A conversation with Lance Loveday and Sandra Niehaus
Lance Loveday and Sandra Niehaus are the authors of Web Design for ROI, and will be featured in a webcast hosted by Aquent on May 22. Their approach to web design, while theoretically informed, is relentlessly pragmatic. As they put it, "Our work is about more than just getting people to think about web design. We want them to act."
If you want to improve the performance of your site, read their book. If you want a glimpse into their approach, read the rest of this post!
1. Web Design Isn't What You Think It Is
"Everyone thinks of design in terms of 'graphic design' - colors, fonts, logos, etc.," says Sandra. "We're working with a more strategic and multi-disciplinary concept of design, one that takes business goals as its starting point. Designing from this perspective allows you to determine whether or not all the elements truly support those goals."
"Our notion of design is really about problem-solving," adds Lance, "and goes beyond interface design or even experience design, because it doesn't just involve the creative folks. It involves all the different people on the team, from the business owner on down, and making sure everyone rallies around the objectives of the site."
"We decided to write this book," he continues, "because we were frustrated at the money being left on the table by under-utilized sites with a lot of potential. Design needs to be about helping a company succeed as a business, and that means thinking about costs, customers, and results. Ultimately, we want to take the discipline up a notch."
2. Small Changes Can Bring Big Results
"People are always surprised when we tell them they can improve site performance with relatively small, inexpensive changes. Well, it's true," Sandra explains. "Consider buttons. We've seen people increase check-out throughput by 40 percent just by increasing the size of the check-out button.
"Now, stop reading this and look at your buttons. Are they large enough? Are they legible? Are they placed appropriately? Do the most important buttons stand out? Adjusting these elements can cost next to nothing and can have a major impact."
"Another quick fix we recommend," Lance says, "is adding a functional tag line to your home page. That can solve one of the web's most common problems: 60 percent home page bounce rates.
"Web users have two questions when they arrive at your site: 'Is this what I expected to find?' and 'Does this site have what I'm looking for?' Your tagline should answer those questions instantly. I'm talking simple text, less than 10 words, that is descriptive, explanatory, and intuitive."
Greg Kuchmek, who is represented by Aquent's DC office, has been working on the web since 1994. That's when he was hired to help produce a webzine, Stim, started by Prodigy. [Editor's Note: For an interesting flashback to 1996, read Ty Burr's review of Stim, which he gives a B+, and Slate, which he gives a C+]. When that gig ended in 1997 he discovered that, "3 years web experience was amazing. I was 'senior' automatically."
Flash forward to the present and Greg now has 14 years web experience. If you want to hire someone like Greg (assuming you can find someone like him), what do you have to offer him? He has a broad range of in-demand skills: in addition to ground-up experience with the full suite of web technologies, Greg is also an able photographer, animator, illustrator, and writer. When he goes on a job interview, the pressure is on the interviewer.
What is Greg looking for and how can you convince him to work for you? Listen to his words:
1. Trust
I'm looking for an employer that respects that I have my skills and trusts me to use them. They hire me because I can do something and they can't. It's great when they let me do it.
It's not always like that. I've done jobs where the client was really looking over my shoulder and micro-managing. I understand that everyone's got their personal style, but when that's happening, I don't feel free to be creative and really do what I'm capable of.
2. Flexibility
I don't wear a tie to interviews anymore. I don't need to dress up at this point. I've also got a full studio at home, so I'm even kind of shocked that I have to leave the house! I guess I've been spoiled by working in places like Boston or New York where it's more flexible.
More than flexibility about where work happens, though, I appreciate it when there is flexibility around how things get done. There have been countless little jobs where they needed a photograph and I've told them, "Look, I can spend the day combing through stock or I can go take one." It's great when people are more open to the "I can do this right now" approach, than they are attached to the "this is the way we have to do it" approach.
Thanks to Google, I was alerted to an Aquent reference on a blog called, "Give, Get, Take, and Have." I don't know much about it, but, astonishingly, "This blog has often been found swimming miles from shore in the Indian Ocean." Go figure!
Anyway, the (possibly Canadian) author of this blog posted a link to an Aquent mini-site called, "The Business of Touch," which provides the world with annotated animations illustrating the proper mode of greeting people in a variety of countries from India to Czechoslovakia.
To that blogger, I say, "Thanks for sharing this with your readership!"
To everyone else I say, "If you or someone close to you is going to be meeting anyone in or from another country, please consult 'The Business of Touch' in order to avoid a potentially unpleasant and/or embarrassing international incident."
You know how I wrote the other day that "people make the difference" at Aquent? Well, a week later, I still think it's true!
But you know, it's not just me. When we ask Aquent employees what they like best about Aquent, they consistently respond, "The people I work with." Guess what? I would say the same thing. I feel peculiarly fortunate to work with a bunch of people who are smart, funny, and friendly.
For example, take our creative director, Mark Saperstein (that's a picture of him in his incarnation as an undead warlock). Mark is a talented and funny guy who actually proposed to his wife via a job posting on our website (she accepted). He's passionate about zombies, cannibals, and Conan the Barbarian. He's also an articulate, detailed, and sometimes harsh, I mean, "frank," critic of creative work.
Aside from frequently asking me to be less boring, blogwise, he's overseen some of our endlessly clever direct mail and marketing pieces like the ever-popular "furry" card, the infamous "valium" card, the mirror card, the cow, the beach ball, and the Kim Jong Il: "I Ate the Big Slab at Aaron's House O' Ribs" card.
