Field Notes Inside an Integrated Communications Agency

I love design. Whether in architecture, product or interactive design, the best solutions come from function and form symbiotically playing off each other. The most beautifully designed building is useless if it doesn't meet the functional needs of its occupants and conversely, a functional, but unattractive workspace brings down productivity and morale. Thinking about design in relation to function may cost more up front, but can differentiate your product, improve usability and increase demand.

Recently a story on NPR's Marketplace, "Hospital Design Promotes Better Healing," examined the new evidence-based designed Sharp Memorial Hospital in San Diego. Sharp was built using effective pre-studied design principles as well as input from staff to promote comfort and healing for better outcomes for patients. Being so new, the results are not completely in, but anecdotally, these design enhancements have reduced infection and patient relapse. How many millions of dollars could be saved if all hospitals were designed like this?

With everyone more budget-conscious than ever, it's easy to cut corners in the design process, but if you are considering using the red pen on your design budget, keep in mind how this will degrade your end result. Design is more than just making something "look pretty," it creates an emotional, visceral connection. When well combined, form and function together yield powerful results.

I often hear agency people making excuses for mediocre work — not enough time, not enough budget or decision-making by committee. Too often these excuses get in the way of good work.

Last year, we took a no excuses approach to improving the quality of our work. This approach came on the heels of a successful 2008, both financially and with work quality.

In 2009, when Capstrat won more Addy awards than any other local agency, you'd think we'd have been happy. But Chief Creative Officer Todd Coats, said good, but not quite good enough. Several of our awards were bronze or honorable mention. So, we set out not to win more awards, but to improve the quality of our awards.

Our no excuses approach meant we would expect great work no matter the circumstances. When we shared work internally, we talked about the strategy, the message and the results — not the low budget, unrealistic deadlines or the long hours. We used the normal barriers to good work as inspiration or even an asset in our creative process.

The results speak for themselves.

A video we developed with our clients at GSK won a Judges Choice award, a top honor. The video was concepted, filmed and produced in three weeks. We relied on close collaboration with our clients and our shared understanding of their business to create a video that produced cheers and tears from internal audiences.

An advertising campaign http://deliver.capstrat.com/development/capstrat/2010Addys/ for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill won multiple awards. If you've ever worked on a higher education client, you know that committees are a part of the process. We were blessed with client contacts who helped navigate the organization, but we also embraced the knowledge of the crowd in campaign development. Our research included meetings with more than a dozen small groups and individual departments. Our open approach helped generate buy-in and uncovered stories that formed the basis of the award-winning campaign.

And, a low-cost grassroots campaign for Tobacco.Reality.Unfilitered. took home two silver awards http://deliver.capstrat.com/development/capstrat/2010Addys/ Our creative team used resourcefulness and a passion for the story to produce a campaign that's not only winning awards, but also is winning over a very skeptical teen audience.

There is no denying a bigger budget, more time and access to the decision maker can improve work quality. But, these factors aren't required for good work and can't make up for strategy, talent and creativity.

Have a creative problem to solve? Need to purge yourself of all the expected ideas in the least amount of time? Then reach for a Mohican. Or a Ticonderoga, a Dixon or a FaberCastell. Just not a computer mouse.

With a blank piece of paper and a freshly sharpened BlackWarrior, you can cover much more ground much more quickly than you can gazing into a screen looking for inspiration.

When you turn to the computer for conceptual problem-solving, it's easy to find yourself at a time-sucking dead end. A problem that takes you considerable time to solve on the computer can take mere seconds when done with a pencil.

Better yet, that same pencil can help you fail in half the time.

That's why ounce for ounce, penny for penny, the pencil is the most useful and under-used tool around. Pick one up. You'll be glad you did.

We live in an age of instant gratification, and I think it is safe to say that there is no shortage of tools available to connect us to the information we are seeking. My personal favorite – Google – is something I sometimes wonder how I ever functioned without.

Somehow, despite all the information available to the masses, there seem to be some people who have yet to get the memo. How is it that my mother-in-law has time to compose an email to my husband inquiring what a specific company does, but couldn't bother to check their Web site for the answer? He decided to respond to her query with an answer from a site called "Let me Google that for you". This crafty little Web site allows the user (obviously someone annoyed with being asked a question that could have clearly been Googled to begin with) to type in their search terms just as they would on Google itself. However, instead of being given a list of links, a URL is generated for you to share with the offender.

For example, entering "what is Capstrat?" gave me the following link: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=what+is+Capstrat%3F. Upon clicking on the link, the info-seeker will be shown exactly how she can find the answer for herself. Passive-aggressive? Most definitely. Genius? I think so!

Greetings from Salt Lake City, Utah site of the annual Omniture  Summit. For those that don't know Omniture, they are one of the biggest web analytics vendors (others being Google Analytics, WebTrends, Unica, Coremetrics, etc) and recently acquired by Adobe. The annual gathering is a smattering of who's who in the digital world. While a decent chunk of the content centers on Omniture products, there is also a lot of industry knowledge that is being shared which makes the Summit immensely valuable not just for analytics geeks, but also web marketers.

Last year I attempted to run a semi-live blog of the happenings here at the Summit on my personal blog "Diary of a Madman...", and I will attempt to do so again. I am going to opt for short bursts throughout instead of my usual 6 pages of notes crammed into one post.

I got in late last night so missed yesterday's kickoff and meeting some folks but am ready to roll this morning.

Some interesting things so far...

1) I missed the last Omniture shuttle from the airport. After learning that was the last one, I went on Twitter and asked if there were any more shuttles. Omniture monitors Twitter religiously and responded to me in about 30 seconds, and within 20 minutes they sent a car to pick me up. That is incredible! Builds goodwill, but also demonstrates how important Twitter comments are to them.

People who don't get Twitter don't understand the massive power it has. All messages get amplified, and smart companies are interacting with customers to show they are listening and are a part of the conversation. The walls of vendor and customers is eroding at a rapid speed. Is your company a part of it?

2) The vendor showcase has a lot more Adobe content to it. I wonder why?

3) When I registered I was given a Poken stick. Poken is used as a virtual business card where you can trade contact info by touching Poken sticks (which sounds funny). I think this is a great idea as one of the main benefits to this conference is the networking aspect. This tactic makes that a little easier.

On to the general session. You can follow me on Twitter @hazenj as well.