If one isn’t tuned into the signals of corporate change it can mean an unexpected layoff and months of unemployment and job searching. Do you have a career management plan to ensure your career growth in times of corporate chaos?

To prevent career disaster, live by these three rules of career management:

1. Expect change.

2. Adjust quickly to change.

3. Build a strong professional network in good times.

Expect change.

Change in the work place is far less traumatic when it is expected as the norm. One of the most important career management skills is the ability to detect signs of corporate change. For instance:

* Rumors of corporate merger or takeover

* Corporate profit levels spiraling downward

* No end-of-year bonuses given

* Hints of layoffs to trim the budget

* Upper management suddenly resigning

* Your peers jumping ship to the competition

Don’t get caught off guard by holding on to a false sense of security or displaced loyalty. Those who fear change trust corporate loyalty rather than face the reality of their precarious position in the corporate food chain. Expect change and keep your eyes and ears open—or you could be the last in line when it’s time to find new career opportunities.

Don’t wait for change to strike. While your job is secure and your work environment is stable, take steps to keep your skills highly desirable in the job market. For starters:

* Stay current with technology trends of your industry

* Get certified if appropriate

* Keep your resume current at all times

* Be ready to interview at a moment’s notice

Adjust quickly to change.

Your ability to keep your career momentum building in the midst of corporate chaos depends on your skill at adjusting quickly to change. First, don’t over analyze your dilemma. Too often valuable time is wasted trying to figure out ways to make a bad situation work. Second rule, don’t take it personally, or you won’t be able to plan your exit strategy clearly. Third, take action as soon as possible.

If your resume is kept current at all times you will be ahead of the pack when others consider moving on as well. Your resume should be updated every six months. For quick updating keep an ongoing record of your accomplishments as you overcome work challenges.

Maintaining confidentiality during a job search while still employed is a challenge that requires discretion and level headedness. Ideally, no one in your company should even suspect that you are looking for other employment. Resist the urge to speak to coworkers about your decision for action. Not only do loose lips sink ships, but why put ideas in the minds of others who may become your interview competition? Keep your regular work hours and try to schedule interviews during off-work time. Avoid posting your resume online where your employer may find it.

Build a strong professional network in good times.

One thing that hasn’t changed over the decades is the fact that a majority of people still get new positions faster through networking. What used to be called the “good ol’ boy system” is as active in the job market as ever. Technology will never replace the need to be connected to a vast network of people who can help you find new career opportunities quickly.

The problem is that most people ignore their network until they need it. Bad idea. If you haven’t kept in touch with former coworkers how will you know how to find them when you need them?

If your professional network is slim to none, get working on it right now. There are many great venues for building your network: professional associations, college alumni groups and former colleagues to name a few. Take time to meet with non-work people on a regular basis. Get to know them as friends and develop relationships built around mutual interests, friendship and trust. Make relationship building your lifelong habit and you’ll never be without help when you need to make a career change.

More than ever, proactive career management is essential to professional growth. Keep these rules of surviving corporate change as the building blocks of your career management plan and you’ll stay in control of your professional growth and income potential.

Deborah Walker is a certified career management coach. Learn more at www.AlphaAdvantage.com.

Man, that was painful. If you have a land line, your phone was hijacked by GOP presidential candidates for two weeks before South Carolina’s primary. By my count, the phone rang approximately 637 thousand times an hour, and only 422 of those calls was my mother-in-law.

Almost all of the calls were pre-recorded and went something like this: “Hello, this is Mitt Romney and … CLICK!!”

I mean, really, how would I know what they sounded like? My wife and I broke land speed records racing to turn off the answering machine.

The first few days, before we realized we were being invaded by uncivil discourse, we actually listened to the messages. They said:

Two weeks as a phone hostage set the two of us to wondering — does this stuff really work? Hanging up on that drivel was a service to the candidates, whom we don’t necessarily hate only because we didn’t hear them excoriate each other.  Does irritating the electorate uninterrupted for a fortnight really convince them to vote for you? (And make no mistake, this isn’t a partisan problem; we’d expect the same from Democrats if they had a primary.)

Consider the marketing implications for ordinary products and services!

I’m thinking about the top, say, 5,000 advertising campaigns in history and I can remember just one that annoyed the buying public into submission. It was Tide’s “Ring Around the Collar” campaign, which suggested that women nationwide were spousally-challenged by failing to adequately clean the dirt and sweat from their husbands’ shirt collars. The remedy was obvious: women by the millions joined the workforce and told their husbands to wash their own damn shirts.

