Aaron Strout:                                   

Our special guest today is Dean Whitney.  Dean is the Vice President of internet solutions at Digitas, renowned agency.  He is also a Web 2.0 and social media expert.  I will tell you that I found Dean on Twitter, a tool that many folks in the social media space are using these days.  Welcome, Dean.  Glad to have you.

Dean Whitney:                          

Hello, Aaron.  It's great to be here.  Thanks for thinking of me for this podcast.

Aaron Strout:

Our pleasure.  So, Dean, why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself?  Obviously I've introduced your title and what you've been focusing on, but give us a little bit of background and maybe talk a little bit about what you're doing at Digitas.

Dean Whitney:                          

Yeah.  Just a little background.  I've been in this industry for about 15 years and started out more on the creative side doing really high-end and interactive video, television and sort of worked my way into the web industry, into the high-end web solutions with the computer science corporation.  Now I'm in the agency world and really acting as a technical lead and strategist with some major brands and helping them with their web initiatives.

Aaron Strout:

Great.  I'm sure all of those have helped you position yourself well for the whole new social media blitz, which is just growing by leaps and bounds everyday.  So, to that end, I have a question for you that sort of marries your old with your new and Digitas, which I believe was Bronner Slosberg Humphrey at one point in time, has its roots in really sort of the direct marketing results-oriented background.  How are you helping Digitas and ultimately your customers apply those same results-oriented principles to social media?  And the reason I ask is I think a lot of people who don’t live community, social media on a daily basis feel like it's a little bit fluffy, maybe like brands or even online advertising was considered a few years ago.  So, how do you bring that discipline and how does Digitas really bring that discipline to its customers?

Dean Whitney:                          

It's a real challenge now.  I think it's a real paradigm shift for just about everyone.  From the perspective both of our clients are traditionally silohed from technology, marketing, communications as well as on the agency side, our capabilities are traditionally silohed.  So, we do have a rebirth of interactive and web wars, but again, that's the – the challenge is to try to understand how that can be effective in this new social media world.  So, we really try to deliver the message and try to help both our internal capabilities and our clients understand what's really the cutting edge and understand there's this whole new long tail of opportunities and dialogues and conversations that are happening now that they need to be engaged in.

Aaron Strout:                                   

Obviously, this is something that Digitas was smart enough to find someone like you that's had sort of the strategy and internet background and provide this resource, even thought hey roll it up in an internet solutions, which is I'll say an appropriately vague term, it does span across a lot of things; do you see this growing quickly?  Are you hiring new people sort of on a monthly basis to support you, or is this something that's going to be a long-term approach?

Dean Whitney:                          

We are definitely hiring pretty aggressively, and the industry is growing rapidly, and I guess a big challenge is the fact that a lot of these solutions go across capabilities.  So, try to identify the right people and trying to take a more broad approach from a consulting perspective there's still – there's a big challenge when you look at Web 2.0 solutions out there and very effective online communities.  There's a big difference in what it would take to build something like that today and what it would take with the old model five years ago. 

So, it's not like we're hiring capabilities into these roles where we need more hybrid, multidisciplinary people, and that's really impacting a whole cultural shift within the company.  So, it's pretty exciting.

Aaron Strout:                                   

So, shifting gears a little bit, I mentioned up front that you and I met on Twitter.  I know that we communicate on Twitter, but there's so many different places in the social media world that you can connect these days.  I think you said something about reading the We Are Smarter book, which is one of the reasons why we were connecting.  Now, I'm going – I think you had mentioned in our pre-call that you're sort of still in the process of reading, so I won't put you on the spot.  Any first impressions of the book and sort of the overall strategy behind the book?

Dean Whitney:                          

I'm really enjoying reading the book, and I think what I like about it is part of my role ends up being acting as a translator in trying to explain either technology into what's of value to a marketing person or trying to explain to a technologist how to execute a business idea.  So, there's lots of great, easy to understand examples of how the social media and Web 2.0 are affecting today's culture. 