Mark's sense of humor has sometimes been too "out" for corporate consumption -- like when he wanted to advertise our interactive staffing capabilities with a pixelated rendering of a hand making an obscene gesture -- but it's never been too "out" for me, and, gosh darn it, I love that MMORPG-playin', kimchee-eatin', plaid-shirt-wearin', anime-watchin', erstwhile-astronomy-lovin', "what art school did you go to?"-askin' guy.
I had a little problem with my iTunes account so I sent a message to their support center. The first response I got concluded with:
"Good luck on downloading the song Matthew! Again, please let me know if I can do anything else for you in the near future. I am so happy I was able to help you today with your item. Have a fantastic day and take care! Cheers! Brittany"
I replied: "Thanks! Much appreciated. Now having a fantastic day, Matt"
To which she (Brittany) responded: "Thank you for your kind words and you are so welcome! Nothing makes me happier than to hear that I have pleased our iTunes family members."
I practically blushed when I read that.
Blowing the Job Search
Having some PR responsibilities here, I often respond to ProfNet queries, particularly when they apply to careers and job hunting. Because my responses are thoughtful, but do not always see the light of day on the other side of the querying reporter's in-box, I thought I would quickly share the helpful hints I provided a writer putting together a piece on how people damage their job search:
1) Not doing enough or any research on the target company or the hiring manager. What do they do? What are their goals? Who are their competitors? etc. You better know!
2) Not leveraging your network to get an introduction, a recommendation, or anything else to differentiate you from the pool of applicants. Related problem: Not having or cultivating a network in the first place.
3) Swearing or almost swearing (ex. "friggin'") in the interview.
4) Forgetting you are being interviewed. In other words, acting more casually if the interviewer takes you to lunch, etc. Remember: Until you get that offer letter, you are being watched!
At the end of last year I wrote a post proclaiming that I was going to make this blog more about Aquent. As part of that effort, I've wanted to introduce more and more voices from around the company into this channel. Of course, I've continued to highlight Aquent talent, their insights, abilities, and achievements, and I've also given periodic shout-outs to my environmentally conscious and often funny comrade-in-blogs, Tim Donnelly. But I know I could do so much more.
For starters, check out our Tampa office. The folks down there were talking to me about starting a local blog and so I asked them to say a little bit about the market for this one. I ended up speaking with Tampa's Isela Santisteban, and this is what she told me:
"I've been working with Aquent for the last 9 years, first in Miami, then Fort Lauderdale, and now here in Tampa.
"Tampa is like the mid-West of Florida. It's a great place to raise a family, have fun, and go to the beach! A lot of businesses are located or headquartered down here - Home Shopping Network, OSI Restaurant Partners (that owns and operates Outback Steakhouse, among other properties), and Publix Super Markets, for example - and there are plenty of opportunities for people looking to work in healthcare, finance, hospitality, technology, consumer packaged goods and related fields.
"About half the work Aquent talent do in Tampa is interactive. The rest consists of marketing, graphic design, and print production. Our clients include a number of high profile companies as well as agencies with major accounts. The way the market is right now, I can find a job for anyone with interactive experience at any level.
"What I love about my job is that today's talent becomes tomorrow's client. I'm still talking to people I placed 9 years ago and I'm sure there are people I've just begun to work with that I'll still know 9 years from now."
It's not unusual for Aquent staff like Isela to be with us for a long time. This sort of longevity gives our clients and our talent a lot of continuity. It also means, as you can imagine, that the Isela's of the Aquent-world are centers for ever growing networks of talented, creative professionals. To get in touch with Isela or any of her equally enthusiastic and connected colleagues, call them at (813) 287-9119.
On another note, and speaking of Florida, right now Aquent's training arm, AGI is busy putting on the CRE8 Conference in Orlando. One of the presenters there is none other than Todd Tibbetts, a consultant with Aquent Studios in Seattle, whom I've mentioned here before. He's blogging about his adventures at CRE8 and, more than anything else, making me feel like I'm missing out on something magical. We'll be hearing more from Todd in the days to come, so stay tuned!
Back in 1992, our CEO wrote a letter to all Aquent employees outlining the four principles that guide us in the work we do. The first principle, and the one that has consistently spoken to me, is, "People make the difference."
OK. We're not the only company that espouses this value. In fact, we're not the only company for which it is true -- this slogan can be applied to many organizations, especially those which provide specialized services, such as doctors, lawyers, architects, tattoo artists, and so on.
But I'm on board with it as one of our guiding principles for several reasons. First of all, it's true in a literal way for us. We don't have a secret formula or patented product that makes us different or better. Aquent IS the people who work here and the people we represent.
Second of all, this is how our clients tend to see things. As I mentioned in my post on customer loyalty, the two things that matter most to clients of staffing companies, particularly niche-players like us, are (1) the people or talent represented by the firm, and (2) the relationship with that firm's representatives. (The latter also confirms the findings of Michael Lowenstein and others.) In other words, it's good to have a principle that actually reflects the interests of our clients.
If you talk to marketers who have run customer loyalty programs, they can pretty quickly tell you the basic keys to program success. I've set them out as best I can here, though I recommend reading the last key first.
If you think I'm right on target, or way off base, please leave a comment.
