Our 5 person creative group is made up of digital experts who work on everything from web sites to banners to ecommerce pathways to mobile devices. Our approach is focused on user experience and making cash. Form is led by function here. Self-directed, smart, fast, and creative, this team brings more skill, knowledge, and innovative power than any shop you’ve seen. There hasn’t been a consumer experience challenge yet they haven’t been able to solve and blow out of the water.  They win awards and pitches because of it.

What we need from you is leadership and vision. A team that moves this fast needs a strong center. Someone with the big picture in mind at all times, able to work with all disciplines from marketing strategists to researchers to developers to copywriters to fulfill GDD’s promise of visionary creative that moves the dial for our clients. We need huge ideas unencumbered at first by technical limitations or budgetary constraints. We need to you to start from “what if.”

You’ll bring with you a spirit for ideation and brainstorming. I knack for catching miniscule drops of ideas and turning them into a geyser of an idea that can be molded and shaped into an executable strategy. You’re never bored because you always dreaming, but you know that your job is to get money out of consumers, not get your face on the cover of Creative Director Weekly. Action is your reward, not pats on the back by your peers.

If you think you’re up for this, here’s what we’ll expect:

• 10 years plus in the creative field, not necessarily the digital field. Yes, we are a digital shop but a high level of conceptual thinking is what we are looking for.  Great ideas to solve our client’s problems is where it starts. We can work together as a team to apply it across whatever media is needed for the best solution. If you’ve been in the traditional media agency world and have the moxie to break into the digital space, this could be your chance.
• NO CODE. Creative services team members at GDD are not required to code. We have a deep knowledge of code and how digital works, but coding and creative are, we believe, residents of different hemispheres of the brain and we won’t ask you to cross over. Your programmer counterparts are innovative visionaries to. They understand their job is to bring your vision to life, not put limits on you, and you’re expected to give them the same courtesy.
• You must be able to be incredibly productive and lead your team from a virtual environment. We spend two days per week in our office in Addison and spend the rest of the time working from home or wherever you like. It sounds great, and it is, but it’s not for everyone and if you can’t make it work you can’t work here. If you can, you’ll find a freedom and energy in your work that you’ve likely never experienced.
• OWN your work. Your creative thinking has to stand up to our internal processes. We are not easy. We are passionate. We have opinions. We are tougher than our clients every time. This goes for your work and the work of your team. By the time creative that you have touched or directed gets in front of the rest the team, you better be prepared to defend it and you better believe it’s the best.
• THINK.
• Work fast. Speed to market is everything in the digital space. Slow projects lose their relevance before they come to life.  We like it. We embrace it. If you think you’ve worked fast, you’ll likely be surprised. This is fast like you’ve never seen. If you’re the wrong fit, this will scare you.If you’re the right fit, this will excite you.
• DO. This is a leadership role but it’s also a doer role. We’re a boutique shop and with that comes an all hands work ethic. Your skills for putting thought to pixels need to be sharp and recently honed because you’ll be using them here. You will lead an ideation session with your team, then sit down to create one of 4 concepts to present. Titles and levels mean very little inside these walls, so be ready to get your hands dirty.

Here’s what you can expect from us:

• An incredibly fast paced, results driven, high performance environment
• A team of all stars who will never let you down, and who will expect the same from you
• An informal, drama-free, professional environment
• Freedom and support to ideate, create, and lead
• A virtual office model – we come into the office 2 days a week and work from home the rest of the time
• Un-metered vacation – we don’t count sick days or vacation days
• Monthly health insurance stipend
• Competitive salary

If you’re tired of spending way too much time getting way too little accomplished, if you are fed up with agency politics and mid-level talent, if you are ready to step into a leadership role, if you are able to keep pace with a team of outstandingly talented and smart people, if your head is filled with big ideas just looking for an outlet, you may be what we’re looking for.

If so, we want to talk to you right away. Contact Guy Dineen, Owner and Principal of GDD Interactive, at guy.dineen@gddinteractive.com. Send:

• your resume
• a link to your website with current, relevant work (doesn’t have to be all digital, but some would help)
• your philosophy on creative innovation and leadership
• why you’re interested in GDD
• why not hiring you would be the biggest mistake we will have made in our entire lives

We’re looking forward to talking to you.

