Boston is such a fun city. Honestly, my perfect day in Boston would be spent at the Boston Calling Music Festival, listening to awesome bands all day and all night! Other things I love: running around the Charles on a breezy morning, hanging out in Davis Square at the Five Horses for some great craft beer, hitting up Silvertone for delicious comfort food and seeing live shows at the Orpheum or the House of Blues.
So many, but none that are SFW! Just kidding – working in radio was great fun. It was amazing to see your favorite bands play live or every once in a while getting to meet them when they came to the studio.
One time Joe Perry from Aerosmith came to the studio at WBCN to do an interview and afterward, he hung out and played the new Aerosmith album for us. While the sound engineer was cueing it up, I was asked to show him where the restrooms were. As we walked through the studio he pointed at this ancient leather couch and chuckled, “You don’t even want to know the things that have happened on that couch…”
Voice overs are really fun, especially if you’re working with other voice actors because then you can play off each other. It’s really weird to hear them afterwards though – audio engineers are like photoshop artists. They take your voice and add effects to make it sound a lot richer and smoother. Sometimes my own family didn’t recognize me in a spot!
Search marketing is constantly changing. But unlike other specialties, there is one major figurehead making the rules – Google. Do you think this will ever change? What do you foresee for the future of search marketing?
Lots of people think that Google is the end-all, be-all. For now, that may be the case, but the only certainty in the digital world – and technology in general – is that it’s always changing. It seemed like just yesterday when Yahoo was the biggest search engine around and MySpace was THE social media platform.
As for the future of digital marketing, I see tons of opportunity for smart brands to capitalize on their digital marketing efforts. Technology is becoming smarter and more adaptive every day. In the future, we’ll have software that can predict user patterns and behaviors and change your digital strategy and messaging in real time to accommodate. And with tracking evolving quickly as well, smart data analysis is more critical than ever.
Luckily at 451, we’ve got a really smart and talented team who are able to adapt as quickly as the technology.
The biggest challenge in my career was making the decision to leave radio. I’m passionate about music, and I absolutely loved working in radio, but things were changing so quickly in the industry. I knew I needed to find something else I was passionate about that offered a bit more stability and longevity.
One of the things I love about digital marketing is that it is always evolving and is still a very young industry with a long life ahead of it. It’s exciting to work on the cutting edge!
The most valuable advice that I ever received was from my father. He said “Take pride in your work no matter how small the task. You shouldn’t deliver anything you’re not proud to put your name on.” I follow that advice to this day and it has served me well.
For those looking to make a mark in the digital world I think being proactive is the single most important thing you can do. This industry never stops and is in a constant state of flux. Keeping up with industry trends and news and being able to react quickly is imperative, as well as constantly looking for creative ways to optimize your client’s accounts.