner of the file or folder can grant permission for others to view, comment, or edit the content.

2. Real-time collaboration: Google Drive supports real-time collaboration, allowing multiple users to edit the same document simultaneously.

3. Limited commenting features: Google Drive allows you to leave comments on documents and images, allowing for discussion and collaboration between team members.

Despite these functionalities, Google Drive has several limitations when it comes to creative asset management.

1. Limited tagging and metadata management: Google Drive does not have advanced asset tagging or metadata management capabilities, making it difficult to properly organize and categorize creative assets. The only way to organize your file is relying on a complex folder structure and naming convention, which is tough for teams to navigate.

2. Search functionality: The search function on Google Drive is basic and may not be suitable for finding specific digital assets quickly.

3. Limited review and approval process: The review and approval process in Google Drive is limited, and it is not designed for collaborative asset review and approval workflows.

4. Limited commenting features: there is no way to annotate and add comments on specific parts of the video, which leads to extra work.

In conclusion, while Google Drive is a widely used platform for file storage and collaboration, it is not explicitly designed for creative asset management and has limitations that hinder effective collaboration and asset organization.

Google Drive is ideal for…

• small organizations using the Google Stack

• organizations with a limited number of creatives in the pipeline

Pricing

For businesses, Google Drive is part of the Google Workspace. Their plans start at $6 per user per month for Business Starter and go up to $18 per user per month for Business Plus. Enterprise plans are available, but pricing is not listed.

If your organization uses the Google Stack, your creative team is small, and you have a simple creative asset management pipeline, Google Drive can be a suitable option. However, as the number of images, videos, and stakeholders increases, you'll likely benefit from a solution designed to help you store and manage creative assets.

Focal.inc

Focal.inc is a creative collaboration platform specifically designed for creative and marketing teams. With fast and intuitive search functionalities, media mockups and advanced tagging capabilities, Focal makes it easy to manage your images, videos, and copys and collaborate with your team.

Key collaborative features

Focal's collaborative features include:

1. Advanced tagging and browsing: You can tag your assets easily and browse your creatives based on name, status, tags, format, aspect ratio, video duration, project name, or project status.

1. Advanced commenting: Focal allows you to leave comments on any type of creative asset with annotations, allowing for discussion and collaboration between team members.

1. Advanced real-time collaboration: Focal supports real-time collaboration, allowing multiple users to edit the same page's creative assets. With video files, for example, you can annotate frame by frame and, give comments, draw boxes or arrows.

2. Integrations: Focal supports all the industry standard collaborative tools: Slack, Figma, Miro, and more.

Focal's central asset library makes it easier to provide feedback, collaborate with team members, and ensure that your brand messaging stays consistent across all your marketing assets.

Focal is ideal for…

• smaller teams struggling to find their images or videos from their Google Drive,

• teams creating several asset versions per campaign,

• teams using several different marketing channels per campaign,

• teams collaborating with external freelancers, marketing agencies or other partners,

• teams looking for intuitive and smart cloud-based asset management system,

• enterprise teams looking for creative ticketing system designed for creative work,

Focal's flexible and scalable platform offers a solution for all types of marketing and design asset management, including image, video, audio, and copy text. Focal's digital library makes it easy to keep track of all assets and ensures that your brand stays on-message and consistent across all channels.

Pricing

Focal's pricing model is similar to that of Figma or Air: Focal offers a free version for individual users and small teams, while charging a seat-based pricing model for larger teams. The seat-based pricing model provides a scalable solution for growing teams, with costs only increasing as the team expands.

Focal’s free plan includes

• Two user seats + 4 guest users

• Access to all standard features

• Unlimited number of pages

• 10 GB storage

For larger teams, Focal’s pricing starts from 25€/per seat. You can sign up to alpha here www.focal.inc and read more about our pricing at www.focal.inc/pricing

Conclusion

While Google Drive is easy to access, it can become a bottleneck for marketing and creative teams after the complexity or and the number of assets grows.

Choose Google Drive, when…

• your team is small, the number of your creative assets is limited, and

• you're looking for a simple file storage solution for your creative assets.

Choose Focal, when…

• you want a tool designed to help marketing and creative teams manage and collaborate on creative assets,

• you have multiple stakeholders, even a moderately complex creative pipeline,

• you produce a larger number of creative assets

Whether you're managing a large marketing asset library or a small design project, Focal has better tools to streamline your creative workflow and maintain brand consistency.

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