Be Creative....NOW!!!

I just recently subscribed to AdAge and I am loving my daily emails from them!  They are giving me my advertising “fix” until I can hopefully one day find a job in the advertising world.  

Recently I came across an article that made me smile.  It discussed the idea of being uptight in a creative atmosphere and how it just doesn’t work.  The author, Derek Walker, tells the story of his CEO screaming at his fellow employees for not playing billiards and drinking beer while at work.  (I wonder if they have any openings...)  Apparently Walker and his fellow teammates were having some creative difficulties and the more they tried to be creative, the more they failed miserably.  The CEO and creative director of this company started to see the problem grow, so they staged an insane outburst to try and get everyone to relax.  Guess what...it worked!  

Although this scenario is not bound to happen all over the country, this article brings up a very good point - you can’t force creativity.  Sometimes it is better to just walk away from a problem and either come back to it at a later time or wait for the inspiration to come to you.  Obviously there are deadlines though in the working world, which is the problem Walker and his co-workers had encountered.  

Deadlines are the devil.  A creative deadline is like the devil’s little pitch fork.  

(Bad analogy I know.  Although, ironically enough I feel as though I’m on a deadline to post this since I never posted anything last week.)  Part of the problem is that we are always rushing to meet deadlines which rarely gives us the time to sit and think about what we are really doing.  Where I work, it is more about getting the product out quickly, than necessarily taking the appropriate amount of time to make sure we will stand out from our competition.  

I hope to one day work for a company that understands and appreciates the team I work on.  The billiards table and beers would just be an added bonus.

A Quick Website Update...

Hi Everyone!  I just wanted to give a quick update regarding our company's website feedback.  I was very excited to come in yesterday morning to the following email regarding the website:

"It has really grown on me.  I check back on it regularly.  I'm proud of it.  Thanks very much...CG did say that the website is very well done."

This email was sent to my boss and me by one of the company Partners.  ("CG" is a Partner as well.)  As I'm sure you could tell from my last post, I was slightly frustrated at the amount of negative feedback we were receiving as opposed to the positive feedback I had originally anticipated.  I was very happy to receive this email not only because of the positive comments but also because of its source!

Now I know why they call it an "Email BLAST"!

Earlier this week our company sent out its first email blast ever!  I would like to say it went smoothly, but that would be a lie...

For over a year now the Director of Marketing and I have been working with a local design and marketing boutique firm to design a complete overhaul of our company website.  I remember looking at the website 4 years ago before my job interview and thinking, “Oh my!” (and not in a good way).  Needless to say, this project was long overdue and I was very excited to be a part of the process.

After putting in more hours than I thought were possible for one project, my boss and I were pleased with the outcome.  The site was posted on a trial run basis for about a month before the actual announcement was made.  This means that not everyone saw the new website when they visited our URL but more times than not, it was there. 

One of our Partners took this gracing period as an opportunity to inform everyone at the company that the new website was coming.  He asked everyone to take a look and give us any feedback they felt was necessary.   We had a couple of comments here and there but nothing major.  After a few weeks of the overall review and some minor adjustments we were ready to make the big launch!  The same company that helped design the announcement also created our email blast.  We provided them with an email list of all our clients as well as email addresses for all our employees.  The email was set to go out around 10 am on Tuesday morning.

About 9:33am my inbox went into overload.  For almost 30 minutes straight I received “Out of Office” replies.  My inbox was FULL!  Both my boss and I are unsure why our design firm decided to have the email blast come from my email account but by that point it was a little too late.  In addition to all of the “out of office” emails, I also received a variety of other responses ranging anywhere from a simple “Who are you?” (that was a good self esteem booster) to “Immediately remove me from your mailing list” - - “I did not ask for this information - - under the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 this is considered unsolicited e-mail.”  (He obviously missed the “unsubscribe” button at the bottom.)  Eventually I got a “Thank you” and then I received a “Thank you.  It’s a very nice website.  [And by the way, one of the projects you’re showcasing has all the wrong pictures posted with it.]”  Awesome.

Shortly after I was able to sort through all of these emails I realized that I never received the email myself.  I asked some of my co-workers if they had received it and they said no.  A short phone call to the company we worked with and a phone call to our IT department determined that our spam blocker blocked the entire email blast to everyone in our company.  Fantastic.

After many more phone calls back and forth with the IT department and the design folks, the emails were sent out again to all employees around 1:15pm.  I was out to lunch trying to relax after a morning of putting out small fires.  Little did I know what I was going to come back to.

