 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.
 Some quick stuff for today, May 2.
Customer Service
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!
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Voices of Aquent
Apr 30, 2008 @ 10:04 AM · Matthew Grant
 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!
Image Courtesy of soupboy.
 Here are some lovely links for loving.
Link 1:The ORIGINAL Aquent Blog
Tim Donnelly in Aquent's Los Angeles office started Aquent's first-ever blog several years ago and it's still going strong. He's a good, funny writer who finds weird stuff out there on the Interweb. Plus, he wrote a nice post about my recent podcast on neuormarketing. Go on and give him some love.
Link 2: Why Bother Having a Resume?
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.]
Link 3: Logos Control Your Mind
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?
Image Courtesy of kjunstorm.
In the blurb I wrote about my podcast with Debbie Weil, I gave as one of the "don'ts" of corporate, "Don't overestimate the amount of work it will require." A colleague saw the post and wrote, "This doesn't make any sense. You mean 'don't underestimate the amount of work,' right?" Wrong. Yes, conceiving and launching a blog takes work. Yes, once you've launched it, you've got to maintain it indefinitely. Yes, you will have to devote time and resources to this project. Nevertheless, and this was Debbie's point, while it does require work and commitment, it doesn't require so much that you shouldn't do it. Putting it another way, I could have said, "Don't let your overestimation of the work required stop you from trying." When I explained this to my colleague, he responded, "Too clever by a half." To that, I could only say, "Guilty as charged!"
 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.
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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) Image Courtesy of hyku.
 I interviewed Debbie Weil yesterday for a podcast on corporate blogging (which I'll be posting tomorrow morning - watch this space!). While doing a bit of research on Debbie, I came across her compilation of the "Best Top Ten Lists" for 2007. What threw me for a time-loop was this list of "Top 10 Tips for New Bloggers" assembled by the fellow who coined the term "blog," Jorn Barger.
Actually, it wasn't the list that threw me so much as seeing Jorn's robot wisdom weblog, which was the first blog I ever read (while sitting in the Aquent office in Osaka, Japan back in 2000). It reminded me once again that a weblog, now commonly called "blog," was originally defined by Mr. Barger as a collection of links documenting someone's travels around the web. The journal-esque form of today's blogs suggests that the genre has drifted somewhat from his original concept, according to which, as he puts it, "...del.icio.us is actually better for blogging than blogger.com." In other words, blogging is about the links, not about self-important pontification, snide carping, or insipid personal reflection. (Thank the Heavens that I never indulge in such frivolities on this august and painfully earnest corporate blog!) So, in the original spirit of bloggery, I present the following links upon which I have recently pointed and/or clicked: How do you like them blog apples? Image Courtesy of iangbl.
 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." Image Courtesy of Sporko.
 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!
Image Courtesy of Pear Biter.
 When I was at PodCamp in Boston a couple weeks ago I finally met David Meerman Scott, whom I'd wanted to interview at the time that we were doing the webcast with Paul Gillin.
David has literally written the book on the "new rules of marketing and PR." I spoke with him about thought leadership strategies, building user personas, and using press releases as a marketing tool. If you have the time, please check out our conversation and let me know what you think.
You can hear the interview by clicking on the device below:
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You can download the mp3 by "right-clicking" ("control-clicking," Mac-wise) this link here, or check out this and other Talent Blog podcasts on iTunes.
Highlights of the podcast can be found at the following time coordinates:
2:14 - Defining "thought leadership"
5:40 - Main challenges to crafting a thought leadership strategy
9:00 - Methods for creating "user personas"
10:53 - The Engineer and the "100 Mothers"
11:30 - "Why don't people do things the right way?"
16:19 - Reading blogs written by your buyer personas
18:00 - The "News Release Strategy"
25:30 - "The media will notice"
Image courtesy of belgianchocolate.
Over the weekend I attended the second annual PodCamp un-conference here in Boston. It was great for a lot of reasons, chief among them being the chance to meet people I've corresponded with or spoken to, but had until then never seen in the flesh, as well as the opportunity to meet folks I didn't know before but am glad I do now.
On the "meeting in the flesh"-front, I finally met C.C. Chapman, Paul Gillin, and David Meerman Scott.
