Having spent the past five and half years immersed in the live touring plans of hundreds of bands, the move toward the digital space was prompted in part by seeing and being inspired by the ways that artists, venues and multiple music industry entrepreneurs were embracing technologies that allowed voices to be heard in such a crowded landscape.

This career shift certainly came with some apprehension, but a surprising and welcome revelation too: Believe it or not, juggling the needs of advertising clients and indie bands is not as different as one might think. Less rock, similar role.

The Middle
A booking agent acts as the middleman between the bands and the venues. The agent seeks to orchestrate the best possible live show experience through impeccably planned tours and shows, which depend on savvy collaboration with venues and promoters. These efforts should serve to push the career of the artist forward.

An account executive serves as the middleman between the client and the internal team. Our team works to meet the needs of the client by creating a product – be it a digital campaign, a game, an app, etc. – that not only exceeds expectations but serves to increase the footprint of the client in the digital and physical space.

The parallels in these two roles exist in that shared word “middleman.” Both booking agents and account executives manage deadlines, expectations and teams for the shared goal of making a client (be it a band or a company) both happy and more productive in his or her own endeavors. The dichotomy of serving the best interest of both your client and your team (which can certainly be at odds) exists in both places.

The Language
My first dose of the magnitude of my career shift came with the immediate need to learn the new “digital speak”: ad sizes, ad types, file types, CTRs, CPMs etc. – the gamut. I feared this hurdle might take months to conquer, yet it quickly became second nature. I was soon sending emails that I wouldn’t have been able to interpret weeks earlier when I was using my fluency in “booking-agency speak”: rattling off different types of performance deals and contracts, arguing profits, expenses and rider requirements.

No matter which industry language you learn to speak, the way in which you speak is what matters most. One of the most important skills I’ve developed in both roles is how to relay messages, deadlines and requests in a manner that is both concise and eloquent (sometimes a struggle for a wordy gal like myself). I’ve learned quickly that though the jargon may be different, it pays to be multilingual.

The Passion
The pervasive enthusiasm exuded by my co-workers is easily the most wonderful parallel found in my agency transition. Whether motivated by a new band with a sold out tour, or a ground breaking digital campaign executed to perfection, the impact this energy has on the success of a campaign is immeasurable.

Impressions are the universal measurement for success. For a tour, it’s the impression left on the fan. For a digital execution, impressions are a metric that suggests an experience so captivating the user had no choice but to share it with their friends- like a great record. These experiences, no matter the industry or type of agency, are fueled by the passion of their creators.

As we watch the traditional music and entertainment industry paradigms (my former home) move towards the digital space (my new home), it is apps, web experiences and media that prove to be game changers. It is with the education garnered in both of these homes that I move beyond my “new kid” status and join the passion and excitement with which Glow continues to both explore and guide what is next.

Some digital music industry insiders do not believe that streaming music services will become lucrative; the services use channels that are not theirs to distribute content they don’t own, which separates them from platforms like iTunes and Amazon http://articles.businessinsider.com/2012-03-26/tech/31239066_1_spotify-itunes-music-service). But for the sake of argument, let’s assume that Spotify and similar ‘apps’ like Rdio and Rhapsody have a viable business model when it comes to making money off the whole internet-music thing. The fact remains that Spotify has been available in the US for barely a year (http://www.spotify.com/us/blog/archives/2011/07/14/hello-america-spotify-here) and that is only a short time for analysis if the decline in revenue for the music industry has been going on for a decade plus (http://money.cnn.com/2010/02/02/news/companies/napster_music_industry).

According to the RIAA, subscription music services saw an increase of 13.5% in revenue from 2010 to 2011 (Chart here: http://news.cnet.com/8301-31001_3-57405252-261/riaa-consumers-are-shelling-out-for-subscription-music). This sounds good but works out to be an increase of around $29 million, which while not a paltry sum, does not compare in the big scheme of things where artists like U2 pull down almost 7 times as much ($195 million) in one year alone. (http://www.forbes.com/pictures/eeel45hemh/2-bon-jovi-125-million-6/#gallerycontent).

