We’ve just launched a strong new branding campaign for the University of Colorado Division of Continuing Education and Professional Studies with the theme “Who says dreams have to change.” Using provocative shots of kids and their dreams, and alluding to courses taken later in life that help fulfill those dreams, the campaign uses print, web, online, outdoor and social media to get the word out. What were your dreams as a kid? Did those dreams come true?

The Account Manager holds responsibility for development of assigned client relationships, adding strategic value, ensuring on time, on budget, profitable, high-quality deliverables, and client satisfaction. The Account Manager provides internal team leadership and is responsible for seamless project process management from project kick-off to completion.

The successful candidate will have demonstrated an ability to recognize, create, and deliver strategic solutions that solve clients’ business objectives. Strong communication, organizational, and cross-functional leadership skills are critical to the Account Manager’s success. He/she will have demonstrated the ability to build and develop client relationships by gaining the confidence of clients and team members while ensuring project details, process steps, billings, and agreed-upon deliverables are organized and communicated effectively. Financial acumen demonstrated through the ability to manage budgets, profitability, and internal resources is required.

Candidates should have 6 years of brand management, design, and interactive management, or other client or agency experience. Familiarity with website and interactive work and/or knowledge of interactive marketing fundamentals, social media measurement, online community development and engagement strategies, are critical. Bachelor’s degree in marketing, business, communication, or a related field is also required.

Account Management: 70%

Financial Responsibility – Works with Interactive Director and Creative Director to stay within approved budgets; Ensures timely and accurate client billing; Identifies and capitalizes on revenue opportunities ensuring consistent growth of accounts.

Problem Solving – Identifies and resolves problems in a timely manner; Gathers and analyzes information skillfully; Develops alternative solutions; Works well in group problem solving situations; Uses reason even when dealing with emotional topics.

Interpersonal – Focuses on solving conflict, not blaming; Maintains confidentiality; Listens to others without interrupting; Remains open to others’ ideas and tries new things.

Change Management – Develops workable implementation plans; Communicates changes effectively; Builds commitment and overcomes resistance; Prepares and supports those affected by change; Monitors transition and evaluates results.

Oral Communication – Speaks clearly and persuasively in positive or negative situations; Listens and gets clarification; Responds well to questions; Demonstrates group presentation skills; Prepares and participates in meetings.

Written Communication – The ability to deliver clear, concise, and accurate proposals, estimates, Request For Proposals (RFP), and budgets.

Relationship Management: 10%

Thrives being at the organizational heart of a client relationship while managing multiple projects; Has the ability to read between the lines and can synthesizes complex or diverse information to ensure the client’s business objectives are met while ensuring project details, process steps, billings, and agreed-upon deliverables are organized and communicated effectively.

Team Work: 10%

Balances team and individual responsibilities; Exhibits objectivity and openness to others’ views; Gives and welcomes feedback; Contributes to building a positive team spirit; Puts success of team above own interests; Able to build morale and group commitments to goals and objectives; Supports everyone’s efforts to succeed; Recognizes accomplishments of other team members.

Professional Growth: 10%

Demonstrates potential for growth and increased responsibility; Desire to increase industry knowledge.

How to Apply

Please email the following as PDFs to jobs@vermilion.com with the subject line “Account Manager”:

• Your cover letter that shows your desire and ability to communicate ideas effectively
• Your resume

Please make sure to name the docs with your last name so we can organize them easily on our side, ie.

• lastname_coverletter.pdf
• lastname_resume.pdf

Other Things:

• No phone calls, please.
• No recruiters.
• No contractors or outsourcing shops.
• This is a full-time, on-site position.

“Know what’s in your dough” is one of the themes of the new Rudi’s Organic Bakery website we’ve just launched. The site provides a clear look at their many organic breads, muffins, buns and rolls. Also featured are the great-tasting new gluten-free breads, a growing category in the bakery aisle. The comprehensive Store Finder makes it easy to see where Rudi’s products are sold. We had a great time extending to the web the clever new brand developed for Rudi’s by the terrific folks at Sterling Rice Group. The sunny, optimistic, “let’s not take ourselves too seriously” brand update smartly moves Rudi’s into the mainstream, while retaining all the charm and values of the original.