On the "glad I know them now"-front, there were, among others, the "Hollywood Podcaster," Tim Coyne, Doug Haslam and Sandy Kalik of Topaz Partners, the "golden" Jay Berkowitz, and the "twisted" Mitch Joel.
While many folks at PodCamp made an impression on me, I would say the impression I've been wrestling with most vigorously was that made by Mr. Joel. Mitch's presentation was entitled, "Building Your Personal Brand," and, frankly, I wasn't planning on attending it until C.C. told me that Mitch was a great speaker.
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 The other day I had the good fortune of speaking with Paige and Gretchen of MommyCast, a popular podcast devoted to moms the world over and one that has been featured everywhere from Variety and USA Today to the BBC and the Wall Street Journal. I asked them about their editorial perspective, what works and what doesn't when companies approach them with sponsorship offers, and why their podcast has been so wildly successful.
If you haven't listened to their podcast, you should. If you'd like to listen in on our conversation you can use this device:
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You can also download this interview by right-clicking (or "control-clicking," Mac-wise) on this link, or access it (along with other Talent Blog Podcast episodes) via iTunes or at Switchpod.
Some points of interest:
2:55 - How moms share information
4:20 - Successful pitch approaches
10:05 - People who don't get podcasting
13:33 - Measuring the impact of a podcast
21:00 - Media kits matter!
Image courtesy of Spiralz.
 The other day I had the distinct pleasure of speaking with Peter Rojas, co-founder of Engadget and Joystiq, and formerly editorial director at Gizmodo.
Although our conversation initially focused on the most, and least, successful ways for marketers and PR folk to work with bloggers, we ended up covering a lot of ground including the new Radiohead release, the blurry line between producers and consumers in an era of unlimited digital manipulation, the evolving concept of "nature," and the mass media's "sovereignty over consciousness."
To listen to our conversation, you can use the device pictured here:
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There are some hidden gems in this podcast. Once it's loaded, feel free to fast-forward to the following treasures:
18:42 - On Radiohead's "brilliant, smart, well-played gimmick"
27:09 - Young people and the infinitely manipulable digital world
29:49 - The changing idea of the "natural"
32:38 - On starting the next "YouTube-Facebook-Microsoft-Google"
You can download this episode along with other Talent Blog podcasts from Switchpod
or iTunes.
Image courtesy of edans.
 Aquent is sponsoring an American Marketing Association on-demand webcast, which will first air tomorrow, Tuesday, October 16, at 1pm EST. The webcast will feature Paul Gillin, author of The New Influencers: A Marketer's Guide to the New Social Media.
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.
Image courtesy of hyku.
 Back in February, in a post about marketing ethics and the Mooninite scandal, I referred to a post on the blog of one, John Cass. When John responded to my post with thoughts of his own, I learned a valuable lesson about blogging: if you refer to the work of other bloggers, they will often refer back to you.
Of course, at the time I did not realize that John was a passionate and enthusiastic expert on blogging. In fact, he recently published a book on the subject entitled Strategies and Tools for Corporate Blogging. Not exactly for the beginner, this book is aimed at folks who have already started blogging and, as he puts it, "are ready for the next level of effective blogging."
Taking blogs, and discussions about marketing in general to "the next level," is the hallmark of John Cass' style. When you speak to him about blogging, as I did, the conversation quickly moves from goals, strategies, and metrics, to more vital and essential concerns such as lifetime learning, social engagement, and "letting people follow their dreams."
While he self-identifies as a marketer, John is living proof that the essence of marketing is involvement - involvement with customers, involvement with professional communities, and hands on involvement with the technologies and practices you advocate.
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 Gerry McGovern, an "authority on managing web content as a business asset," posted an interesting article entitled "Impediments to seeing information as a task," in which he makes some interesting claims on establishing the true value of content on the web.
His argument is summed-up in the following statement: "Until the Web, the act of creating content and the impact that content had on the reader were not really connected. But the Web opens up a window through which we can look and see if the content is actually delivering on its objectives."
McGovern's perspective is informed by the notion that web usage is task driven and that "[m]ore than anything else, it is content that will influence the successful completion of these tasks." Accordingly he concludes, "We need web writers whose first and foremost concern is the action their content will drive."
While I agree that the web allows us to apply metrics to writing, at least in terms of page views, feed subscriptions, comments, etc., I don't agree that the "completion of tasks" is the best measure of content value or that content influences the completion of tasks "more than anything else." Furthermore, I disagree that the goal of all or even most content on the web is to "drive actions" (unless we count as content the word "Continue" written on a button on an e-commerce site).
