When I Grow Up, I Want to be Mayor of the Picnic Table

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Picture this. Six months ago I’m sitting in a crowd of several hundred people as I work on my laptop during an athlete Q&A session with fans. All of a sudden I receive a public message on Twitter with a photo attached, asking if it was @DigitalRoyalty (me) in the photo.  It was. The photo had been taken from about five feet away. Right there, right then. But I couldn’t locate the person who snapped the photo. The photog had seemingly disappeared. And before I could process the situation or have the chance to respond, my followers did for me. Having watched from afar, they voiced their concern for my well-being in lue of the incident, which they believed to be slightly creepy. Oddly enough, I wasn’t too affected or ever felt truly threatened by the tweet, so I responded.

Why? Well, “wait a minute,” I thought to myself. I choose to play this game and everything that comes along with it. Transparency has led to openness, which has lead to access. The virtual world and physical world have collided. It’s a beautiful thing for consumers and brands.

Should we be scared? No. See below. Should we be smart? Yes. See above.

Let’s break it down. Nearly two years ago, pre-Foursquare and Gowalla days, Shaquille O’Neal stood on a street corner and tweeted his exact whereabouts. We called it Twitter Tag. Nowadays we consider that type of geo-tagging cavemen-like, yet still very effective.

Today, your consumers and friends can become a local celebrity, “the mayor” of their hometown pub, grocer, or the Atlantic Ocean for that matter. They can even develop connections all over the map with just a mobile phone and a bar code.

Now that’s fancy. But, just because there’s a new abracadabra app in the store doesn’t mean you need to force it into your marketing strategy and “app drop” (the equivalent to name drop) at the latest and greatest social media conference. The technology needs to compliment your strategy in effort to meet your objectives. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still important to experiment and understand capabilities. Period.

But in the interim, I’ll continue to arrive to work early and stay late just to steal the mayorship of the picnic table in the dR office backyard from @ChadM. Work smarter. Not harder.

Campaigning for a Job

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9/19/10 Update: Kristin landed the job with us at Digital Royalty and has relocated to Phoenix from Philly. She’s now working in our sports and entertainment division.

A Note from Amy Martin
Each week, our inboxes are graced with numerous employment inquires. We’re fortunate to attract talent from all walks of life. However, with volume like this, it’s difficult to stand out. But Kristin, the most recent addition to our team, did just this. She caught our attention by implementing her own social media plan, campaigning for a position at Digital Royalty. Yet even prior to executing her well-planned campaign, Kristin began following the dR crew via Twitter, causing us to, in turn, follow and engage with her.  Subtly, she had been interviewing for a job within our agency, without any of us having realized it. The point here is that social media breaks down barriers and provides direct access — a great tool for scoring a job. One of Kristin’s first projects was to craft a blog post describing her path to Royalty. Below is what she came up with.

Kristin’s Story

If you are just tuning in to the #work4dR campaign you can catch up a bit here and here. But to sum it up – I wanted to work for Amy Martin and her awesome dR team – badly. I knew that I probably wasn’t the only one, and I wanted to make sure they knew how much I wanted it. Frankly, I was unsure of what to expect considering there were no job postings or requests for résumés. The best way I thought I could make it happen was to implement some of the lessons I learned from Amy herself. The biggest lesson was to listen. The dR team is the best bunch of listeners in the business. They listen to the stories being told online and I wanted them to hear my story beyond my résumé. Two emails, a couple short blog posts, one hashtag, a giant Nor’easter and some fun @-replying later I saw this tweet.

See! I told you they are darn good listeners. And about ten minutes later I also received an email from an employee at Digital Royalty to see if I had time for a quick phone chat the following week. My answer? YES! Next thing I knew (less than three weeks from when I had first emailed my résumé) I was on a train up to New York to meet Amy while she was in town for the NY Knicks’ Tweetup. I really can’t express in words how nervous I was to meet Amy, but within a few seconds of sitting down with her my apprehension was put to rest. I think that says a lot about why Digital Royalty is such a smart and successful company and why major brands trust them. They connect people, they listen, and as a result people are naturally attracted to them. They have a way of not only listening but also a way of making someone feel “listened-to”. Digital Royalty combines that with innovative strategy, research and planning in both traditional and digital mediums, and creative brand activations. dR is at the intersection of the tangible and intangible, the virtual world and the real world. It is a powerful place to be. And I wanted to join them there.

Barely a month has gone by since I set my Digital Royalty-inspired #work4dR plan into motion and this is what happened when I listened and was “listened-to”. Powerful, right?

Thank you, Digital Royalty, for the awesome welcome. I am so excited to join your amazing team. I also wanted to say a final, big thank you to the #work4dR supporters—you know who you are.

Day 3: South by Southwest Update

From the Social Media Clubhouse, Digital Royalty founder, Amy Martin, gives a brief recap of the dR-hosted Sports Social Media Summit, as well as outlines the value and agenda for Day 3 of South by Southwest in Austin, TX.

Day 2: South by Southwest Update

From the “Delivering Happiness” Bus, to Digital Royalty’s Sports Summit, Digital Royalty founder Amy Martin gives an update on tonight’s schedule of events at SxSW from the Social Media Clubhouse on Lake Austin.


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