Big time event. 15 of us heading to a VIP / CEO / Celebrity black tie event. Our technology will be front and center. It's not a normal logical step by step how we got there but we did. Hours before the event the marketing person who reports to me (I'm not a marketing director so there's a story here) and I respect his design sense, says to me 'Hey we don't have an Instagram account and from my research everyone there will be using Instagram. It's a visual event and we're are going to be providing the best visuals. Twitter and facebook aren't the best visuals. We need to be on Instagram.
Great. Now I need to get permission from the marketing director, who pretty much hates me and everyone who works for me. She probably has disagreed, argued and put down 99% of the ideas me and the team have had. Most of us have resigned to the fact that she's in her position and we're simply going to do everything we can to not have to work with her. She can be quite pleasant. But she's just not built to work with a team, she's built to be a commander of people who know nothing about style, social or communication and are willing to have someone make all the decisions for them. That is just not the case with my group. We are pretty passionate about what we do and we've got a clear sense of direction and how we need to communicate with our clients. She disagrees. You can see where this goes. This has been going on for the last year. Not fun, stressful for everyone.
Anyway, the marketing designer who works for me is talented and on-spot. He works for me and not her. Very unusual. Why you might ask is it set up this way? Because the business can't move forward the current marketing group is as mentioned above and the design sense isn't there. It's not going to change so I pushed, and the pres heard the call. Also the VP of Sales randomly decided to let go 2 of the 4 corporate marketing people which provided the budget I needed to hire a dedicated marketing person to my team. A win for the business all around. A loss for the marketing director.
Anyway, we need the instagram account. I emailed her. She happened to be out today but she had forwarded me an email. So instead of just bulldozing what we need I wanted to see if she would accept the opportunity to be helpful.
Hey xxxx,
I wanted to run something by you. I know you are out but I’m hoping you’ll get this and can comment. We see an opportunity to improve our visual social media by incorporating Instagram for the event tonight. This is something that I know you are in charge of and respect that.
But in our event tonight it seems like visual imagery will be the best method for communicating via social channels. We will be the imagery of the event. So we were hoping, if you agree, to open up an Instagram account. Let me know. I’m available to speak if you’d like as well.
It's funny actually. Because I thought of asking my boss or going right to the pres. Nah. Let's try and go direct and see if we can create a positive channel of communication.
2 hours later she emails me back.
I am sorry but I cannot address this from where I am.
The kicker. She copies her boss, the VP of Sales. I love these guys. She's gone. There's not a collaborative bone in her body. If this were her idea it would be done. Now I don't want to nit pick, she's on vacation. But it's something we need so take a step forward, be the boss and say, 'hey it's something you need so why don't you let your marketing person set it up and start us off.'
She's got such.........okay I'm done.
Anyway. I told my marketing guy, 'go ahead and create an instagram account for the company. I'll take the heat.' Yumm.
Ton's of action on the account. We're taking images, video, posting it, people are interacting and responding. It's awesome. The whole night my marketing guy is chatting with people at the event. Gee someday I wonder if a department will have freedom to create and build the department it needs or if corporate oversight will always create the mind numbing and heart constricting mindset and decision making.
Marketing is so much more fun when I can say yay or nay. I haven't worked with a marketing director I like. Not sure I ever will, at least at this company. It's okay though, with my own guy we're getting things done. It's just stressful. He doesn't like her either. Just not a nice person. (She's a type 1, in the average range)
Well, we'll see in the morning what things look like on Instagram. And then I get to break the news what we did. Probably will take this through my boss or bring up in my weekly meeting with the pres tomorrow.
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