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Team DIGO | 04/24/2014 | in
Many people are falling for hunting with a fishing pole. Let’s say you’ve gotten this far in life with your average fishing skills. But now the waters are all fished out and hunters are bringing home the big dinners. Do you get advice, read all you can about hunting, find a guide or partner to lead you? Or do you just head off into the woods with your fishing pole and tackle?
Of course not. If you are with me at this point, you recognize the absurdity here. And yet we all do this in some aspects of our lives. It’s so hard to keep track of what we know and impossible to learn the names and categories of all the things we don’t know.
Knowing is just the first step: accepting is another thing entirely. Deciding what to do about it is a third. A fatal flaw could be the inability to judge character and quality in people. This will dog you no matter what you do. You are going to want to address this problem directly as quickly and energetically as you can. Getting the best help is vital; otherwise it is like driving with the emergency break on – it not only slows you down, but it also stinks.
Work as hard as you can to learn what you don’t know. If it’s marketing, find someone you can trust. Of course, you can check with other advisors, but you will want to develop trust and a good relationship with a key individual. Look for proof and measures of success that make sense, and then delegate real responsibility and authority. Create a true partnership and let it flower.
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Team DIGO | 04/23/2014 | in
Jeff Kastin, Business Development Manager at DiMassimo Goldstein
I’ve been with DiMassimo Goldstein for three years now and it all started when Lee Goldstein approached me. How many Presidents do you know that are personally reaching out for you to come into the office for a possible gig? He wanted a new business guy that could “run the machine” and keep a foot on the pedal at all times. After a few interviews and a burger, I was hired. Within the first two weeks we had a new client to add to our roster. We started hot and haven’t cooled off yet! Mark DiMassimo in his own words said, “I don’t even want Kastin to change his underwear.” To be clear — my underwear is clean and the agency is growing everyday!
From being in my own closet office to now working on top of co-workers, seeing new hires monthly, creating new departments and brands, expanding office space — being part of the AGENCY GROWTH is what I’m most proud of. We recently expanded our office and took over the rest of the floor. I’m looking forward to a little breathing room for the time being, but I will make sure that we take over another floor in the near future.
I’m a family man with a beautiful wife and the coolest son ever (shout out to Ryder). DiMassimo Goldstein treats me like family and I’m proud to be part of an agency growth network like them. It’s extremely rewarding to wake up every morning knowing that you can effect so many people in a positive way. It’s not just growing an agency, but growing peoples lives.
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Team DIGO | 04/22/2014 | in
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In the above video, Veritasium explores the growing problem of fraud with Facebook’s paid “likes” advertising platform. We know it’s possible to buy them for pennies on the dollar illegitimately outside the system. But what about those you purchase via Facebook advertising? Even when you target specific audiences, it’s highly likely you’ll wind up with followers from zombie accounts in Third World countries. The last time we checked, these zombies do not engage with your content, and they most certainly do not buy your products.
Where are they coming from? This isn’t an initiative on the part of Facebook to steal your advertising, but rather the result of good intentions–attempts to shut down the shady bulk “like” sales in the first place. Here’s how it works: previously, merchants of bulk “likes” could simply write computer scripts to create millions of zombie accounts that like your page. However, Facebook found it odd that some accounts were only following certain pages in a completely different country; and if they had no other activity, they began to delete these accounts in bulk. Suddenly brands had an unexplained “like crash” about a year ago.
Of course, in this spy vs. spy world, these “like” merchants made adjustments to once again circumvent Facebook’s process. They had to disguise their interactions with customer pages by “liking” as many random pages as possible. This means that when your advertisement is displayed on Facebook, it’s tempting for someone with a fake account to click your ad and disguise their true intent. You not only get charged for a meaningless “like”, but it sticks with you forever. Every time you pay to promote your content to existing fans, you’ll be charged to promote to a person who simply does not exist.
What does all this mean for managers of Facebook pages? Taking a hard look at whether Facebook will continue to be a viable medium for advertisers, it is difficult to swallow the notion that we have to pay Facebook to show content to audiences we have already paid to grow. Now when we pay Facebook to expand our audience, we have to question whether it’s an audience at all.