Furthermore, the number of subscriptions rose from 1.5 million to 1.8 million in 2011 (http://news.cnet.com/8301-31001_3-57405252-261/riaa-consumers-are-shelling-out-for-subscription-music). An increase of 300,000 seems small, considering Spotify alone had 10 million registered users in November 2011 (albeit it world wide - http://www.engadget.com/2011/11/23/spotify-hits-2-5-million-paying-subscribers-yacht-rock-playlist/). Time will tell if subscriptions increase or if these 300,000 people are outliers like music nerds or tech evangelists.

So where does that leave us? While certainly encouraging, these numbers warrant spending more time on analysis. There are many things to pay attention to in the future. Among them, the fact that smartphone users are increasing exponentially (http://business.time.com/2012/02/14/one-billion-smartphones-by-2016-here-comes-the-mobile-arms-race), even in “fly over” country where country music has been profitable despite set backs in other sectors of the industry. Additionally, in recent years the industry has been following Europe’s example, focusing more on singles releases, which, of course, lend themselves perfectly for playlist creation. As Spotify commercials are eager to point out, creating playlists is a highlight of the program. But again, no one knows yet if streaming music isn’t fundamentally flawed to begin with. There are many factors that come into play, so jumping to a conclusion based on the first available numbers will not give a clear result.

Why did we learn to type? Because typing was a basic and necessary skill for functioning in a world where computers were taking over the workspace. Today, in a world where we interact through websites, networks and app-enabled mobile devices, it seems that our prerequisites are in need of an update.

How frequently have you found yourself in a situation where you need to launch a simple website? Perhaps it’s for your resume, band, artwork, small business, an original idea, etc. Everyone has that one friend who knows how to build a site, or that guy who knows a guy, who knows how to build a site. But these days, on some level, everyone should be that guy or that girl. Your goal should not be to unseat the masters of code and design, but seek out the simple foundations of their art. You don’t need to be Edison to change a light bulb, but when the lights go out, you shouldn’t need to call an electrician to fix the problem.

We’ve reached a point where people need to re-educate and learn new basics, if not for themselves, but for the benefit of their co-workers. Imagine an office where the same number of people that understand Microsoft Word understood basic HTML and Photoshop. That would be one high functioning workspace.

It’s the ancillary knowledge gained when developing these skills that we’re really after. Suddenly the things you see online become demystified and your ability to foresee greater possibilities and problem solve increases exponentially. All companies no matter the industry, profession or trade interact with the web in some capacity – whether as a utility, a distribution channel or communications platform. Giving context to these channels and platforms on a wider scale is long overdue.

You didn’t sidestep learning Microsoft Word because you weren’t a writer. So why sidestep the fundamentals of the web because you’re not a designer or programmer? After all, learning to type has turned out to be pretty handy.

Taxes, unemployment, class warfare: The haves and have-nots have consumed much of the rhetoric in this year’s election cycle. Today’s political discourse would have many believe that most of the country is wildly divided, occupying opposite ends of a political spectrum with little to no overlap; however, the truth is very different. Most Americans are moderate, and though political ideologies may differ, we generally seek similar goals.

Throughout what has seemed like an endless procession of debates, a comment made by one candidate was particularly jarring as it highlighted a troubling trend: a growing gap between politicians and the people they represent.

Newt Gingrich recently said of the poor, “You have a very poor neighborhood. You have students that are required to go to school. They have no money, no habit of work… They have no habit of showing up on Monday and staying all day or the concept of  ’I do this and you give me cash,’ unless it’s illegal…What if you paid them in the afternoon to work…What if they became assistant janitors, and their job was to mop the floor and clean the bathroom?”

Forget for a moment the disregard for child labor laws, even the displaced workers (replaced by a cheaper child work force). His solution centers on the premise that there is an inherent flaw in the poor that is best fixed through imposed manual labor.

How is it that in a society more open and connected than ever before the gap between politicians and voting Americans has never felt larger? If politicians (not their staff members) actually used the Web, specifically social media sites, they’d begin to understand their constituents more intimately. It’s something that can easily be done everyday, not just during election cycles. President Obama’s recent Google+ Hangout – albeit during a campaign season – is a perfect example of a politician using social media to connect with his constituency.