• You have clear and active demonstration that you live and breathe new media. You are an active blogger, poster, commentator, and contributor in both your personal and professional lives.
• You have proven experience creating and promoting at least 5 new media campaigns that generated quantifiable results. We don’t expect you have to have done all of it yourself, but the strategy, including reporting and conclusions, came from you.
• You are dialed into the newest, hottest, latest new media trends and connect the dots between disparate verticals to find a common thread that can be leveraged for our clients.
• You understand the power of images and video in digital story telling.
• You are part social butterfly, part geek, part entrepreneur.
• You are outgoing and personable.
• You love to write and can prove it.
• You can write extremely well. You have a demonstrated ability to convey personality and emotion in writing. You can speak with any voice and make people believe it.
• You can write extremely fast.
• You are an idea-generating machine. You are constantly pitching new ideas for us and our clients – ways to leverage new media to get the word out.
• You excel at being a team of one. You can manage your own calendar, your own communications and your own time. You will be a part of a larger team, but direction and strategy comes from you.
• You are comfortable working in a virtual environment, communicating clearly and effectively without being in the office.

Your specific responsibilities will include:

• Promoting GDD Interactive through new media channels. This will include our blog, newsletter, YouTube channel, Wikipedia page, FB and Twitter accounts, our LinkedIn company profile, and other channels you think we should be leveraging.
• Contributing content to all of GDD’s new media channels. This may involve leveraging internal and external resources including PR agencies, freelance writers, and our internal creative team.
• Leading new media strategy for key GDD Interactive clients including social media monitoring, driving promotions and contests, leveraging API-based social engagement (e.g. Facebook Graph API), developing and managing reporting and analytics, including drawing conclusions and developing next steps.
• Aggregating and disseminating industry content such as article snippets and links, gleaned from outside sources.
• Identifying and, as approved, filling resource gaps at GDD to ensure exceptional individual service and attention to detail for our clients.

Here’s what you can expect from us:

• An incredibly fast paced, results driven, high performance environment

• A team of all stars who will never let you down, and who will expect the same from you
• An informal, drama-free, professional environment
• Freedom and support to ideate, create, and lead
• A virtual office model – we come into the office 2 days a week and work from home the rest of the time
• Un-metered vacation – we don’t count sick days or vacation days
• Monthly health insurance stipend
• Competitive salary

If you are able to keep pace with a team of outstandingly talented and smart people, if your head is filled with big ideas just looking for an outlet, if you would rather cut off a limb than shut off your iPhone, you may be what we’re looking for.

If so, we want to talk to you right away. Contact Guy Dineen, Owner and Principal of GDD Interactive, at guy.dineen@gddinteractive.com. Send:

• your resume
• a link to your personal new media pages: FB, Twitter, LinkedIn, blog, etc. Anywhere you are digitally.
• A link to 5 campaigns you were involved in and a short blurb about your contribution, including quantifiable results.
• Your philosophy on new media and its impact on how people interact
• Why you’re interested in GDD
• Why not hiring you would be the biggest mistake we will have made in our entire lives

We’re looking forward to talking to you.

http://mashable.com/2011/07/31/tweets-influence-debt-ceiling/

http://www.businessinsider.com/restaurant-discount-site-savored-joins-up-with-opentable-to-give-30-off-meals-2011-7

The gist is that SMBs are getting tired of pitches from local deal sites like Groupon and Living Social. Realizing that the repeat business they’re supposed to be getting for their whopping 80% investment is either not coming, or is turning out to be customers who aren’t really interested in their offerings as much as they are trying to get endless ridiculous deals.

It will be interesting to watch how this space shakes out. My prediction is that this will start to fizzle out in its current form and start to take on a more traditional shape, much like your local Val Pack, where deals can be had but within reason. SMBs are realizing that anything that sounds to good to be true, probably is, and the notion of endless riches by giving away the store is turning out to be disappointing.

We deliberated over the top 10 for quite some time, and the final choice was a hard one for certain. We want to thank everyone for participating and sharing your vision of an orange world….