In order for the program to be meaningful and attract participation, you need to offer participants things they want. To find out what those things are, you have to ask them. Then, when the program is up and running, you've got to continually ask them if they are really getting what they want. Were they happy with the item they received? Was the customer service up to snuff? Were their expectations met? Is there anything else they'd like to see in the program? And so on.
The listening should never stop. You've got to keep checking in with them to update and expand your offerings to meet their changing needs and wishes.
2. Act on What the Customer Tells You
If you're going to go to the trouble of asking what customers want, and they are going to take the time to respond, then you've got to deliver. If they want pet supplies, offer pet supplies. If they want home and garden accessories, offer home and garden accessories. If they want it, and you can get it for them, do it.
More importantly, if there are problems with fulfillment, customer service, or the account management process, you've got to fix them. The program is supposed to be a benefit to your customers. If it turns out to be a hassle or a disappointment, it will fail.
You might not expect a graphic designer working as part of a program support center housed within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to say, "The majority of work I do gives me creative freedom," but that's exactly what Chris Spangler, who is represented by Aquent's Baltimore office, told me when I spoke with him last week.
I gave Chris a call because a poster he had designed on assignment won first prize in the Combined Federal Campaign of the National Capital Area (CFCNCA) Communications Contest. (To see his winning entry, you can click here.) As it turns out, designing posters, which he has done for everything from promoting IT security within the agency to celebrating Asian Pacific Islander Heritage Month, is just part of his job at HHS (or, more accurately, SAMHSA/PSC). He has also designed and illustrated annual reports, brochures, and info-packs, he's designed logos and updated brand identities for various governmental programs, and he's even had the chance to serve as photographer at meetings with ambassadors and other functions.
"Working for the government is great job security," Chris says, but what really appeals to him is "... feeling like your making a difference by helping people with the stuff you're creating. I've designed a book on preventing bullying, I worked for a year and half on materials related to 9/11, and I put together a publication on responding to bio-terrorism attacks. You've got to look for different ways to find satisfaction in your work and these types of projects help do that for me."
Seth Godin doesn't need my link love, but, just in case you don't follow the daily musings of The Godin One, I thought I would share. Key quotable quote: "Great jobs, world class jobs, jobs people kill for... those jobs don't get filled by people emailing in resumes. Ever." [Tip of the hat to my esteemed colleague, Erin, for this one.]
The other day I pointed out that brand loyalty mimics brain damage. Well, turns out that exposure, even subliminal exposure, to well-known brands can cause you to exhibit behavior associated with them. For example, this study demonstrated that seeing (or, strictly speaking, "not seeing") the Apple "apple" can make you more creative.
Gee, what does exposure to the Microsoft logo make you do?
Todd's knowledge of the digital media realm runs deep and, having worked with clients ranging from Microsoft and 3M to Starbucks and the Whole Earth Catalog, his experience is broad.
As far as content development and asset management is concerned, his message is this: "For many individuals and companies, their content (pictures, text, video, etc) is a mess, a liability, and a cost center. It takes focus and effort to turn the content from a liability into an economic asset, but the path is straight-forward and very achievable."
To find out just how straight-forward and achievable, tune in on the 27th. To register, just go here.
Laurie Baldwin, who is represented by Aquent's Richmond Office, has spent the last five years running a successful search engine marketing company with clients like Wrigley's, Lumber Liquidators, and the Christian Children's Fund. A self-proclaimed Web marketing "addict" -- she named her dog "DotCom," her license plate reads, "GOOGL ME," and even tried to name her family's gecko "Google," until her children rebelled - she has been doing work in and around the Internet since 1995.
Everyone knows that SEO and SEM are important components of contemporary marketing, but there is so much advice out there about how to do it right, that it can get pretty overwhelming. In the interest of cutting through the noise, we asked Laurie to tell us the five things that people most frequently forget about SEO and SEM. Here's what she said.
1. Content Is Still King
When trying to optimize their sites, companies too often spend a lot of time focusing on technical things like metatags. They forget that if you have an authoritative site that talks about relevant stuff, you will be ranked.
The technical elements that matter to the search engines are always changing - the importance of content remains constant. Your site should talk about who you are, what you do, and who you take care of. Forget the "leading edge, highly competitive, committed to innovation"-type copy. People are looking for specific things so you should say specific things.
2. Think Like Your Customers
We had a client who sold fake eyebrows for cancer patients going through chemo. These folks weren't looking for "cancer solutions" or something like that, they were looking for FAKE EYEBROWS. You've got to show up where people are looking and that means you have to know where they are looking and what they are looking for. Ask them.
And while you're at it, ask them, if they did happen to find you, did they find what they wanted? If they didn't, make sure that the search terms you are optimizing for and the actual content of your site match.
3. Traditional Media Still Matter
Let your different marketing pieces talk to each other. Use your keywords and the key marketing ideas from your website in your radio, tv, and newspaper advertising. People will often Google the words, characters, etc. that appear in your ads. In fact, they will generally Google before they go to your site or your store, so make sure you are taking this into account when you are buying search terms.
We changed our name to "Aquent" back in 1999. It is pronounced with a long "a" (think: "agent") followed by a "kwent." The name has never been popular among naming pundits. About a month after we switched, Ruth Shalit, writing for Salon, said, "You could be forgiven for thinking that a functional, descriptive name such as MacTemps [our former name - Matt], for all its pedestrian clunkiness, might be preferable to a name like Aquent, which to the casual observer evokes something vaguely liquid, perhaps a mouthwash, and whose meaning only becomes clear, if then, when parsed by a listener who is profoundly familiar with the morphemic structure of Latin and ancient Greek." See what I mean?
