If you’re an experienced digital strategist with solid account management skills, enjoy working with clients, believe in better work through collaboration, and want to create, build, and expand your online marketing knowledge, then tell us why you’re the right candidate for this role. The perfect fit is a strategic thinker who can marry analytics insight with brand marketing goals, and knows their way around a cocktail shaker.

Should you be interested in joining our team, please submit a cover letter and resume (or a link to your Linkedin profile). Tell us in your cover letter why you consider yourself a digital strategist, and let us about your favorite cocktail or adult beverage. Feel to reach out to us through various social media channels, or come to our next Bower Hill Society event (http://www.BowerHillSociety.com/events)

No recruiters, and this role will be based in our DUMBO, Brooklyn, NY office.

RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Develop cohesive, compelling strategic visions for our clients that guide their overall business plans
• Performing and directing research, analyzing trends and results to determine strategic implications
• Collaborating with cross-functional project teams to motivate, create, and implement short and long-term integrated marketing strategies
• Acting as the senior strategic client contact
• Facilitating client strategy and key deliverable meetings
• Nurturing client relationships and presenting monthly account growth recommendations to the CEO
• Coordinating with our Producers to create project milestones and deliverable schedules
• Supporting the Producers in client training related exercises (admins, marketing softwares, etc.)
• Crafting monthly client strategy reviews, including digital media recommendations, research, campaign implementation, and market analysis
• Managing schedules, budgets, assets, and overall project organization to ensure requirements and project deliverables dates are clearly communicated, understood and executed upon
• Actively monitoring project risks and scope creep to foresee/identify potential problems and proactively identify solutions to address them in advance
• Communicating and documenting project status and strategic recommendations to clients, team members, and senior management on a regular basis; escalating potential issues accordingly within the appropriate channels

QUALIFICATIONS:

• Bachelors degree and at least 7-9+ years of experience in digital marketing strategy
• Must have solid digital and integrated strategic management experience.
• Excellent verbal, written, presentation, and interpersonal communication skills
• Should understand how to work with both left-brained and right-brained humans while keeping puppies calm
• Mobile, paid media, and social media/community strategy and execution experience an asset
• Superior written and verbal communication skills and outstanding presentation abilities
• Proven experience working with large teams, small teams, and working alone
• Must have all if not primary (bulk of) experience working on digital campaigns. Must have experience working with/managing cross-disciplinary teams.
• Must have experience working with other agencies and partners
• Extremely analytical, detail-oriented, and organized
• Experience in prioritizing a heavy workload and the ability to meet & exceed deadlines with accuracy
• Experience creating strategy presentations and recommendations based on account performance
• Team player with an entrepreneurial spirit, willing to take turns concocting a cocktail for the team
• Solid Excel skills required (Vlookups and pivottables skills make our hearts sing!)

BENEFITS

Healthcare coverage, paid vacation days, sick leave, personal days and holidays. Relaxed productive work environment, amazing office views, possibly a few office pups, Sonos DJ battles, frequent 5pm company cocktail hours, weekly team lunches, and much more! Compensation commensurate with experience.

1.  KitchenAid’s Obama Oops
The Scoop: Someone tweeted, “Obamas gma even knew it was going 2 b bad! ‘She died 3 days b4 he became president’. #nbcpolitics”

MG: Come on, an offensive tweet from the wrong twitter handle? Are we really still surprised by this?

ST: What this brand did may have been a common (and very offensive) gaffe, but have I sold my KitchenAid pro mixer? Nope, can’t say that I have.

AL: iMedia makes a valid point suggesting that businesses need to tailor their policy of social media transparency. If you’ve chosen to give one person, or a small team, the reigns in order to keep the necessary personalization and pace required for truly great Twitter engagement, you should lift the curtain and let consumers see who they’re talking to.  In the best case, it will put a human face on your brand. In the worst, it’ll cover your ass.

KitchenAid also missed an opportunity in their apology. This was an excellent opportunity for KitchenAid to define themselves in opposition to such a tasteless comment.  All press is good press when you can take ownership of the conversation.

2. European Commission: High Heels, Makeup, and Clubbing! It’s for Girls!
The Scoop: In support of a campaign for the European Commission’s Women in Research and Innovation, the Commission commissioned (ha) an ad that showed young women posing awkwardly, putting on makeup, and playing with beakers.

