Tag Archives: brightwave

Jumpstart Your Career by Excelling in These Four Business Elements

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We have spent a great deal of time in the last few months talking about doing a better job of on-boarding new employees and providing direction when it comes to professional growth.

Altimeter Group partner Jeremiah Owyang is an industry leader that provides excellent commentary on his blog on all things digital with an eye on what is disruptive.

I really like this recent post “The Four Elements of Career Management in Business” and have shared it around our office.

It’s a great cheat sheet for what any ambitious leader-in-waiting (or someone on the hot seat now) should focus on, as well as how to analyze what you may be spending too much time on or not enough in elevating your career.

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Hiring & What’s Important at BrightWave (including 10 things I look for in a first interview)

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Who we hire is one of the most important decisions we make as a company. As a services firm, your people are your product. As a relatively small and specialized firm, the stakes are even higher. When you consider the fact that our client retention rates are over 90% and we are focused on being a partner, not a vendor, it reemphasizes that every hire can derail the ship or drive internal and external successes.

LinkedIn Profile

Make sure your LinkedIn is complete and up-to-date.

In the past year, I have personally reviewed hundreds of resumes (and by resume I usually mean LinkedIn profile which tells me more – more on that later), interviewed scores of candidates and hired a bunch of new all-stars.

In part one, I will address the first two important things I look for when evaluating whether that person may be a good fit at BrightWave. In part two, I will address how to be well positioned to get an offer at BrightWave and have a successful career here at our fast growing agency.

Standing Out – just like a great subject line, getting noticed is paramount. Referrals from existing team members, partners and trusted friends and colleagues will ALWAYS work (at least in terms of getting noticed). I can’t emphasize that enough – whether it is fair or not. If someone I respect and know well sends me a referral, I will always connect with that person, even if the fit isn’t great. It doesn’t mean they will get an interview but I will try to provide honest feedback and direct them in the best way I can.

Networking and recommendations are so important, regardless of one’s career or role in a company, and I think a lot of people don’t do a great job on this front to the detriment of their career. Personality helps but someone that is active in the digital community also shows their ambitions and ability to go beyond the 9-5 requirements of most jobs. There are other ways of demonstrating this type of “above and beyond” characteristic, but I always want to get that sense that someone is capable of more than just fulfilling their job specs. A candidate looking for just a job and a paycheck won’t be a good fit here, whatever their pedigree may be. I think those folks may not know it but it usually comes across in many ways to the person across the table.

Of course, talented people that may not be type A individuals or well-connected can still stand out. A strong LinkedIn profile is a must these days regardless of age, experience or role. To me, this is often the barometer of how they will come across to a client. Are there typos, poor grammar or limited descriptions of their experience? Do they project a confident and polished appearance or just seem to mail it in? (Sidenote: I can usually spot who is polishing off their resume and looking for a new job via LinkedIn. Be smart and thoughtful in terms of how you broadcast your employment desires.

Fit & Feel – among the people we have evaluated and spoken to, we look for the same fundamental criteria, regardless of the internal role in the company. So a business development candidate and creative services prospect will be judged in a similar manner for the real key criterion which is this:  Can they be successful at our agency? Essentially, are they the right fit?

This is highly subjective and not scientific, but – insider knowledge here - I try to determine 10 things within the first 15 minutes of my first meeting with a candidate:

  1. Does this person really want to work at BrightWave?
  2. Do they really want to and care about making an impact in their job?
  3. Will they impact BrightWave’s culture in a positive manner?
  4. Do they like our primary areas of focus (email, social, mobile), and will they, if they are not already, be a subject matter expert?
  5. Will they be liked and respected by clients and colleagues?
  6. Will they be an all-star in six months?
  7. Will they thrive if the job description changed in 6 months?
  8. Can they become a leader in our firm as we grow?
  9. Can they perform in a fast moving and often stressful environment?
  10. Would we want to have an adult beverage with this person regardless of the circumstances?