Vermilion’s “You’ll Love What’s Inside” campaign for IZZE has just been selected for inclusion in this year’s prestigious AIGA Annual Design Competition. Consisting of ads, websites and social media, the campaign is one of 126 projects selected from more than 3,000 entries worldwide. This year’s competition is part of a “40-year tradition that forms an authoritative source of the best in communication design,” according to AIGA. “The selections represent exemplary visual communications work from around the world,” and will be published in the AIGA Design Archives online and added to the permanent collection at that Denver Art Museum. They will also be featured in upcoming traveling exhibitions starting at the AIGA National Design Center in New York. Congratulations to the great folks at IZZE and to the brilliant crew at Vermilion who produced the campaign.

B-to-B (business to business) social media is inherently more limited and difficult than B-to-C (business to consumer) social media. After all, consumers are the ones creating and viewing the majority of content on the Internet today. Consequently, B-to-C companies have a much easier time finding and participating in relevant, existing conversations on social networks. They also have an easier time generating responses from conversations they initiate. In contrast, the target audiences of B-to-B companies are relatively small and harder to find in online communities and networks. Because of this, it’s helpful for B-to-B companies to know the full range of social networks that other organizations and professionals are using.

Please note: each network listed below can be used in a variety of ways. Finding the correct social media solution for any B-to-B business requires careful planning, clearly defined goals, experimentation, and cross-pollination between various networks.

Video

Considering the popularity of online video, it’s surprising that companies aren’t using it more to display their products, services and thought leadership. YouTube currently has more than 1 billion views a day, and 20 hours of video are uploaded every minute (the vast majority of which will be viewed by fewer than 1,000 people). B-to-B businesses don’t need to target the world with video; they need to target the correct audience (whether that’s 5 or 5,000 individuals).

• YouTube
• Vimeo

Photos

Social photo storage and distribution services can be used by B-to-B businesses to show participation in industry events (conferences, seminars, etc.), detailed product or service galleries, company culture, and more. Many of these can work with your mobile device, and several also have common plugins for popular content management systems, including WordPress and Drupal.

• Flickr
• Photobucket
• Picasa

Presentations

Want to share your presentations or embed them into your website? Considering requiring visitors to submit their contact information before viewing presentations, and then follow-up with these individuals at a later date.

• Slideshare
• Scribd

Streaming Audio & Video

B-to-B businesses frequently work in industries with specialized news sources, industry blogs, and periodic coverage by large media outlets. Allow these sources to get the information and quotes they need as easily as possible by streaming (and then storing) conference speeches, product releases, technology briefs, webinars, and more.

• Ustream.tv
• Justin.tv
• Skype

Blogging

Blogging is one of the best ways to show your thought leadership. Have your SME’s (subject matter experts) post innovative articles, respond to questions or give their thoughts on current industry news. Most websites today use content management systems (such as WordPress, Drupal, etc.). Creating a blog through a CMS provides greater control and integration into your existing website than using the external services listed below.

• Blogger
• Wordpress

General Social Networks

The big social networks can be difficult to leverage for B-to-B marketing. A lot of B-to-B companies use LinkedIn as a directory, enabling them to gather quick contacts in specific industries. LinkedIn tried making this process easier by creating groups tied to specific interests and professions, but many of these quickly became soundboards for self-promotion. Regardless, a sufficient presence on these networks typically doesn’t require a lot of maintenance for B-to-B companies. At the very least, putting some effort into Facebook and LinkedIn can help you gain a few first page rankings in Google for your company’s name.

• Facebook
• LinkedIn

Specific Social Networks

In addition to the big social networks, an increasing number of specialized social networks are popping up to meet the demands of highly specialized groups. Sometimes these groups are targeted at professionals, which opens the door for easy B-to-B networking and information sharing. However, B-to-B companies can also get valuable information and feedback from specialized personal networks (especially if their products or services end up in the hands of consumers).

