I’m supporting Elmo Keep’s crowd funded project to go on a cruise with KISS (Don’t ask) and she’ll write the story.

Sounds awesome!

Aside from the awesome victory the team enjoyed thanks to some collective hard work, the highlight for me this weekend gone was meeting the family and friends of the late Daniel Morris.
Daniel was a local lad who was killed in an industrial accident back in March. Mad keen HRT fan, he’d met GT in ’09 and asked the 2007 V8 Supercar champion to sign his car’s air intake.
I was asked to create a tribute video and decided it would work best as a bookend to our weekend.
Here it is- it’s the last few minutes.

HRT TV Sunday Townsville from HRT TV on Vimeo.

Gentleman racer, gentle soul and all round nice guy Paul McMenamin was interviewed by good mate Dieter Kahsnitz at one of my media training workshops in February 2010.

Last Saturday morning, Paul was killed after a race crash at Eastern Creek.

I decided to publish this practice interview with Paul as Dieter took a few tangents and I think we get some insightful moments.

Race in Peace Paul.

For the 10+ years I have been working in the online space, I have waited for everyone to reach the point where “we can all learn, evolve, and get the fuck off this planet” (thanks Bill Hicks)
And yet here we are, some 15 years after the internet hit Australia in a big way and still we have people who find the concept of internet marketing foreign and magical.

I’m beginning to think that maybe this is the way things are and will continue to be.

While this presents a wonderful opportunity to the technically literate, it actually makes their (and by inference my) working life an occasional hell. As an account manager in digital, I have had to deal with so many people client side who have no idea yet talk (and repeatedly email) like they do.

A small sample:

• “But that should not take six hours. Let’s say two?”
• “I know we don’t have an SLA, but I want that done today!”
• “We need to have a document online for staff, but they can’t print or save it”
• “We need the database search to then search inside the PDF itself”
• “Pursuing social media is a sign you’re out of ideas”

The last one was not a client, but a boss.

These are just a few of the many I can think of right now. I used to say with pride that the role of a digital account manager is part advisor, part kindergarten teacher.

And while kindergarten teaching is a worthy and marvellous profession- it’s not what I signed on to do at my various account management roles. In my discussions with prospective clients, I always emphasized how important the client side contact would be. It seems I failed in this regard to get across not so much how important their gatekeeper role would be but rather how important growing their knowledge would be.

So when I was offered the opportunity to jump out of the cesspool of ignorance that is digital account management, I took it.

Recently I received a call from a very clever agency run by a very clever gal and they asked if I would be interested in an Account Manager role with “a boutique agency” (read: small). As an occasionally sensible man, I would normally say yes just to check out what’s what. But in this circumstance I had no hesitation in saying “no thanks” as I really could not stomach the idea of explaining why a customised Open Source CMS was not actually “free”.
Since this rather short sighted and foolish refusal to even consider a role in Digital Account Management, my mind has turned to thoughts of a digital and strategic utopia and the answer has become quite clear; we need geeks to jump the fence and go client side. We need experts in digital strategy, digital brief writing, user experience, social media and digital ROI to take the plunge.

While having a digital expert client side ought to produce results, there’s also the issue of how management handle this “champion of the digital” on their side of the fence. Maybe we’ve just moved the arguments about digital from client v agency to an internal shit fight.

At dmg I’ve been fortunate enough to work with people who either get it or if they struggle then they are prepared to learn and place their faith in my judgement.

Now I’m not blowing smoke just because I’m on contract and keen to continue, but rather I’m seeing the potential of having a digital champion on board. For companies who outsource their digital work (dmg have internal assets as well as some outsource), the agility and rapport between like minded digital people means you don’t just work on making a project happen- you can focus on making it awesome.

And for a huge number of web based projects- from viral to social and plain ol’ e-comm- the difference between serviceable and brilliant is the ability to spend a lot of time and thought on that last 10% of polish and awesome making. Unsure?

Check most Australian web projects and you’ll see what I see- close but no cigar.