Aaron Strout:                                   

So, to that end and as a little bit of a follow-up question, thinking about what you do and the solutions you provide to customers on a daily basis and mixing that with some of the best practices in the book, we like to on these podcasts pick out one or two best practices that we can impart to folks out there that are just getting started with their community or their social media initiative.  So, any pearls of wisdom or a best practice that you've seen, maybe things you start with your clients on and how to get started?

Dean Whitney:                          

I think one thing that I try to do across the portfolio of my clients is that as we design some kind of a social media strategy typically it becomes a platform – an engagement platform.  What we'll do is we'll go through the exercise of trying to dream up what that – what the most amazing platform, how that would look, how that would – both in the social sphere and in the destination side, if you will, what that would look like.  Then strip away everything we can to try to define what's the baseline?  What's the absolutely minimal go-to-market solution?  Because once you get it out there you're going to get your most valuable feedback from your – from the end users and from – just from seeing it work, seeing how people interact with it, how it engages.  That's when you're really going to know what are the real value components to make part of that strategy and part of that solution.

Aaron Strout:                                   

And do you find your clients open to that idea, or do you get pushback?

Dean Whitney:                          

They are because I think the idea of go to market quickly, keep the minimal up-front investment, and then also having a much more informed strategy once you've gone to market and once you start to get people to use the solution.  A lot of times we bring up the Flickr example, and Flickr's still in beta, but they – it's kind of web development 2.0 where we deploy things in incremental enhancements and really use our customer base as our co-developers in helping us shape that solution.

Aaron Strout:                                   

Funny to think of a company that's been out there for, what, four or five years – maybe three or four years that a lot of people use, and I know I use on a daily basis, to still be in beta, but I guess that's a safe way to say, "Please expect bugs and rapid development."  People so far have been willing to bear with it.

Dean Whitney:                          

Yeah.  I think it really builds that brand loyalty because people feel that you value their input.

Aaron Strout:                                   

Yeah.  So, Dean, one final question, and then I will let you go.  I like to ask folks this.  This is sort of a new question I'm asking, but if you were allowed to read one blog and one blog only which one would it be and why?  Obviously I ask this because I always like to get good recommendations, but I think it speaks to the fact that we all get our information in different ways, but who do you – is the most important and really seems to get it and imparts the most value on a daily basis or maybe a weekly basis?

Dean Whitney:                          

Well, this probably won't be a new insight for you, but I think if I had to choose one it would be TechCrunch, and just because there's just so many posts, and they really seem to discover – because Michael Arrington has got that weblebrity status, and I think a lot of the Web 2.0 innovators are getting him the information early.  So, from the perspective just seeing new solutions, seeing new types of functionality and how they relate to other solutions.

When we're talking about whether it's social networking platforms or social ratings, seeing who's competing with who and what are the new innovations and what are their key differentiators I think that site does a real good job of keeping you informed on Web 2.0 businesses.

Aaron Strout:                                   

Thank you for that insight.  By the way, I love that word: weblebrity.  I'd not heard of that before, but quite appropriate, and certainly I think Mike would fall into that category.  Interestingly enough, I did a podcast with him a few weeks ago, and I called him an uber-blogger, which he said he understood was a compliment, but he sort of bristled a little bit.  My guess is he might bristle a little bit at the weblebrity, his point being he's one of the community and the community helps each other, but I'd say he probably has a leg up at least on myself, maybe on a few other people.

Dean, thank you for joining us today.  This was helpful, and we appreciate your insights.

Dean Whitney:                          

Thank you, Aaron.

Dean Whitney:                          

We appreciate you listening in to this series of the WeShow podcasts.  To find other podcasts like this you can check out WeAreSmarter.org, Mzinga.com and also iTunes under "We Are Smarter."  Thanks so much for joining us.  We look forward to seeing you next week.