In our continuing exploration of how operations supports creativity, I wanted to dive into a recent restaurant experience. Here, the food, the experience, the brand itself, are all thought of as creative expressions, but I would propose that operations are paramount to conveying this. Case in point for this exploration, the first impression and greeting.
Read MoreOk, story time.
Years ago I was in charge of a retail email list and I partnered with someone who ran social media. We had the idea to leverage social media marketing and create a lead form campaign to drive subscribers. I left the creative to the social media expert, which came back as highly lifestyle focused, beautiful visuals, low text.
To explain the value of a Digital Project Manager, we want to understand a digital project. These can be websites, landing pages, online stores, applications, social media presence and depending on where you draw the line, digital advertising. The variety of project types means different technology frameworks and related expertise to deliver a quality final product.
Read MoreIt’s possible to be too close to your own business. You look at it everyday. Whether it’s your website, your store, your team or your solution; it’s easy to lose your customer’s point of view. You might find yourself bored with the look, the sound, or something about your brand and want to tinker. You gain a bias for change.
Read MoreI’m not much of a lottery player, in fact, I’m not sure I’ve ever bought myself a ticket, and definitely never bought one online. Still, these are multi-million dollar events that garner huge attention and purchase volume.
I was investigating the website and checkout experience for a lottery brand. There was a reported big drop in conversion in the checkout, even among direct clickthrough to buy call to action campaigns.
Read MoreHeadless commerce is a pretty straight forward concept. Separate your front-end experience from your back-end commerce engine, and now you have the ability to implement changes on either more easily.
Simple enough right? That’s why so many technologies exist as stand alone CMS platforms or payment gateways. This empowers companies to choose the right technology for their business, but also supports change in a more efficient way.
Read MoreDon’t just embrace change, invest in it.
Failure isn’t the risk, that’s a natural byproduct of business. We have to accept there is an inherent risk of failure we can learn from.
The real risk is sustained mediocrity.
It’s the big changes we fear, so we continuously keep making small ones. Over time, we fall further and further behind the competition who release better features, services or products that meet customers' expanding expectations.
Read MoreI like to fill the walls with printouts of designs. Webpages, emails, ads - both internal and our competition. They’re a good way to make comparisons, stimulate ideas and review work that has been accomplished.
When doing reviews with designers, I get them to point at the wall and tell me which one they feel was a great design. Often the elaborate creations with bright colours get chosen, and yes they are beautiful, but are they great?
This was the response from more than half of participants in a leadership program we had developed years ago. It was eye opening and it changed the way I looked at my team.
Read MoreAs someone once in marketing agency sales, what I had to overcome was not the hesitancy to invest in marketing, but the hesitancy to trust agencies. Everyone had a bad experience being sold something they didn’t fully understand and it failed.
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