May 2006

During college, it was nothing to see people holed up in the library well past midnight. The mix of students no doubt included your typical college procrastinators and habitual overachievers. But it also included a group of dedicated hard workers who wanted to do their best.

Junior New York Senator Hilary Clinton indicated in a recent speech that dedicated hard workers are a lost breed among the millennial workers. Such is not the case at PlattForm.

On any given night, you can walk through the halls of the Dungeon, Printopia, The Deuce, or the other nooks and crannies of PlattForm and find such dedicated hard workers. They work long hours pouring over data, revisiting print ads or commercials, or scouring the internet for lead generation opportunities for our clients. For this bunch of PlattFormers, work is much more than a four-letter word. It is a commitment to the vision of PlattForm and the needs of our clients.

Each and every client that we service benefits from such dedicated workers. It shows in our success year after year. And it shows that hard work is not a foreign concept to the group of employees who make PlattForm the education industry’s leader in direct response advertising.

Maybe other companies do have a problem with getting millennials to work hard, but PlattForm is not one of them.

In 2005, I made a New Year’s Resolution to be more charitable … uh, to other people. Then I decided philanthropy should be PlattForm’s resolution as well … uh, unbeknownst to them. But how do you get your closest co-workers to donate, volunteer and participate? Duh. You hold a gun to their head.

And thus, the PlattForm Philanthropic Committee was born. (Thanks, Dana Owens! Thanks, Pete Amerio!)

From auspicious beginnings, PlattForm has now grown into a full-on Charity Machine! In the last month alone, we’ve helped sponsor a local walk for Lupus Research, coordinated a fundraiser for a battered women’s shelter, participated in a Day of Caring at a local hospice, and travelled to NY to produce a video for a children’s charity that’s about to go nationwide.

And, in the spirit of giving, we also battled several other local ad agencies to design (and then auction) a dress made from candy.

Yes, candy.

Clearly, we’re on a roll … Tootsie Roll, that is … and it seems to have hit a nerve. Because what comes around goes around. And it’s phenomenal to see 20-30 different faces at each and every event PlattForm sponsors.

All for charity. All for a good cause. All for the right reasons.

So if you’ve got ideas or suggestions on how to make the Philanthropic Committee bigger and better – don’t be shy. Let us know. Lord knows I’m not shy … in fact, gimme five bucks … we’ve got a school supply drive coming up!

Here a some of the charitable causes that PlattForm supports:

• Alliance for Lupus Research
• Hope House
• Save Inc.
• Books for Kids
• Della Lamb

My eyes, still slightly slit from “too-good-of-a-weekend,” didn’t register the sign on my office door at first. Taped to a white page bordered in green construction paper was a tiny magnifying glass. The boldly typed message spelled out the cheap promotional gimmick: “Take a closer look at all the candidates . . . then vote for Colleen!”

On my way to the break room to get the morning jolt of java there’s another one: “Vote 4 Jason Kerschner” (including four testimonials from, among others, Homer Simpson and Mr. T).

Last-ditch efforts by scandal-riddled members of Congress to save their phony baloney jobs? Not quite. At a retreat in nearby Excelsior Springs, PlattForm managers decided: we want a group dedicated to keeping the fun culture of PlattForm growing. See, one of the dangers in growing as fast and working as hard as we have in the last year is that we might lose touch with what made us the premier agency in the career college category (and one of the largest agencies in the Kansas City area): our culture.

“So why not appoint a committee?”

“Yeah, a ‘culture committee.’”

“Let’s call it the ‘Culture Club!’”

“Better yet, let people who feel passionate about this nominate themselves.”

“Good idea. But what if there are too many nominees?”

“Let’s hope there are. And if so, we’ll have an election!”

And indeed there are “too many” nominees resulting in Napoleon Dynamite-like campaign posters all over the place. So in addition to campaign dances, cheap promotional gambits, blogs and counter-blogs (yes, we’ve already resorted to campaign sabotage), I expect to see stump speeches, campaign rallies, and lots of baby kissing.

Stay tuned, the voting begins soon. And Jack Abramoff, if you’re reading, my vote certainly is for sale!

Did you ever make a sarcastic comment to your parents when you were growing up only to get the response, “Well, you think you just know it all, don’t you?” If you were anything like me as a kid, you heard that all time – practically on a daily basis. The best comeback I ever thought of was a snarky, “You said it, not me.”

Here at PlattForm, we can say we know it all and really mean it. Seriously – we do know it all. At least in the higher education advertising and marketing business. Since PlattForm is a niche-market advertising agency, all of our employees are pretty much experts in higher education. And that’s a pretty cool thing.

Most ad agencies have clients across all spectrums. Automobile manufacturers. Restaurant chains. Department stores. But all of our clients are in postsecondary education – traditional colleges and universities as well as career and community colleges. We even do some work for the military. All day, every day, we develop ideas to increase interest in our schools and the military among potential students or recruits. Because of this, we know A LOT about that industry. Maybe even more than anyone else does.

Now I can tell my dad that I do know it all, at least when it comes to public relations for higher education. As far as knowing it all in other areas, I don’t … but don’t tell that to my dad.

Usability is a hot topic at PlattForm right now. Usability in this case applies to a web design. Ever been to a site with no obvious place to click? How about a site that was so confusing, you didn’t know where to go first? That’s what usability is all about – whether visitors know what to do when they get to your site.

The sad truth is that a poorly designed site will lose about half of your web traffic – they don’t convert into a lead and they never come back! Designing with usability in mind means that we have to make it easy for someone to find what they are looking for on your site – or easily take action. In our case, we want to (1) educate them about a school and (2) make it enticing and easy enough to fill out a contact form.

People in the “real world,” meaning anyone not in Internet marketing, use the Web much differently than I do. It’s so important that we keep the actual site visitor in mind when we design, write and even market a site. Soon, we’ll be conducting usability tests with people in the real world. It makes our skills much sharper and lets us design for the bottom line. Nothing is more valuable than sitting with someone as they navigate and critique your site. Nothing is more humbling, either. Ouch!