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.

iPad and the Enterprise

Apple has never played well with corporate enterprise systems, but the company still exerts influence over corporate culture. A lot of my engineering/scientist colleagues who live and breathe Windows are carrying iPhones these days, and I believe this exposure to the Apple brand and user interface will have a subtle, long-term impact on corporate preferences and buying behaviors.

Research firm Gartner recently had this to say on the impact of iPads on the enterprise in a recent report:

The Apple iPad and its ecosystem are likely to disrupt existing technology use profiles and business models, and CEOs should ensure that its potential is being seriously evaluated inside their organizations. …“It is not usually the role of the CEO to get directly involved in specific technology device decisions, but Apple’s iPad is an exception,” said Stephen Prentice, Gartner Fellow and vice president. “It is more than just the latest consumer gadget; and CEOs and business leaders should initiate a dialogue with their CIOs about if they have not already done so.”

Good advice.

Pondering personas

I’ve recently started working on a marketing initiative that involves developing personas. This device has been around for about 15 years or so (as best as I can tell), and it involves creating fictional characters that represent different client/customer types. By ascribing traits, motivations and desires to each persona, marketing teams can better tailor web sites, products, retail environments, etc. to the specific needs of each customer segment.

In a product-marketing context, personas are pretty intuitive. But what about in a service marketing context? In a service-marketing setting, client-company interactions take longer to develop and a lot of factors influence the buying decision. Does that make the project of defining personas different?



A new way to look at iPads

I came across this item today, and I thought it was pretty brilliant. An iPad repurposed as a point-of-purchase display:

Tasti D-Lite Now Installing iPads in New Stores.

Now I’m not a retail guy, but I appreciated how this company took an off-the-shelf product and quickly customized it for a very different use. That’s the essence of creativity, in my book.

Connecting the dots

Every once in a while, a small, seemingly inconsequential thing arrives on your doorstep, and it leads to a whole series of unexpected thoughts, realizations and even conclusions.  Yesterday someone sent me this photo:

After I stopped laughing, I realized this photos is highly symbolic of what I’ve done on a daily basis for the past 20+ years as a service-marketing professional. Yeah, you know—herding cats. But then I noticed most of these cats were all heading in more or less the same direction, so someone (or some thing) must have found a way to get their attention. And that’s when I realized that this photo is less about herding and more about persuading.

That’s what I do—I persuade folks. Not just the ones my company wants to attract or retain clients, but also the many people internal to the organizations I’ve worked for and consulted with over the years. I also get to work with a lot of smart people who like to develop compelling stories that persuade other people to act. At its best, it’s wildly fun and challenging. At its worst, it feels like herding.

So, that’s what this blog is about: identifying the fun and challenging aspects of my marketing profession–and the cool things others marketers and communicators are doing—and sharing my findings with anyone who is interested. I welcome you to do the same right along with me.