[thelist] RE: Transition from Print to Web

[Burhan Khalid]

Steven Streight wrote:
> Come up with concepts for web sites? A creative
> director? Who has merely a little experience in web
> related work?
> 
> I, gosh, I don't know what to say exactly. This sounds
> like a company that may need to re-think its whole
> interent marketing strategy.

Heh, I'll pass that on to my marketing manager.

> I would expect the marketing department, or even sales
> department, to come up with web site concepts, before
> I'd expect a creative director with little web
> experience to do it.
> 
> Don't mean to sound cynical or bitter, but if you are
> not highly experienced in a medium and its special
> requirements and audience behavior, you should not be
> coming up with concepts for the medium. It's not,
> IMHO, a creative decision, it's more a marketing or
> sales decision, working closely with web design, web
> usability, and market research.

Where I work (by that I mean my geographic location), marketing and 
sales people are not expected to be in tune with audience behavior or 
highly experienced in the medium.  Of course I would love it if my 
marketing people were top-notch designers and usability experts, but the 
fact is that it is unrealistic to expect marketing and sales people to 
be experts in technical fields.  Yes, they need to know what is it that 
they are marketing or selling, the strengths/weaknesses of the 
product/service; but nothing beyond that.

In my market, its more of *whom* you are talking to, rather than what 
you are talking about.  I still haven't adjusted to it (being more 
accustomed to the technical merits type discussion) -- however, its just 
not how business is done where I am.

When my sales people go out to a client, find out what is their need 
(ie. They need to sell widgets) -- they will tell them about our 
company's experience and strength in that area (Hey, did you know that 
we did the online widget store for Widget Company, Inc.?) and proceed to 
give a brief on why they should go with us, etc. etc.

When the client comes to our offices (they usually send a 
marketing/sales person) -- we (that is my marketing and technical 
people) sit down with them to iron out any concerns before we launch 
into our internal development process.

> The question remains: what do users need, and how can
> we meet those needs via a web or a blog or a wiki, etc.?

This decision will be made by people that are more experienced in web 
development, not the creative director.  I guess you misunderstood her 
position.  We would make the decision on what *type* of solution we are 
going to develop for a particular business need; she would then decide 
on things such as brand integration (how will the logo be integrated 
with the layout of the website?) proper color conversion (for example, 
rending the color correctly on monitors and converting from print to 
screen), a sketch (non-computer) of the website; and then hand it off to 
the designers.

Anyway, thanks for your comments.  Interesting read :)

- Burhan