Arcane morphemic structures aside, numerous commentators criticized the name for being meaningless, and Clay Risen, writing in 2002, gave it an "F." (He also pointed out, rightly though embarrassingly, that "... 'aquent' actually does have a meaning in English: It's a geological term for poorly drained human-altered soils--in other words, landfill," which many of our employees discovered when they Googled the name.)
After 9 years, you'd think that the ridicule would have died down but, sadly, it has not. As recently as this past Friday, Jim Ferry referred to the name as a "doozy" and snidely quipped, "Well, gotta go brush my teeth and rinse with Aquent. (Oh! They are a Temp agency? Nevermind.)" Ouch.
Debbie Weil is a corporate blogging and social media consultant who literally wrote the book on corporate blogging, which she aptly entitled, The Corporate Blogging Book. I had the good fortune of interviewing her the other day on the three "don'ts" of corporate blogging (don't focus on the technology; don't outsource the writing; don't overestimate the amount of work it will require), journalistic standards and blogger credibility, and the revolution in corporate communications.
I invite you to listen in on our conversation. You can do so by clicking on the device pictured below or by clicking on this link here. You may also download the mp3 by "right-clicking" ("control-clicking," Mac-wise) on that link, or check out this and all other Talent Blog Podcasts on iTunes.
A few highlights of the podcast can be found at the following time coordinates:
01:43 - How to become an "expert" 03:31 - It's not easy to do a really good corporate blog 08:50 - Top 3 Dont's of Corporate Blogging 11:38 - Think of a blog as a next generation website 15:53 - Manufacturing authenticity 21:38 - A collection of intersecting communities 23:10 - The first step is always to listen 25:05 - You can't start blogging until you're in a different mindset 28:02 - Can you make a career in blogging? (Answer: Probably not)
I was on vacation last week and that means I got to hang out with one of my cousins in Vermont. We were talking about work, partly because she's still trying to decide on a career and partly because, from time to time, I'm given to complaining about my job and wondering if there could be something better out there. (Of course, as all my bosses and super-bosses know, there really could not be anything better than the job I currently, and, God willing, always shall have at Aquent. Thank you for the ongoing opportunity to find personal fulfillment again and again within the hallowed halls of this, our corporate headquarters!)
I told my cousin that I was just one of those people who shouldn't have to work - I fully realize how entitled and immature that sounds - and she said, "Me too!" Sadly, she and I do have to work, and although I've settled into my ever-evolving role here, she is still searching for one of her own. In the course of our conversation, however, it came out that she had been invited to accompany a friend who is going on tour with some big rock act this summer. She did the same thing last summer with Aerosmith, and one result was that she got to take a bunch of pictures, like this one, of the Bad Boys of Beantown as they rocked Latvia. Turns out that she's sort of a natural rock photographer. Who knew?
In other words, even though my cousin is now considering going to nursing school, she could end up having a career capturing the unkillable dinosaurs of rock for posterity. Which made me think not only of the many unexpected twists and turns a life may take, but also how many careers, even my own, are utterly accidental (at least, or perhaps especially, at the outset).
How accidental has yours been and what have you done to make it less accidental? Or have you?
Image Courtesy of jon hanson. If you are wondering why I chose this image, I have two words for you, "Saddle Grouper."
The webcast will provide those who are new to the reputation management game with a comprehensive overview of it. For those already involved in search engine optimization and marketing, social media marketing, or the management of an organization's complex and constantly evolving web presence, Andy has a lot of practical, tactical, and technical advice that will help you make sure you're covering all the angles.
Finally, although the emphasis will fall on things that companies can do, should do, or are doing to manage and influence their online reputation, many of the insights Andy will share can be applied by individuals concerned with building and shaping their own online reputations.
In other words, there's something for everybody here so you owe to yourself to check it out. I mean, your reputation is on the line! Doesn't that matter to you? Don't you want to know that you're doing everything in your power to maintain it in the best and strongest light? Wouldn't you feel bad if your reputation was dealt a horrible blow and you could have prevented or avoided it if you had just attended this webcast?
Don't find out the hard way just how important your online reputation can be; find out the easy way how to protect and nurture it: Listen to the darn webcast.
Since we Aquenters are strewn liberally across the globe, we need to make a special effort to get everybody together and remind ourselves that the wide world of Aquent includes many more folks than we see around our particular office on a daily basis. To that end, every year or two we hold a big get-together called, "BTS," which stands for "Back to School." It's a chance for everyone to hear from the CEO, John Chuang, not to mention other luminaries like the CEO of Aquent International, Greg Savage, get some training, and have some fun.
I have traditionally been the host and MC for these things and that has usually involved writing songs and poems about the company. Three years ago, I performed a "rap" song entitled, "Milllion Dolla' Client," that showcased the 22 clients with whom we had done more than a million dollars worth of business in the previous year. It featured dope rhymes such as, "I came to drop science 'bout 22 clients/ They used to be tiny, but now they're giants," and, "I know it sounds whack/ But please stop laughing/ A lot of our engagements are/ Straight up staffing!" To this day I regret that I did not capture this performance on video and post it to YouTube to be mocked by one and all for my unrepentant corporate chicanerie.
