Kim Welch, Gail Leija, Sonia Janovjak, Norma Penner from Sapient Nitro
This past Friday we had an awesome presentation from four women that work at Sapient Nitro. We'll talk about them individually in a bit, but let's jump into Sapient Nitro and what they are all about.
SAPIENT NITRO
- Sapient is a monster company with over 100,000 employees globally.
- The creative marketing sector is called Sapient Nitro
- They are do not do all their work in house and do not contract out work
- The Sapient Nitro philosophy is that they really listen. They don't expect their clients to take on their personality and culture, rather they take on the personalities of their clients. They have empathy, to serve clients emotional needs. They are like the "Meryl Streeps" of ad agencies rather than the "Julia Roberts" type.
- Some of their clients are Crystler, Jeep, Dodge, RBC, BMO, TD, SportsChek, Harley Davidson, Abercrombie & Fitch...and the list goes on and on
- Norma is a graduate of the Sheridan Web Design program (back when it was called "Media Design") about 5-6 years ago
- From there she's had a successful career as a designer at places like ecentricarts inc., Organic and HBK
- She is now the Sr. Art Director at SapientNitro
- Norma works on a ton of projects from micro sites to very large projects
- Let's take a look at some of the projects she's worked on:
- This project was a micro site that had to be compatible on all devices and had to carefully consider the language and culture so it could be communicated globally
- Norma had to use images provided by Jeep from their television spot
- Her concept was to focus on the people who drive Jeep's and their individual personalities and use this
- The site used HTML 5 as a scrolling site as well as layers to give it depth. This was a very clean design as to keep the main focus on the mood of the images
Crystler Grand Voyager
- This was a micro site that was used to leverage a television spot that was targeted to 40 year old men
- The research has revealed that "gen X" men had a very powerful emotional response to nostalgia. Because "gen X" men were the first generation to have mothers in the work force and raised with new core values, they are heavily involved in their family life. They are no "mad men" but are now family men. This concept was putting a parallel to buying this car with a nostalgia of buying their first car.
- Norma not only came up with the initial design in one evening but also had only two weeks to execute the entire site
- She designed the site to mimic the commercial where half the design was of the past images and the new images of the product and info were on the bottom
- This was one of those projects that Norma had to take on the personality of the client
- Abercrombie & Fitch were having a very difficult time with leveraging their products via media and had experienced several companies that let them down trying to deliver
- Norma basically lived in Utah at their head office immersing herself in their culture and learning about their design standards and how to design for them
- Sapient Nitro successfully steered them in the direction of mobile design which they had not done yet and they successfully pulled off great mobile web designs complete with A&F approved typography and design
- Gail is one of those people you could talk to forever, she has had so many different jobs and is one of those people that is addicted to learning...not a bad addiction if you ask me
- After a series of seemingly random jobs (not so random if you watch her autobiography) she started at Sapient as an info-architect in the 90's always in digital
- She worked hard to prove she could go from info-architect to research at Sapient so for the last 2 years she made a change to experience research, utilising anthropologial type tactics to uncover what it is customers really want from a company or products
- She works with creative teams closely to come up with the best possible and research proven tactics to leverage a product to it's full potential
- An example she gave of her process was for Harley Davidson. Harley was pretty sure they knew who their target market was...you know who...tattooed, husky, older men. But by hiring 12 people across the U.S to go out and collect information (specific information requirements were provided by Gail) they found that young people and young women should be Harley's target markets.
- Once she collects all her information and arrives at certain conclusions, she puts together "personna" sheets. Based on her research she creatively creates fictional people and their habits that would buy the product. The creative team will use those to come up with the best possible language, imagery and tonality to communicate most effectively with the target consumers.
- Through her experience with this job Gail has found it most effective if you involve the clients heavily in the research, so they have a sense of ownership about the research and can really appreciate the value of this type of work.
- Gail still does some I.A. work because you always need a plan before you start building.
- She says that if your a designer with great I.A skills you will always be in demand. Noted. Thanks for the tip :)
- Kim's title as Studio manager doesn't seem to do her justice for all the jobs she actually does. She is in charge of staffing the interactive team for the Toronto, Chicago and Detroit offices as well as keep everyone busy with billable hours and keep everyone on time for client deadlines. She likes to think of her job as a big game of Tetris, trying to get all the pieces in optimal use of space and time.
- Some of Kim's past jobs are:
- Director PMO at dthree
- eBusiness Manager at Maritz
- Director of Project Management at March Networks
- Sr. Project Manager at March Networks
- Kim spoke to us about attributes they look for in potential candidates. She says she tries to be at all the interviews for all the candidates. Kim told us that it doesn't matter how amazing your portfolio is, they look for culture and fit. They want people that look for and embrace feedback, have a commitment to ongoing learning and who are flexible about things as they change drastically in this business. They also look for people who are open to mentor ship.
- Sapient is what she calls a "self-serve" company, in that you are in charge of your career. You can even choose your supervisor. If you can prove yourself you will get promotions, Sapient tries to set all of their candidates up for success. They don't have just one spot open for senior designers, but everyone follows their own path, so if you prove yourself completely capable of being an Sr. Designer then you will be promoted.
- Sapient also has a "boot camp" for their new employees, where they will fly you to one of their offices that has the most hires and give you a week long seminar in Sapient lingo and culture. This really shows their investment in you as an employee and how many they value the culture they set.
- Sonja is the Creative Recruiter for Sapient, which ensures requires a lot of research on her part to really make sure they are hiring the right people for the job. If she wants you at Sapient, she will do everything in her power to get you there.
- Oddly enough, she started out her career in package and print design, and now loves her job doing interviews and hiring.
Expectations of you as a candidate:
- Forward thinking design - innovative
- Fluency in the digital channels
- Typography - always the first thing the hiring designers will look at
- Presentation skills - your work needs an interpreter, it needs someone to sell
- Eagerness - desire to learn
- Compassion & Drive - holding your work to the highest standards and having passion for what you do
Thanks for the intriguing presentation ladies!
