Working with clients from project inception to completion as a Project Coordinator helps me establish an overall understanding of the needs of particular clients, their direction, and their intentions for the outcome of the projects at hand and those of the future. It is my hope that every project ends on a positive note for the client and DDA. I work closely with staff members, such as programmers, search engine optimization (SEO) specialists, graphic designers, copywriters, photographers, videographers, animators, and the AR/AP department to ensure that every “i” gets dotted and “t” crossed. Working in this manner also helps me to understand the intricacies, responsibilities, and tasts involved with every DDA employee.

In the past few weeks, we’ve managed to complete and close a variety of different projects from copywriting services to logo design, and much more. I’m pleased to say that we were able to meet each project’s deadline and every client was satisfied with a job well done. But with the completion of one project means the inception of another and the same goal… to meet and exceed client expectations so that he or she returns to our full-service advertising agency for any and all of their advertising and marketing needs.

Last night Elizabeth and I attended a leadership seminar. The premise of the presentation, and the book authored by the presenter, was that leadership cannot be taught but it can be learned. The speaker went on to explain that the the premise is not a contradiction because while schools cannot teach the curriculum that prepares one to be a leader, the hard knock, real world survival lessons of life can prepare an individual to lead.

Here is my hard learned lessons of leadership.

I think of all the staff at DDA as leaders. The programmers, copy writers, graphic designers, illustrators, SEO specialists, artists, video production crews, and photographers are leaders within their industry niche, within their department, and within themselves. They are offered responsibility and authority and challenges. They rise to accept and meet them or they shrink from the opportunity. If they rise and fail, they are hopefully corrected and thanked for trying and asked to try again next time.

Most importantly, it is in the trying that they grow and learn and become wiser and more sure of themselves and more able to lead. The concept that to be a leader, you must have followers is way too limiting. Leadership is about the willingness to have, express, and follow a point of view.

As management, Elizabeth and I know that we cannot run the business from above. There is a sign in my office for the last fourteen years that reads: You do not build a business, you build an organization, and the organization builds the business. I should probably update it to say: You do not build a business or an organization, you help grow leaders that build an organization that builds a business. Thank you DDA leaders, one and all.

Moving an office with 21 people and not disrupting the work flow takes organization and juggling. As an experience, it is both traumatic and cathartic. It seems that at the old Dynamic Digital office, we saved everything that had to do with advertising. We filled a big dumpster with our throwaways.  I saved proofs of all our projects, as well as samples of brochures, postcards, and posters of companies - even those that are no longer in business. But most of all, we saved every marketing and promotional item about our digital services.

I came across one of our first letterhead designs that we used to sell our services to local businesses. It had seven thumbnail images stacked down the left margin and included digital photography (with a Lumina scanning camera) which today is obsolete. Since it scanned in three passes (RGB) the resulting image was a photograph. Today, if you go into our video and photography studio, the sophistication of digital cameras from that first clumsy Lumina is dramatic. The images our photographers and videographers produce with our up-to-date equipment are crisp, the color is very accurate, and the results are akin to film output.   

Since those early days, we have pushed the envelope constantly in all the areas of our services. Our clients, new and old, discover over and over again that there is nothing we cannot do at Dynamic Digital Advertising. We chose the road of complexity and steep learning curves so we could become a truly full-service shop. And we are proudly that, and pushing some more. Stay tuned. 

One of my favorite poets said it best, “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I…I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.” 

The new office has a lot more space than the previous location. Our advertising company needed more space for its operations to continue their growth. The photographers needed more space so, in our new office, they have almost two and half times the previous space to perform digital photography. Some different types of digital photography are, food photography,  product photography, and other photography services. The photography studio is shared with the videographers. Now these two can work concurrently and not bump elbows like in the previous location.

Our new office has plenty of space to grow and we are all excited to be here where all of us have more space and equipment to work with!

Corporate culture can be defined as that diverse set of intangibles that tie individuals together with common business approaches, goals, processes, and values. The strength and uniqueness of these intangibles often determines the cohesiveness and competitiveness of the business organization.

Corporate culture intangibles can determine the level of success and even assure or threaten the survival of each business organization.

This is why DDA is proud to say we work four ten-hour days, celebrate each team member’s birthday, and pass out a beer to all staff and clients in our offices and studios at 5:00 on Thursday evening.

It can be argued that making sure one of our Coldfusion or PHP Programmers has his or her birthday celebrated with a cake, gift and song, or having a search marketing specialist pass out beers to the graphic design or website design staff, or DDA choosing to never allow unpaid overtime for the entire team including copywriters, video production crew, flash animators or photographers, can assure the success, growth, and survival of the Corporation, but we are not taking any chances.

