Erin Togerson is the Director of Marketing Operations at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego in California. She discusses the benefits of building a scalable, searchable foundation with a DAM platform.
Five years ago, our marketing team at Point Loma Nazarene University found ourselves in a familiar bind. We were spending more time digging through folders for headshots, logos and campaign visuals than creating new content. Requests for assets were piling up, version control was becoming less reliable and creative energy was getting drained by logistics.
That friction wasn’t due to a lack of talent or effort, but an inevitable outcome of scattered storage across cloud drives, inbox attachments, old Flickr libraries and siloed team folders. We knew we needed to modernise, not just for ourselves but for the hundreds of faculty members, staff and campus partners relying on us to tell the university’s story consistently and professionally. What we needed wasn’t just software, but a rethinking of our digital asset infrastructure.
Building a scalable, searchable foundation
We adopted Canto as our DAM platform and rebranded it internally as Loma Photos. Our goal wasn’t just to centralise photos and logos, but also to have something searchable, brand-controlled and intuitive enough for non-technical users across campus to access without constant hand-holding.
The Creative Services team continues to govern uploads, tagging and folder structure, with seasonal reviews to ensure assets stay current and relevant. But campus-wide access is enabled through SSO and relatively light governance. For example, some assets (like campaign-specific photos) are kept private, while others (like logos and headshots) are open for self-service use.
We also use asset expiration tagging to enforce time-bound usage when needed. Additionally, for high-volume tools we also use like Canva, we’ve established a direct DAM integration so users can access approved assets without leaving their design environment. That integration alone has made a significant difference. For many teams, Canva is where content creation happens, and removing barriers between platforms means fewer delays, fewer mistakes and better brand alignment.
Efficiency isn’t a bonus, but the justification
When justifying budget, we focused on outcomes rather than feature checklists. With a modern DAM strategy, we could reduce redundant asset requests, increase consistency across materials and minimise delays for campus departments that need to act quickly while always staying on-brand.
Even without deep analytics at the time, the return on investment was obvious. Requests that once required manual delivery were now fulfilled instantly, and assets were easier to find and safer to distribute. The reduction in repeated asks, alongside the confidence that everyone was working with the right files, also freed up our relatively small team to do more strategic work.
This also made it easier to show our cabinet that we were being good stewards of our technology investment. We could clearly demonstrate that DAM wasn’t just solving a workflow issue, but unlocking real value across departments.
Serving thousands and not slowing down
Our team supports more than 3,000 people across campus, and we’re often fielding requests from departments as varied as Admissions, Advancement, Athletics and Academics. What makes DAM work for us is that it reduces the bottlenecks without sacrificing oversight. Folders can be shared externally with expiration rules, which we use for vendor co-ordination. Access is intuitive, even for remote partners. And because we can train new users quickly, we’ve avoided the long tail of support tickets that often comes with platform rollouts.
As a result, Canto has become a utility player that is equally valuable for a faculty member updating a department site and a designer developing a campus-wide campaign. We’ve also benefitted from additional DAM integrations beyond Canva. Being able to embed the DAM directly into our university website gives users an easy starting point. The platform’s flexible permissions structure allows us to support both open campus-wide use and tightly controlled internal asset sets without spinning up separate systems. That kind of integration between users, tools, and governance has allowed us to scale more smoothly.
Preparing for an accessible, AI-enhanced future
I also serve on our university’s ADA project committee, where we’re working to align our digital ecosystem with accessibility mandates. That work intersects directly with our DAM strategy.
One area of particular interest is metadata tagging, especially as we look to reduce the manual effort involved in maintaining compliant, searchable assets. We’re closely watching the evolution of AI-powered tagging and analytics. While we haven’t fully implemented those features yet, they look promising for accelerating compliance and improving discoverability without adding to our team’s workload.
I think that as accessibility becomes a more visible mandate in higher education, DAM will have a central role to play in enabling (and scaling) compliance.
From overhead to infrastructure
Universities often treat DAM as a luxury, as something for the marketing team, if budget allows. But that mindset overlooks the way modern institutions operate. We’re not just stewards of brand identity; we’re also supporting real-time communications, donor engagement, recruitment, digital learning and accessibility.
As universities face growing demands for responsiveness, accessibility and cross-campus co-ordination, digital systems that reduce friction and improve clarity will be key. At Point Loma, that meant treating DAM not as overhead, but as critical infrastructure.