JY: The “Science: It’s a Girl Thing” tagline doesn’t help.  They could’ve at least shot images of real women in science and ran a smart, funny, and empowering ad by displaying a graph showing the indirect relationship between the potential of women in science vs. the quality of pick up lines guys attempt. Authenticity goes a long way.

AL:  This is the stupidest thing I. Have. Ever. Seen.  Forget the fact that both the production values and conception look like a B+ project for a high school Intro to Communications course.  The message here appears to be, “it takes science to make makeup, and you like makeup, don’t you, girls?” It all comes down to the fact that both the client and the agency developed this campaign based on radically inaccurate assumptions about their target audience.  The fault here lies within the dummies that either failed to pursue, or completely ignored any feedback from their target audience.

3. Express “Get the Look”
The Scoop: Express used a new advertising tool that matched images on Yahoo.com’s news platform with similar items on sale by the retailer. This resulted in an image of an Afghan militant with a sidebar that said “get the look!” with a similar scarf to the one in the image.

MG: Ouch. This had to hurt. But seriously, it just goes to show that all the developments in adtech that we’ve been following – while they’re amazing, aren’t always foolproof. I’m not sure how this could have been avoided, other than making a serious, serious consideration to the level to which you’re willing to customize and personalize. It doesn’t always work for you.

AL: I can’t imagine too many circumstances in which “get the look” would be appropriate for a hard news site.  It would be more appropriate for entertainment news or any other site where readers aren’t likely to be asked if they want to dress like a convict, murder victim, shamed politician or combatant.

4. Belvedere
Belvedere showed an ad of a woman being grabbed from behind by a man, with a startled expression on her face. The text on the ad said “Unlike some people, Belvedere always goes down smoothly.”

AL:  Sexual violence is not funny.  Period.

ST: SO many companies have made gaffes similar to this, if not even worse. While I personally think this is awful, I can’t see it really hurting the brand in the long run.

JY: I actually do think this kind of ad might have a long-term impact on the way they’re being perceived by their consumers (despite the two issued apologies and donation to RAINN). Rebuilding/ regaining trust is the hardest thing to do for a brand.

5. Sausage or Democracy?
The Scoop: Pizza Hut created an ad asking people at the Town Hall Presidential debate whether they prefer pepperoni or sausage, allegedly mocking the democratic process.

MG: I mean, if you can’t mock it, you just have to cry. I thought the ad was funny – we need to keep a place of humor in advertising. If we’re all going to get offended at everything, what’s the point?

AL:  Are we citing Pizza Hut as a source of journalistic integrity?  While many may find this ad somewhere between silly and tacky, most media consumers are savvy enough to know from whom to expect serious discourse. However, consumer uproar should indicate to Pizza Hut that this was seriously misaligned with the values and voice their consumers expect.  This was the bigger failure.

6. Nokia Fake Out
The Scoop: Nokia made a video with a professional camera, made an ad out of it, and said it was shot with their new mobile camera.

ST: This is different from GOPro how exactly?

MG: How dumb do you think we are? How dumb are you?

AL: Seconded.  Don’t attempt to fake, re-create or enhance content.  Especially when you’re selling it on the basis of its authenticity!  These marketers should know as well as the rest of us that we are living in an age of transparency, where dozens of TMZ readers will spend hours analyzing pixel “heat” to figure out if celeb scandals are Photoshopped.  You will get caught.

7. McDonalds Hashtag
The Scoop: McDonald’s created a hashtag campaign asking patrons to talk about their McDonald’s stories including #McDStories. Instead, their haters (including PETA) had a field day.

AL: No, you can’t control consumers’ behavior in social media.  But you sure can predict it. Starting a hashtag campaign in direct opposition to the public’s perception is a recipe for jokes, sarcasm, and very obvious comparisons between what a brand says and what it actually provides.

JY: I would’ve preferred to see an “Imlovingit” hashtag. The hashtag is still specific to the brand but broad enough to cover any potential setbacks.

ST: I don’t see this as either a win or a fail. I see it as a poorly strategized and poorly executed campaign. If the #hashtag had been pre-defined for them, would the campaign been better executed by the masses? No one can honestly say. In today’s society where more and more visual social content is being produced, perhaps they would be better served by pushing out images of their healthier options such as salads, or spinning how their existing menu can be tailored to those on special diets

8. Greenpeace is Alienating – say what?
The Scoop: Greenpeace created an imposter site posing as Shell Oil asking people to make funny slogans in response to images of the environmental effects of oil drilling in the Artic.

