Agency Life

You are currently browsing articles tagged Agency Life.

Farewell and Roundtable Bing-style

August 24, 2009 in Agency Life by Nick | 2 comments

Bing has undergone significant changes over the past year – a new logo and web site, fluctuating roles and responsibilities, shifts in the economy, and a broadening diversity of client work.

Unsung Hero

Binger Emeritus - Melissa Blevins

Our most recent staff change was the resignation of Melissa Blevins. She has been working virtually from a home office in Colorado Springs for the past two years and has done a fantastic job. Through her relocation and travels to Beijing, she has been dedicated and shown amazing follow through in managing clients, projects, and different timezones!

While we’ve been very thankful that we were able to extend her role with Bing after her move westward, Melissa has decided it’s time to look for other opportunities closer to home. We’re confident her professionalism will take her far. Thanks Melissa, for your commitment to Bing through the years and good luck to you in your endeavors! Take care of Martin the cat and Robert for us!

With so many changes going on, we decided to hold a roundtable to address the direction of the business, explore opportunities, and get each other’s perspectives on how things are going. Our HR consultant, Rosalie Catalano, facilitated the discussion and kept it on track through our banter. Several things stood out as we enjoyed our Current Cuisine lunches.

  • We value our communication channels and enjoy working in “unstructured” structure.
  • Each of us brings a dynamic value-add to their position, and we utilize each other’s strengths to explore opportunities.
  • Our ability to adapt to changing needs is a company strength.
  • Maintaining a healthy work/life balance is important to all of us.
  • We strive to be an efficient extension of our clients’ marketing teams.

Keeping a watchful eye on things like the economy, competition, and other variables that are potential threats on the business, we feel that we have stayed the course to keep our clients satisfied as well as our internal customer. In what turned out to be a mini SWOT analysis of Bing, we seemed to come away knowing it’s not a perfect company, but it has unique strengths that we all contribute to.

Tags: , , , , , ,

Economic impact at home

February 12, 2009 in Agency Life by Nick | Permalink

This has been a tough and emotional week for everyone at Bing. Like many businesses, we have been impacted by the downturn in the economy and I had to make the difficult decision to lay off two exceptional members of our staff. We’ll greatly miss them, and wish them the best of luck.

In addition, we have restructured our creative department and are now offering some of our higher level strategic thinking through a contractor arrangement with Todd who had been on staff as creative director. This restructuring will allow both of us to focus more tightly on our core competencies, while continuing to collaborate on key projects.

This is one of the hardest decisions I’ve had to make as the owner of Bing, but I believe it is the right decision for the company to remain healthy and productive in order to serve our clients. We have a solid team in place and the unifying factor is that we all believe in putting the customer first while continuing to provide our clients with excellent service.

If you have comments, questions or thoughts, please feel free to contact me.

Tags: , , , ,

I am a Traffic Manager

October 24, 2008 in Agency Life by Laura | 2 comments

Hello, my name is Laura Arber and I am the Traffic Manager at Bing Design. When I tell people outside the agency world my title, I follow up with “No, I do not work for an automobile dealership, and No, I do not direct traffic at busy intersections.”

So what do I do? The short answer is project management … The kicker is that I am the one person who is aware of every open project going on at Bing. Every. Single. One.

I receive projects from our outstanding Account Executives and assign them to our talented design staff. I then make sure the project stays on schedule and on budget. This last line sounds so simple… but the pot has a lot of hands in it: clients, account executives, designers, creative directors… I am the person who gets everyone to sing Kumbaya and still be productive.

How to do this wasn’t taught at Wright State University. But we manage. Over the years we’ve developed processes and put the right people in place to make it work.

I like my job. I really like knowing what everyone is working on. I’m not sure that everyone else always likes me poking into their business, but I do get to say ‘It’s my job.’

I left the corporate world to come to Bing, and working for a small company is outstanding. It helps that I am only six blocks from Kismet, a cute boutique in Yellow Springs. Google maps tell me it’s 0.5 miles from my office, which means I can walk and shop in a lunch hour. There’s nothing better.

So the next time you meet someone who tells you “I’m a Traffic Manager,” you’ll know that person ‘knows it all.’ If you’re interested in more tales from the traffic side of agency life, I recommend a blog called “Traffic Patterns.”

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

« Older entries