Last week a VP of human resources was telling me about a “digital strategist” position he was trying to fill. His was a digital shop whose roots were in SEO and SEM. The client roster was a veritable Who’s Who and they were growing like a dookie but wanted to expand in the direction of web and application development and better compete against the likes of Razorfish, Big Spaceship, and R/GA.
Again, the job was “digital strategist.” Listen to what he had to say and I paraphrase: “Our digital strategists are hybrids and kind of hard to find. They are part account manager, part technologist, ideation generator, account planner and handler of analytics.” Pause for effect.
First of all, this person doesn’t exist except maybe at the highest level of a company. Good shops need 5 departments to do all this well. These disciplines are so different my head is spinning. Here’s a technology word for this shop “scalability.” And here’s a prediction: There won’t be any Cannes Cyber Lions or 4As Jay Chiat Awards in this shop’s reception area any time soon. Worse, this approach will give digital shops a black eye. You might be able to search for these keywords online, but not on street. OMG. Peace!
