This group media director offers best practices advice for communication in the digital age.

Prior to joining Organic, Sutherland served as media director at Mediasmith, Inc., a media strategy, planning and buying agency. At Mediasmith, she helped build the company's interactive capabilities for several accounts.

Before Mediasmith, Sutherland spent four years at Lot21 where she oversaw the media strategy, planning, and buying for accounts such as Bank of America, Hotwire, Palm and Walmart.com. Prior to joining Lot21, she spent five years planning and buying for B2B campaigns at Publicis Technology and RKR for clients such as Cadence Design Systems, Fujitsu Microelectronics, LifeScan, Oral-B, and Visa. 

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?

Jinenne Sutherland: Organic has been on a tremendous upward trajectory over the last few years and 2005 was memorable -- and a large reason why I joined the firm. Organic won Top Agency of the Year from the Web Marketing Association and was also named a leading web design agency by an independent research firm. Organic also won some large accounts including Bank of America, in partnership with the Omnicom network. This is a great time to join Organic because the firm has a lot of market momentum right now. And, I plan on helping to keep it going throughout 2006 and beyond.

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

Sutherland: Standard terms and conditions are always a challenge. I look forward to that day when agencies, clients, publishers, technology providers and all of our lawyers are in agreement so that I never have to review a contract for media buying again. That would be a good day.

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

Sutherland: We always want to stay very close to consumer media habits through strong measurement and analytics practices and delivering content more immediately through the ad unit versus pointing people to a bigsite.com destination to derive the value. We're doing a lot of experimenting and doubling down on the strategies and tactics that deliver results. The work that we did with DaimlerChrysler this year -- the Dodge Charger, "Unleash your Freak," campaign and the Jeep® Commander, "We are the Mudds," campaign are prime examples.

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

Sutherland: Organic approaches our client's objectives in two ways. We look at the digital experience holistically. How do we engage the potential customer from the first digital impression through to their continued loyalty to our client's brand? We also look at how the potential customer consumes information and data and what the role of the digital medium is in the consumption mix.

A great example of how we are looking at consumption habits is a recent campaign we launched for Sprint on Food Network. People watching the shows can go to the site for recipes and if they are Sprint customers they can upload the recipes and shopping lists to their cell phones. The concept started with the site, but we knew that we had to work with the network to include in-show promotions if we really wanted people to catch on.

iMedia: You mentioned the mobile element of that campaign -- what emerging media have you tested/are you using for clients?

Sutherland: I have been fortunate to have clients that are willing to try new things and have products that are geared to the elusive early adopter. We dabbled in the standard list this year: blogs, rss, wireless, viral, et cetera.

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

Sutherland: In general, I don't find that our clients are afraid of the means; it is the end that they are anxious about. For example, if a client must tie a particular sales number back to their online budget, then they are challenged to move forward with a wireless strategy that can't directly track sales in the same way that their display advertising efforts do. And, sometimes the unregulated nature of blogs, or user-generated content, can also be worrisome.

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?

Sutherland: At Organic, we tend to work with Fortune 1000 companies, but I can speak from my prior experience. Smaller companies are generally much more nimble and it is much easier to get buy in for "out of the box" ideas and the resources to implement them. The downside is that their media budgets are much smaller and a large portion of it is already allocated to certain "known" media efforts. If they want to do something in the "emerging" category, then that translates to "practically" free in the media budget.

Larger companies generally have a larger discretionary media budget for "emerging" media opportunities. They understand the value of being first to market especially when they are targeting early adopters. But, there are typically two road blocks. First, the corporate infrastructure is multi-layered, so it can be challenging to act quickly on an emerging opportunity. Second, bigger companies have a brand to protect and many emerging opportunities are unregulated and riskier. The upside of accessing hard-to-reach consumers is appealing, but it can also mean a potential PR nightmare -- like in blog advertising. Every client asks for it, but they all want to regulate where their ads appear. Only when blog networks started regulating advertisers, did big brand advertisers feel comfortable that they were not going to be trashed in the editorial content next to their ads.

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?

Sutherland: If the campaign has legs, then it's not just numbers that can sell a concept. I mentioned the Food Network campaign earlier. Now that it is live, the campaign is public knowledge. Yes, it is getting outstanding results and it's worth checking out, read it here.

Since the launch, several of our current clients have called to ask about the campaign and we have used it as an example in many new business pitches ranging from beverage services to financial services. No one has asked us about the numbers because the campaign itself tells the story.

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

Sutherland: Big surprise -- Subservient Chicken. It was brilliant because it fulfilled every client's dream for online advertising. It was viral, inexpensive and had mass appeal. We've heard every client mention it this year.

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?

Sutherland: It is easy to overlook the value of a verbal conversation especially for those of us that are so immersed in the digital world. Don't get me wrong. I think that email and instant messenger have increased productivity and accountability, but it can also be misused. Sometimes a 15-minute phone call, or face-to-face meeting, is more efficient than hours of disjointed IM/email banter.

Some day, I would like to coauthor a book with Miss Manners on the best practices for business communication in the digital age. Some of the things it will include:

• When in doubt, pick up the phone
• Follow up conversations in writing and cc: anyone that needs to know the information (I miss that old school contact report)
• Keep your Outlook up-to-date
• If more than three people need to discuss something, then call a quick meeting and include the briefing information in the Outlook invite so that they are prepared before the meeting
• If you agree to something in instant messenger, then confirm it in email so that is it documented.

iMedia: What are your goals for the coming year?

Sutherland: My biggest goal for 2006 is to lead Organic's media team to the next level. We have a lot of interesting things brewing here -- and a very talented, creative team. Look for interesting things from us in 2006.

Dawn Anfuso is senior editor for iMedia Connection.