Hands on

The sight that befell me for three days
last week

It feels good to be back in the land of the living after a series of exams for my Diploma. I must say that it wasn't as bad as I feared and 3 x 3 hours actually went by very quickly. My hand didn't fall off and I now need to ensure I retain all of the knowledge in my head until after I know I've passed in early September.

One of my favourite(!) questions was on the current value of creativity in Digital Marketing and if the need for data has meant this in no longer so relevant. The argument (as far as I can remember!) which I put forward is that it's as important as ever in a world where so many brands are screaming for your attention, whilst the viewing public are multi-screening and increasingly expecting more targeted and integrated campaigns.

This got me thinking about the value of what we do at the University and the main reason I enjoy working there is the ability to try new things with little red tape. It also got me thinking as to who are the 'doers' and how we shouldn't rely on agencies alone to come up with our creative ideas. After all, we're closer to our brand than anyone and if we all just become a load of managers kicking our agencies there will be little continuity in message and a potentially unfulfilled workforce.

Mashable offers great industry insight

This is why I'm a firm believer in having design and creative skills in house. It's sometimes hard to keep up with the latest tools/tends (my technique is following certain people on Twitter and reading a number of industry blogs - Mashable and E-Consultancy are among the best) but before you know it you'll be out of touch and unable to use the latest version of Photoshop.

Personally I never want this to happen to me (at least until I retire!) I enjoy keeping up with the latest trends in Digital Marketing (and I'm glad I have after looking at my exam questions!) I also believe that as a middle manager I should be able to practically achieve everything which I ask from my team. That way, I understand how much time a task takes and we can all work collaboratively if required.

Photoshop has come a long way
since I first started using Version
3 back in 1999.

As you move up the corporate ladder it's undoubtedly true that your time gets absorbed by meetings and strategy documents but it's important to make time to actually be creative too. After all, that's the fun stuff! It'll be a dark day if I ever get to the stage where I don't have Adobe Creative Suite on my Mac! It also means that if a member of my staff is absent I can competently finish off one of their jobs. There are too many examples of people who are reliant on agencies for the smallest amend to an InDesign file or who doesn't understand how their staff members produce the work they do. It must be pretty stressful knowing that the team may miss a deadline just because someone is on holiday/ill!

To this end the team sat down and devised something for me to work on alongside the usual yearly Clearing campaign which is a bit different. It could fail but that doesn't matter as we'll enjoy doing it alongside all of the usual activity. We've also ensured that this piece will be helpful to students in Clearing instead of the usual hard sell and that it hopefully strikes an emotional chord with the audience (given the people involved it will with me!) so watch this space...

I also recently picked up a yearly job which comes our way to produce a highlights video. This is used internally for our Student Experience Awards and Graduations. Whilst it can be a chore collating all of the footage it's also really enjoyable to cut something together using a commercial music track (we have a site licence) which celebrates our achievements. I've embedded it below and hopefully it shows that I'm not a has-been yet!