Obama was recently challenged by the wife of an unemployed American semiconductor engineer on his visa program that allows highly skilled foreign workers to gain employment within the US. Obama, perplexed, insisted she send her husband’s resume so he could look into this matter further.

We watch politicians debate bills like SOPA and PIPA and believe these moments expose how far removed and out of touch they are with technology, the Web and social media. But the truth is, false statements, outrageous stereotypes and inane proposals expose their disconnect.

As a politician, it is your civic duty to be in touch. Rejecting the vessels that connect you to your constituency is a failure of responsibility as a candidate and elected official.

The comments made by Gingrich offend me not because they are representative of Republican values, because they aren’t. Rather, they offend me because it is yet another glaring example of a politician pontificating while ostensibly removed and out of touch with the real issues and the people he claims to represent.

My father has served as a director of finance for various non-profits both large and small for several decades. One of the difficult issues he is forced to confront is where and how to allocate funds. The organization’s cause? Salaries? Marketing? Fundraisers? The challenge: how to maximize each dollar and every resource so that the organization can A) stay afloat and B) carry out its mission.

He taught me that one of the best ways to save money is to create an environment where a salary is not the single defining assessment of an individual’s value to an organization. The truth is, money has and always will be an important factor for employees. However, deep down we know that money is only one of many factors, and its significance diminishes greatly after a certain point. Princeton University conducted a study and determined one’s happiness as it relates to the amount of money he or she makes starts to level off at around $75,000. It’s at this point that other factors play a surprisingly more significant role.

Whether or not you subscribe to the theory that a happy employee is a productive employee, the science backs it up.  Results of a study conducted by the University of Warwick‘s Economic Research Institute overwhelmingly support this idea.

“We find that human happiness has large and positive causal effects on productivity,” the team said. “Positive emotions appear to invigorate human beings, while negative emotions have the opposite effect.”

The study goes on to conclude:

“If happiness in the workplace brings increased returns to productivity, then human resource departments, business managers and the architects of promotion policies will want to consider the implications.”

So the question then becomes, absent of money, how do we make employees happy? Sure, compliments, greetings and everyday friendly gestures can make a difference, but it’s a small (albeit important) piece of a much larger pie. The seemingly obvious solution would be the public recognition of an employee’s contribution or success. Yet even as this basic act can often go unrealized, the larger challenge for managers can be how we deal with errors, missteps and failures. Harvard University and the Stockholm School of Economics investigated the benefits of a reward-based strategy as opposed to one that focused on punishment. The study found:

“When both options are available, reward leads to increased contributions and payoff for the group, while punishment has no effect on contributions and leads to lower payoff for the group.”

Often when we think of rewards in the work place we think money. It just simply isn’t the case. What we do know is that there are several factors that motivate us, and each seemingly contributes to our overall happiness. Congruently, the factors that demotivate contribute to our unhappiness and ultimately detract from the group as a whole. If revenue is down, try working to get employee spirits up, and just maybe the revenue will follow.

For more information on what motivates us see Daniel Pink’s (author of Drive) video “The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.”

One of the many benefits of working at a small agency is getting to know and interact with every single person in the company.  This promotes such a great sense of togetherness and makes the working environment open, friendly and comfortable.  We know and care about what’s going on in each other’s lives and have a sense of camaraderie almost by default since we all see each other and come into some kind of contact everyday.

However, the advantages of this sense of community do not end at mushy feelings about liking one’s coworkers.  We are a true team and this gives us an important business edge: we communicate.  Account managers, designers, developers, programmers, partners…we all talk to each other and this affords us with a number of important advantages.