AL: If you can’t beat the trolls – feed them!  Someone at Greenpeace was clearly paying attention to McDonalds this year.  It’s debatable whether their ability to fool some users into believing it was a real Shell property is a failure.  They inspired exactly the response they wanted.

ST: I love the idea of this – but stealing assets, including all of the videos, tweets, retweets, etc. – I am opposed to. Is it a fail? I don’t know. It seemed like EVERYONE was talking about both Shell and Greenpeace, so they both got publicity out of this. Not sure that was Greenpeace’s intent. (Shell is not suing Greenpeace – and Greenpeace should be counting their lucky stars for that!)

9. Nike “Find Your Greatness” Campaign
The Scoop: Nike created an ad that showed an overweight kid running and said that we all have the capacity for greatness. YouTube commenters either made fun of the kid in the ad, or said that Nike was trying to use an overweight kid to sell shoes.

ST: To me, it’s a HUGE WIN.  The feeling is genuine, and the overall commentary is positive.  At the end of the day, if the goal is to sell shoes do we care as long as people are up off their arses and actually working out? I certainly don’t! I see this as brilliant marketing Haters are always going to hate – these guys are pure genius.

AL:  Point: Nike. The fat kid is a very powerful symbol in America: laziness, failure, and shame.  That’s surely what these negative YouTube commenters were reacting to.  Nike’s approach to that symbol – which in reality is also its target consumer – is perfectly elegant in switching the presentation of this idea from, “Look at this kid struggle.  It’s a futile, mockable struggle,” to “look at this kid’s struggle.  It’s a universal, inspiring struggle we all understand.”

JY: If the message was genuine, people will connect to it and take it upon themselves to moderate the conversation. Right now, there are way more positive comments about this kid on YouTube so, to me, it’s a win.

MG: If you’re using YouTube trolls as a source of sentiment analysis, I think the fail is not in your marketing, but in your marketing analytics. Also, yes, Nike is trying to use this ad to sell shoes. Did we think there was some other goal here?

10. BBH Labs
The Scoop: BBH labs created “homeless hot spots” for SXSW, which allowed people to pay homeless people for access to their wifi hotspot on the street.

ST: This was disgusting. Point blank.

MG: Awful.

AL: Disgusting.

JY: Pathetic

“What’s the point of social media?”

No, for real, raise your hand. I know someone’s asked you. You’ve probably had a moment when you’ve even asked yourself.

The “point” of social media, as with any other marketing efforts, is to grow your business.

Consumer behavior has changed a lot in the past 10 years, and it’s no secret that your customers expect to see you all over the Internet. But that doesn’t mean that you should move forward without a roadmap.

But how do you find that treasure map? Here goes-

1) Focus on Your Business Goals

Anything that takes company time and effort should be closely tied to your overall business goals. If you’re going to use resources to create Social Media content, why deviate from what you’re already trying to accomplish?

Ask yourself a few questions to see how Social Media can connect to your overall marketing plan:

• How does your business provide value to customers?
• Why do people pay money for your product or services?
• How are you working to grow your business?

Once you stop to consider what motivates people to choose you over your competition. You can capitalize on that motivation, and not just in your social media plan, but also in your larger marketing strategy.

2) Use Metrics in Perspective

How do you think about your social media numbers? If you’re looking at things like shares, followers, repins, and likes, you’re probably not going to be able to tie these metrics back to your overall marketing goals. Those numbers are “Vanity Metrics,” and mean nothing in terms of how and when people are hearing your messaging- and more importantly, what they are doing after they hear you.

Eric Reis describes Vanity Metrics as any data that doesn’t help you make decisions. He suggests using actionable metrics, like split-testing new features, tracking conversions on a per-customer basis, tracking groups of customers over time, and monitoring customer behavior based on specific keywords.

What it all boils down to is this: track what your customers are doing to find and move through your conversion funnel, and know how that affects your bottom line.

It’s not that user behavior on your social media properties isn’t important, it’s that those interactions need to tie back to your overall business model and goals.

3) Measure Social Media Against Key Performance Indicators

Before you start any social media campaign, start with your biggest goals, and build your content around them.

If you are you trying to increase Lifetime Customer Value, consider ramping up your customer service offerings on Facebook and Twitter. Then test to see if your customers stick around for longer, or if those people talking to you on Facebook and Twitter take less time to convert.