Within a business context, it goes without saying that we need to be able to evaluate and justify the things we do in business terms. At the same time we need to make sure that we are comparing apples to apples. Content <> Content. Entries in an FAQ are not the same as product descriptions, which are not the same as user reviews or the instructions for submitting a review. Content needs to be judged against its stated purpose, not against the general purpose of "driving action."
What do you think?
Image courtesy of santheo.
My first post for this blog went live on October 28. Over the last seven months I've learned a thing or two about blogging and thought I would take this opportunity to share them.
1. Just Do It
When I was asked to launch a blog for Aquent, I spent a lot of time hemming and hawing about what exact approach to take. Then, one day I was simply told, "The new website is launching in two weeks and there's going to be a link to the blog on it." I just had to do it. 100+ posts later, I'm still doing it and have not yet been fired (to my knowledge).
2. "It's just a blog"
The hard part about writing a blog is churning out the posts day in and day out. If you don't have new content frequently (I started out at 3 posts a week but now shoot for 5), readers won't return and neither will the search-engine spiders. However, if you spend too much time crafting your posts, and have additional responsibilities as I do, you'll never get anything done. To overcome your inner perfectionist, it will serve you well to recall something Ann Handley told me: "It's just a blog."
Blogs may have a long tail, but they are very much of the moment and somewhat ephemeral. Don't agonize, just post. You can always write something better, or at least different, later.
3. People who blog read blogs
If you want people to read your blog, then you should read the blogs of others and a) leave comments on posts that interest you, as well as b) write posts inspired by their thoughts and link back to them. I've been consistently impressed by the responsiveness of bloggers* who have gotten me thinking such as Gavin Heaton, CK, Valeria Maltoni, and Mike Wagner, to name but a few.
*I originally called this item "Bloggers read blogs," but then remembered that David Armano recently told a conference room full of people who blog that they should stop calling themselves bloggers, and I agree with him.
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So I've started adding photographs to my blog, as you may or may not have noticed. The impetus was Mack Collier's post entitled "Your Company Blog Sucks, Now What?" in which he suggests adding images to make one's post more distinctive.
Because I didn't want to just rip off images from other websites- that didn't seem right on a blog devoted in part to extolling the value and virtues of creative work - I decided to sign up with a stock photography service. After reading this post on sessions.edu's blog, I was intrigued by the "member-generated" business model of iStockphoto and so I signed up.
While I have been able to find some apt and some not-so-apt pictures thus far - our creative director told me that "the perfect stock photo" is a contradiction in terms - the most interesting thing I stumbled across was a strange associative misogyny in my search results.
After writing a post about people lying on their resumes, I went to iStockphoto and searched for "liar," just to see what I would get. I didn't find much except pictures of people lying down and one picture of handcuffs. Then I noticed the following listed under "Common terms in this search:" "Beautiful Beauty Dishonesty Females Friendship Fun Girls."
My guess is that members tag their own work and, when you search on a certain term, the search engine then goes through the tags associated with the images and compiles the list of those terms the images have in common. In other words, the collection of terms is relatively random, made up as it is of tags applied to individual, in principle unrelated images.
Isn't it odd, however, that this "randomness" would reproduce a cultural stereotype, among the testosterone enhanced anyway, that what "beauty" and "women," even in friendship, have in common is "dishonesty"?
(Note: the picture I chose for this post was one that came up when I searched for "liar.")
Brought to you by our Guest Blogger, Nomi.
Terms like "user design" and "user-centered" design date back to the 1970's. They have their origins in a progressive, politically forward-thinking movement intent on involving the needs, wants, and preferences of the end user in every step of the design process and often relying on extensive user-testing as a design is being developed.
When the terms were coined, this was radical thinking. Some instances of user design challenged organizational conventions by doing things such as including nurses in the design process of hospital IT systems at a time when medicine was a very gender-divided and hierarchical industry. It was an esoteric and novel approach to design back when it was a designer's market and people were expected to adapt themselves to systems, usually non-optional and work-related, as designed.
