My Year-End Realizations

Before I get to my New Year’s resolutions, here are a few of my realizations for 2010.

1. I need to take an even more active role in managing my personal brand. This year, social media moved (at least in my mind) from a novel and useful side project to a front-and-center professional necessity. I think most of my company had the same realization. This means I now am consciously allocating more time and resources to managing both brands in the social realm.
2. Embrace new devices. Tablets and mobile devices are revolutionizing how we share information, and we need to be aware of the impact they are having on other aspects of our work.  For example, as a number of folks have observed, app design is beginning to shape how many companies are designing their user interface for web sites. While two platforms may be influencing each other, the underlying code is different, meaning corporate marketing teams will need to understand a range of different development environments. 
3. Adaptability is key to survival. While I’ve always known this to be true, the challenging economic conditions that persisted throughout 2010 really drove home the importance of being able to adjust quickly to changing circumstances. Professionally, this meant taking on new challenges without immediately knowing how I’d find the talent and resources to pull them off. As a manager, it also meant asking folks to stretch and take on new roles so the team could adapt to new requirements.
4. Corporate identity is a multi-platform game. With Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter (and others) tweaking their sites to appeal more to corporate brands, it’s very apparent  that we’ll be maintaining and sharing branded content across multiple venues. In a period of scarce resources, the big question is: What will we need to give up or do differently in order to fully staff these campaigns?
5. Test assumptions. So much has changed as a result of the recession that I’ve found it valuable throughout the year to ask whether the way I or my company have done things is still the right way. More often than not, I’ve realized that  simplifying my projects, procedures, assignments, etc. and finding more creative approaches was the right thing to do.  If there is a silver lining to the recession, this may be it.

The Benefits (and Limits) of Social Media

I read a lot about social media issues, both to keep up to date as a marketing practitioner and because I’m fascinated by social and technological movements. There is a lot of great information available on this topic, but it can be tough to cut through the background noise and decide what is truly relevant and useful.

I’ve come across three articles in the past few weeks that offer good insights into the growth of social media and its implications for society and the marketing profession.

Devin Friedman interviews young Silicon Valley entrepreneurs for a recent article in GQ. He captures the excitement—and lingering anxiety—that many of us feel about this medium:

For the past month, I’ve been trying to fully engage with the social layer. I joined and contributed to such services and platforms as Quora, Twitter, Foursquare, Facebook, Blippy, Swipely, DailyBooth, Goodreads, Daytum, etc., etc. I tried to tweet five times a day… And what it all made me feel, mostly, was stupid. And anxious—that I didn’t have enough people following me and then that I was the kind of person who wants people to follow him. …I think old people like me (I’m 38) often do this stuff to feel like the world hasn’t yet left them behind, but we don’t have any natural hunger for it. It’s kind of like androids having sex: We know we’re supposed to do it, but we’re not really sure why. 

Another article, titled Social Media: Millenials’ Next Expected Skill Set, describes how social media tools are being integrated into college curricula, setting the stage for a new generation of graduates that understand how to leverage social tools for more than just keeping track of friends.

And finally, Malcolm Gladwell, author of the Tipping Point and other insightful books, writes in the New Yorker about social media’s capacity to truly drive social change:

 

Our acquaintances—not our friends—are our greatest source of new ideas and information. The Internet lets us exploit the power of these kinds of distant connections with marvellous efficiency. It’s terrific at the diffusion of innovation, interdisciplinary collaboration, seamlessly matching up buyers and sellers, and the logistical functions of the dating world. But weak ties seldom lead to high-risk activism.

Gladwell makes a number of interesting observations about what social media tools do well—and not so well. Something to keep in mind when the hype begins to take over and you’re feeling anxious about being left behind.

Rediscovering Photography

Winter shoreline at Greenlake

I’ve loved photography since I was a teenager. It was a constant companion throughout my high school and college years, and I shot professionally for a few years early in my career. Somewhere along the line, as I gained other responsibilities, I stopped actively creating photos. I tried to stay close to the field by enjoying other people’s work, volunteering at Youth in Focus, and living vicariously through my creative friends. In the back of my mind, I promised myself that someday, when the time was right, I’d would take up the camera again.

This year I finally decided to follow up on that promise. I had stayed current with the digital photo technologies over the past ten years or so, but I’m finding that the experience of making personal photos feels a bit different than I remember. There’s an immediacy to digital image capture inkjet printing that I could never experience with a film camera or in the darkroom. It is still gratifying to tinker with an image in Photoshop and see the print you had envisioned come off the printer a few centimeters at a time, much like the image used to appear in the developer tray.

What I have found most enjoyable, though, as I’ve reconnected with photography, is the simple pleasure of wandering around with a camera and seeing the world intently. In some ways, it doesn’t matter much what comes off the printer or gets displayed on my basement studio wall. I’ve come to realize that the joy is in the practice, not in the finished product.

