Current work

Interactive Director of Product Development and Design

The Baltimore Sun – 10/07 to present

Assembled, manage and art direct a team of web professionals including web designers, web developers, videographers and project managers. This team is highly flexible and has been designed to grow and adapt to any new business opportunities that arise. We act as an in-house creative agency providing marketing solutions, product development and design for clients both internal and external.

Identify and recommend new business opportunities based on research and knowledge of web trends. Lead development of new products in conjunction with sales, marketing and editorial departments. These products are often responsible for significant growth in revenue and readership.

Work closely with marketing manager to conceptualize, create and employ campaigns for all Baltimore Sun Media Group online brands.

Conceptualize and direct design strategy, branding and marketing collateral for baltimoresun.com and the products we create.

Experienced in designing for SEO, purchasing Google Adwords, scheduling online display campaigns, scheduling admail campaigns, scheduling print ad campaigns and performing other marketing related functions.

Use metrics from Omniture and Google Analytics to track performance and make changes to web sites based on reader usage.

Follow metrics from online campaigns (banner and admail reports) and make adjustments to campaigns midstream to improve ROI.

Build and present proposals to clients to acquire new business. Build and present proposals to senior management to develop new products.

Evaluate third party technology and lead implementation. Manage relationships with vendors. When appropriate, develop internal solutions to eliminate vendor expense, make processes more efficient and ensure quality.

Manage and prioritize the needs of multiple customers, never missing deadlines and always providing the appropriate solution to any challenge.

Lead projects and drive team progress by establishing and maintaining effective working relationships with managers, employees, external clients and third party vendors.

Identify opportunities and implement solutions that increase the effectiveness and efficiencies of the department, including the development of tools, processes and reports related to job responsibilities.

Share information and learnings in both informal and formal settings throughout the company.

Create and manage department budget.

Examples of recent work

The explore sites

The Sun is publisher of a number of small circulation community newspapers. These papers overlap to cover the Baltimore metro region at a more microscopic, or hyperlocal, level. Until recently, each of these publications had its own web site created and managed by a vendor. The sites were not monetized and the full potential for traffic was not realized.

We developed the explore sites by combining the newspapers into geographic area by county. We did this in order to allow the audience to find information that was relevant to them but wasn't constrained to the newspaper circulation area.

Each publication still retains its own site, but exists under a larger umbrella brand that helps not only with audience accessibility of information and SEO, but also gives us a larger single site for ad placement that is easier to sell.

The first site of these sites launched in late May after a four-month development period. Subsequent sites launched in two week intervals thereafter. Traffic has improved and advertising space is selling quickly.

Development for these sites was done quickly using PHP and MySql. The CMS was built in DoJo.

Explorehoward.com
Explorebaltimorecounty.com
Explorecarroll.com

The video project

Two years ago The Sun began to offer video advertising, allowing our clients to run their television commercials in banner positions on our site. These ads were successful as most ads that use animation or motion of some sort attract attention.

As I began to learn more about video by producing my own short film and by watching more of what others were doing online, it occurred to me that what we were doing wasn't reaching its full potential. The TV ads weren't meant for online use and didn't speak to that audience.

I hired a videographer and started to develop online video campaigns for our clients that were more specifically geared to an online audience.

Instead of retrofitting a 4:3 television sized ad into a 300x250 banner ad, we edited our video to fit perfectly into 728x90, 160x600, 300x100 and all other banner ad sizes. The video would speak directly to the online audience suggesting a click through as opposed to making a phone call or visiting a storefront.

The ads linked to micro sites we developed for the advertiser. The sites acted like infomercials but without the over-the-top, tacky sales pitch associated with their TV counterparts. We video a business, or a part of a business, and cut the video into bite-sized chunks that the audience could play on demand based on their interest of a topic. The result is an interactive, information seeking experience that matches the online audience better than the passive viewing associated with television.

These new campaigns have been extremely successful for our clients. Click through rates on the banners are much higher than any of our other products including Flash and other types of rich media.

Visitors find the sites via the banner ads and through search – all sites are optimized for search engines. Once there, users spend an average six minutes of time – a huge increase over the two to four minutes averaged by newspaper sites. More importantly, after watching the videos, about 20% of the sites visitors reach out to contact the advertiser using forms provided on the sites. We have sent patients to hospitals for specific treatments. We have sold homes. We have increased traffic to local museums. We have increased gym memberships. And we have built a new revenue stream where there was none before.

Ryland Homes: Banner 1 Banner 2 Banner 3, Site
Lifebridge Health and Fitness Center: Site
Baltimore Washington Medical Center: Banner 1 Banner 2 Banner 3, Site
Geppi's Entertainment Museum: Banner 1 Site

Bthesite.com

Traditionally, web sites have been a second thought to an established print product. Because this site was conceived in conjunction with the print product, we decided that it needed to play a larger role than just a regurgitation of what was in print.

Bthesite.com and b the paper are meant to work together to create a conversation surrounding local news and events. The paper is a collection of news briefs and stories of interest. The web site is a blog written by b staff members with comments, photos and video provided by the site users.

The site and the paper continue to gain traction in the community. Traffic and ad sales have grown since launch in early May after two months of development.

With a backbone of WordPress for the site structure and CMS and MyphpBB for talkboards and registration, additional functionality and automation was added using PHP and MySql. Users can upload photos directly to the site or indirectly from their personal flickr accounts. Video can be shared by simply pasting in urls from YouTube, Revver or Vimeo.

Bthesite.com

Awards

International Academy of the Visual Arts
2008 Communicator Awards

Silver Medal
Creative direction, design
Ethan Allen micro site

Silver Medal
Creative direction, design
Geppi Museum micro site

HBAM Max Awards

2007 Outstanding Use of Technology – Large Volume Builder
Creative Direction
Ryland Homes video site

W3 Awards

Silver, 2007, Rich Media, children's category
Creative direction
Animal Grossology video site

Addy awards

Silver, 2007, Banner ad
Creative direction
Party City flash banner

2007 MDDC Press Association awards

3rd place, Use of Cutting Edge Technology
Creative direction
Homicide Map

1st place, Innovative Online Advertising
Creative direction
Animal Grossology video site

3rd place, Innovative Online Advertising
Creative direction
Ryland Homes video banner

2nd place, Innovative Online Advertising Campaign
Creative direction
Ryland Homes video site

3rd place, Innovative Online Advertising Campaign
Creative direction, design
Geppi Museum video site