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Team DIGO | 04/21/2014 | in
On the heels of a busy end to 2013, we decided to avoid getting caught in the clutter of holiday and New Year’s cards and concentrate on a day that has more meaning in our culture. DiGo creates enthusiasm for things, people, services, ideas, organizations and brands; and in order to do this, we first have to find it within ourselves.
What better way than to celebrate Valentine’s Day with clients and prospects? First, we learned that our new client, EverBank, had checked twelve of our references resulting in the testimonial, “all of your clients love you.” (We love them, too.)
We followed this love-fest with what ended up being our most successful email ever to prospective clients–successful, because as opposed to our other brainy and witty efforts, this communication came straight from the heart. Because we love what we do and value our clients, we wanted to honor the day when love is on everyone’s minds. We sent the above beautifully-designed card to our clients and partners with a personal note because, as you know, real relationships require an investment in time, and occasional hand cramps.
More important than gaining qualified leads was sparking new business friendships and mutual admiration from people who share our way of thinking, even if they never become clients. In the end, some of the best business relationships come from mutual inspiration rather than a laser focus on profits.
So whether you’re ready to fall in love with a new agency or simply want to admire us from afar, please don’t hesitate to send some love our way.
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Team DIGO | 04/17/2014 | in
Brittany Harshbarger, Media Planner
When I was interviewed for an account internship just weeks after I graduated college, I didn’t even know that digital media was a “thing.” Yes, I knew digital, and I knew that media encompassed TV, radio, billboards, and all of those other classic media outlets that come to mind. Then I was asked if I would rather intern for the media team because the account interns were a dime a dozen. I took a chance and decided that I was going to learn the art of placing ads online.
It was not easy at first- I had to solve for X, learn which sites day traders use to check stock quotes, and learn so many 3-letter acronyms that I was like, “WTF did I sign up for?” It was a challenge. I quickly decided that I had to either commit to this fully or go do something less brain intensive- like start my own bakery.
I committed to my job as Assistant Media Planner and took every opportunity to learn. My supervisors and Director saw something in me that I hadn’t yet seen. In the wise words of Rebecca Weiser, “you don’t even know what you don’t know.” I commuted to and from Connecticut and had many late nights at the office and long rides home with plenty of time to think. I wasn’t sure if I was cut out for this job, which needed me to think strategically, mathematically, practically, and creatively all at once. I decided that my 2014 resolution was to shed my college girl persona, buckle down and get damn good at this job that I felt lucky to have been given.
Now, 9 months into my time at Proove, I shed my college girl persona as well as the “assistant” in my job title. I could not be more thankful for those late nights. I was lucky enough to be trained in how to take a media plan, traffic ads, pull reports, create dashboards, report to the client, make optimizations to said media plan, and then start planning for the next quarter. The training I received and still receive every day is invaluable.
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Team DIGO | 04/10/2014 | in
Andy Bly, Art Director at DiMassimo Goldstein
Even though I was raised in a small town hidden in Northwestern Pennsylvania, I was fortunate enough to visit New York City a few times early in my life. My dad would come out once a year for the International Toy Fair and from the very first time he brought our entire family out for a long weekend, I knew this was the place for me. There’s no grey area with New York and I think you figure out fairly early whether you can handle it or not. It would take another two decades of living to make that a reality.
Early last June I had planned a trip to the city from Cleveland to see a few friends, one of them being Cait DeAngelis, who I first met in 2002 while attending architecture school at Kent State. (And yes it took us almost 12 years of friendship to realize our initials are ABCD). Within hours of being in New York and only minutes after meeting Cait at her office here at DiMassimo Goldstein, I was filling out a W-9 and signing up for a freelance gig that started in 10 days. So, after years of struggling to find my place in northeastern Ohio, I had a job and apartment in the best city in the world after only a few minutes. It’s never that easy. Luckily, a few people took a chance on a bearded guy moving from Cleveland with no direct advertising experience. It’s been almost a year and I am comfortably freaked out on a daily basis in my role as junior art director. It’s never that easy, but when it is, I’ve learned to make the most of it.