Beyond that, I don’t see a real-world corollary to what the candidates perpetrated on us and have now taken on the road to other states.  Do all their experienced and well-compensated campaign managers truly believe that interrupting voters’ dinner hours with phone spam is effective marketing? They must, or they wouldn’t do it, right?

Imagine if every time you logged on to the Internet, a pop-up ad for Budweiser appeared regardless of your settings.  Wouldn’t the irritation factor eventually reduce Budweiser sales? It would certainly disincline me towards their brand of suds.

So if denigration doesn’t sell toothpaste or cars or tax preparation services, but it does sell candidates, what does that say about us? Is electoral politics the marketing of distrust, hatred and fear? Does annoying people work harmonically with those emotions? Say it ain’t so.

Just in case it is, I want to be on the cutting edge. So I’ve devised a negative campaign to boost revenues for my employer, Trident United Way. It’s a plan whereby computers would call 50 houses at a time with the following pre-recorded message:

I’m Barry Waldman and I approved this message.

I have a friend ’round these parts whose name is Yvonne. She’s bright and friendly and has a great sense of humor and mispronounces her own name.

Yes she does.

Yvonne is a French derivation of John, related to Ivan and Johan and Joanne and Joanna and Jan and Ian and Sean and all those other John derivations. And the name is pronounced Ee-von.

Yvonne pronounces her name Yuh-von. It’s not like her parents purposely bestowed upon her an alternative to the name Ee-von. They thought they were naming her Ee-von but didn’t know how to pronounce it. So she’s Yuh-von.

I haven’t the heart — or maybe it’s the heartlessness — to bring this to Yvonne’s attention. Besides, she’s not alone.

Most Americans don’t seem to know how to pronounce the name Naomi. I’ve never quite understood how you get Nigh-oh-mee out of that spelling, but now we have people who think that’s their name.

Of course, the name is pronounced Nay-oh-mee.

My trusty sidekick at work correctly argues that your name is whatever you say it is. Sure, if you name your daughter “La-a,” you can call her Ladasha. You chose the name.

But if you name your kid Xavier, you’ve chosen a name that already exists. And the name Xavier is pronounced Zay-vyer, not Ex-ay-vyer. An “X” at the start of a word or name in English is pronounced like a “Z”. Think xylophone or xenophobic. (X-ray is a little different because it was literally an “X” ray.)

At this point you’re thinking — which puts you in a different class than me right off the bat — you’re thinking, what in the wide world of integrated marketing communications are you jabbering on about? Have you lost what small scattering of marbles were formerly clanking around in your head?

Au contraire, Pierres.

Shakespeare noted that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. But he didn’t say anything in defense of a word like “pustule.” Because there is no way to make that word sound like something you’d want with your lunch.

“Hey Margaret, slap a pile o’ pustule on that ham sandwich, wouldja?” Doesn’t work.

Nor does President Melvin Finzheimer. Or Irving Poopsciewiecz. Or Gertrude Dolt.  (I’m showing great restraint in not mentioning how hysterical it would be to have a president named “Newt.”) How many billions and billions do you think McDonald’s would have served if the man who purchased the franchise from the McDonald brothers had renamed the restaurants after himself. Would you purchase a hamburger from Kroc’s?

Your company name is a bit like clothing: it reveals something about you, , even sometimes inadvertently. Google and Yahoo are telling us that they’re fun, geeky and maybe not too self-important. General Motors says more staid, perhaps even stodgy. A bank in my hometown was Dime Savings Bank. Didn’t inspire visions of wealth.

Hook, Obviouslee, Slant and Blue Ion intrigue, and suggest a certain creativity. Rawle Murdy, Davis, Bosworth live off the impressive reputations of their proprietors. Firms named for  people’s initials always struck me as evincing a lack of cleverness, unless the initials spell a word, like ELM or HAF. (My firm would be HAF-WIT Marketing. Hey, don’t say you weren’t warned.)

The point — besides the one atop my head — is that names matter because they communicate all kinds of things. Personally, I would take great care in picking a company name and I’d make sure I knew how to pronounce it.  Of course, Joe Theismann might disagree.

barry waldman
(but you can call me berry)

Finding these social insights through your customer’s voice is where you can truly improve your business. The question is: how can you use social media channels to find these types of insights? Here are three basic steps to consider when gathering social media intelligence:

1. Monitor Conversations

Gathering social media intelligence requires listening to what your customers are saying. Think beyond Facebook and Twitter, and consider popular forums, blogs and even location-based networking sites, like Foursquare and Yelp. Also, consider monitoring conversations that relate to your key competitors, as these conversations can be leveraged to see how your company compares to them.

