May the Force be with You...

I am an Account Director with great experience in branding but my company does not fully develop digital comms like we would do print materials. I know the basics but I feel I may be being left behind. I want to expand my digital knowledge so I can advise clients with confidence. Do you have any ideas on the best and most effective way to do this?

Good question. I think everyone - from agency CEOs to junior creatives – are struggling with how to keep up with new developments. It’s just that you may feel like the archetypal teenager wanting to lose their cherry because you think everyone of your peers is doing it and you’re not. The digital world is so massive that it makes people who are dealing less with digital solutions feel as though they are missing out. The reality is you are and you are not – you have realised that you could be doing more but there is so much of it, you need to decide what is relevant to you, your client and your agency.
You work in the area of brand and design and I think those agencies – in contrast to other traditional agencies like advertising agencies - are in a very interesting position with regard to structuring themselves for the new challenges all agencies face. They are less constrained by the old art director/copywriter model and have always dialled up and down different resources like design, copy, film, modelmaking according to the brief. This sort of flexibility is what all agencies will need to show a lot more of.

So what can you do personally? Here are just some initial suggestions:

1) Decide what knowledge is relevant to you in your job and mine this vein of info as it will make most sense to you and should bring business benefits. I would start with your clients’ customers and understand how they are using or could be using online to engage with your client’s brand. I would register for Google Alerts (google.com/alerts) so you can see what is being said or not being said on the web about your clients’s brand. You can get more detailed about this by also registering at moreover.com for sector-specific related breaking news. Technorati allows you to set up RSS feeds for blog-generated info if blogs are used frequently to talk about your client’s products (eg mobile phones). In fact, everyone is talking about social networks as the key for brand engagement. They are definitely part of the story but I thought Seth Godin brought a level headed view in a recent debate about how businesses could use them:



2) Because there is so much out there, you need to treat gaining knowledge in this area like learning a language – you will learn more if you have to learn it and it is in a live environment. Like when you are asking the way in Paris and you have to make sure your French is good enough to be understood to find the railway station, I suggest that you choose something which will help you familiarise yourself with some digital channels and force you to engage with them in quite a granular detail. So take one of your interests and see if you can use the web to help you further it. So if you are into cooking, create a blog using one of the easy platforms like Blogger, Wordpress or Typepad to blog about the results of using new recipes. If you have a company or school reunion use Facebook to organise and record it. If you are a mad-keen cyclist, then use Twitter to tell people of your exploits. My point is that these platforms cannot be seen as normal media as they have changed the way people see the world, interact with each other and engage with brands. So you need to interact them with yourself and a little more deeply than just your average customer. In my case with this blog, I have had to learn about online reputation management, website analytics, social bookmarks, coding issues and many more things. Sure if you had asked me about online reputation management, I could have given you the theory and the mechanisms but now I have a much more practical understanding and the continuing need to keep on top of it. And that is helping me think differently about client problems.

3) There are some many great sources in our industry and beyond that will provoke your thinking, you should consider signing up for RSS feeds from the likes of Adverblog, Seth Godin's blog, Digital Connections and mashable.com. Once you have visited a few they will point you in the directions which may be more your style and taste. Also because you will be finding stuff on the web which you will return for reference, you may want to sign up for a bookmarking site. Somebody recommended me Diigo and I find it really easy to use. I don’t share my bookmarks but it is great way to keep a handle on all that you come across which may be of relevance later down the line.

So that it is my starter guide. The problem you will have is keeping up with all the information but it will be up to you to decide what is relevant. And you have to bear in mind that this sort of thing takes a chunk of time out of your week so you need to legislate it for it. Also as Princess Leia in Family Guy's Blue Harvest found out, there are people out there to help you –with so much talent and inspiration. It just may take a bit of time to open the lines of communication.