~ The GDD Team

Have you ever noticed how much orange stuff there is? Boy, we sure have. So we thought it would be great fun to see some pics of orange stuff everyone else came across. And to make it really interesting, we’re giving away an iPad2 to the Facebooker who shares the most interesting photo.

Visit our Facebook page for details.

If you’re thinking about entering, awesome! Here’s some legal and rule-type stuff you need to know:

Contest open only to legal residents of the 50 United States and Washington, D.C., 18 years or older at time of entry. Employees of GDDInteractive, the judges and their immediate families are excluded.

1. The contest will take place between May 15th 2011 and June 10th 2011. Photos may be submitted beginning on 12:10AM on May 15th 2011 and will be accepted until 11:59PM on June 3rd 2011. The winner will be announced no later than 11:59PM on June 10th.

2. The photographer who took the winning photo will receive one AT&T 16GB Wi-Fi + 3G Black Apple iPad2 engraved with the statement “Winner of the GDD Interactive Orange? Hell yeah! Photo Contest.” The iPad2 will not have active 3G service when awarded and GDD Interactive is not responsible for 3G service.

3. Only images taken of something orange will be considered for the competition. Images must be uploaded to the GDDInteractive’s Facebook Wall in order to be included in the competition. Photo, or one substantially similar to it, may not have been published, nor have won, or be currently entered in, any other photo contest.. No alteration or retouching of original image or print is permitted. Photo must have been taken by entrant. All photos submitted that are not representative of the color orange will be removed from the competition and taken off the GDDInteractive Facebook Wall.

4. No entry fee is required. Entrants are allowed three (3) submissions per contest. There will be one winner. Each contestant must ”like” the GDDInteractive Facebook Page before submitting any and all photos.

5. Entrant must be the photographer who captured the image and he/she must own all rights to the image. Model releases are required where appropriate and are the responsibility of the photographer. Pornographic images and any image that at any stage involved cruelty or violence to humans or animals/wildlife will not be permitted and will be disqualified.

6. Only photos complying with the rules may win. Photos will be judged by a qualified panel of judges on the basis of the following: 1) How well the photo conveys the subject: The Color Orange 4) Visual appeal. 5) Originality The contest will be judged by a panel of judges selected by the Sponsor. The decisions of the judges are final and binding.

7. Winners will be notified via Facebook message and required to sign and return within 21 days of notification an affidavit of eligibility and release of liability, together with model releases from all recognizable persons pictured in the photo. To the extent permitted by law, winners will also be required to grant GDDInteractive use of the winning photo, together with their names, likenesses and biographical information, in advertising and publicity about the Contest or future contests without further compensation. Failure to comply with all these conditions may result in prize forfeiture.

8. Winners may not transfer prize rights nor obtain substitutions or cash redemptions. All taxes on prizes and incidental expenses not specified in the above prize descriptions are solely the responsibility of winners. Offer void where prohibited by law.

9. Sponsor reserves the right to disqualify anyone who, in their opinion, has tampered with or disrupted the entry process or operation of this contest or violated the rules. If the contest cannot be run as planned for any reason, including technical problems, sponsors reserve the right to cancel, curtail, modify or suspend the contest. In the event the contest is terminated early, winners will be selected from all eligible entries received at the time of termination and will include all mail in entries postmarked on termination day and all electronic entries submitted prior to the termination.

We did a recent informal poll on The Facebook, posing the following question: “Hey TV lovers. Question: do you watch the Primetime Emmys Why or why not? Doing some market research for a GDD Interactive project. Weigh in please!” The answers were unfortunately not surprising. A few highlights:

“No. They drag it out. It takes too long in between awards (which is the only reason I’d be watching it- to see the awards given out). I enjoy the comedic hosts (usually), but everything else besides the actual awards is “fluff” to me.”

“No. It’s too boring.”

“Not anymore, because the only shows and people that ever win are from HBO, and if you don’t pay for that, you can’t watch it. It irritates me that the industry awards only those people who are already getting paid way too much.”

“I don’t watch them because it goes on forever!!!”