1. Limited distortion of client comments, or what I like to call, “the Password effect.”  At our company, client directives goes through one person and then directly to the team.  This helps to prevent the message getting changed and garbled, as is often the case, when it has to go through several different people before getting to the production team.  Like a game of Password, the closer you are to the source, the clearer the message.
2. A united vision for the project at hand.  When the entire team is involved in the process from the start, everyone has the same understanding of the goals for the end product.  We keep each other on point by asking questions, talking things out and checking in frequently.  This focused approach keeps things running smoothly and more importantly, efficiently.
3. A sense of pride in the work.  When everyone is in the loop and communicating extensively throughout the course of a project, each member of the team wants to put forth their best effort to keep things on track and create the highest quality product possible.
4. Accountability to one another.  Directly relating to the point above, we are driven to do our best work not by fear, or financial motivations.  These may be influences to some degree, but a major contributing factor is that we don’t want to let down our teammates.

This is not to say that life at a small agency is perfect – communication occasionally breaks down and mistakes still happen.  But our unified team approach helps keep these instances to a minimum. At many larger agencies, it seems that because of the added layers of hierarchy and bureaucracy, the old adage often rings true that the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing.  Luckily, we don’t have that problem.  For better or worse, we are all in it together.  And most of the time, it is for better.

There was a time, way back in 2006, when we were lucky enough to be a part of these kinds of collaborative efforts. For me, digital media was at its best when we (the creative agency) were sitting around a table along with the media company, the social outreach team, the client and their marketing team, all discussing an upcoming campaign and brainstorming ideas together. The media plan had not been set, blog outreach had not begun, and there wasn’t even key art available yet. All of these parties came together to discuss the tone of the campaign, the target audience, the goals of the project, and we put our collective heads together to develop a unified plan of attack. If we came up with a great creative execution that the client loved, the media team could send RFP’s with this in mind and the social outreach team could plan ahead for where the best buzz would be generated. This was a time when the creative team was brought into the fold much earlier so we were a part of these critical conversations from the start. As a result, the user experience was better, everyone was happier and the media was badass. As a team, we were kicking ass and taking names – we were, innovating and making great strides forward in the digital media space.

And then, for reasons I can’t quite put my finger on, it all came to a screeching halt. It feels like we’re starting over from square one, which is frustrating because we’ve been saying the same things, making the same recommendations for the better part of a decade. It’s all about teamwork. It doesn’t make sense for a creative agency to have a brainstorm after the media plan has been purchased. What happens when we devise a killer cooperative roadblock execution, but the IO’s are already signed and there are no placements on the plan that fit the bill? Either a mad dash to try and secure a placement at the last minute, resulting in a stressful rush job, or the client will opt to scrap it altogether, but “keep it in mind for the future.” And round and round we go.

In the end, this comes back to something that I just can’t wrap my head around. The vast majority of planning, time and money spent on media are still focused on print. Most clients spend weeks and weeks waiting for a piece of artwork that a digital agency will then have a fraction of the time to translate for online. This is extremely frustrating; especially when you consider that print is floundering while digital is flourishing. For example, the New York Times newspaper is down to under 1 million copies per day in circulation for the first time since the 1980’s, while their website is getting over 45 million monthly unique visitors. Shifts like these can be seen across a number of properties, yet digital media is still consistently getting the short end of the stick when it comes to planning.

It’s past time to start bringing digital into the creative fold earlier and making a splash with online media again. It has worked in the past, so we know we can be successful again. We just can’t do it alone.

New York – May 12, 2011 – Glow Interactive (www.glowinteractive.com), a leading New York-based interactive marketing, advertising and creative agency, today announced that its managing partner, Mike Molnar, has been selected by CableFAX as a recipient of the “Sweet 16 of Cable” award, which honors the top brand and agency advertising executives supporting the cable industry.

Recipients of this award were honored this morning at the CableFAX‘s annual Sales Executive of the Year and Sweet 16 Awards Breakfast at the Grand Hyatt in New York City. For the complete list of “Sweet 16” honorees, visit CableFAX’s award site: http://www.cablefax.com/cfp/events/seoy2011/#0. Nominations for the “Sweet 16” were chosen from a pool of media buyers and brand marketers who fervently support cable and whose brands have profited in the bargain.

“Mike has brought so much to the Glow team,” said Pete Levin, CEO and co-founder of Glow Interactive. “His new business and account efforts – across the board, but especially in cable – have really helped elevate Glow to the status we are at today. He’s a perfect fit for the Sweet 16 honor.”

