Why do you think an interactive presence is important for a brand?

Clients demand results and interactive technology delivers. Company’s embracing interactive technology as a marketing and advertising tool reap more benefits than traditional advertisers. The interactive medium delivers in ways traditional media can’t.

It delivers an active and engaging branding experience. This experience lasts longer than any other marketing method and allows customers to internalize their experience for better brand recognition.

It delivers deep consumer insight and real time quantifiable results. Each customer experience is tracked, recorded, and ready for analysis in real time. Now imagine performing focus groups on an entire customer base - timely, expensive, and not practical. With simple analysis though (e.g. website log files, cookies, etc.), any organization may obtain critical insight about their customer base, length of brand interaction, product preferences, and psychographic information to name a few.

It drives down client costs and contributes to overall client profitability. Through automation, interactive technology simplifies processes and drives down internal organizational costs. Take package tracking for example. By automating the package tracking function through a business' website, Customer Service package tracking calls are reduced. And, when customer tracking inquiries are reduced through automation, then the cost to serve each customer drops significantly adding to client profitability.

With proper execution, any company can utilize this rich medium as a means to "wow" customers with exceptional front end design, while driving down costs and improving customer experiences using back-end functionality.

What is the interactive marketing accomplishment you are proudest of and why?

I’m proud of all interactive projects completed, but this site stands out the most. From images and design to overall content, it’s all completed by me. Usually people with strong business, financial, and account management experience come at a cost; the lack of or inability to understand and sell creative. My site visually communicates my strong sense of design and creative, while highlighting my results oriented, cost minded, and business side.

What is your favorite website or interactive “presence” and why?

My favorite websites blend good clean design with useful, purposeful, and engaging technology, plus they meet their business goals. Nike.com, UPS.com, and BMWFilms.com are definite standouts. Nike.com for its solid branding experience paired with e-commerce technology. Ups.com for delivering simple navigation and functionality to a once complicated shipping process; now with two clicks of the mouse I’ve paid for, processed, and printed a shipping label. And, BMWFilms.com, for the ability to engage consumers in a 5 minute advertisement, attracting top talent to the project, and for selling BMW on the idea of spending more money in production than on media placement.