• BabyCenter (for new and expecting parents)
• Cake Financial (for investors) (Purchased and discontinued by E*Trade in January 2010)
• deviantART (for artists)
• Epernicus, ScienceStage, Scispace.net (for scientists)
• Hospitality Club (hospitality)
• NGO Post (for non-profits and NGO’s)
• Ning (allows users to create their own specialized networks)
• Ravelry (knitting)
• SocialVibe (for charitable organizations)
• Sermo (for doctors and health specialists)

Colaborative Publishing

People use Wikipedia to find information about everything, including B-to-B businesses. If your organization has a page on Wikipedia, monitor it, and consider editing it when there are good reasons to do so (e.g., if you add products to your offerings, or if there are indisputable factual errors, etc.). Please note that there are vague but well-established ethical standards for companies editing their own entries on Wikipedia.

• Wikipedia

Microblogging

Microblogging is essentially public text messaging. That said, it’s surprisingly popular and powerful for a variety of uses. There is something of a learning curve involved with using services such as Twitter (users need to learn how to find and sort information, in addition to learning the platform-specific terms and standards), but with that knowledge in hand a surprising amount of information can be shared with 140 character messages. Additionally, because Twitter is a public network (anything you say can be viewed by others) it’s incredibly easy to see if anyone is discussing your organization, products or services.

• Twitter
• Plurk

Aggregators

Aggregators can be helpful to easily monitor industry news and social media at the same time. For example, Netvibes is a free service that provides organizations with an infinitely customizable online portal that consolidates industry news, Google Alerts, blog feeds, Google Analytics overviews, and social media functionality (including keyword searches on Twitter). Consolidating all of this information in one place saves time. It also allows your monitoring and listening activities to be more comprehensive.

• NutshellMail (Social aggregator for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and MySpace)
• Lifestream (was SocialStream — social aggregator)
• Netvibes (Information, news, RSS and social network aggregator)
• Twine (Information aggregator)

Ask & Answer

Some B-to-B companies (mostly large ones) can monitor answer forums to find questions about products and services. Large organizations with reputation management teams can also use these networks to find and respond to negative feedback.

• Yahoo Answers
• Wiki Answers
• Askville

Events

Event planning, sharing and RSVP’s can be done through several networks (including Facebook and LinkedIn). B-to-B companies can host events, share their participation in industry events, and find networking opportunities. Highly specialized events or discussions (for individuals with very particular interests) can also take place virtually, allowing experts in various fields to easily connect online.

• Meetup.com
• Eventful
• Upcoming

Bookmarking & Link Sharing

Although social networks such as Facebook and  LinkedIn are incresingly used to share links (25 billion pieces of content are shared on Facebook each month), social bookmarking sites can still be useful to find and share specialized information. B-to-B companies can use social bookmarking (or link sharing via social networks) to find or share useful industry information. If done correctly, this can also influence an organization’s status as thought leaders in their field.

• Delicious
• StumbleUpon
• Digg
• Mixx
• Reddit

Reviews / Opinions

Reviews and opinions generally aren’t very applicable to B-to-B companies at this point in time (although there are exceptions). However, it may still be useful to create a Google Local Business Listing to allow people to find your location and contact information easily.

• Epinions.com
• Yelp
• Google Local Business Listings

Location Sharing

Although location sharing is increasingly popular, it may currently be difficult to leverage for B-to-B companies. That said, integrating Google Maps functionality into B-to-B websites can be useful for several reasons. For example, conferences with events in different locations can use the Google Maps API to share the GPS locations of each event with conference attendees. Similar implementations can be used to show the locations of stores, offices and services.

• Foursquare
• Google Maps API

Questions or Comments?

Do you have something to add? Did we forget anything important? Feel free to add comments to this post, email us, or respond to us via Twitter.

Watch for the next post in this series in the near future.

Global Greengrants Fund came away with two Gold Awards from the the Council on Foundations. The awards recognize excellence in communication strategies that advance the grantmaking goals of the foundation. Global Greengrants won a Gold in the Annual Report category, and a Gold in the Special Report category for a brochure focusing on the issue of water. Vermilion has long been a partner of Global Greengrants and designs all of their communication materials. A new website will be launched in the spring.