But times have changed. Our lives overlap with tools and technology at so many points, with so many options, that if something isn't designed in a way that feels natural and immediately intuitive, if it strikes a dissonant chord with the way we fluidly live, think, and act, it just won't be adopted. It will be guiltlessly ignored like a child's discarded toy. Nowadays, even a completely free information site like Wikipedia has to provide a transparent and pleasing user experience.
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When I contacted Ann Handley of MarketingProfs -- who apparently invented blogging-- to talk about her career in marketing she told me, "I don't think of myself as a marketer."
Instead, she clarified, she was an "editor of a marketing publication." Accordingly, I asked her about her career as an editor and, specifically, what she looked for in the writers she worked with. She responded that, aside from area expertise and writing ability -- "I know a good writer when I read one" -- it was important that she "see how they'll fit into my overall editorial product."
This statement jumped out at me. If marketing in its purest sense is "the act of bringing a product to market," then weren't editors, who cultivate a specific brand of content, manage the people who produce it, and present it to the appropriate content consumers, "marketers"?
When I suggested this, Ann acknowledged that her responsibilities as an editor did in fact involve a lot of "marketing matchmaking" (between writers and audiences, for example). She also saw "content as a product," MarketingProfs' main one, arguably, which would make her effectively its brand or category manager. In other words, maybe she was a marketer after all.
Taking this line of thinking further, however, she pointed out that "anyone creating anything is a marketer" (which certainly echoes the thoughts of Seth Godin). While that may be the case at times, the direction that Ann provides, and the way it essentially represents the interests of her readers (her "customers"), just makes her role as editor seem more "marketing-ish" than that of her writers (the "content creators").
All of which made me wonder, how many people out there are marketers without even realizing it and, like Ms. Ann Handley, in spite of their claims to the contrary?
In December I wrote a post about blogs as the new resume in response to something I had read on a blog called "Servant of Chaos." I stated then, as I still believe now, that a blog can function as an annotated resume or portfolio, and it might even be easier and cheaper to construct or maintain than a portfolio website. I even recently reiterated my views here.
Turns out that I'm not the only person who holds these views by a longshot. First, though I cannot now recall how, I was alerted to a post, "5 steps to let your dream job find you," on the Marketing Nirvana blog maintained by LinkedIn's Community Evangelist, Mario Sundar. That post pointed me to a post by Adam Darowski called "The Blog is the New Resume." That piece unleashed a lengthy discussion (the preceding link will actually take you to a roundup of that discussion), demonstrating that a lot of folks have an opinion on this matter.
Reading through these various posts and round-ups I was struck not so much by the sound advice or the reasonable differences of opinions on display ("blogs are resumes," "blogs are NOT resumes," "your vanity Google search is your new business card," etc.) but by something that Immanuel Kant referred to as the "mathematical sublime." For Kant, the mathematical sublime, in contrast to the "dynamic sublime," which we encounter in natural wonders such as Niagara Falls, consisted in reason being overwhelmed by unfathomable quantity.
"Overwhelmed by unfathomable quantity" pretty much describes my daily experience as a blogger. How do others cope with this frightening and alluring experience of sublimity?
Is it wise that I encourage others to cast their career ambitions into this roaring and incomprehensible torrent?
Maintaining a blog can be hard work. You have to stay current; you have to be original; you have to "participate in the conversation." Still, you're in control. You know who your audience is (or is supposed to be), you know what you've written, and you know what's worked and what hasn't.
Even though guest blogging might seem somewhat easier, I think it's actually harder, especially when you are writing for a blog that has a lot of other contributors. In a way, such a blog is like a microcosm of the blogosphere. While, in the grand scheme of all things "blog," you might be writing the exact same thing as some other blogger, chances are, no one will notice. More importantly, YOU won't even notice, because you can't possibly be reading all blogs all the time.
Not so when guest blogging with a bunch of others. Case in point: As I've mentioned, I'm a "guest" on the "Notes on Design" blog over at sessions.edu. Well, the other day I wrote a post strongly stating that designers should create blogs as an alternative to creating a portfolio. Then I read through some previous posts from my co-guests and discovered that Ilise Benun had written a similar post just the day before. To make matters worse, her post was more reasonable and, frankly, better than my own!
I decide I'm going to go in a different direction and talk about the state of branding today. As an example, I'm going to write about my experience shopping for a guitar and trying to shake the spell cast on me by the Gibson brand when I was a teenage Jimmy Page worshipper.