Why am I telling you all this? Well, here's the rub. After I had thrown down, I ran into the CEO and he asked, "Do you think that seemed professional?" It was fairly lo-fi, goofy, and amateurish, so, I said, "No." But then I added, "My goal is always to get people to think, 'I've never worked at a place like this.'"
He looked at me and said, "I guess you've achieved your goal, at least in your case, because as of now you don't work here anymore. You're fired."
PSYCHE! In all honesty, I can't recall if he responded to me at all, but I believe my point was well taken. This company has always been imbued with a spirit of entrepreneurship, independence, and iconoclasm. It's also always been a place where fun and enthusiasm are not only welcomed but encouraged.
Composing and performing a rap song to celebrate our success may not have been "professional," but, it was quintessentially "Aquent."
Yesterday - February 7, 2008, in case you are reading this in the far, distant future - Aquent hosted a webcast on changes in creative technology (like InDesign, Acrobat, etc.), that not only have an impact on the type of creative work that gets done but also on the way in which it gets done.
The trends discussed by the presenters, Chris Smith and Jennifer Smith of Aquent Graphics Institute, ranged from the growing need to repurpose content for multiple platforms and devices to the emerging possibilities for collaboration and process improvement in creative organizations.
We got a number of good questions during the call but one that surprised me the most was, "What is XML?" It took me back because five or six years ago I was frequently called on to explain XML to our internal staff, in spite of the fact that I had no technical background nor had ever consciously used XML (it's all around us, so I had probably used it without knowing).
I was on the call as the host, so I portrayed XML as a customizable mark-up language that works like a universal translator on Star Trek. With it, you can tag your content in a way that can then be read or understood by a variety of technologies. Chris Smith put it a little more simply by describing it as a mark-up language that allows you to make content platform independent.
Any other ideas about how to explain XML to non-technical designer types?
I said I was going to use this confounded blog to talk more about what Aquent is up to, and, tarnation, I'm going to do it!
First of all, back in December, our DC office landed a $5.2 million contract to provide the Library of Congress with web services for their New Visitors Experience Project. The contract runs through June 2010. Nice!
Secondly, our Detroit office was selected by the readers of Corp! Magazine as a "Best of Michigan Business" in the "Staffing Firms" category. We've got a great team of hard-working, experienced, and friendly folks working in Detroit and it's nice to see them recognized by their community.
Finally, although it might not be news to some of you, even I sometimes forget the extent of Aquent's reach around this vast green globe. I mean, we've got 5 offices in Australia, 5 more in Japan, 3 in China, and 2 in India, not to mention offices strewn about Europe from Warsaw to Barcelona and from Manchester to Prague. We've got 120 staffers in London alone (which may make London a bigger Aquent-town than Boston, where we've got our headquarters - got to check on that)! Who knew?
In other words, people who work for Aquent work on cool projects in cool places for a cool company.
Wait, wait, wait. That sounded like marketing puffery, so let me rephrase it: Some people who work for Aquent work on some cool projects in some cool places for some cool companies. And you could be one of them!
(Ugh. I try to dial down the puffery and I turn my moment of honesty into a crass promotion. I'm so ashamed.)
Aquent is going to be at FUSE: Design, Culture and Branding Conference this year, if for no other reason than that, "Every year, hundreds of design legends and corporate superstars converge at FUSE to experience a sense of community in the brand and design capital of the world - New York City." I mean, it's kind of a no-brainer.
What's more is, we're able to offer you a discount on the standard registration fee! To take advantage of this discount, all you need to do is reference this code when registering: SPONM2007AQ.
Registration is fairly simple. You can do so by calling 888.670.8200, emailing, register@iirusa.com or visiting the website.
The other night I was talking to a friend of mine, Peter Dixon, about his cool new cd, "Shady Planet." It hasn't been selling as well as he had hoped, so I, as Mr. New World of Marketing, was suggesting some things he could do to promote it.
For example, I mentioned starting a blog or, better yet, a video blog, in which he talked about music (he knows a lot about music of all flavors), songwriting (he's a melody machine), the making of this cd, and other projects he's been involved with (one of his former bands, Combustible Edison, recorded for SubPop).
Since writing a blog can be sort of time-consuming, I said he could simply start by hunting down music blogs that talked about his old band, or even his new cd, and leave a comment, start a conversation, whatever. As I put it, bloggers are always looking for content and, in a way, he is content.
My basic message was that you don't need a big record label or a press agent to make this stuff happen; you could do it yourself. But before he acted on any of my brilliant ideas, I told him, he needed to decide what he wanted. For example, if he wanted to sell cd's, how many did he want to sell? His exact course of action will naturally depend on whether he wants to sell 500 or 5,000. I thought he should also create a profile of the type of person who he imagines would buy this cd and start thinking about where these people might hang out (both on-line and off-line). Etc. In my view, the more specific he can get about his actual goals, the easier it should be for him to devise and execute a plan that gets him where he wants to go.
In this case, as in many others, however, the big question is: Where SPECIFICALLY do you want to go?
Gary Katz is the CEO and founder of Marketing Operations Partners. Gary is a thought leader in the emerging field of marketing operations, a field to which he brings both a keen intellect and a missionary zeal.