Want to grow your sales? See which sites are sending you the most referral traffic, and post more high-quality content to those sites. You can monitor to see if the referral traffic from those sites results in a higher average transaction total or higher conversion rates.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering what to do with those vanity metrics- narrow in on them and use them to make decisions! Track which posts are getting you the most repins, likes, retweets, shares, and clicks. If those are the posts that your fans like the most, they can point out what you should be doing more of (and what you can ix-nay).

And the next time someone asks, “What’s the point of Social Media?” you’ll know the answer – it’s helping your business grow!

My name is Ja’Nai Harris and I am interning at The Jar Group for the Summer. I recently graduated from The Young Women’s Leadership School of East Harlem and will be attending Gettysburg College in the fall. During my High School career I participated in several extracurricular activities including  The Step Up: Young Luminaries program that got me the internship at Jar. When I was informed that I would be interning here I didn’t know what to expect. We were given a brief descriptions of our expectations as an intern and what the company was about, but you don’t really know what a company is like until you observe their workers, website and blog.

Being that they are a Digital Marketing company I expected their website, blog and other social media sites to be up to par, so I was not surprised when I researched their sites and saw updated material not only referring to their company and its successes, but to other marketing, technology and current events going on that relate to their company. Although their new website and blog are amazing, what really makes me happy to be interning here is that I am allowed to do things that I enjoy in an atmosphere that I am comfortable in. I love to write and am interested in learning how to make a brand of myself as well as a company. At The Jar Group I am able to learn how to navigate social networks and use them in a way to send a positive message out to the world whether, it’s the business world, consumer world or simply the general public. I love how comfortable and upbeat The Jar Group environment is. It’s what motivates me to commute from my homey two room apartment in East Harlem to Dumbo every morning.

Although my Internship has just begun and I have the whole Summer ahead of me I am sure that my time here will be not only be fun, but an experience that will allow me to grow as person.

I recently had the privilege of attending a day-long seminar at General Assembly on APIs and their role in the digital marketing ecosystem. The day consisted of a fairly interactive discussion on how business are changing the way their data is consumed, and we heard from extremely intelligent speakers, like Shafqat Islam, the CEO of Newscred.

What is an API you may ask, and why is it relevant? An API stands for “Application Programming Interface” and is essentially a way for 3^rd parties to access the inner-workings/data of a website. Think of it as one piece of software presenting information in a common language so that other software can access to read and use that information. Common uses of APIs include using Facebook Connect to log-into your Netflix account, or using HopStop to find directions around New York City. HopStop relies on the Google Maps API, as well as the data the MTA has made accessible and promoted through the MTA App Quest.

What does this mean for marketers? While tech companies have always been the early adopters (Twitter gets 10x as many calls to their API as visits to Twitter.com), traditional brick and mortar business could begin to release their data to the public to woo developers. and create a buzz around an increasingly tech-centric consumer base. Andrew Chen famously stated “The fastest way to spread your product is by distributing it on an platform using APIs, not MBAs.”

What if your favorite sports team released their players’ stats, and dozens of developers release applications measuring stats to help with obsessed fans desire for the latest data? Airlines and travel companies that have released their data resulted all sorts of interesting integrated flight/booking applications. What if your local bank allowed you to write a program dictating your own transferring and saving rules?

Building an API gives developers the opportunity to be creative with what you have to offer. By creating a new way to use your data, developers will evangelize your brand, helping to find new uses for your information that you may never have thought of yourself. On top of that, apps built on an API will often put your company in the hands of a new, niche customer base that you haven’t yet reached. Hopefully more and more companies will continue to include publishing their data as an API as part of their cohesive marketing strategy.

We’ll help you reach the right audience for your business by:

• Identifying how your site is actually being consumed right now, and by whom
• Defining audience growth opportunities
• Figuring out where your audience “hangs out” online and orchestrating targeted buys in those spaces
• Finding other sites where your audience is performing the desired conversions, and employ “lookalike modeling” so similar users will behave the same way on your site
• Understanding how your competitors are using their media dollars, and what that means for you
• Identifying gap opportunities in the marketplace

To get maximum bang for your buck, JAR can help you align paid marketing strategies with search optimization to make your brand an unstoppable united force on the web. We’ll use our media expertise to advertise your business in formats the competition doesn’t even know about yet, and keep you extremely competitive in traditional online ad spaces.

