Creative Skirts

Sally Hogshead: It's Time to Upgrade to You 2.0

From AdAge. Published months ago, but there are some friendly reminders in here.

Think You Don't Work in Digital Media? Guess What: You Do. Here's Your Guide to Translating Your Skills From Traditional to Digital

By Sally Hogshead
 

In the next year or two, you'll be interviewing for a new job. So will I. So will your coworkers. So will your boss, your client and your competitors. Digital media is changing advertising so quickly, so radically, that we'll all have new jobs in a couple of years, and our careers will depend upon our ability to use digital media to our advantage. It's not just the creative department or media; it will drive how every person in the company creates and operates, from human resources to accounting. Today, digital is not a department -- it's a competitive advantage.

Bad things happen when people don't upgrade their skills. About 15 years ago, when computers entered the creative department, most art directors quickly adopted them. But some resisted, especially "senior" ones (read: those over 40), who continued to rely on the studio. Their argument -- quite noble in theory, actually -- was that they should be hired for their brains, not their wrists. Unfortunately, nobility doesn't live long in agencies. Within a few years, most had been replaced by younger (and cheaper) wrists/thinkers who'd never dream of art directing from the back seat.

Let's avoid that unpleasantness, shall we? Translating your skills and experience from traditional media to digital isn't as hard as you might think (at least, assuming you had strong ideas and strategy to begin with). Below, your guide to navigating this transition.

STOP RESISTING IT

It's happening. Or should I say, it happened. No longer is digital a "department" within an agency -- it's an essential competitive advantage for everyone in the company. Time to get on with it.

THE MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE, YEAH, BUT YOU STILL NEED A MESSAGE

It's not enough to slap up content and expect it to get hits. For every Dove "Evolution" there's a burial ground of failures.

EXPERIMENT MORE

Digital marketing is written in code, not stone. Constantly try new things, tweak formulas and take more risks.

GET READY FOR  OBSOLESCENCE

Even as you launch a digital project, the clock is ticking on its countdown toward clichédom. Things change so quickly in digital space that 2008's breakthrough will be 2009's yawn.

QUIT BITCHING ABOUT FASTER TURNAROUND TIMES

Immediacy is a key advantage for clients. Make it your advantage, too.

STOCKPILE NEW SKILLS AND  EXPERIENCE

Collect as much digital understanding as possible. Boost your learning curve by attending conferences (and not just for the boondoggle). The best way to turbocharge your worth in the digital marketplace is to work alongside the best, so work with digital superstars even if you don't get paid for it. As someone once said, "Aspire to be the dumbest person in the room."

LIMBER UP YOUR BRAIN

The most successful people in digital marketing can mentally multitask. Stay flexible. Don't get married to any one solution.

BE CONVERSANT  WITH A VARIETY  OF TECHNOLOGIES

It's always a bad sign when someone on a digital assignment isn't familiar with Facebook, SMS, Skype and other key digital technologies. Learn about the main players and understand their implications. You don't need to read the TiVo owner's manual to understand the implications of DVRs.

DON'T WORK IN A COMPANY THAT  DOESN'T EMBRACE DIGITAL MEDIA

Your career will take a hit in a culture of Luddites. Digital media mirrors a modern career: Constantly changing, fast-paced, occasionally frenzied and always filled with new possibilities. If your company becomes outdated, your work for it will, too.

PERFECT THE ART OF THE SELL

As if selling great work to clients wasn't difficult enough before, now there's the added complexity of explaining unfamiliar media. If your client isn't fully versed in a recommended form of media, boost your odds of selling the idea by boosting his or her learning curve in advance of the presentation.

CREATE A "FIRST"

It was easier to discover new lands back in the days when guys like Christopher Columbus could accidentally bump into continents. Today, countless uncharted digital territories still await. Now's your chance to conquer one.

DEMONSTRATE  DIGITAL PROWESS THROUGHOUT ANY JOB SEARCH

Find new ways to sell yourself. Describe case studies you've been part of. Have a website built and become active on LinkedIn and other professional social-networking sites. Creatives should have a DVD with examples of all forms of experience, including traditional media.

GET OUTSIDE YOUR COMFORT ZONE

The best way to get smart about the digital space is to constantly expand into new forms of media by actually working with them. Take on assignments outside your area of expertise. Become a generalist in thinking, with specialist application as needed.

EMBRACE  TECHNOLOGY IN YOUR PERSONAL LIFE

You shouldn't spend life tethered to a BlackBerry, but you also don't want to become known as the slowpoke who can't access e-mail out of the office. Don't allow personal resistance to technology to become a pain in the ass for the people you work with. In this case, it's not OK for the cobbler's child to go barefoot.

FINALLY, KNOW WHEN TO SKIP THE DIGITAL AND GO OLD SCHOOL

When sending a thank you, skip e-mail in favor of handwritten note. When giving a presentation, don't read PowerPoint slides verbatim; instead, tell stories. Get up off your butt and go talk to people across the office. Be a human. Not an avatar.