2. Analyze Conversations & Sentiment

As always, analysis is the next step. Obtain the conversations taking place on multiple social networking platforms and evaluate what consumers are discussing. Some questions you may ask yourself: Are there any key topics being discussed? Are they complaining or praising the quality or price of a product? Do they applaud any specific employees for their superior customer service? Do they purchase your product due to a current promotion? How are they responding to your sponsorships? Do they prefer a competitor’s product over yours?

3. Act on Social Insights

This is the fun part of your social strategy. This step is where you turn your trends into insights and your insights into actions. For example, if you are a retail clothing company and your customers constantly criticize the fit of a particular product, it could be worth exploring a new fit to better accommodate them. Or perhaps a few customers have stated how helpful your employees were at a particular retail store location; consider rewarding them for their quality customer service.

Regardless of the actual insight that is garnered, social media intelligence can truly help your company make more definitive and data-driven business decisions based off the voice of the consumers you serve. You just have to know how to use social media to your advantage.

Steve Parker Jr. is the co-founder and managing partner of Levelwing, a 2011 Spark! Award winner.

References Available Upon Request.

Have dumber words ever been written? I see this on resumes all the time. I think, “no shoeshine, Sherlock.” If your references aren’t available, neither is the job.

(I don’t actually think “shoeshine,” but this is a family website.)

If you’re looking for the painfully obvious on your resume, why not, “will show up for work if hired”?

Many of the objectives I see on resumes are similarly over-ripe. I’ve seen some that say, essentially, “seeking a job with your company.” You dedicated space at the top of your resume for that? If I’m too dense to figure that out when you send your application, you don’t want to work with me.

Here’s another resume rip-snorter:  prosaic jobs coached up on paper to sound like brain surgery. Applications for internships from college students with no professional experience are the most fun. A student who worked as a waiter killed thousands of electrons with this entry:

Liaisoned with kitchen staff to maximize customer experience.
Interfaced with diners to expedite meal delivery and eliminate errors.
Coordinated multiple orders simultaneously.

And so on like that, Adobe emailed and demanded that I return Acrobat. I wanted to tell the applicant her resume would only work were I a moron, but of course, I never called her.

Nor have I called the “functional resume” fundamentalists who list their skills (Word Perfect, great!) ad nauseum, but neglect to mention where they’ve actually worked and when. I agree that accomplishments are more important than experience, but nouns can be validated more easily than adjectives and verbs.

I’ve always thought  a good rule of thumb on resume construction is: try not to look like a dolt. No phony objectives, no transparent hyperbole, no empty proclamations.

Facts are good, though. I like facts.

barry waldman

I encourage you to provide this service to said young person because, and I say this with all due self-respect, I suck at it. Believe me. I have engaged multiple young persons of various eye configurations and have failed spectacularly. I have face-planted on the ski slope of mentoring. If failing at being a mentor were, say, acting skill, I would be Meryl Streep. You get the picture.

My first mentee experienced a personal epiphany after our second meeting: that she was more mature than her mentor. By the third meeting, she realized that my main qualification for mentoring was that I celebrated a birthday around the time her mom was born. And it occurred to her on the fourth meeting that there would be no point in a fifth.

Determined to share my wisdom with Charleston’s young personhood, I volunteered again, this time armed with research on best practices and insightful tips. “Quit now” would have been the best “best practice.” This particular mentee determined, after much honest self-evaluation, that as long as I wasn’t quitting my job anytime soon, there wasn’t any point in leaving hers.

So. There is a serious mentor deficit in the Lowcountry, due in large part to a rider on the TARP bailout prohibiting me from ever mentoring again. Which means it falls to you, dear AMA colleague, to pitch in and fill the void for the good of young personage throughout the Charleston area.

Oh, one more thing. Being a mentor might just be your most fulfilling endeavor in years, not withstanding procreation. Guiding an enthusiastic young marketer as they navigate the open waters of their career can be a deeply rewarding experience. You’ll make a friend, find yourself needed, and maybe even learn something about yourself.

You might not make the Mentoring Hall of Fame, but I promise, you’ll be better than I was.

barry waldman

I don’t know if most of the men who appear in Skirt! lobby the magazine for the right to pose in women’s wear, but Ted deLoach did. Without the least evocation of irony, he campaigned Jenny Dennis at a recent AMA event. (That’s Ted on the right.)

And it’s clear that he’s already contemplated his ensemble for the blessed event, which I am prohibited by FCC law and the revocation of my man card from detailing. Let’s just say it’s a saucy selection that will require just the right shoes.