Some people are hard to read or interview well but aren’t up to the task in the long run. We have high employee retention here, so I view us as being successful in hiring and retaining great people that make significant impacts in our business and on behalf of our clients. Of course this is an imperfect criterion, but I have found thinking about each and every candidate in this context is as important as their relevant job experience, education, recommendations and all of the more traditional criteria.

I’d love to know what both job searchers and other people hiring find is in their secret sauce for finding the right people for their unique companies. Plus – extra points for anyone that interviews with me and references this post!

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Delivering Happiness and Playing Dress Up: How to Cultivate Company Culture

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Much has been written lately about how to create company culture – just check out the 36,000 news articles Google has indexed in the past week on the subject. Hopefully this post will be indexed as well as I certainly have my opinion.

I have worked at BrightWave Marketing for 7 of the company’s 9 years and was fortunate enough to be Simms Jenkins first full-time hire. Even though the company doubled in size when I arrived, the simple act of hiring me was the first statement on the company culture – we are dedicated to customer service. He didn’t hire a programmer, a designer, or a business development position; he hired someone to take care of his clients. This decision and commitment to ensuring his clients had a dedicated resource to listen to their needs and goals, plan and execute a campaign, and report and recommend what to do next was BrightWave’s first statement to what the company culture would be for the foreseeable future. To this day, we still give every new employee a copy of Tony Hsieh’s book “Delivering Happiness“.

BrightWave Marketing Field Day 2012
Work Hard. Play Dress Up.

Nine years later, even though we are still razor-focused on serving our clients, I’ve noticed our culture is maturing as we grow and Simms is no longer the sole person responsible for defining it – we all are. The business owner of a company our size or larger can’t define the culture by themselves, they can only support, nurture and, most importantly, be a part of it. Don’t get me wrong, the CEO should certainly have a say in it but the company culture isn’t something that can be handed down from the top, it will feel forced. If you are a business owner, takes Simms’ lead and empower your employees to define it on their own and support them through the process.

I mean, look at the picture above. This is a picture of a company in the midst of organically growing their own culture. (NOTE: Our CEO is in there – I bet you can’t identify him.) All it takes is a modest budget, focused encouragement, and employees that get behind a movement. Kudos to my colleague, and field day co-champion, @_twojdesigns, for reminding all of us how important it is for our culture to not take ourselves too seriously. Have some fun, enjoy the people you work with and it’ll bring the best out of everyone and create a winning company culture.

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The Wild, Wild West (of Email)

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This is part two of a two-part series on my recent travels to Arizona and the email ponderings it inspired. Miss part one? Click here to read it!

While visiting old western towns in Arizona like Tombstone and Jerome, it occurred to me how so many marketers think of email as the Wild West. And, when you think about it, it makes sense to be a little gun shy. There are outlaws and gamblers out there who want to take your money (we call them spammers today). Shotguns and the aptly named approaches run rampant. Not to mention the fear of stampedes and overwhelming your customers/subscribers.

The good news is that there ARE good guys. Today’s email lawmen are the ones speaking out against the spammers, shotgun approaches and overwhelming your audience. Being a great email marketer requires listening to your audience and acting on what you learn from it, not just sitting back, waiting and watching. Be attentive to what’s around you — in the Wild West, it would have saved your life, but as an email marketer, it will make you even better!

Just like the Earps stood their ground at the O.K. Corral and became legends, great email marketers who learn their audiences, stand up for what works best in their programs and deliver their clients or companies from the shotguns and stampedes can create and support campaigns that become legendary.

And, since the tune has been in my head since I wrote the title, I’ll leave you with a classic video from a true hero of the Wild, Wild West – Will Smith. You’re welcome.

 

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Chapter Two: BrightWave

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I am beyond excited to begin the second chapter of my working life in Atlanta at BrightWave Marketing. The two questions being asked of me is, “What will you be doing at BrightWave?” and “Why BrightWave?”

Great questions. Let me try and provide answers while sharing some insight about the milestones and events of Chapter One that set the table for Chapter Two.