Morgan Shorey Interview

I ran across this interview with Morgan Shorey after reading she was the new CMO at Merkley & Partners in NY.
It's an old interview, but I still found it interesting.

(In an interview with Oz The Journal of Creative Disciplines)
Morgan Shorey - Founder and Co-Owner, The List

Morgan Shorey will never forget the day she was handed her boss's photo portfolio to take to a client. She was new to the photography business, and eager to do whatever it took to succeed. "I was handed the portfolio," Shorey notes, "because I was a girl and was dressed best." Not one to miss an opportunity, Shorey ran with her golden moment. Suddenly she was traveling to cities like Washington, D.C., Miami and Memphis, representing the studio. Thanks to her top consultative and selling skills, she became a partner in the studio, helping Arrington Morgan reach the top 5% in the nation in revenue.

By the time she hit 30, she was ready to make her own move. And she had an idea. Over the years, Shorey had bought scads of lists in her search for prospective customers, always thinking she could do better. She set out to discover if she could, creating The List, a well researched roster of folks who buy creative work. "People wondered whether or not there was a market for a $300 customer prospect list. My gut said there was."

Even though Shorey felt confident as a woman in the workplace, it's interesting to note that she created a business card with a very masculine feel, something she really hadn't noticed at first. "I guess I thought if the card was frillier, I'd have to work harder to prove myself," she says. "As it stands now, people think I'm a man until they meet me. To be honest, it felt good to present a strong, masculine identity. By the time clients get to me, they've already got an image in mind so when they discover I'm a woman they say, "oh" and proceed.

Shorey believes there are a few advantages to being a woman in the workplace. "The key to success for us is being able to build relationships instantly so we can get information about who's doing the buying over the phone. I think defenses come down when it's a woman doing the asking."

Shorey also believes in the strength of a woman's intuition. "I think there are two voices people hear," she cites. One is in the head and one is in the stomach. "The head voice might ask whether this prospective employee can type 60 words per minute. The stomach voice asks whether this is someone I can trust. I think men ignore the voice in the stomach. Women are more prone to listen to it. I think that's why I've never had to check references. My gut instincts are typically right on."

Not to say that there haven't been struggles as well. "When you're a business owner and a wife and mother," she adds, "everywhere you go, someone wants a piece of you. 'There's no toner, I need posterboard for a school project, I want dinner.' It's never-ending. Either you build up the mechanisms to make it work or you have to have help."

Shelly Lazarus 'exclusive'

Smart lady.
Love her take on new business.
She's also gung-ho for media planning taking place alongside creative from the start--which is no new strategy, but quite a task for a huge and compartmentalized global agency to actually see through. Think Ogilvy can succeed? The Chicago office has already made moves along these lines, hiring VCU's one and only Ms. Kerry O'Connell as Strategic Contact Planner... and while she's been there for several months, the office is definitely still adjusting and trying to figure out who the heck she is. For a business that tries so hard to stay hip with the times, people can get really stuck in their ways.

From AdAge:
In a rare and exclusive interview, Ms. Lazarus told Advertising Age's Matthew Creamer that the media-planning function pulled out of creative agencies in late 1990s needs to go back to its original home, a statement, coming from the head of an agency owned by one of the most aggressive and successful unbundlers of media services, sure to resonate throughout the business. She also touched on her future, the role of marketing in the business world and Ogilvy's involvement in the recent Wal-Mart pitch.

Shelly Lazarus Wants Media Back at the Table 

A Refreshing Take on Ad Attitude

Linda Kaplan Thaler and her partner, Robin Koval, are my heroines of the week.

I caught an article by Thaler in this month's O Magazine (check it out, it's worth stashing in your sketchbook), and one in Newsweek. The premise? You can indeed create a successful ad agency and/or career by being a NICE person, as opposed to a total buzzkill (and we all know a few of those). As Kaplan Thaler puts it, "We want to dispel the myth that only those who eat their young get raises."

How wonderful is that? No one ever tells you you'll get far by being nice. Except maybe for Mom and the clergy.

The ladies are coming out soon with a book, "The Power of Nice," and are also working with a psychologist to develop a "Nice Q test" to measure social intelligence.

"It's really sad that being nice seems counterintuitive," says Kaplan Thaler. "I think people are embarrassed to say they're nice."

Advice for those with open ears

From the archives of AWNY's annual Women to Watch event: 25 "tips for success" from female pros.