Before I start, like a good guest, I head over to sessions.edu to find out what others are writing about. Sure enough, the first post I read, by John Kuraoka, is about branding! I then write a post about my total lack of original thought-content but it is, quite appropriately, rejected by the editor. "Woe," as they say, "is me."
If there is any lesson to be learned here it is this: Whatever you want to blog about has already been blogged about somewhere else.
If there is another lesson it is this: Never read any blog but your own. You'll always be the first to post on something there!
Brought to you by our Guest Blogger, Nomi.
As a designer, have you ever thought that the life of your design has only just begun when your work is "done"? First, you are designing a thing: a product, process, page, or identity mark-- some actualized enactment of your thought process. But what does this enactment orchestrate for the people who see it? How do they interact with it? Do they have a certain reaction? Draw a certain conclusion? Take a certain action or engage in a certain behavior based on what your design made them feel or believe?
Thinking in these terms, and asking these sorts of questions, belongs to an approach that goes by the ubiquitous and somewhat amorphous title of, "Experience Design."
More a process or method than a narrowly defined career path, the concepts of Experience Design can be applied to all media and disciplines from print and web design to industrial, process and environmental design. The goal of Experience Design is to rethink the label of "user" or "customer" and recognize that human interaction with design goes beyond a simple transaction. Experience Design views a design's audience as participants in the design itself, and the goal of design as the orchestration of an experience that brings about in participants a certain perception, instills a certain belief, and then triggers certain behaviors based on those perceptions and beliefs.
As an example, consider Deborah Adler's redesign of prescription medicine bottles and labels, now instated at Target Pharmacies worldwide under the name ClearRx. When her grandmother accidentally took medication meant for her grandfather, Adler, now a senior designer at Milton Glaser, realized that a great deal of patient error could be avoided by a design that changed the patient experience of processing and acting upon crucial labeling information. She conceived her design on a bottle with a clear front and back, versus the traditional cylindrical bottle, and a snap-on color-coding system to help family members keep prescriptions separate. Upon this canvas she reassembled the label info into "primary" and "secondary" categories, reasoning that the medication name and dosage level, for example, had to be given primary placement, while something like the prescription refill number was less urgent and thus lower on the visual hierarchy. By immersing herself in the complete patient experience, Adler came up with a design that has reduced patient error by six out of ten.
Brought to you by First Official Guest Blogger, Nomi.
Within the constellation of stellar design talent working today, what sets a true innovator apart? One way to define design innovation is that it goes beyond aesthetic appeal or even functionality to completely reshape user experience or perception. With this in mind, you can't say "innovator" without mentioning Jonathan Ive, Senior Vice President of Design at Apple. A profile of Ive this week in the Guardian reveals the career path of this iconoclastic industrial designer whose work goes way beyond industrial design. With his small, intensely close-knit team of designers at Apple, Ive has been the mastermind of Apple's genre-defining products: the iMac series, the iPod, and now the iPhone.
Due to his extremely private nature and reluctance to give interviews, little is known about him apart from the legacy of his work. Fair enough, since his designs speak for themselves. Throughout his career, his work displays a common thread: the ability to design a user experience which serves to create an emotional bond with the product. He is also known for being open to inspiration in unexpected places. For his iMac design, with the goal of making personal computers fun and loveable instead of drab and depressing, he was inspired by the gel-clear colors and chubby, rounded edges of jellybeans. He and his team made many field trips to jellybean factories to take notes that informed the production of the iMac shell.
If you think about the collective consumer attitude towards owning a personal computer-any computer, not just a Mac-- the launch of the iMac is directly responsible for that. But as revolutionary as the iMac was, Ive then went on to design a product many people feel is even more emblematic of a generation: the iPod. I cannot think of a single better piece of shorthand for today's self-contained, user-centric ethos. If I had to put five contemporary designs in a time capsule to represent the "now," the iPod would definitely be one of them.
When Ive does speak about his work, he reveals a passionate sense of teamwork with the designers that work under him, and an egoless dedication to getting the product absolutely perfect. "One of the hallmarks of the team I think is this sense of looking to be wrong," Ive has said. "It's the inquisitiveness, the sense of exploration. It's about being excited to be wrong because then you've discovered something new."
I'm pleased to introduce The Talent Blog's First Ever Official Guest Blogger: Nomi!