Do’s and Dont’s for Marketing Job Applicants

One of the occupational hazards in the marketing industry is that there are relatively few barriers to entry. This is a good thing if you are just starting out in your career, but it can be challenging for those of us who screen resumes and hire new staff for our marketing teams.

Speaking as someone who has reviewed thousands of marketing resumes over the years, here are my tips for applicants:

The Big Stuff:

1. Do read the job posting. Hiring managers put a lot of time into crafting position announcements. Pay close attention to the things we say we require or prefer. If you have those things, be sure to say so!
2. Do tailor your resume and cover letter to the position and company. One of my biggest turn-offs as a hiring manager is reading generic resumes. If you believe yourself to be a marketing professional, act like one. Do some research, learn about the industry and markets associated with the position, identify the hot-button issues specified in the position posting, and tell me why you are the very best person for this specific job. I look very closely at your ability to write persuasively about your skills, because if you can’t convince me, you will likely have a hard time convincing my clients and customers.
3. Do match your skills to those required in the resume. If you are applying for a product marketing position, for example, don’t tell me about your extensive graphic design skills (unless, of course, such skills are required or preferred). This also applies to less-obvious portions of your resume. For example, if you are applying for a graphic design position, don’t list the 15 programming languages you know, because I will assume that you are a programmer and not a designer.
4. Do have an expert writer read your resume. It’s hard writing about yourself, and everyone can benefit from a good editor. At the very least, have a strong write, or ideally a recruiter or job-search consultant, review your work. I immediately eliminate resumes with grammatical or spelling errors, and I would imagine most other hiring managers in the marketing field do the same.
5. Do seek out expert advice. If you are new to an industry or trying to take the next step in your career, talk with an expert to get his or her thoughts on industry trends or specific skills you should acquire. My experience has been that people in senior roles are very generous with their advice–all you have to do is ask.

The Little (But Important) Stuff;

1. Do pay close attention to names and titles. I can’t tell you how many resumes I’ve seen that have misspelled my name or the name of my company or used the wrong job title.
2. Don’t use complex or fussy formatting, fonts or colors.
3. Don’t include a photo.
4. Don’t use excessively personalized email addresses (e.g. “trekkieforever4589@gmail.com”) or blog titles on your resume.
5. Do maintain an active LinkedIn profile.
6. Do learn about and use a range of social media tools.
7. Don’t post compromising photos of yourself on your Facebook page.

What Does it Take to Win Interviews?

Over the years, I’ve sat on either side of the interview table–as a consultant pitching my services, as a marketer pitching my company, and as a client looking to buy services. The last couple of weeks, I’ve had an opportunity to be the client reviewing pitches from creative teams, and I always find this perspective to be incredibly eye opening. This is particularly true in this economic climate, where firms are competing for projects they never would have touched a few years ago. So, speaking as a client, what does it take to win an interview?

Well, in short, it takes many of the tried and true methods–knowing your prospective client, asking good questions, building rapport. But in this market, it’s critical that the consultant take a risk and demonstrate that they have already begun thinking about solutions to the client’s issues. This may mean doing additional research, visiting the site ahead of time, and even showing preliminary concepts–whatever it takes to help the client understand the your commitment to going the extra distance.

Experience and reputation doesn’t win interviews, at least in this market. Demonstrated passion, creativity and commitment is what wins.

Post-Its Everywhere

In a recent span of about two weeks, I participated in three meetings–a web site redesign kickoff, a discussion on social media adoption, and a non-profit board retreat–and each meeting featured a variation on the Post-It note brainstorming session.

You may have experienced this format: the team is encouraged to think of as many ideas as possible that address some high-level theme. Each idea is scribbled onto a Post-It note and stuck on a wall. Once all the ideas are collected, the facilitator and the team work to arrange the Post-Its into broad themes. The goal is generally to identify areas of consensus, discern where there might be overlapping initiatives, and capture outlier ideas that might have merit for the broader project.

Apart from the odd coincidence that these Post-It brainstorms happened in such a short span of time(is it a trend? a fad?), I found it interesting how this exercise fit into the meetings. On the plus side, the exercise is fast moving and fun, and the little yellow squares have a way of evening the playing field for each idea. On the down side, it’s possible to bring a lot of ideas to light and see some interesting themes develop, but not arrive at any concrete conclusions.

Ideally, I’d like to have the Post-It exercise lead into a group discussion about priorities.  It’s important for the group to affirm that the categories they developed are in fact the right ones, and then decide which ones merit the most attention and resources.

In the end, consensus is great, but creative teams need to make tough decisions about where to expend their scarce resources.