So, the hundreds of DDA-centric corporate culture idiosyncrasies that permeate everything we do, including beer night, will always be encouraged, facilitated, and cherished.

The green grass of spring is finally here. The landscapers are visiting for the first time and the bushes, lawns and even the rocks are being pruned, pared back, raked and mounded in preparation for growth. Hope springs eternal and spring brings eternal hope for the promise of growth through good weather and hard work.

So it has been for thousands of years and so it will be.

At DDA, the growth is as much a personal one as it is corporate or financial. The human condition does not allow for stagnation. We are all either learning, and striving, and growing or we are ignoring lessons, slacking, and dying.

Every day I see our photographers learning, our programmers improving, our website designers testing, our search engine marketing specialists tracking, our artists illustrating, our writers illuminating, our video production crew stretching, our flash artists animating, our branding team clarifying, and our ecommerce technicians polishing and presenting.

The weather is not always great, the world is not always perfect, but it seems the growth comes not from the results but rather from the effort. Spring is here, again!

At Dynamic Digital Advertising (DDA), we have a staff of talented and degreed individuals, which include progammers, copywriters, videographers, animation artists, photographers, web developers, search engine optimization specialists, graphic designers, project coordinators, and more. While many advertising agencies employ freelancers that are remotely based and often times disconnected from the work involved in a project aside from that of their own, DDA has all creative team members available in-house for linear production and comprehensive collaboration.

For example, the work I do as an advertising Copywriter for a brochure is not considered seperate from design, but rather part of the whole overall concept. The text supports the illustrations and vice versa so the brochure functions as one cohesive piece that conveys the “right” collective message. This approach is applied to all service areas of our business. No team member, whether they be man or woman, animator or writer, is considered more important than another. We work together to accomplish the objectives of our clients. All pieces of a project are critical to its success, even down to the proofreading done for accurate functionality and spelling.

Our ability to communicate and work together for a common goal is one of the many ways that make DDA the better choice for your advertising needs. We are a team of professionals that have obtained degrees from around the world and have come together to work on a level playing field and provide the very best quality work for our clients.

Happy Thursday! Before working at DDA as an advertising Copywriter, I never thought I’d be saying those words. Our 8-6, Monday-Thursday work schedule is something that I’ve come to appreciate more than I ever thought I would. During our work days, all the members of our staff (including programmers, web developers, search engine optimization specialists, graphic designers, photographers, videographers, and more) put in a hard day’s work from addressing client needs as they come up to being exceptionally creative on the spot in the projects with which they are involved.

With this schedule, dinner may not get on the table as early as one’s hunger may like and there are some Pennsylvania winter days that the only sunlight you see is on your lunch break, but having three days to recoup and refocus is a lifestyle that I wouldn’t want to trade. For me, it’s the perfect balance of work and play. Furthermore, in order to generate creative copywriting on a daily basis, one needs to stay fresh and ready to write about any topic at the drop of a hat. I truely feel that I am able to write better as a result of this balance in my life.

When clients first contact us and we explain our schedule, some express their concern (which we are often able to alieviate as we are on call as needed on Fridays and even the weekend in extreme situations), but most say that they wish their employer would implement a similar schedule in their organization. In Europe, this type of schedule is far more common than in the U.S. Try to shop in parts of France during lunch and you may find closed doors, or attempt to do business with a Swedish company in the month of July and you may have trouble getting your objectives accomplished. Why? Because other countries realize that the right balance between work and play is key to sucessful organizations.

Perhaps more businesses in the U.S. should adjust their way of thinking with regards to the work week. They may find, as we have, more productive employees and better quality work.

In addition to holding a Lead Copywriter position at DDA, I oversee client projects from start to finish as Project Coordinator and, in many cases, provide long-term assistance for projects that extend from which they initially contacted us for into other areas of advertising. This service ensures that projects come to fruition in a timely manner and that the enthusiasm for the objective at hand is maintained for an end product of exceptional quality.

I take pride in my work and that of every member of our creative in-house team, which includes programmers, web developers, graphic designers, search engine optimization specialists, videographers, animation artists, photographers, and more. It is my goal in every project to be sure that the client is so happy with the end result and the work involved that they employ our services for all of their advertising initiatives, allowing us to build powerful Marketing Systems™ that transform their business.

To me there’s no greater satisfaction than knowing you and your team had such a positive impact on a company that they return to carry on their advertising campaigns for years to come. One of my favorite things in life is to see a  company of great people reach levels of success that they never thought possible. At DDA, we don’t like to consider ourselves to be an outsourced vendor, but rather the creative extension of your business.