1. Determine what you are most passionate about. Do what you love, not what you think you should be doing.
2. Be true to yourself. Don’t be someone you are not; recognize and build upon your own special talents and skills.
3. Follow your heart. That little voice called instinct may lead you to a smarter place than your intellect: heed it.
4. Do what you love and the rest will follow. Nothing fuels results better than passion, and you can’t have passion if you aren’t excited about your work. Choose accordingly.
5. Don’t be too eager to fit into the good old boy’s club. Be true to what you believe in… it’s from that place of truth that fresh thinking and unique ideas emerge.
6. Study the industry you’ll be part of. Knowledge is power and don’t forget it… you need to be invested.
7. Do your homework. Learn everything you can about your brand or your business… it’s a continuous, never ending need.
8. Be open to new information. Stay fluid and responsive to shifts in the marketplace: Just because it ain’t broke isn’t a reason to not fix it.
9. Be prepared. Those who “wing it” are eventually discovered. Being prepared shows you care and that goes a long way.
10. Keep a bright attitude. Don’t worry, be happy. Or if you can’t, stay positive; it’s infectious.
11. Listen. You can’t learn much if you’re always talking, so listen, both to those above you and to those below you… brilliance is everywhere.
12. Ask questions. Don’t assume you always know what’s best. Check in with staff and clients on a regular basis.
13. Attack each day with gusto. Be fearless and be proactive—you have to be in the game to win.
14. Work with people who will challenge you. Reach beyond your comfort zone.
15. Take risks. Don’t be afraid of failing. You cannot learn anything new if you’re not willing to fall now and then.
16. Don’t try to do it all alone. Teamwork enables many things.
17. Network with everyone. If someone wants to speak with you, there must be a reason, so do it, you never knows where it might lead.
18. Surround yourself with great people. Up, down and all around; it really is about who you know.
19. Listen to your boss. Who is, of course, your customer; also your best source of inspiration and ideas.
20. Build a reputation based on performance. Words are nice but actions matter most. Deliver what you say you will, every time.
21. Lead by example. Remember as you move up the ladder that others are watching, so don’t say one thing and do another.
22. Invest in talent. Your staff is an extension of yourself so choose accordingly.
23. Be a mentor. The ability to give back, pass on learning and provide support to the next generation is a vital part of success.
24. Find someone who cooks. Get your priorities straight and seek help where you need it.
25. Face the hard reality that you will never again be perfect. If you ever labored under this illusion, give it up—fast. Juggling and perfection just don’t mix.

I wonder how these would be different from men's advice.
(I can't see any man in my office telling me to "attack each day with gusto," although I'd totally high-five him if he did).

Evaluate your career, the fun way

If you hate your job or simply have some time to kill... the admirable Sally Hogshead is doing her best to make evaluating your career path a fun experience.
On radicalcareering.com, she's working on about 20 well-designed microsites that focus on different aspects of you and your job journey. Some of them are weaker than others... but most of them get to important self-examinations in an interesting way.
This one caught my eye--it's not done yet, but it's a spoof divorce lawyer site for people whose marriages are going downhill because they're devoting too much time to working. Makes me laugh knowing the ad industry's reputation for tearing marriages apart.

Click here for divorce-lawyers-r-us.com, which also has links to Sally's other "Radical Sites."

Hit the nail on the head.

Yvonne DiVita brought this quote to our attention, and I didn't want it buried in a comment. Of course one of the America's greatest writers would sum up the issue best :

"But the problem is that when I go around and speak on campuses, I still don't get young men standing up and saying, 'How can I combine career and family?'"

Gertrude Stein

A Lifetime Lesson

Betty Cohen, "a marketing whiz who put Cartoon Network on the cable map," and has been CEO of Lifetime Network for the last year, was recently profiled in USA Today and showed some insight into her new target ... women.

"Q: You're phasing out the slogan "Television for Women." How come?

A: What women are saying is: Don't tell me you're television for women. I'll be the judge of that.

Q: You've been doing audience research. As Freud asked, what does a woman want?

A: One of the things the research has shown is that, for the women who do love us, the connection to Lifetime the brand is a powerfully emotional one. They're mostly powering through their day and check their emotions somewhere else. They've got to get the kids to school. They've got to deal with the boss at work without blowing up. All these things. So if Lifetime is this place where they can actually have an emotional reaction to a story that in some way they identify with, more power to us.

And the evolution that I want to make is that the emotion doesn't always have to be crying. We need to speak to the array of emotions that women need and want that gets shoved aside in their busy lives."

See the whole thing here.

A Revolution is Upon Us

I can't resist. Coming soon to a bookstore near you:

That's right. This woman is convinced that advertising consistently represents menstruation as an "illness or shameful episode," and has written this book about it, officially convincing me that one can take a stand and write about anything. In it, "documenting how industry advertising portrays women as the Other, Kissling explores the profound gender bias inherent in - and reinforced by - the business of menstruation.

Be sure to make it to can't-miss Chapter 7:

"Chapter 7 looks to counterculture expressions regarding menstruation
for alternative means of understanding and talking about menstruation.

"Harry Finley’s online Museum of Menstruation is reviewed,
along with Geneva Kachman’s campaign to celebrate menstruation
with her development of an original holiday, Menstrual Monday, and
her own virtual museum. In Chapter 8, I offer strategies for building
on the successes of this “menstrual underground” to transform
cultural meanings and to become, in the existentialist sense, authentic
menstruating subjects."

Although I find this highly amusing, I suppose I should ask if there is any truth to her cause...