If the sight of Ted’s legs in full color at 600 dpi shivers your timbers, consider instead the power of AMA networking. A stray word to the right person during a Charleston Crab House happy hour can lead to permanent personal infamy, not to mention dozens of canceled subscriptions. (Does Skirt! even have subscriptions? Well heck, let’s not let facts get in our way here.) Imagine what a well-placed conversation might yield.

So if you pick up a Skirt! in the next few months and find your eyes have fused to the inside of your eyelids, don’t say you weren’t warned. There’s no gams test for the American Marketing Association.

barry waldman

Congratulations to the 2011 Post & Courier Marketer of the Year, Jessica Munday, President and Founder of Trio Solutions!

Winners of the 2011 SPARK! Awards include Levelwing, Visiture, and Charleston Wine and Food Festival!

As Warren Peper said, all of the above winners set a high bar for the rest of the Charleston Marketing Community! We are all lucky to live in the beautiful city of Charleston, and it makes our jobs that much more enjoyable!

Thank you to all who participated to make this event shine!

Nomination:
Will’s experience and training as an architect continues to influence how he approaches graphic design for Slant Media’s clients. Slant’s client list ranges from retail-based to service-based businesses. In everything he does, his ultimate goal is to bring clarity to their client’s designs through thoughtful simplicity. Though he can appreciate a design that is visually appealing, I am much more intrigued by designs steeped in process, meaning, and theory. He has recently been part of the esteemed group of Pecha Kucha Charleston presenters

SIGNATURE PROJECT
Moore Beauston Woodham Identity + Web

Project Goals
An accounting firm with offices throughout South Carolina, Moore Beauston Woodham commissioned SLANT to develop a new identity and website to solidify their market presence after several recent name changes. Our goal was to create a brand that effectively communicated that which differentiated the firm from other accounting firms: having smarts AND personality.
New business collateral was needed to reflect the new brand, including basic items such as letterhead and business cards as well as customized client folders. And while the design of these items was important, the understanding of how to use them was even more so. Therefore a comprehensive brand guideline was required in order to coordinate standards among the various offices.
Beyond messaging and identity elements, a new web presence was seen as the primary method for conveying both the professional and personable sides of the firm. The site would need to strengthen relationships with existing clients as well as attract potential new ones. And of course the site would need to be easy to use from the user side while also being easy to maintain from the client side.
Will’s Project Role
As design lead, Will advocated a visually-driven marketing strategy that focused on a clever yet professional image. He began to explore how numerals could be substituted for letters, and how transformed symbols could have their own double entendre. An icon was born that consisted of 3 views of the same “3” to form “MBW”. To offset the abstract, minimalist demeanor of the new icon and name, Will suggested an accompanying tagline to round out the new message:“knowledge in numbers.” The progressive nature of the new brand elements was also reflected in the color choices of a bold yellow contrasted with a warm gray.

Will travelled to several of the firm’s offices throughout the state to direct photoshoots of key personnel. Outdoor locations that reflected the interests of each person were used as backdrops to create a sense of candid quirkiness: not too serious, yet not too playful.
His understanding of both the individual personalities as well as the overall persona of the firm influenced his design ideas for the new website. He utilized visual elements synonymous with accounting (such as a typical ledger) as tools for navigation and interaction. Where possible, large photos were used as launching points to direct users to various sections of the site. Rather than boast a long list of client names, Will suggested that developing several unique case studies would be more meaningful to first-time visitors on the site. Though the names of the businesses in the case studies were changed for privacy concerns, each one tells a true story of how MBW made a difference in someone’s life in a way that is both compelling and relatable.

Project Results
MBW tells us that the new identity has really served them well by distinguishing them as edgy and innovative compared to most CPA firms. “You took us from a logo to a brand”, said Robbie Ellison, Partner. The bold departure from their previous ID was also well received by their employees and existing clientele. “Knowledge in numbers” is now a registered trademark.
Despite the downward economy of the past few years, they’ve continued to prosper in each of their locations and market segments. One reason for this is the fact that they now have a more consistent, unified, efficient brand that saves them time when creating correspondence; their people no longer have to search for fonts and choose random templates because everything is now neatly organized for them.
The new web presence has made them more competitive among other medium to large accounting firms in the Southeast due to it’s polished look and feel. By integrating the SLANT-designed content management system, Adaptation, they can also easily update and manage their site’s content.
The end result of the collaboration between SLANT and MBW is that their firm is now “identifiable as a legitimate firm in an otherwise crowded industry”. To this day, Will continues to advise the client whenever a new communication challenge arises.