I caught up with Gary and recorded this interview with him, which I present for your podcasting enjoyment. In it, he defines "marketing operations," discusses the benefits of this approach as well as the challenges - both organizational and, for lack of a better word, psychological - faced by anyone trying to implement it within their company. Listen to what he's got to say and find out why he refers to marketing operations as a "cosmic universal force."
To get down to the nitty gritty, you can hear the podcast by clicking on the device pictured below:
You can also download the mp3 by "right-clicking" ("control-clicking," Mac-wise) this link here, or check out all the Talent Blog Podcasts on iTunes.
Highlights of the podcast can be found at the following time coordinates:
00:46 - What is Marketing Operations?
02:12 - What problems should the Marketing Operations approach fix?
05:00 - Marketing vs. Sales: Who's driving?
07:10 - "Sophistication"
10:31 - Ideal metrics
11:25 - Challenges faced by organizations when implementing Marketing Operations
16:30 - MO - A Cosmic, Universal Force
18:37 - Overcoming the challenges
21:40 - Getting C-level support
26:10 - MO: The future of marketing?
29:49 - The missionary sell
Greetings, loyal followers and coincidental visitors of Aquent's Talent Blog!
I know I only did one post last week and I extend my heartfelt and sincere apologies for my shortcomings and unworthiness. I'm back in the saddle this week, though, and vow to return to my 3+ posts pace. Wish me luck!
In any event, I blame my other marketing duties for my blog-wise slackness . We've been pursuing a kind of "thought-leadership" strategy for the past year and I've kind of become "chief thought leader" (what else would a Minister of Enlightenment be?).
In addition to this blog and the Talent Blog Podcast, not to mention the numerous webcasts we sponsor, host, and produce, I edit several newsletters that we send out to clients and talent. Getting all the details wrapped up on those can eat up time faster than a dog eats homework. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the newsletters ate my blog-work.
The talent newsletter primarily features "hot jobs" and career advice while the client newsletter generally focuses on some particular aspect of marketing and includes interviews and insights from our talent and any relevant experts we can track down. I think the content in the client newsletter tends to be pretty strong - judge for yourself by checking out this article on expanding your brand's global footprint, or this one on building branded entertainment sites - though the newsletter has been "under-performing," in terms of people actually clicking on the links to the articles. I've got some ideas about improving things and will try them out over the next few months.
We've been hearing about the credit meltdown and the bursting housing bubble for a while, but Fed Chief Bernanke was talking yesterday about a worsening economic outlook and even the President is finally copping to the notion that the economy "faces challenges". So what does this mean for folks who, for one reason or another, decide to work as "temps" (which, as I mentioned in my last post, is basically everybody)?
I'm not an economist or a policy wonk; I'm just a humble doctor of philosophy who has been working in the temporary staffing industry one way or the other for going on 20 years, but this is how I see it. Rising unemployment rates are rarely good for anyone, and if we glance back to 2001/2002, when a lot of people came to us looking for work, things weren't exactly hunky-dory. Be that as it may, there may be some upside for temps, at least in the short term, to an economic downturn.
Here's how it works, at least in theory. As the economy slows, companies start worrying about spending money. Hiring "permanent" staff becomes a dodgy proposition because you're adding an indefinite cost to your budget at a time when indefiniteness is more scary than reassuring. Still, you've got stuff to do and chances are you need to hire people to do it. So you turn to freelancers and temp agencies to find people who will work on projects and then leave when the projects are complete, thus making your costs more definite and predictable. In other words, towards the beginning of a downturn, temporary staff, thanks to its "flexibility," starts to look pretty appealing.
In my last post, I floated out various reasons why people "temp" in hopes of dispelling the notion that people temp because they can't find permanent work. In this post, I want to debunk the myth of the "perm job" itself.
To get all heavy and existential, 'cuz that's how I roll, teachers from Buddha to Heraclitus have taught that change and impermanence are an integral part of existence and cannot be escaped or avoided. This applies to employment just as it does to living bodies and any object subject to entropic flux.
Everyone knows this intuitively, and yet, when we apply for or are offered a "full-time job," while we know that it won't be "permanent" like death, we assume the amount of time we will end up giving to the company is more or less in our control and practically indefinite. Indeed, this implied indefiniteness tends to separate the full-time employees from contractors who, as the name implies, work under a contract stipulating the terms and, more importantly, the length of their employment.
Of course, anyone who has gone through a round of lay-offs, downsizing, or re-organization knows that this sense of indefiniteness and permanence is an illusion.
Anyone watching Aquent over the last few years would see that we've shifted the emphasis in our marketing from "the world's largest talent agency for creative, web, and tech," back in 2001, to "a professional services firm that specializes in helping companies all over the world, across a variety of industries, make use of people, processes, and technology" with a "marketing and creative services group" that included a consulting and a technology offering in addition to staffing, to the current positioning of "staffing for marketing organizations" (which is fudged a little in the title of the homepage which reads "marketing and creative staffing at Aquent.com").
These shifts in emphasis have been driven by our desire to grow beyond our origins in desktop publishing and graphic design (both print and web). Truth be told, we still place a lot of folks in these so-called "creative" roles and probably have not yet exhausted the business potential of this space. Nevertheless, the organizational fact of the matter is that creative folk are generally working for marketing folk and creative services departments are frequently nestled within or otherwise adjoined to marketing departments. Given this arrangement, it seemed a natural extension of our business to expand beyond the edges of creative into the broader world of marketing proper and that is just what we've done.