To start out, as you all know from my last posting we just recently joined Twitter.  At the bottom of the email blast it tells people to follow us on Twitter.  Turns out, Twitter is blocked in our headquarters.  (My boss and I do not work in our headquarters therefore we did not realize this.  We assumed that if we had access in a branch office, they did in the headquarters as well.  We were wrong.) Next I had a handful of people who assumed the email came to them blank because they never clicked “show images” in their email.  (This of course makes me wonder how many of our clients had this same issue.)  And of course lets not forget the 20 or so emails I received regarding errors on our website (ie: there’s a job posting missing, you’re using the wrong photos for this project (yes, it was the same one our client pointed out to us), you need to change this photo (not the same one the client pointed out to us), you should add this project, and my favorite - we’re missing a partner on our leadership page).  

Even though things did not go as smoothly as I had anticipated, this was a good learning opportunity for me.  Since this was the first email blast I was part of, I now know what to expect in the future.  Besides having an inbox full of “out of office” replies, I can now expect people to not be as excited about our new announcement as we are (insert CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 guy.)  It was also a gentle(?) reminder that even though you may put your blood, sweat and tears into a project it does not mean it is perfect.  (Although that would be nice.)  The good news is we did get one “Your new website is Great!” which made me feel better.  Now onto the next project…

Being Social

It’s finally happened!!!  After spending the last year trying to convince my boss that we should join Twitter we have finally entered the world of tweeting!! 

Social media has become such a large part of the marketing world offering a variety of avenues to make announcements.  A fitness website I often visit has about 20 different options under the “share this article” link.  I mean I obviously know the basics: Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, Linkedin.  But what exactly are 2linkeme and Adifni?  I think at this point everyone is trying to be the next big thing in the social media world. 

At one point, Myspace was the #1 social networking site.  However, very quickly Facebook swooped in and after only 5 years went from having 1 million active users to 200 billion!!!!  Unbelievable. 

While I was working on my MBA I took an “IT for Management” class and we talked a lot about social networking.  The group I was working with decided to pick Facebook for our social network presentation.  During our research we learned that 8 million users become fans of pages daily.  If you have a product you want getting attention - Facebook is the way to do it.  A friend of mine just started her own business, on the side, selling handmade purses, wallets and aprons.  She created a fan page on August 2nd and today (August 12th) she already has 80 people that “Like” her page.  Talk about free marketing!

Linkedin is another great site.  I’ve been using it a lot personally to find out information about companies I’m looking at as potential employers.  According to an article from Sales & Marketing Business Brief 98% of companies use Twitter as the main focus of their social media initiatives, 96% of companies use Facebook as a secondary source, and 74% also use LinkedIn as part of their strategy.

I really believe that companies who haven’t jumped on the social media bandwagon yet are falling behind.  Granted this phase might not last forever but this is what is hot NOW.  And hey guess what - it is FREE!!!!  Yes, it costs the company money to have someone maintain their sites but it is still a fabulous way to get products, companies, anything noticed.

Has your company entered the social networking world yet?

Pitching "The Pitchman"

My book club is currently reading What The Dog Saw by Malcom Gladwell. I finished reading the chapter titled “The Pitchman” a couple of weeks ago but still haven’t been able to shake the idea of it from my head.

For those of you who have not read this book yet, this chapter is about Ron Popeil a man who has come up with some of the most effective infomercials. The difference between him and Billy Mays? He’s also the creator of the products he’s selling. Popeil would take an idea and run with it. He would make sure that his products were not only helpful but also convenient. He knew people preferred to know how things worked as opposed to just what it did so he made sure that he spent his time explaining everything when making a sale. He knew that people liked to learn knew things (knowledge = power) and people always want power.

In the book they use the example of a VCR and the blinking “12:00”. The idea of the VCR itself is not what frustrated most people – the frustration that came with the VCR was due to people having a hard time figuring out how to use it properly. As Gladwell says, if Popeil had been the person who had invented the VCR, and presented it like his other products,

The tape wouldn’t be inserted behind a hidden door – it would be out in plain sight…so that if it was recording, you could see the spools turn. The controls wouldn’t be discreet buttons; they would make a reassuring click as they were pushed up and down, and each step of the taping process would be identified with a big, obvious numeral so that you could set it and forget it. (Gladwell, What the Dog Saw, 24)

While selling his items Popeil would also get feedback from his customers. He would then be sure to focus on the features people seemed to prefer the most during his next sale. He always listened to the customers and what they wanted - a step that is sometimes too easily forgotten..

Ron Popeil was a great business man. He was an innovator, an inventor, and a wonderful salesman. He believed in what he was doing and never gave up.

‘Other people in our business take the spaghetti approach,’ says founder Ron Popeil, ‘they throw a lot of stuff against the wall and hope something sticks...I don't operate that way. If I believe in a product idea, I'll put my time, money, and marketing skills behind it. It might take two-and-a-half years of my life to create a product and sell. But, I enjoy every minute of it!’ (http://www.ronco.com/rco_aboutus.aspx)