Josh Hill, Vermilion’s seo and social media guru, and I made a presentation at the Craft Beer Conference last week in Chicago with the title “Social Media: Creating Community in Real Time.” It was a standing-room only crowd of 500 or more, and the audience couldn’t have been more attentive. When Josh asked how many were already using social media, nearly every hand in the room went up. The talk showed the staggering growth of Facebook fans for many of the top brewers, and profiled five exemplary social media campaigns. Including was promotion of Magi Hat’s Mardi Gras, Dogfish Head’s “Beer and Benevolence” program for Habitat for Humanity, Stone’s remarkable “Stone Beer Week” introducing the brand to Chicago, Mountain Sun’s promotion of its ever-popular Stout Month and Chop contest, and Bell’s mouthwatering introduction of its annual summertime Oberon.

This person will have proven experience scoping projects accurately and thrives on delivering projects on time and within budget. We want someone who enjoys a highly collaborative, creative work environment, wants to learn new things and loves to work with a variety of clients.

If you have the experience described below and enjoy working with a great team of people who are committed to their community please contact us.

Here are the details:

• 4 years experience building web applications with PHP (provide examples)
• 4 years experience with modern web protocols and markup languages – XHTML, CSS, RSS, HTTP, Javascript, Ajax/JQuery.
• Proven ability to work with Content Management Systems like WordPress and Drupal and successful integration of custom programming
• Excellent debugging and problem-solving skills
• Strong knowledge of code optimization and software design principles
• Excellent knowledge of MySQL, including complex design, implementation and reporting
• Experience building custom e-commerce websites using PHP
• Proficiency with Subversion or similar source control products
• Experience building Facebook apps a plus

Please email the following as PDFs to jobs@vermilion.com with the subject line “PHP Programmer”:

• A cover letter that shows your desire and ability to communicate ideas effectively
• A resume
• A code sample. Preferably something unique that you wrote from scratch with a link to see it in action (please don’t send anything you’re not allowed to send)

Please make sure to name the docs with your last name, ie.
lastname_coverletter.pdf
lastname_resume.pdf
lastname_codesample.pdf
so we can organize them easily on our side.

Other stuff:

• No phone calls, please.
• No recruiters.
• No contractors or outsourcing shops.
• This is a full-time, on-site position.

This person will have proven experience scoping projects accurately and thrives on delivering projects on time and within budget. We want someone who enjoys a highly collaborative, creative work environment, wants to learn new things and loves to work with many different types of clients.

If you have significant experience (described below) and enjoy working with a great team of people who are committed to their community please contact us.

Here are the details:

• 4 years experience building web applications (provide examples)
• 4 years experience with modern web protocols and markup languages – XHTML, CSS, RSS, HTTP, Javascript, Ajax/JQuery.
• 4 years experience writing PHP
• 2 years experience with Ruby on Rails and Object Oriented Programming
• Proven ability to work with Content Management Systems like WordPress, Drupal, BrowserCMS and successful integration of custom programming
• Excellent debugging and problem-solving skills
• Strong knowledge of code optimization and software design principles
• Excellent knowledge of MySQL, including complex design, implementation and reporting
• Experience building custom e-commerce websites using PHP and/or Ruby
• Proficiency with Subversion or similar source control products
• Experience building Facebook apps a plus

Please email the following as PDFs to jobs@vermilion.com with the subject line “PHP /  Ruby Programmer”:

• A cover letter that shows your desire and ability to communicate ideas effectively
• A resume
• A code sample.  Preferably something unique that you wrote from scratch with a link to see it in action (please don’t send anything you’re not allowed to send)

Please make sure to name the docs with your last name so we can organize them easily on our side, ie.

lastname_coverletter.pdf
lastname_resume.pdf
lastname_codesample.pdf

Other Things:

• No phone calls, please.
• No recruiters.
• No contractors or outsourcing shops.
• This is a full-time, on-site position.

Download this job posting as a PDF file here.

This new TV spot for the annual HW Home Warehouse Sale hit the airwaves last week. The goal was definitely to create traffic for the sale, but it had to remain true to the brand as well. As the first TV campaign for this upscale Colorado furniture retailer, we wanted to make sure it came off as classy and elegant. The solution was a simple animation technique (thanks to Alan Dague-Greene), a tongue-in-cheek voice-over script (thanks to Paul DesRosiers), with a perfect soundtrack (thanks to our friends at Coupe Studio). Can a “sale” ad work without fireworks or tigers or a shouting announcer? We’ll see. From what we’ve heard, their phone was ringing off the hook. We’re expecting a “big” turnout.