About Will Bullock
Will is a partner in SLANT and is head of art direction, or as we call it, “graphic intelligence”. He takes ideas and turns them into them reality by exploring a range of concepts that can fulfill our client’s creative needs as well as business goals. (Seriously, you want this in an art director). He then organizes and executes the creative production process that brings the creative ideas to life.
While pursuing graduate studies in architecture, Will honed his skills in advanced design theory, creative tools, and photography. The combination of Will’s creative passion and love of technology means whatever medium is called for, Will figures out how to make it happen — beautifully.
Before joining SLANT in the fall of 2004, Will worked as an Intern Architect for McMillan Smith & Partners Architects and LS3P Associates, LTD., utilizing his skills in CADD/drawing production, project management, marketing and presentation graphics. Will earned a Bachelor of Arts in Architecture from Clemson University in 1997 and reinforced his education with additional study in Genoa, Italy. Will has served as adjunct professor at the American College of Building Arts.
He is a past presenter of Pecha Kucha Charleston and is actively involved with the Art Institute of Charleston. He periodically sits in on portfolio reviews and sits on their Professional Web/Graphic Design Advisory Board.
Besides being a husband and father of 3, Will is a proud supporter of the Charleston creative communiity.

Favorite Quote
Image is everything.

Nomination:
Jessica is a bright marketer with a heart of gold. She has worked in the marketing communication and health care industries for more than 15 years and has been involved in web development for health care organizations since 1997. In addition to owning and operating Trio Solutions Inc., Jessica is an adjunct professor at the Medical University of South Carolina, where she teaches health care marketing. Jessica’s professional background includes a wide variety of projects, some of which include strategic planning and start-up planning for businesses and programs, public and government relations, community outreach, Web development, e-health strategy, event planning and branding. She has worked with the Medical University of South Carolina, Roper St. Francis Healthcare, Trident Health System and various specialty, primary care and human service practices throughout the Charleston-metro area. She enjoys volunteering in the community and her volunteer efforts have included Gabe’s Chemo Duck Program, March of Dimes, The Education Foundation, Trident Urban League and Juvenile Diabetes Foundation. She is also active with numerous business associations including the Center for Women, the American Marketing Association, American College of Healthcare Executives, Public Relations Society of America and the Charleston Metro Chamber of Commerce. In 2005, Jessica was selected as one of Charleston’s Top 40 Under 40 by the Charleston Regional Business Journal.

Submission:
Signature Project:
There have been so many wonderful client projects over the years but honestly, I would have to say that my signature project has been starting and running my business, TRIO. It’s the best, most rewarding project I have ever worked on. It challenges me every day. It inspires me to do my best every day. It provides livelihood for a group of incredibly talented people and most of all it allows our entire team to use our talents to make a difference every day. Whether we’re working with a nonprofit that is playing a role in saving the world, a health care organization that saves lives, or helping promote services for an international business, we strive to ensure our work makes a positive difference for our clients. Hands down, opening the doors of TRIO has been, and continues to be, my signature project. The rewards are truly priceless.

Project Goals:
My main goal when I started TRIO was to create a full-service creative agency that would allow me to use my professional knowledge and talent in an independent environment. I wanted to create a business where going above and beyond was the culture. I wanted to focus on working with organizations that made a difference in this world while specializing in three main areas: marketing, events and web.

Project Results:
This year TRIO is celebrating its 10-year anniversary. Many small businesses never make it past three years so to be at the 10-year mark is truly an accomplishment. I’m proud to say that since 2001, TRIO has grown to a team of 10 talented professionals all personally driven to use our creative skills to make a difference in the world. Our client roster represents more than 70 businesses and our annual gross revenue tops nearly $1M. We are a certified woman-owned business with the state of South Carolina and the official CreateAthon agency for the Lowcountry – an international collaboration of creative agencies dedicated to providing nonprofits with pro-bono marketing services. TRIO has exceeded all of my expectations and would not have been possible without the commitment and dedication of all our employees, past and present; our partners, clients and our families.

Role in Project:
My role in establishing TRIO has been to motivate my team and to ensure our clients view us as a partner, not a vendor. I strive every day to lead TRIO the same way that I would want to be led – with respect, integrity and dedication.

A Favorite Quote or Words You Live By:
LOL – anyone that knows me and knows TRIO knows that I live and breath by the words: WORK HARD. ENJOY LIFE. MAKE A DIFFERENCE!

What Motivates You:
Three little people named David, Hannah and Hudson. They are my life, my love and my inspiration to be kind and set an example that they can admire and respect.