In one of my last posts, I addressed the issue of "voice" and the difference between the "corporate voice," which I tend to use for this blog, and my own voice, which peeks through here and there but is more or less repressed. That post was sparked by the realization both that I was using the corporate voice without anyone explicitly telling me to do so and that I knew implicitly how the corporate voice should "sound," again, without anyone ever instructing me on its proper use.
Although I was focused on a curious sociological fact - i.e., that people learn how to act "professionally" by osmosis - with a little bit of navel gazing thrown in for good measure, the comments I received got me out of my own personal quandary ("How can I write for Aquent and still be me?") and have set me on a new blogging path. Specifically, the words of Kris Rzepkowski resonated strongly with me. As he put it, "The corporate voice of Aquent is the sum of the talent they've chosen to retain." In other words, the real issue isn't whether I'm using a stilted or sterile corporate voice instead of my own scintillating and incisive voice. The issue is that the voices of Aquent's many talent are not being heard here.
Of course, I have profiled and written about Aquent Talent , and I thought I had made it clear that I welcome guest bloggers, but nevertheless this blog has remained "mine" in many ways. Accordingly, I resolve in the 2008 to get more voices of Talent on this here blog. I also hereby resolve to write more as "Talent" myself. I first came to Aquent as a temp back in the MacTemps days and, in many ways, still think of myself that way. I also think that there are some valuable career lessons to be learned from the meandering course of my own.
Finally, and this will be a big and shocking break, I want to make this blog more about Aquent (which, frankly, was the suggestion of Lewis Green). I've consciously avoided adopting a "Rah Rah Aquent!" tone on this blog and, even when writing about Talent that we work with, I've taken pains to highlight their skills, experience, and insight, and not dwell so much on the role that Aquent has played in their careers, even though their connection to Aquent is the main reason that I'm writing about them.
A year ago our COO said, "I'm still not sure if the perspective of the blog should be 'I bleed orange,' or not." Now, I may stop short of bleeding orange, but I will write more openly and enthusiastically about this company. I've worked here for over 10 years and think that the people I've met, both Talent and staff, are cool, interesting, and deserving of praise and, frankly, hype.
So, Happy New Year, everybody. I'm looking forward to 2008 and I promise, with your help, to make this blog ever more smashingly fabulous. Cheers!
You launch a new product and it doesn't perform as you hoped. What do you do? Well, you could turn to someone like Irma Salinas for answers.
Irma is represented by Aquent's Connecticut office and is currently working on the "Marketing Insights" Team at a large non-alcoholic beverages company (as it turns out, she actually started her career at an international spirits company importing beer from Latin America). She got involved in doing product reviews when working for a research company where she was very involved in reviewing and reporting on the performance of non-carbonated beverages (water, teas, juices, etc.). "I started working in this area when it was really getting competitive. It was a very exciting time. The market for beverages was changing and I learned a lot."
Irma was frequently involved in reviewing the performance of new products. I asked her both why new products don't perform well, but also how companies go about setting sales goals for new products in the first place. "Of course, there is a very extensive process that large companies go through to develop and launch new products," Irma assures me, "and since they have tested it with consumers, etc., you soon discover that the reasons for poor performance are not usually to be found in the product itself."
"If you're not thinking segmentation, then you're not thinking," Ted Levitt of the Harvard Business School supposedly quipped. While every marketer would readily agree with him, getting segmentation right can be as challenging as it is necessary - and getting it wrong can be downright disastrous: Working with segmentation schema that are irrelevant to your business is a waste of time and money; working with too few or too broadly defined segments means missed opportunities; and working with too many or too narrowly defined segments means stretching your marketing resources to their breaking point.
Since there are so many options and variables involved in segmenting your audience, it is best to rely on analysts, either external or internal, who understand your business and who understand how to match your needs with the myriad segmenting approaches. To sketch out a useable framework for getting the most valuable results from your segmentation provider, I consulted Ben Ben-Baruch, a Senior Business Intelligence Consultant represented by Aquent who got his first contract assignment with General Motors in 1997 and has been there ever since.
"Whatever segmentation provider you use and whatever methodologies and data they employ," Ben says, "the key is ensuring that you can use the segmentation to meet your business goals. Finding a provider that thinks in terms of your business, presents the data with an emphasis on its proper use, and makes it easy to keep the data fresh, is critical not only to the success of your segmentation process, but to the success of your marketing efforts in general."
As part of the follow-up to webcast Aquent sponsored devoted to Seven Key Insights for Global Marketing and Brand Management, I called up Sarah Schuh who is general manager of Aquent's Multilingual Communications offering. Sarah has been working in the marketing translation and localization space for many years now and I thought she could help some of you out there with her experience and insights.
I recorded a podcast with Sarah and in our conversation she made one thing perfectly clear: when it comes to localization, translating copy from one language to the next is actually the easy part. Indeed, the real work happens well before any copy is handed over to the translators. That work involves clarification of your core marketing message, ensuring that this message meaningfully addresses a real audience in the target market, and planning for eventual localization when designing critical marketing instruments such as websites. There's nothing worse than having to add to the cost of translation the cost of redesigning your site to accommodate the expanded text produced by moving from English to, say, German.