Nomi is a designer and educator who comes to us courtesy of the the blog at Sessions.edu. She'll be contributing several posts over the next few weeks on design-related topics. Here's a little bit of info about her:
 Nomi is Director of Student Experience at Sessions. She manages Sessions.edu programs such as the Portfolio Review and Design Competitions geared towards preparing students for the leap to professional designer. Nomi runs the show at DesignSessions Community where she applies her Parsons design education and years of professional design experience to help commercial artists navigate the quickly evolving nature of today's design careers. Nomi focuses on spotlighting the most outstanding students to give their hard work the recognition it deserves, and to inspire every student to give design their absolute all. In addition, Nomi helps students connect and generate interesting discussion on the DesignSessions Community site.
Check out Nomi's posts and let us know what you think. Also, if you're interested in playing the role of guest blogger, drop us a line!
There's a blog called Notes on Design over at sessions.edu and I'm going to be one of their guest bloggers for the next couple weeks.
My first post appeared today and it focuses on reasons why design professionals should consider contracting. My basic point is that contracting serves as a viable alternative to taking a full-time job with an agency or striking out on one's own as a freelancer. If you want to read the whole thing, click here.
C.C. Chapman is a blogger, a podcaster on music and new media, and VP of New Marketing for crayon, that "new marketing" company presided over by Joseph Jaffe with offices in Second Life.
Given the increased demand for interactive marketing expertise and the accompanying talent shortage, I called C.C. to find out how he had carved out a niche for himself as a new media "go-to-guy."
Turns out he's got a killer combination of technical know-how - he started his career as an information systems consultant before teaching himself HTML, landing a job as a web-master, and eventually morphing into a digital marketing manager - and a palpable passion for new media.
"Passion" is frequently heralded as the key ingredient to professional and personal success, but if we are to learn from C.C.'s example, we will quickly learn that "passion" is not enough. C.C. distinguishes himself by being a rather hyperactive doer. He doesn't just enthuse about blogging - he's been blogging for 6 years. He doesn't just marvel at the potential of podcasting - he created a successful, syndicated podcast. He doesn't just think that Second Life is "neat" and "promising" - he actually meets clients there.
Long story short, if you want to create campaigns that integrate and rely on new media, you need to familiarize yourself with it in a hands-on fashion. You've got to get into the sandbox and play. Start a blog; produce a podcast; try out Twitter. As "new media" or interactive marketers, says C.C., "We've got to do what we're talking about; that's part of the fun."
OMG! We can have fun doing this? Yes, we can, as long as we take a page from the C.C. Chapman playbook and remember that the fun is IN the DOING.
Rock on, C.C.!
I'll admit it. Sometimes I find Seth Godin kind of preachy. Indeed it seems that, for him, marketing is preaching, or "evangelizing," as it's more commonly called in the church of the customer. "It's about spreading ideas that you believe in, sharing ideas you're passionate about... and doing it with authenticity." Or so goes the Gospel of Godin.
He's not alone. Back in November, Hugh MacLeod of Gapingvoid published an updated Hughtrain Manifesto, which he kicks off with the proclamation that, "The market for something to believe in is infinite." That the act of marketing is not too different from the Acts of the Apostles becomes more clear towards the end of the Manifesto where we read: "A well-executed marketing campaign is an act of love." And if the point weren't fine enough, we are then told, "Choosing to have a 'smarter conversation' with the market is not a marketing decision; it's a moral decision."
I understand the allure of faith to marketers. On the one hand, people want to feel good about themselves and what they are doing and, since marketing often has an air of disrepute about it, defining it in terms of authenticity and honesty bestows upon it the glow of existential righteousness. On the other hand, if we want to be honest with ourselves as marketers, we must concede that we want people to have a pre-rational devotion to our products and services. In other words, faith in our products and services is the holy grail.
Of course, as good marketers, we're just responding to what consumers want. Part of our sense of self-worth as humans comes from seeing our convictions mirrored in the communities and organizations we associate with. Since many of those associations are economic, people increasingly hope to find themselves reflected in the phantasmagoria of the marketplace. Accordingly, as one blogger put it, many long-established brands "are under threat because they don't believe in the stuff we believe in, indeed they often don't believe in anything."