As managing partner at Glow Interactive, Mike Molnar oversees the daily operations and works to continually develop the evolution of the company. Since joining the company in 2002, Mike has helped his partners Pete Levin and Ted Kacandes ramp up the company to 20+ people and leads new business initiatives and client relations. Mike has worked to launch several high profile, award-winning campaigns for The History Channel, A&E, HBO, Showtime, USA Network, Discovery Channel, Wendy’s, Canon and more. Collectively, the Glow team has won over 15 industry awards including multiple Horizon Interactive Awards, Promax/BDA, Webby’s, OMMA and AdTech honors. Prior to joining Glow, Mike was a publicist for “America’s Most Wanted” – his first foray in dealing with cable programs – as well as a celebrity publicist in NYC.

When Apple announced that they would be exclusively creating iAds for clients, most industry insiders were skeptical. Turns out they were right, as the result has been delayed ads, delayed campaign rollouts and a slew of dissatisfied customers.

Since this topic seems to be a ‘We told you so” moment, we as an industry should focus on alternative means to delivering a powerful advertising and brand experience through new mobile devices. There is another way advertisers can get quality, rich-media advertising compatible with all popular devices (including iPhones, iPads, Androids and tablets), without Flash and without Apple.

The answer is simple, and yet many have overlooked it as a powerful vehicle for delivering advertisements: the browser. The fact that Apple’s mobile Safari browser has dominated the market should make us all see the magnitude of what this approach could mean billions of impressions, without having to download an app.

Blasphemy, I know, but I’m saying it’s possible to distribute great content outside the world of apps and plug-ins. With that being said, the alternative and logical next step in mobile advertising is to build HTML5 advertisements to run in-browser, not within apps. We’ve seen and heard about the HTML5 video alternative to Flash, but this article is more about how HTML5 will affect advertising and rich-media.

Just like any technology option, the pros and cons of the technology need to be considered when deciding on what to deploy based on the target device, intended audience and environment. At Glow Interactive, we consider ourselves technologists with a creative bent, so we like to embrace all the latest and greatest options and see what we can do with them.

Given our experience in working with HTML5 and other technologies, these are what we at Glow see as the main pros and cons of HTML5:

Pros:

• The technology is built off existing web development standards that have been around for a long time ultimately shortening the time-to-market and need to learn new technology
• An isolated and controlled browser and operating system (OS) environment drastically reduces quality assurance (QA) time and development
• HTML5 offers an alternative to static ads left behind because a user doesn’t have Flash, and with Apple’s devices cant acquire it
• The rich-media ads are cheaper to develop than iAds and don’t require Apple’s involvement or approval process, which could mean the difference to a brand being first or following its competitors
• Fluid, Flash-like experiences can be achieved with ease

Cons:

• Ads would be less immersive, as in-app ads command attention as they are user-initiated with “a lean-forward” approach to consumer advertising
• In-browser ads can be easily overlooked if consumers don’t know what to be looking for
• Purchasing power seamlessly integrated within the advertisement isn’t possible in this configuration
• Although HTML5 is gaining momentum, not all ad-serving platforms and publishers support the delivery of these types of ads (yet)

As mentioned earlier, we developed this list of pros and cons to be fair and open about the possibilities on the table. In order to experience an advertisement built in this environment, just fire up your mobile Safari browser and point it to this advertisement.

This advertisement is a prime example of a rich HTML5 experience replete with videos, animation and content. It takes advantage of touch gestures by allowing users to spin the navigation with their finger, and it functions very much like a Flash banner that you would normally see in a desktop browser. No more static alt-images left behind in an environment that is worthy of attention!

The unit created for the television network Syfy ran exclusively on The New York Times in conjunction with the premiere of Syfy’s smash hit Warehouse 13, the most watched series in channel history was served up by EyeWonder and developed by Glow Interactive.

So the next time you are considering rich mobile advertising, consider an HTML5 banner. We think it provides a solid alternative experience and you won’t be waiting around, watching competitors beat you to the punch.