Yikes – it’s been three months since I’ve added anything at all to this site. That’s mostly because I’ve been swamped with my new job. Here’s the latest news:
- It’s now been close to three months since I started at Organic. It’s been a great experience so far – lots of really smart folks and challenging work to boot. I’ve been keeping busy with Bank of America projects, and it’s definitely an interesting time in history to be thinking about financial services. I’ve had to take a few trips to Boston and Charlotte to meet with clients, so that’s been fun as well.
- Ice hockey season is over at Lasker Rink in Central Park. We lost last night in the semi-finals in an overtime heartbreaker. Now I need to sign up for kung-fu lessons to keep in shape for the off-season. Or maybe I’ll just get back on track with surfing out at Rockaway Beach.
- We’re thinking about planning a vacation in June. I’m considering Alaska and Ecuador, but right now the front-runner is a big road trip up the Maine coast and then a ferry to Nova Scotia. I’ve always wanted to check out the Atlantic Provinces of Canada, so this might be my opportunity to do it. Plus, I can avoid getting on an airplane and I can bring my dog Champ along.
- The Prospect Park cormorant has been making appearances on the north side of the lake.
- I’ve been taking guitar lessons the last few weeks. I actually think it’s harder than pedal steel.
So the big news here is that, after a joyous six months of working on personal projects and freelancing (at Euro RSCG and MCD Partners), I’ll be starting a new job on January 5th. I’ll be joining Organic, one of the original Silicon Alley interactive agencies (and current Omnicom company), as Director of Strategy. It’s a pure account planning role, where my key responsibility will be to provide consumer insights to our creatives in order to deliver effective client work. The day-to-day will consist of a whole lot of talking to consumers, as well as research, writing, and presentations on digital media.
I’m honestly very excited to start. Organic is a great company (with a great blog), and I think this role will be a really challenging opportunity for me. I’ll probably be working mostly on Bank of America to start, with some new business work thrown in as well.
This past Sunday’s NY Times ran an interesting article on the challenges of using social networks for marketing. This is particularly relevant for me, as one of my freelance projects right now involves creating a Facebook page for a major financial services company. I think the key quote is here:
Independent experts on Web advertising have been watching, however, and what they see is a myriad of difficulties in making brand advertising work on social networking sites. Members of social networks want to spend time with friends, not brands.
I’m reminded of a brand strategy class I took at Stern last summer in which brand benefits were broken into functional, emotional, and self-expressive. Functional benefits speak to actual features and utility (i.e. a car gets me from point A to point B and has automatic transmission), while emotional benefits speak to how a brand makes me feel about myself. Self-expressive benefits matter most in a social context however. When a brand allows consumers to communicate something about themselves, it becomes highly relevant to sites like Facebook. For that reason, I can see brands with strong self-expressive benefits like Apple (“I think different”) or Harley-Davidson (“I’m an all-American tough guy) having effective social networking presences. For brands that lack a self-expressive component, it’s going to be an uphill battle.
Emily and I just got back from a week in beautiful Portland, Oregon. Here’s what we did:
- Explored Laurelhurst, Mt. Tabor, and Forest Parks.
- Visited some old friends at the local agencies.
- Ate waffles, southern-style biscuits, burritos, and asian stir-fry.
- Checked out a cemetery tour on Halloween night.
- Went to Food Fight, the vegan grocery store.
- Drove to the coastal town of Astoria to visit some sea lions and check out the “Haunted Astoria” tour.
- Gave our umbrellas a workout.
As a gift to myself for finishing school, I have decided to become a chess master. I picked up a new board and a strategy book at one of the chess shops near Washington Square Park, and I’ve been practicing my moves. I’ve also downloaded a chess app on Facebook, so if you’re looking for a real battle, challenge me.
And it looks like I am in good company, as I’ve recently learned that RZA from Wu-Tang Clan has recently started a hip-hop chess site called, WuChess.
After three years of classes, homework, group assignments, presentations, and textbooks, I finally finished my last class at Stern last Tuesday. All I need now is the big diploma with “MBA” on it.
We rented a house for August up in the lower Hudson Valley town of Cold Spring, NY. Here’s a shot of Emily, Champ, and foster dog Pomegranate on top of Mt. Taurus.
On Saturday I took another shot at donut making. This time I tried apple cider donuts dusted with sugar and cinnamon. They turned out much better than the jelly donuts I tried in June.
I think I’m going to start making these on Sunday mornings and dropping them off at the local coffee places.
These little guys turned up today during our morning walk in Prospect Park (near the Audobon Center.) We’ve been watching the mother sit on her nest near the skating rink for the last two months. Congratulations, swans!
Yesterday was my last day at Digital Pulp, and today is my first day of self-employment after three and a half years. The plan is to work on Figure Four Media and maybe fry up some donuts along the way. I’ll be working mostly from Brooklyn until August 1, when Emily and I will move up to Cold Spring, NY for the month. Should be a good summer.
This is the personal site of David "Lefty" Leibowitz. It used to just be about entrepreneurship and technology. Now it's also occasionally about robots, polar explorers, Roman emperors, time travel, outer space, gorillas, mariachi singers, and pit bulls.
