Staying Busy

You can feel when the agency is doing well.

Everyone has a glow of confidence and there is a definite smoothness in the work process. Everyone’s busy and the work is good.

We’ve been hiring over the past few months; writers, designers, account managers, even some just graduated trainees.
We took our “it’s the economy” hit last year. We got so freaking paranoid as business slowed down that we trimmed down, tightened up and re-evaluated every process and procedure. We got focused on what clients need, right now.
We must have done something right.
The agency came out of the gate strong in 2009 and whatever it is that we are doing right; we plan to keep doing it!

Speaking of Trainees
We have three new college grads starting next week.
They will go through six months of training and if they’re still here in 6 months will be promoted to Assistant Something or Other. Their first week, we don’t give them any work. It’s all about orientation by different departments and agency process training, which can be pretty intense. They walk around in a daze and tend to cling to each other. We have a pretty good training process in place. On average, it takes two to three months before it all comes together for them and they have what I call the AHA! moment. All of a sudden, they understand how the agency can go from a challenge to a brilliantly executed solution and what part they can play in that.

What’s good with having several trainees at once is that they learn to work as a team and support each other. Once several years ago, I had a trainee that just wasn’t getting it. She was a hard worker and very smart, but not firing on all cylinders. I called together three other trainees in the agency and told them that it was their responsibility to get her up to 100%. I also told them all of the terrible things that would happen to them if they failed.
Worked like a charm.

I love eCommerce
Ever since we built the PetFoodDirect.com site in the late 90’s, I’ve been fascinated with eCommerce.
We just soft launched an eCommerce site called www.SkinRenu.com . The site sells high quality skin products. We needed to keep the budget in control while we built the first phase of the site. So we went with a Yahoo Store Front that we customized. It looks pretty good and started pulling orders right away. But there’s still a lot to be done over the next six months.

A RPV session led to the concept of “Love what you see when you look in the mirror.” The brand vision is paid of well on the site. Next we start to build in all the response triggers. Things like special offers, promotions, and events. Once we get all the bugs out of it, we’ll begin testing Search Engine Marketing (SEM). You’ll see the site grow and change over the next year and I’ll keep you posted on what’s happening and what I’m learning.

And I’m open to your suggestions! Really.

Jon