Chapter One probably actually started when I married my better half in 2001.  From the day we said ‘I do,’ she was telling me how great it could be to live in Atlanta (she grew up in Columbus, GA and went to Emory). As it turns out, she wasn’t wrong. 8 years of experience in a small family travel business and 3 more in the non-profit world taught me how to solve problems, against all odds.  Making something out of nothing was more than a motif – it’s just part of my DNA. It turns out that this was great preparation for what awaited me in Atlanta.

When we arrived in Atlanta in 2006, I had the great fortune of being recruited by an 8-year old digital agency called Spunlogic (now Engauge). I still remember an early conversation with the recruiter at the time where I was told that with my experience, I could be slotted as a designer, a developer or a project manager — take your pick.

Project management was where I wanted to be because I felt like I could play the proverbial ‘quarterback’ — leading a team in executing the ‘plays’ that spanned websites and email projects. Account management responsibilities soon followed with opportunities to work with brand names bigger than I’d ever imagined possible, adding even more experience with analytics, mobile websites and social media.

In 2010, I was given the opportunity to take what I’d learned about email marketing and drive excellence around the discipline within Engauge. I had the distinct privilege of assembling a team of rockstars who could help carry the email flag to all of our clients.

[Insert Fred Savage interruption of Peter Falk from ‘Princess Bride’]  “If you had such a great team at Engauge, why did you move on?”

In the two years that I had connected with other email marketing industry experts and met other marketers responsible for their email programs at conference after conference, one nagging truth was impressed upon me that makes chapter two make so much sense:

More marketers need help with email marketing than I had ever imagined.

Now, substitute the word ‘email’ with ‘mobile’, ‘social’, ‘location-based’, and you get a glimpse of the enormity of what’s possible for marketers and, at the same time, what seems like a monolithic learning curve. I see an outsized opportunity to help more marketers strategically navigate the digital currents (as intimidating and as fast as they may seem) to benefit their customers and their companies.

A big part of my formula for helping more marketers involves partnerships with technology trailblazers (especially Email Service Providers) who provide the tools that can empower marketers to efficiently and effectively execute campaigns across multiple channels that include email.

Now about the ‘Why BrightWave?’ question, I can share the two biggest reasons.

Authority:  If I remember correctly, I used Simms’ book as a training manual for one of my first campaign manager hires. (Yes, I read it, too.) The opportunity to collaborate and combine forces with Simms and the BrightWave team was something I honestly hadn’t thought of but not unlike peanut butter and chocolate, I knew it would be a win-win situation to be here.

Opportunity:  I believe that marketers who understand email marketing are well-poised to tackle every other emerging 1-to-1 communications channel. Relevancy, value and the ability to measure impact to the bottom line are critical ingredients in marketing, regardless of channel.

I know that the team at BrightWave gets that and I’m prepared to help our clients win in the always-exciting and ever-evolving digital marketing arena.

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Culture, Language and Relevancy

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Please excuse the chain thought, but it’s how my brain works…

I’ve seen a few articles and blog posts this past week on Intel’s “StudyBook tablet PC for emerging markets“. It’s the next step in getting technology in the hands of under developed regions, a follow up to their Classmate PC that’s been around since 2007 and has found it’s way to millions of classrooms. This and other programs like One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) reminds me of a question I received a few years ago that really caught me off guard.

Image from: amazingpics4you.blogspot.com

I was at a conference giving a keynote presentation on mobile marketing, but this was almost two years ago so it wasn’t as played out. Besides, two years is like forever ago in mobile marketing right? Anyway, I don’t remember the exact wording of the question – just my answer. The question was something like, “With the push to get inexpensive devices such as netbooks into emerging markets how will this effect mobile marketing efforts?” The guy asking the question also used, “introducing low cost netbooks into India” as an example. The question was out of place with all the other questions I was getting like, “Wait, explain iAds again?”, “Why did you show a video of someone driving a car with an iPad?” or “What was your name again?” My super clever response was just as out of place. I didn’t know how to respond so took the math high road and said something like “caveat, caveat.. blah.. blah.. well, if you introduce a billion* new devices into any market it’s going to change the dynamics.”