To get down to the nitty gritty, you can hear the podcast by clicking on the device pictured below:
You can also download the mp3 by "right-clicking" ("control-clicking," Mac-wise) this link here, or check out all the Talent Blog Podcasts on iTunes.
Highlights of the podcast can be found at the following time coordinates:
01:08 - Does your target audience even exist in another market?
03:18 - It's not just words: How do your visual elements translate?
05:20 - Take localization into account when creating the original message
07:20 - Define the use of company terminology
10:00 - Plan for expansion of foreign text
12:08 - The investment in planning vs. The cost of getting it wrong
13:33 - What companies should look for in their localization partner
17:35 - The cause of localization disasters
20:39 - Is "success" just the absence of "disaster"?
It's hard to believe that December is well-nigh upon us, but that is the horrible and shocking truth.
Since this is a time when many companies slow down or halt their hiring activities altogether, it also means that this is a good time for job seekers to take stock of their career aspirations and job-search resources.
It's not surprising that you can find a wealth of job search advice on the Web. There is everything from the copious compendium of job search resources known as The Riley Guide to the step-by-step instructions provided by Job-Hunt.org. And much, much more.
While thinking about the next stage in your career could involve a lot of soul-searching - "What do I want from life?" What is my passion?" "Who am I?" - there are also a number of nitty-gritty, practical steps you can take before, after, or during this self-interrogation. Here are 5 we recommend:
Figuratively speaking, our planet is smaller than it used to be, thanks to jet travel, the Internet and other inventions that reduce the historical limitations of distance and time. But when it comes to global product launches and marketing campaigns, it's a big world after all--and going global involves serious challenges as well as significant opportunities.
Cindy Dyer understands that reality all too well. Dyer, who is currently in an Aquent placement as senior manager of consumer strategy and insight at Frito-Lay Inc. in Dallas, started out as a food scientist, but moved into marketing while at Pizza Hut Inc. She's also worked for global giants like General Mills Inc., Campbell's Soup Co. and Mead Johnson & Co., the infant-child nutrition division of Bristol-Myers Squibb. Throughout her career, she's been involved in international branding and marketing campaigns.
Following are a few of Dyer's tips for successfully taking your products and messages beyond your own borders:
Mr. DePalma has written extensively about the challenges associated with taking a brand or a business global, including this article on global toe dippers and toe stubbers, and characterizes the web-based, global marketplace as an "eighth continent," with all the peril and promise that that image implies.
If your company has already gone global, and your toes hurt, or if you're thinking of wading into the global waters and want to know how cold they are, you should tune in on November 29th.
Aquent held a contest a few weeks back inviting designers to create a Halloween-themed logo treatment on our homepage. We got about 40 responses and the winning entry, created by Kevin Bonixe, a native of Massachusetts but currently a resident of Portugal, debuted on Aquent.com today.
Reaching him via the interweb, I asked Kevin how he got into design and this is what he told me: "I started out taking a course in photography and got introduced to digital photography. When I then began image manipulation in Photoshop, a new world of imagination, color, and creativity opened up to me. It fed my eagerness to learn, evolve, and to search for even better tools to create my vision. Design was the answer."
The work that Kevin ended up doing for us was is in Flash, of course (if you are reading this after Halloween, you can view it here. I asked Kevin what he liked so much about that application. He wrote, "The coolest thing about Flash is the ease of translating your creativity to the stage. When you have a timeline where you can incorporate images, movement, sound interactivity, dynamics, your creativity is your only limit."
Although, for now, Kevin is pursuing a career in business management, he does do some design work on the side, such as this site for a Portuguese hip-hop band, S. Clemente. If you are interested in working with Kevin, he can be reached via Aquent's Barcelona office.
Paul's book is an insightful, articulate, and information-rich overview of the new social media from blogs to YouTube and beyond. If you are a marketer and want to figure out how you can succeed in the new media landscape, or at least avoid some of its precipitous pitfalls, you should tune into the webcast and check out The New influencers.
As an added bonus, I recorded an interview with one of the influencers Paul profiles, Peter Rojas of engadget fame. I will be posting the interview as a podcast here tomorrow. I beg of you to do us both a favor and come on back to listen to it. You'll be glad you did.
People don't usually think of job ads as "entertaining." Frankly, they can be kind of dry. At least that was the case until July when P.Diddy posted an ad on YouTube for a personal assistant. (His update of the posting is also worth watching, if only for the admonition, "Kids, stay in school.")
Aquent has already made several forays into more or less straightforward video job posting territory - check out this post for a Senior Interactive Designer in Philadelphia or this one for a Search Marketing Specialist in Europe. And, as it turns out, we've also ventured onto P.Diddy's turf with this video advertisement for a "selling area manager" in our New York office.
Is it funny? Does it work? Do you want the job? If you are interested, please check out
Lance Loveday and Sandra Niehaus are the authors of Web Design for ROI, and will be featured in a webcast hosted by Aquent on May 22. Their approach to web design, while theoretically informed, is relentlessly pragmatic. As they put it, "Our work is about more than just getting people to think about web design. We want them to act."
You know how I wrote the other day that "
You might not expect a graphic designer working as part of a program support center housed within the 
Yesterday - February 7, 2008, in case you are reading this in the far, distant future - Aquent hosted a webcast on changes in creative technology (like InDesign, Acrobat, etc.), that not only have an impact on the type of creative work that gets done but also on the way in which it gets done.
