For some reason or another your staff are just not getting through the work. It might be that the work is beyond their capabilities, it might be that they have too much work on and have not rasied a flag, or maybe they are  just plain slacking about. Schedule delays usually end up costing you – both money and reputation, and when it’s happening due to internal issues you need to stomp on it quickly. If one on one consultation is not getting the results, sometimes it is useful to turn to the old method – name and shame.

Weekly traffic meetings, which involve as many people as possible, (at the very least the project team, but if you can fit in the whole company even better) are invaluable for giving staff a bit of a prod in front of their peers. If their part of the project keeps coming up on the work in progress sheet you don’t even have to make a big deal of it to provide the motivation for them to get their name and that task off that list. I’m not endorsing hard out peer pressure, but as a manager this is a useful method and one that moderates itself. It’s not personal, the fact is the job is on the to do list and will be until it’s done. I’ve been that person a few times and believe me, hearing your name read out time and again in front of your workmates is strong motivation to get that job off that sheet!

Just stumbled on this old(ish) interview featuring responses from a panel made up of the following distinguished contributors:

Steven Marrs – VC & Global Head of Digital and Branded Content, Nitro

Clark Kokich – World Wide President Avenue A/Razorfish

Nick Law – Chief Creative Officer R/GA

Torrence Boone – President of Digitas, Boston

Well worth a watch if for no other reason that to see these industry heads all in once place discussing a topic that is till very much current.

http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid933247283?bclid=933143142&bctid=932807466

If you want to be in front of the client you need to be able to speak with authority on UI design, IA design, back end, software, hardware, brand management, quoting and billing, margins and ROI, social media and ecommerce, video and audio, the 100 new applications that Google bring out every week and God knows what else. The list goes on and on. The one thing you don’t want to be doing is promising stuff you can’t deliver, so from that perspective you need to know at least what you can and can’t offer.

I think to be successful in Digital Advertising space you need to have the right attitude, and that attitude is “I’ll give it a go”.  Clients asking questions for something is one thing, but then there are your colleagues who are in need of help with the transition to Digital as well. When a work mate asks you for something they are usually asking because they assume you are an expert in that area, or that your area is the closest fit to whatever category the question falls into. This can become quite tiresome, but at the end of the day, somebody has to learn the new stuff, and it is most likely going to be you. Often it comes down to the fact that you are the only one who can be bothered making the effort to learn whatever the new technology or problem is , but so be it. That’s your lot in life now – you are the person who learns new stuff. Eat it up!

I didn’t study anywhere near this hard when i was at university or design and arts college, and anyone who’s seen my grades would hardly be surprised by that fact (bizarrely I also had a lot more disposable income but that is another matter). But the point I am making is that aside from working your day job, racking up the billable hours that go towards paying your wages, you also lead a double life as an eternal student that not many people appreciate. And what’s more the course you are studying is ridiculously broad. How can you possibly stay on top of all this?

If you are anything like me the amount of information you have coming in through channels such as, RSS feeds, twitter, countless eNewsletters etc is mind-boggling.  But believe me, once you’ve been looking at this information pouring in for a while you actually become quite good an skimming through all this data, snacking on mildly interesting information, and not committing to gorging until you are fairly sure that it is something you really need to know. You do have to make a commitment to keeping up with new information however. The Digital and Digital Advertising landscape over the next couple of years will move incredibly fast and those who are not in a situation to move with it will be left in the cold.

The crux of all this is that to exist in the Digital Advertising space is you need to talk with authority and to do that you need to know what you can and can’t promise. Because let’s face it, despite the magnificent growth that Digital has experienced and continues to experience, and the general mainstream acceptance of Digital as a crucial brand and service delivery mechanism(s), there is still a lot of doubt and ignorance about what we actually do. And it is up to us to be there waving the flag with informed, insightful and reassuring information. Good luck with your studies. If you find anything useful can you please maybe tweet it for the rest of us?

i’m a fake

everything is fake

Love this great little parody of a viral advert by Mini, which ironically is becoming viral…

However,  probably the most notable update is the new ability to be able to purchase items within an application. This means that now iPhone applications can sell products or application upgrades wiht the actual application. The further opportunities that this functionality offers for the monetization of your iPhone application other than paying for the inital download could be massive. For more infotmation on the impact of this feature have a read of this very good article on Mashable on how the iPhone 3.0 will create a new mobile economy.

Apple have announced that the iPhone OS 3.0 will be out in June. I’d be on the lookout for a decent iPhone application developer if I were you.

The brainchild of Stephen Wolfram, WolframAlpha is due to launch in May this year. If it works it will most likely completely change the way we use the web (and really piss off Google!). Worth keeping an eye on anyway!

Check out Wolfram’s blog:

http://blog.wolfram.com/2009/03/05/wolframalpha-is-coming/

The latest IAB Insight Report has been released by the Interactive Advertising Bureau of New Zealand and PricewaterhouseCoopers, and NZ’s Online adspend is up 43% from 2007.

Read the press release and download the report fom the internet bureau website.

Siftables break out of the traditional media environment of your computer screen and your mouse. They are tactile, like little interactive building blocks, but come together to form a single interface. Pretty cool as a learning tool – my kids would love them (until they smashed them).

Not so much a digital advertising related topic as such, but who knows what these little things will lead to. Looking forward to seeing where they take them…

http://siftables.com/

LinkedIn provides a network of professional and personal contacts which might be very helpful in the current climate.

I’ll tell you one site I wouldn’t mind owning in this current recession – and that’s LinkedIn!

Forget Facebook! With people being laid off left right and centre all over the world, they will be looking to the likes of LinkedIn to browse for jobs or leverage off old professional relationships. The advertising opportunities on that site must be enormous. It would be interesting to see what number of people find work off  LinkedIn as opposed to using sites like Monster, Workopolis or Yahoo! Hotjobs.

View the movie on the TED website here

Great quotable quote

if you’re not prepared to be wrong, you will never come up with anything original – Sir Ken Robinson

Be sure to have a good look around the TED website – there is some fantastic stuff on there. But if you are short on time at least make sure you watch this clip. It’s a treat.