Part 3: Humor, the "target" audience, and our five feature questions

Speaking of press releases, can you tell me about your own press releases? The Star Wars release in particular is very funny and enticing. How do you use them as a marketing tool?
What I remember when I worked at IBM and Lexmark is how we used to think it was so fun to go to the "agency" - that's where all the wacky people were. Those wacky creatives are at the agency. I also see that to some degree when I have people come visit our agency. We're in a hundred year old house, with Steadman art everywhere and it's a very informal environment.

I don't find professional and wacky as mutually exclusive. Far better I find that people with senses of humor have a broader sense of all things. I think that kind of reflects accurately what Buzzword is about - you know I can play the gray suit up when I need to - and it gives me an advantage sometimes.

It probably helps that we have designers who are in their twenties but I'm almost fifty and combined we've seen a lot. There's a lot of experience we can offer.

Humor really helps us in dealing with our clients. When we write copy for the web site, we get the nuances of what to talk about and what not to talk about. I think humor is really important. And then you also need to be sensitive to the fact that a lot of people don't have senses of humor.

How important is it to know your audience?
You have to be aware of the audience analysis. Everything interactive or otherwise should basically dovetail. When we did the recruiting site for Lexmark it needed to be really bold and a lot of the established Lexmark guys were like "Geez, this is really bold, I don't know about this flashiness." And we said, "This will work for your audience." We had to say, "You're not the target audience. I know this makes you uncomfortable but let's look at how it will work for your target audience." If you can show them that, then it really makes a big difference.

It's a difficult thing for your clients to say, "We don't like it but we see how this is going to work for the target audience, so let's go ahead." If they will acknowledge up front that sometimes they're going for an audience that they're not a part of, then really that gives them an advantage. The advantage is what any successful marketing plan comes down to in a nutshell.

What's your favorite web site?
Matinee.co.uk, it's a site in England. It's complete eye-candy that's very well done. Other than that, I don't really have a particular web site, I've got "My Yahoo!" which is set up with my news, my site to finding lyrics to songs. We're always looking for lyric stuff.

What's the last purchase you made online?
Probably a DVD.

Who is the web personality you would most like to meet?
I guess Bill Gates, to see if he really has as deep an understanding of all of the stuff that people think he does.

What's the best piece of Web advice you ever got or gave?
Probably is to plan it better, think about what your goals are.

What would you miss most about the Internet?
Just access to information, there's so much out there.