What?

I’m still not sure what the person was asking, mainly because I don’t remember the question, but I could have gone in several directions with my answer. What I should have done is thought about how introducing more users from a different culture would impact marketing efforts.
[Past Ryan] Oh, man. My bad.

We do a lot of email marketing here at BrightWave and one of the first rules in email marketing is to stay relevant. So, in introducing new cultures (or existing cultures in greater quantities) into our user mix we need to consider how to maintain relevancy. This is nothing new, there are many agencies out there that specialize in marketing to various cultures and even a few agencies that claim to be multicultural marketers. Just Google anything on Hispanic marketing trends in the U.S. and you’ll find that this group is increasing, spending a ton more, and there are several agencies that will “help” you figure out how to market to this group.

I’ll tell you one way to market to this group, or any other… make sure your messaging is just as relevant to them as to the rest of your customers/subscribers/followers. Relevancy will come in many forms. In the case of completely different cultures and languages by empowering emerging markets with StudyBooks and Classmate PC, relevancy will be a very unique value proposition for those users. In the case of the growing Hispanic market within the U.S. relevancy may be more subtle. In this case it may just be a shift in the language used (e.g., Spanish instead of English) and less in the value proposition (e.g., All U.S. kids want to run faster in new Nike shoes).

We as marketers need to start thinking of what we will do to increase relevancy to the new cultures that will start subscribing to our lists. For me, I think I [and by "I" I mean the team at BrightWave] am going to develop a way to send email that auto-detects the default language on your device and delivers** the appropriate content (language). I don’t know if it can be done, but if it can we’ll figure it out.

What are you going to do?

*You know, because obviously everyone in India was going to get a netbook
** I really do think it can be done. We can deliver content in real-time by auto-detecting your device, so why not do the same with your default language?

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Be Careful What You Wish For…

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Recently, I heard about an employer in Maryland who asked for an applicant’s Facebook password during an interview.  The employer, in this case, The Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services, indicated that they wanted access to a candidate’s social media account for use in background checks.  It has been reported that interviewers were looking specifically for gang related affiliations or activities and searched through photographs, wall postings and other personal messages to and from other members on Facebook.

Alarm bells went off.

Not because I’m concerned for the applicant’s privacy.  Excellent candidates will reply with a graceful decline and move the subject back into the territory of why their skills and abilities are best suited for the position and the company.

What concerned me was the notion that the employer never paused to think about what that password would unlock.   They were walking straight into a landmine – not a goldmine.

By using this password to violate someone’s privacy, the employer could potentially open up a whole host of EEOC claims against them even if they weren’t using this information for nefarious intent.  The EEOC specifically outlines that information obtained in the interview or “pre-employment” inquiry should be:

“…  limited to those essential for determining if a person is qualified for the job; whereas, information regarding race, sex, national origin, age, and religion are irrelevant in such determinations.”

And, really, what information could the employer have learned that couldn’t be fleshed out in a thoughtful and thorough interview?

The benefits of gaining this information certainly do not outweigh the risks of a potential lawsuit, much less the publicity it has engendered.  If you want to show a candidate how out of step your company is with social media – just ask for the password to their private accounts.

BrightWave Marketing’s social media policy encourages all staff members to engage in social media in a thoughtful and respectable manner.  Of course, proprietary information and anything that is confidential in nature simply doesn’t belong on social media.  But, BrightWave believes that engaging others in creative and conversational platforms builds brand loyalty for our clients and delivers successful outcomes across many channels.

Remember, an interview is a two-way conversation.  An employer who asks to pry into someone’s personal life may get the password – but they certainly won’t get the best candidate for the position.

 

(Photograph appears courtesy of psd on flickr)

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Marketing Mysteries

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At BrightWave (and any other job) it is easy to sit around and talk to your co-workers about TV. Regardless of how powerful the Internet is, it is pretty hard to find someone that is not watching hours of television every week.