The JAR Group is an award winning, fast growing digital services firm that focuses on driving realized value to our clients. By understanding our clients’ customer behaviors online we then grow, build, and optimize the necessary channels including but not limited to Paid Media, Social Media, Affiliate Marketing, Mobile, SEO, and eCRM. We provide creative, UX, technology and strategic support, and ensure that ongoing research and analytic insight use feedback to continuously increase our clients’ ROI.

Commission and Compensation package will be very aggressive and encourage groundbreaking strategy, concepts, and sales.

Requirements:

• 5+ years of sales experience within advertising agency or creative service/consulting business with digital at the core
• Strong understanding of core developments in digital marketing and underlying technologies.
• Have existing relationships with companies, advertisers, agencies, and potential channel partners. You should be able to get a real meeting today with a phone call.
• Ability to understand and fluently communicate JAR’s core business propositions and offerings.
• Identify and close deals with digital brands and advertising agencies to achieve JAR’s and individual’s quarterly and annual sales goals.
• Excellent sales skills with a proven track record of success negotiating, closing and delivering complex, consultative, high revenue, deals (6-figure +).
• Comfort working in a fast paced, rapidly changing, start-up environment.
• Ability/willingness to travel as needed.

Responsibilities

• Help define and develop a new business strategy tailored to the needs of the JAR group
• Proactively initiate new client relationships
• Follow up on new business leads and identify organic growth opportunities
• Prioritize opportunities
• Define new business processes, and manage that process in conjunction with the CEO and senior team
• Contribute to capabilities presentations and other marketing materials
• Coordinate internal resources within office and cross-office to develop client proposals
• Lead new business/pitch presentations
• Develop and maintain a client and prospect database using Salesforce.com
• Leverage our existing partnerships and develop new ones
• Lead internal new business meetings and agency updates
• Work with the agency management team to meet overall agency vision and objectives

To Apply:
Please submit a Resume and Cover Letter answering the following questions to jobs@thejargroup.com:

1. If you were to start selling at the JAR group tomorrow, who would be your first sales client, and why?
2. Briefly describe what you would see as your difficulties in selling the JAR group.

This is a full time position.  You can work remotely or in our Brooklyn, New York office.
To be considered send your resume and salary requirements to jobs@thejargroup.com.  Please, no phone inquiries or agency recruiter solicitations.

Summary:
The PPC Media Strategist will be responsible for creating, implementing, and optimizing online strategies and initiatives for a variety of clients that cross multiple industries.  Client facing calls and meetings are also required.  Strong landing page testing background is desired using Google Website Optimizer or similar tools.

Key responsibilities:

• Developing, managing, and evaluating multiple paid search programs to include, but not limited to: 1) concepting PPC keyword campaigns, 2) implementing new media campaigns, 3) analyzing return on investments, and 4) reporting performance, education, and program planning
• Utilizing SEM methodologies and best practices to increase profits associated with all SEM online media and social media programs and initiatives
• Conducting strategic site assessments of search engines to include, but not limited to, Google, Yahoo and Bing
• Conceptualizing, initiating, and maintaining high-volume paid search programs to continually improve key metrics (e.g. PPC, search, convert) across campaigns
• Managing and maintaining internal agency and external vendor relationships
• Supporting and improving campaign profitability through ongoing analysis and optimization of pages
• Managing the tracking and maintenance of integrated campaign expenditures versus budget projections
• Planning, developing, and implementing key word selections while prioritizing expansion efforts
• Performing advanced/complex reporting and data analysis activities; summarizing data into meaningful reports to be utilized by senior management
• Generating client-facing reports and communicating with clients at an executive level
• Assisting with general invoicing and tracking of media expenditures
• Ensuring all marketing and digital marketing initiatives align with the client’s strategies

Qualifications:

• 3-4 years related online media experience
• Undergraduate degree required
• Advanced knowledge of website optimization techniques for major search engines
• Web-savvy and advanced proficiency using web analytics tools and PPC ad systems (e.g. Google AdWords, Yahoo, Bing, etc.)
• Advanced experience collecting, analyzing and summarizing complex data into meaningful and actionable reports
• SEM account management and client-facing experience
• Strong working knowledge of Microsoft Office Suite (Word, PowerPoint, Excel)
• Strong verbal and written communication skills as well as strong analytical and logical reasoning skills
• Ability to manage multiple tasks concurrently in a deadline-driven process
• Ability to manage internal customer relationships and expectations, through effective interpersonal communication, negotiating and partnering
• Online agency experience a plus