This creative director tells us that determining the right organizational structure is an ongoing challenge for his agency.

Doug Schumacher is president and creative director of Basement, Inc., an interactive marketing agency in Venice, California. His primary objective at Basement is to bring impacting creative to the online space, while fully utilizing the medium's testing capabilities to help clients shape and refine their product marketing strategies.

iMedia: It's near the end of the year. What would you say was your personal and/or your agency's biggest triumph this year?

Doug Schumacher: We've been turning down more projects that aren't right for us. That's not always easy to do, but it's been a big help in staying true to our long-term goals.

iMedia: What are you still struggling with or frustrated with that you thought would be history by 2006?

Schumacher: Determining the right organizational structure has been an ongoing challenge, especially with clients having significantly different needs. The online space is remarkably diverse -- like five or 10 different mediums in one -- and working in it requires a more lateral approach to problem solving.

iMedia: How has the role of your agency changed to meet the needs of clients in a world of fracturing media habits?

Schumacher: We're focused on strategy and creative, and we're finding our work in those areas is more and more central to our client's activities across the mediascape, and not just online. Whether online is the first place they advertise or is three percent of the ad budget, what happens there is growing in significance.

iMedia: What are some of the latest ways your agency is integrating different media to achieve client objectives?

Schumacher: Testing. We're working to help determine cross-media effectiveness for both ROI and messaging analysis.

iMedia: What emerging media have you tested/are you using for clients?

Schumacher: We're especially interested in Wikis, and are utilizing one on a community building project we're working on.

iMedia: What are clients most afraid of (either device, like cell phone or technique, like blogging)? Why?

Schumacher: It's always the unknown, whether it's new technologies or new creative directions. Performance tracking has been a big help in resolving this in certain areas. It enables companies to experiment without laying so much on the line.

iMedia: How is marketing/working with a small company different from working with a large company -- in terms of openness to innovation/experimentation/use of emerging platforms? Any industries more innovative, willing to take risks than others?

Schumacher: We haven't seen a difference between large and small companies in terms of their willingness to take risks or try fresh creative approaches. I think that's a strong trait of interactive marketing. There are a lot of people at large companies that are excited about the space and interested in trying new things. The difference comes in the layers. With large companies, the process often takes longer.

iMedia: If you develop an innovative campaign that is successful for one company, can you use that success story for companies in other verticals? How can you pitch it to convince other verticals that these results might apply to them too?

Schumacher: Because the online space is so diverse, the important issue is, does your approach to projects make sense, and is there a strategy for improving the ROI? Performance reporting has gotten a lot more sophisticated in the past few years, and it has enabled us to address larger questions. What works for one industry may or may not work in another, but the methodology for developing the strategies and pulling marketing intelligence from the results has much broader applications.

iMedia: What's the interactive campaign over the last 12 months that you wished had come from your agency? Why?

Schumacher: It's great to see more and more inspired creative work in online. The viral campaign for "The Ring 2" out of the UK was exceptionally memorable. WOM is a tough space to work in. The way they utilized the technology without getting too heavy-handed makes a good role model for interactive marketing.

iMedia: What's the biggest communications problem that you have in your work -- either internal within your company or external with clients -- and what strategies work best for you in tackling this sort of problem?

Schumacher: Aggregating project communication has been an ongoing issue. Extranets are great in concept, but rarely deliver a truly usable focal point for communication. We've recently found a new solution that matches our approach to this business, and it has been a big help.

iMedia: What are your goals for the coming year?

Schumacher: We want to continue our work in the area of online testing and developing models for better marketing intelligence gathering. And pushing outward in new creative directions is always at the top of the list.

Dawn Anfuso is senior editor for iMedia Connection.