When I first interviewed here, one of my favorite questions was what TV I usually watch. It is one of those tricky questions that can show a lot about a person with very few answers. It is also a question that can put someone like me in a very odd situation as I watch some pretty bad TV (not always). Without revealing all of my viewing habits, let’s just say one of my favorite formats is news magazines – Dateline, 48 Hours, 20/20, and 60 Minutes –  Usually a tale narrated by a voice you hardly see as they interview detectives or witnesses. The story can be anything; I just enjoy the mystery and the hunt for answers.

Having worked in the agency world for the majority of my career I have come to learn one concept that all clients appreciate: investigation. You can search far and wide and it will be hard to find a client-side marketer that has never asked their agency questions of, “Why?”. The questions are not always difficult to answer, and, generally speaking, our team almost always knows the answer. But to truly deliver data-driven answers you always have to conduct a thorough investigation. And, almost always, the answers are going to be buried in a spreadsheet.
Working in the digital space we build and execute campaigns at lightning speed. Clients always need information fast, and they always will. The great advantage we have on the agency side is the enormous amount of shared knowledge our team has gained from many years of investigating the “why.” This all becomes increasingly important in the digital space as you can literally see successes and failures in real-time (to clarify, we are almost always investigating successes). Much like a good detective, we are looking for a set of answers based on the few clues available. There are the usual suspects: opens, clicks, “Likes”, shares, tweets, and my personal favorite – conversions. This sea of numbers will help answer a much bigger mystery, it will tell us what the campaigns are doing to drive real business results.

Next time you execute a campaign, next time you press the go button, think to yourself the wealth of information you are about to receive. Think about all of metrics you about to dive into. The amount of insight you deliver to clients will help them answer the “why” next time someone asks them.

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The Power of Saying “Yes”

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The Power of Saying “Yes”

As a dad, business owner and on occasion, “glass is half empty” guy, I routinely say no. No to toy requests, business model considerations and boring restaurants. “No” can be deflating and helpful in some ways, depending on the context and how old you are.

Businesses often protect and insulate themselves by saying “no.” No, to special requests, payment options and anything outside of the lines. Just think how airlines use no to drive billions of revenue (“no, sorry you can’t change your ticket without a fee”).

Service firms from my experience often have a similar mentality, and that is a shame. Whether it is a 2-person landscaping company or a firm made up thousands of consultants, we should only say no when we really need to. We should be saying yes, because they (meaning clients) really need us to. Service firms after all are beholden to their clients. We are getting paid because of our knowledge, skill set and ability to do something that has monetary value to someone else, whether it is a business or homeowner or just average consumer dude. So why do we say no so much?

 

red-light-green-light

Knowing when to start - and stop - a client relationship can be a difficult decision.

A very important client (they all are though, right?) asked us to do something outside of our core competency, in a tight time period and during a time that we had little to no resources to make it all happen. I should expand that their needs were not even related to what we do for them but their other agencies and partners failed or couldn’t assist them. So as the CEO I am battling two masters: my employees and my clients. The funny thing is we all just realized we needed to say yes and help them because that is our job. We had plenty of suitable excuses to tell them no, but they needed us, and what good is an agency that prides itself on our ability to move fast and deliver for our clients but fail to deliver on that promise?

A few days before another great brand asked us if we could help them out as their main marketing agency could not. While this is a loaded conversation in and out itself, we had no choice but to say, yes we can help.

So we said yes on 2 circumstances where “no” was the easy reaction. Our business is plenty strong so we don’t have to take on any new clients and projects.  However, that is how we are building the team, culture and company as other service firms continue to dole out invoices better than they do service.

So how do you respond to a difficult request from a client? “Yes” really is not only the right thing to do (most of the time), but saying “yes” can prove whether you are a vendor or a partner.  Of course, saying no can also do the same thing – but that is a different kind of post.

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