Wooden Nickels

Archive for June, 2009

I?m thinking a lot lately about what I do for a living and how I could do what I do better, and how I could apply and/or acquire new skills to make myself a more valuable employee/member of the workforce/member of society. Of course, underlying the veneer of my professional motivation is a desire to provide for my family, but I do think that participating in the process of social evolution is a valid and valuable endeavor – and that’s a part of the thesis of this post.

I?m a project manager for the corporate marketing team of a company with a franchise-based business model. Largely, I manage web development projects, contribute ideas to ongoing marketing initiatives to leverage our existing tools and touch points, participate in strategy development, and I specialize in tactical implementation of our strategies. I move a lot of data around from place to place online using a wide variety of tools, interfaces, and mediums. I also work with our franchisees in their local marketing plans, and I stay in touch with what?s working in the marketplace. A lot of my job depends on my knowing where all of the operational moving parts are in our company, and having an insight into how to get that information in front of prospective customers. Armed with this insight I manage projects that create paths to market for our product data, location data, and marketing messaging.

For a long time now I?ve found that the most stimulating aspect of my job to be in the study of emerging technologies. I think that the line between the ways that people look for information and the places that they spend their money ? or research spending their money ? are being blurred. I?ve observed people being influenced in their buying decisions and social decisions in the same online venues more and more. I?m finding that the way we subscribe to and/or filter our media is evolving at an exponential rate, and that the players in the game who are ?winning?? whether that game be for profit, for political gain, for social influence, or what-have-you ? are highly optimized and exposed in the appropriate doses in the appropriate media venues and channels. Their messaging permeates the culture as a result of their ability to leak their messaging so fluidly from medium to medium.

Here is the opportunity I see in this. Creating a corporate presence in multiple social media channels is old hat, but for many outside the marketing community the questions remain: ?What do I do with all of these channels? What the heck is Twitter? Do we need that?? And so on. But in order to ensure our messages are heard somewhere we should optimize or marketing to permeate all channels ? and be heard everywhere. Sounds daunting, but really, when you distill it down to the essential elixir, you?re simply leveraging one message into multiple channels. In reality, it?s only a matter of dispensing your messaging efficiently.

So that?s where my efforts are moving. I?m going to create a calendar of upcoming marketing campaigns based on our current plans and begin to back into that plan with consistent content and messaging with a hierarchy of website campaigns, blog posts, social networking messaging, and micro-blogging. I will write a lot more, which I welcome, and my company will dominate a marketing landscape defined not by singular placement, but my placement everywhere. And conversely not by multiple messaging, but by a singular message.

I think that?s where we?re going, if we?re not already there. So I?m moving my company there with all good haste.

Yo,

We made a book for Nana Doyle – my Mom – for Mother’s Day. I exported it to a .mov file to take a look at it. It’s the Z Clan from X-mas 08 through Easter 09… good times! Scope it:
Nana’s Book.

Rock On!