Part 2: Strategies for the Web and learning from meatloaf

What does your role as Creative Strategist at Whitlock ebs entail?
I work at Whitlock ebs in Richmond, Virginia. As the Creative Strategist and Wireless Solutions Director of Marketing, I wear a lot of hats. The one thing that both roles encompass is showing people how technology can help their business. Here's an example:

We were meeting with an ad agency to talk to them about the benefits of wireless technology. He nodded every once in a while. Politely. Then I said, "You guys run a golf tournament every year. Imagine putting a Palm device into each of their hands when they get off the plane." It totally changed the conversation. We were giving him the benefits of the technology, not the boring features.

One reason our company is doing so well is that we look at the Internet as part of the marketing and advertising and technology mix. Most companies that rely solely on the Internet to solve their problems are already out of business.

What is the most difficult task in regard to "creative strategizing," and getting a company up and running on the Web?
Working on websites is new for most people. Simply getting people to understand that a schedule needs to be adhered to for the project to launch on time is critical. But the most important factor in any site is making the end product good for the user.

When the Web started, most sites featured a smiling CEO with a mission statement. My personal feeling about mission statements can't be printed in a family magazine. What a waste of space! People use the Internet to find information. If a site is clogged with mission statements on the home page, poor navigation and wacky functionality just to satisfy an art director's whim, it's doomed. Smart business works for websites too.

So it's important for a company to be able to creatively represent their product or service via the Web?
Although the Web is only a few years old, standards have already been set. There are good reasons that Amazon.com gets millions of hits per week. They make it easy to find information! Seems obvious, but how many sites have you been to where you can't get back to the home page, the third level of pages have no logical way out, or the copy is poor? I think that taking complicated information architecture and making it seamless is the ultimate in creativity. Not many people are great at it yet. We're all learning.

And on learning, what about those failed creative ideas? How can one learn from them?
Who knows why some things work and some things don't? In 1991 a partner and I quit our jobs to start The Great American Meatloaf Contest. We thought comfort food would be a big craze, and we loved food. I started appearing on local TV to promote the contest, and it grew into a national event.

Then, we sent the tapes to the national morning shows. One day, a producer from "Live! With Regis and Kathie Lee" called and asked if I could be on the show later that week. It was the best nine minutes of my life! (Professionally.) They re-ran the segment later that year as one of the "best of" and a literary agent called me and asked us to write a cookbook.

The Great American Meatloaf Contest Cookbook sold more than 40,000 copies and I toured the country promoting the book. I still check ebay regularly and buy back copies of the cookbook. People get a kick out of the author buying back their own book! But I only got ten copies back in 1994 when it came out and most of those are long gone.

We just did it. We didn't have a blueprint. My big point is: We're all going to be dead a long time. Try stuff. If it doesn't work, do something else. I'm glad Edison kept working after his first 2,000 attempts to create the light bulb failed.

Tell us about a successful creative strategy you've found in your attempts to get companies on the Web...
I've introduced brainstorming as a part of our process. We've used it while competing for business and with clients. There's nothing better than going off somewhere with a team from our company and the clients to work together. There is a lot of power in working as one unified team.

And, when a client is the one who comes up with the BIG IDEA, they help champion it at their company. And anything we can do to work better with our clients is a huge advantage. We're more than just email buddies, we've created great work together. Whitlock ebs has been great about letting me implement this process with several clients, with amazing results.

And do you think creativity is a journey or a destination?
It's definitely a journey. Who knew where StickyIdeas would be one year after launching it? I didn't expect to be a weekly columnist or a Wireless Marketing guy. But I've been open to new things and willing to try almost anything I feel passionate about. I can't wait to see where it is one year from now. I'm sure it'll be quite different, but I'm ready for it.

We will all definitely be watching for what you'll do next and what we can all learn from it!