Maybe it's because I was brought up with a God vs. Mammon mindset, but the rhetoric of faith in the mouths of marketers rubs me the wrong way. I guess I'm more comfortable with marketing based on knowledge - I know what this can do; I know what you need; etc. - than one based on faith. This might make me a bad marketer. But does it make me a bad person, too?
Blog, Blog, Blog
Mar 30, 2007 @ 4:03 PM · Matthew Grant
I've tried desperately to avoid blogging about blogging and I've succeeded, more or less. When I have found myself blogging about blogging, I've striven to make sure that my comments were at least arguably career-related (for example, back in December I wrote about blogs as the new resume). I still believe that anyone interested in marketing themselves, which includes most independent consultants and, on some level, all jobseekers, needs to have a blog; a static resume or portfolio, nowadays, is just not enough.
Of course, once you start blogging, you'll discover that there is always more to learn about the medium, its potential uses, and its myriad practitioners. Along those lines, anyone with a burning thirst for blog-related knowledge should know about SOBCon07, a conference devoted to taking your blogging to the proverbial "next level." Among its many speakers you will find at least two bloggers from the realm of marketing and design whom I've referenced here, David Armano, and MIke Wagner, not to mention a bevy of other experts on podcasting, corporate blogging, and the like.
So, if you happen to be in Chicago May 11-12, have the dough (registration will run the early birds $350), and want to get your blog on, hie thee hence to SOBCon07.
Joseph Jaffe, of Life After the 30-Second Spot fame, is asking on his blog for people to recommend those blogs which are best at providing "smart, original thought leadership and guidance for people trying to understand and navigate through the new marketing world."
If you have an opinion, you should head over to his blog and join the conversation. If you are hoping to find out which blogs marketing bloggers find most valuable, Jaffe's post is also a good place to start.
It's easy to forget that there was a time when no one did the things that we do now.
Take blogging, for instance. 55 million people do it, it's a major focus of mine, and it's even part of my job, but there was a time when, believe it or not, no one blogged because it was not yet possible.
Now run the clock back 157 years to this date in 1850 when Nathaniel Hawthorne published his classic novel, The Scarlet Letter. According to the The Writer's Almanac, The Scarlet Letter stands as the "the first great American novel in part because it was the first great American novel that could reach a large audience."
Hawthorne's novel enjoyed a relatively broad audience and long-lasting popularity because it was among the first to be mass-produced (2,500 copies initially) by factory workers on steam-powered printing presses. Industrial, large-scale publishing, which I can hardly imagine not existing as I look at the many books, magazines, and newspapers littering my workspace, had finally become a reality.
Consider now that, when I "publish" this blog post, it will be available almost instantaneously to anyone on Earth with access to the Internet. Likewise, if you follow this link you will be able to read The Scarlet Letter in its entirety online. The publishing industry that catapulted Hawthorne to fame, while not yet dead, has evolved into something that would have been inconceivable to him.
The technologies we rely on as marketers become second nature. Then, before we know it, they're history.
I had never really thought about "design thinking" until I read the blog post at Adaptive Path that led me to write my last post. The funny thing is that as I started to research the concept, I noticed that earlier that same day I had bookmarked, obviously without much thought, a blog called Design Thinking Digest, which is maintained by Chris Bernard, Microsoft User Experience Evangelist (and which I was introduced to via this post on David Armano's blog).
As if it weren't strange enough that the mighty and mysterious Web would bombard my subconscious with secret messages about "design thinking" to get me to write about it, today on his blog Chris Bernard discusses the design approach of BMW's Chris Bangle and, guess what? Bernard is very taken with the fact that when designing cars, Bangle focuses on "the doing." Bernard writes, "His teams get outside to look at the car, they craft and sculpt designs with their hands. They are constantly on the lookout for new ways that they can make things, they spend as much time thinking about not the actual creation but the TOOLS they use to create with too."
That is, a critical component of true "design thinking" as practiced by a successful designer like Bangle and admired by an evangelizing software designer like Bernard is "doing" - getting your hands dirty, working with tools, making things. But that was, like, exactly the point I was "making" in my initial post on "design thinking"!!!
Is the Web reading my mind?
More frighteningly, is the Web writing my mind?
