I have a new job at Lenovo and figured since a few partners, customers, and suppliers read this blog, it might be efficient to take a crack here in public at describing what it is that I do.
Some background. Every year the executive ranks at the company are presented to the CEO and senior vice president of human resources in a process known as the “OHRP. ” I don’t know what that acronym means exactly, but it is the one time a year I get asked “what does Dave want to do next?” I get talked about but I am not in the room.
The OHRP form — an Excel template — first gets filled out by me. I first did the onanistic-assessment thing to myself at McKinsey where evaluation and feedback is the backbone of the Firm.
One of the fields on the OHRP is essentially the question I dread: “What do you want to do with your life?” I dunno. This year’s OHRP, with me coming down and back from the Beijing Olympics, I wrote: “Work in China” and “Focus more on blogging and social media marketing.”
I got my wish. Coming into this new year, Lenovo did a reorganization of marketing with the result that I now divide my time pretty much between two things:
- Social media marketing: think blogs, monitoring, word of mouth, conversational, digital branding and content publishing … stuff aimed at defining the Lenovo brand online, staving off unhappy customer experiences, and persuading the world that it is better to be an owner of a Lenovo than any other PC or device on the market.
- Project Mayhem: my Fight Club code name for the project that shall not be named. This is the thing I took on in September, but am now engaged with as the marketing guy since early December. This is the coolest thing, the holy-moly thing. The change-the-world and sit-down-and-shut-up thing.
I give up a few things and the following things no longer apply but I remain an interested party and bystander to the following former responsibilities:
- Web marketing: paid search, display/banners, affiliate, email … anything direct and focused on CPC, CPM, CTR, etc. etc. …. that moves to a new global direct marketing function headed up by my esteemed colleague and fellow Red Sox fan, Steve Starkey.
- Web metrics: those stay with Jim Hazen, but no longer are a direct part of my day-to-day, at least not ecomm metrics. Blog and social metrics I do care about.
There it is. I move from the bottom to the top of the marketing “funnel” and I get to do somethingwith people with titles like “Distinguished Engineer” and “Visionary.”
New year, new challenges, some regrets, but a lot of excitement.
It sounds like you’re going to have some fun times ahead.
Congrats and good luck!
Congrats and good luck! I formulated something similar when I left Nielsen BuzzMetrics to join Clickable — although my analytics submersion remains a little higher, due to the nature of our company. Look forward to hearing about it!
Max
Good to hear things are moving up and you didn’t lose your structure in the restructuring. I know others who weren’t so lucky so congrats for keeping your base secure.
I look forward to Project Mayhem.
Good to see you focusing more on cutting edge social media. We’re doing some of the same at Helium.com, with an extremely limited amount of resources. Which means trying to do a little of a lot of cool stuff. Similar to our days at CXO!
Hope all is well and happy that you survived the restructuring.
congrats on the new gig. So when do you start commuting to China?
Congratulations and all the best!
Best of luck with the new position, and I cannot wait to find out about Project Mayhem…
Sounds extremely cool – can’t wait!
Project Mayhem sounds like fun! Here’s to hoping you don’t have to commute to China.
Congrats!
Looking forward to reading more posts that relate to your new job description…I’m looking to hire a “communications associate/webmaster” to help me with those aspects of marketing (among other things) at the independent school where I work (Beaver CDS). Not that what we’re trying to do is in the same league as Lenovo!
David,
You’re lucky that you can shape your next career in these difficult times. I am sure you will do well.
Howie
Thanks Howie. Shaping career direction these days is like driving a supertanker — you go where the ship wants to and effect little trim movements along the way.
David,
congrats on the new direction. Anything with, “Mayhem,” in the title sounds fun.
Onward and upward!
Peter
let me know when you go to China and I’ll try and commute with you on my way to Taiwan