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Team DIGO | 04/07/2014 | in
In his research, Jim Collins finds that companies achieving lasting greatness have many things in common. For one thing, they have a “stop doing” list that rivals the to-do version. Here are a few things we stopped doing at DiMassimo Goldstein that seem to have made all the difference:
TIMESHEETS. That’s right, at DiMassimo Goldstein exactly zero creative energy is spent on useless timesheets. This exercise, once thought to be absolutely essential–and which is almost universally a billable time-consuming farce that occasionally leads to criminal penalties–has no place in our routine. We just don’t do them. Instead, we put time and energy into growing our client’s brands and businesses.
But what if a client insists on timesheets? Every organization must choose its priorities. To those who can’t appreciate the benefits of a team 100% focused on their business rather than our own, we just say “No thanks.”
BILLING BY THE HOUR. DiMassimo Goldstein is not a temp agency that lends employees to clients, who then must manage them. We take care of the integration of the team and take full responsibility for the results. That’s why we never charge by the hour. Each client pays a monthly retainer. If we put in more hours, the fee remains the same. If we need more staff, the fee remains the same. If a relationship is unprofitable for more than a few months, we sit down with the client and reprioritize or expand the scope of the work–always going forward, never backward.
Some say, “It’s unsustainable!” All we can say is that we’ve been doing it this way for more than a decade—over ten years of satisfied clients and consistent agency growth and profitability.
So how do we manage and know what people are doing with their time? We can, by asking the team every day – what are you working on? What are your challenges? How can we help? These questions not only take bureaucracy off everyone’s plates, but they fuel integrity. Along with trust, it forms the core of all successful relationships.
What’s on your Stop Doing List? Let me know at mark@digobrands.com.
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Team DIGO | 04/06/2014 | in
We were recently interviewed for an article in Investor’s Business Daily about employing different tactics in this digital marketing age. It’s extremely difficult to be a marketer right now. The effectiveness of traditional marketing tactics are declining at a rate faster than executives can figure out how to best leverage all of the new media opportunities out there. There’s no end to the amount of reading you can do to bone up on “best practices” and “new paradigms”. If you just practice them more religiously and adopt them more quickly, you would no doubt outpace the competition.
Missing in this conversation is the ultimate killer advantage: do you love what you’re selling?
Your job is not to be the sanest, most balanced and detached individual in the world. You should be on fire, whatever moves you. Bring all the experience you have to the party, but leave your cynicism at the door–it is a failed attempt to prevent disappointment and only prevents the joy of surprise.
In Seth Godin’s book, The Dip, he describes how a new endeavor– whether it’s a job or learning how to rollerblade–starts with enthusiasm and excitement. But between the beginning and the end of the process, when you’ve achieved your goal, is a dip to power through.
“Every new project (or job, or hobby, or company) starts out exciting and fun. Then it gets harder and less fun, until it hits a low point—really hard, and not much fun at all.
And then you find yourself asking if the goal is even worth the hassle. Maybe you’re in a Dip—a temporary setback that will get better if you keep pushing. But maybe it’s really a cul-de-sac, which will never get better, no matter how hard you try.”
Loving what you’re selling is the super fuel that impels you through the dip. People who adore what they do will pore over the most tedious spreadsheets, attend snore-worthy meetings, listen to stomach-turning feedback, and keep on barreling through. Godin continues:
“Winners quit fast, quit often, and quit without guilt—until they commit to beating the right Dip for the right reasons. In fact, winners seek out the Dip. They realize that the bigger the barrier, the bigger the reward for getting past it. If you can become number one in your niche, you’ll get more than your fair share of profits, glory, and long-term security.
Losers, on the other hand, fall into two basic traps. Either they fail to stick out the Dip—they get to the moment of truth and then give up—or they never even find the right Dip to conquer.”
To do marketing @speed, you must eliminate the fear of failure and new ideas, and the fear of an iterative process. Remember, love is the inverse of fear.
It’s so much easier to follow our simple advice, “do something”, when you’re passionate about your work. There’s no dread, fear of failure, or procrastination of difficult tasks.
We love what we do at our agency – and more importantly, we love people who love what they do. So why not “do something” right now. If you’re passionate about your job, company or career, email Mark DiMassimo and tell him all about it.