I subscribe to the feed from Adaptive Path's blog because, as they say here in Boston, the people who work there are "wicked smaht." As a result, and thanks to the magic of RSS feedings, I spotted this impassioned plea from one of the Adaptive Pathers, Dan Saffer, for design schools to start teaching design again.
Saffer's main complaint is that design schools have moved towards a curriculum centered around "design thinking" and away from a well-rounded, practical education focused on "thinking and making and doing." In his view, the real work of design consists in the process of moving from concept to realization; stopping at the idea stage means you've only done the easy part. He writes, "Some notes on a whiteboard and a pretty concept movie or storyboard pales in comparison to the messy world of prototyping, development, and manufacturing," and then puts a finer point on it by adding, "It's harder to execute an idea than to have one..."
Having encountered this lament in one form or another many times - "No one understands good typography anymore;" "People try to design when they can't even draw," "They think the computer's going to do it all for them," etc. - that aspect of his argument wasn't new. Rather, what drew my attention was the phrase "design thinking" and his characterization of it as "just thinking."
Since I was pretty sure that it meant more than that, I did a little research and found a Business Week article from last October called "The Talent Hunt," which describes Mozilla turning to the folks at Stanford's Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (aka, the "D-School") in search of a strategy for expanding the adoption of Firefox. In light of Saffer's comments, I was struck by the following sentences: "Business school students would have developed a single new product to sell. The D-schoolers aimed at creating a prototype with possible features that might appeal to consumers." Likewise, in a lecture at MIT entitled "Innovation Through Design Thinking," IDEO's Tim Brown talks about the process they follow often involving "a hundred prototypes created quickly, both to test the design and to create stakeholders in the process."
As I understand it, the "thought leaders" behind "design thinking" (you can find a good overview of them and their thoughts here on Luke Wroblewski's site) advocate the application of design methods to problems of business strategy precisely because it places a heavy emphasis on prototyping and real-world pragmatics. If Saffer is correct that "design thinking" as taught in design schools is primarily about thinking, and not about making things and seeing if they work, then I would say the real problem is that they are not actually teaching "design thinking."
But then again, I never attended design school. If you have, do you think that Saffer's criticism rings true?
A fellow who calls himself "Rands," and who works as an "engineering manager of teams that design phenomenal software" wrote an insightful post on what he looks at when reviewing a resume.
I encourage you to read the post in its entirety. It will provide you with a very detailed and frank description of those elements of a resume, in terms of both content and style, that matter to this particular hiring manager. Ideally, his practical suggestions will help you craft, or re-craft, your resume so that it will do what it's supposed to do: get the attention of people who are empowered to hire you and influence them to, at the very least, initiate a conversation with you.
In a nutshell, Rands, decides whether or not to talk to a particular candidate within about 30 seconds and he's basically looking for two things:
Clarity and honesty - Provide a meaningful "glimpse" into the things you've done and can do while avoiding vagueries such as, "Established track record for delivering measurable results under tight schedules." If you feel strangely compelled to include statements like that, be absolutely prepared to give a concise and concrete example when asked. In other words, don't put anything on your resume that you're not prepared to talk about at length.
Differentiation - Rands says that your resume should offer some "hook" that begs further exploration. As he puts it, "The hook will leave me with a question. Maybe it's something from your other interests section? How about an objective so outlandish that I can't help but set up a phone screen? I'm not suggesting that you make anything up, I'm asking you to market yourself in a way that I'm going to remember."
Like I said, this post contains a lot of very practical suggestions. Do yourself a favor and read it!
On a side note: I love how one thing leads to another on the web. Checking out Mike Wagner's blog (Mike has a lot of great ideas about branding and is a contributor to Marketing Profs), he recommended reading David Koopman's blog (David is a marketer down in Melbourne, Australia). I clicked over to David's blog and found this post, which was itself a comment on Rands post, which I otherwise may never have discovered. Thanks Mike, David, and Rands. And thank you, oh wonderful World Wide Web!
I addressed the question, "What is Marketing?" here a while back, and then most recently, here. The latter post inspired this thoughtful response from John Cass and got me thinking even more about the distinction between sales, advertising, and marketing proper.
I'm not sure that I'm any closer to understanding what marketing is in its purest form, but after watching GoDaddy.com's most recent Super Bowl ad, I think I understand why everyone wants to work in marketing.
On second thought, maybe I only have more insight into why working in Human Resources at GoDaddy might be, well, interesting.
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