Ouch. Gotta love social media and people’s willingness to sound off. The thing is, this isn’t just relegated to the Emmys really, is it? If you took a similar poll about any award show, even the once-controversial MTV VMAs, you’d get a yawn. If you think back on the last 30 years, you can see a steady decline in eventful TV watching in general. Do you remember where you were when the last episode of M*A*S*H was broadcast? How about when The Fonze jumped the shark? Did you watch the first space shuttle launch on TV at school or your office?

See, 30 years ago, we gathered round the ol’ boob tube with family and friends to bask in the eventful glow of what we knew to be a national TV event of one form or another. The only interaction available to us back then was sharing the moment with the people next to us on the floor (to be closer to the TV in case you had to adjust the rabbit ears) or yaking it up with a cubemate or classmate the next day. To be a Neilsen family was to impact the course of the nation. Viewership was the only real media metric there was to understand how people felt about, and interacted with, content distributed on TV.

Also think back on who was famous: movie stars and TV stars. We hadn’t imagined that 17 year old trust fund crackheads who had no skill of any kind could be so interesting. Thirty years ago there were only two screens: silver, and the one in our living room. So our pre-paparazzi gazes turned toward the studios.  The most interesting celebrities from across the Atlantic were royals who had yet to reveal just how interesting they would end up being.

So you can imagine why an award show like the Emmys held our fascination. We were used to seeing these people on TV. They were characters we knew and loved. They weren’t PEOPLE! So seeing them all dolled up, all in one place, being all regular and charming and such was an outstanding treat we looked forward to all year. We once again found ourselves parked on the floor in front of the TV, ready to watch the antics of our favorite stars and starlets giving heartfelt acceptance speeches, rib each other, and feign humility as they accepted their accolades from a sea of TV addicts who hung on their every word.

And we did it all while sitting through 10 minutes of commercials for products we pretty much assumed did what they said they did and weren’t going to kill us.

Now it’s different. We still sit on the couch  (I still like to sit on the floor, actually). We still get together with family and friends to watch our faves. But now we do it with iPhones in hand, iPads on our laps, laptops open and ready for Facebooking. We’re still fascinated by actors and actresses. But now we know what they look like when they’re puking into their purses in Vegas. We know what they think about the war in Iraq. We know when they’re having lunch with an ex-flame. We know that they harbor horrible racial bents and spout them uncontrollably when they’re wasted. And even better, we can tell them what we think about all this. We can Tweet to them, comment on their blogs, tag them, video them, snap pictures when we stalk them. And we can share all this with our own network who is doing the same.

Now we’re a part of it all. There is no longer a separation between us and the media we consume. We create the media we consume. The notion that we are “viewers” of media is as antiquated as the notion that we are “consumers of TV dinners.” We even interact with print media now (though what the hell those little black and white boxes are good for is still a mystery).

Award shows have been stepping up their game in this regard, I have to admit. The NAACP Image Awards has made a lot of progress in interactive viewing with some great success. The Emmys has added web casting, Twitter contests, and other interactive elements into the show. Last year host Jimmy Kimmel organized an interactive Tweetup encouraging the good people at home to tweet what they wanted the presenters to say.

But what everyone is still missing is that we’re just not wired anymore to sit for four hours and watch a variety show. We need to help create it, like we do everything else. We need to be dialed in live, in real time, in a way that makes us feel like we’re shaping the event from every corner of our lives. This is a huge paradigm shift for an industry that is rooted in tradition, process, and unions. The idea that the general public would have this much control and input into who is recognized is not easy to swallow. But if you look around you’ll see that this is what’s happened to retail and other consumer services already, and the entertainment industry is just in denial of the inevitable.

So I’d like to suggest a rethink of what it means to hold an awards event. Let’s make these things as interactive as possible. Let’s bring live user-generated content to the screen. Let’s let the people have a hand in the voting. Not just in cutesy Facebook polls. The real deal. You know who got this right? American Idol. And look at their ratings. Three judges, 12 contestants, and 20 million texting teenagers. Now that’s interactive.

So TV, let’s change it from “viewers” to “participants” and bring life back to the time honored award shows we once so adored. I have a great fondness for these events and would participate from my spot on the floor every time.