We think beer is always a good investment, so we’re proud to be the first corporate investors of the East End Brewing Co. Think of the Good Beer Investors program as a company-wide gift certificate for happy hour. As an investor, we get “preferred status,” our name on the wall, and an invite to the private grand opening, but mostly we’re in it for the beer vouchers. You can read more about the program in the Post Gazette. Cheers!

I just graduated from Wake Forest University, where I spent a lot of time in the library cranking out philosophy papers. Now I get to write all day at a cool IKEA desk across from a giant purple beanbag, so the transition has been smooth. For the next few months, I’ll be blogging, editing, brainstorming, researching and marketing with the creative team at Deeplocal.

Part of the reason why I already love working here is the Deeplocal culture. Unlike my previous work environments, there are no cubicles. The workspace is like this on purpose, which means there are open lines of communication in a tight-knit group. It also means I get to hear some interesting conversations. Here is a sampling of some of the comments I’ve heard this week for Overheard in the Office, Deeplocal Edition:

• I guess you can’t set batteries on concrete floors.
  
• Patrick was made for Hollywood. He just was. We didn’t know it until he started working here.
  
• Ew these cupcakes are a week old.
  
• Just pretend you’re fighting a fire.
  
• The shoe flew to the pitcher, the pitcher caught the shoe, and Kickball Mark just kept running.

Thanks for reading! I’ll be sure to keep you updated on Deeplocal news and events in future blog posts.

At Deeplocal I value hard work above all other qualities. Just for fun, the above photo is of my late grandma riding a tractor and operating a hydraulic snow plow. She was a hard worker and now all of Deeplocal must live up to the standards she set for me. Good luck

Rather than simply posting the position, I wanted to share a little bit of background on how we identified the need for this role. I am sharing it since I think this might be helpful to other start-ups that wonder when they should hire additional help (especially for a role that is seen as overhead – no direct billable hours, etc).

Deeplocal has worked without any dedicated project or account management since we started nearly five years ago. Our model has been simple: individual responsibility to a client. Each engineer or designer works and reports directly to a client. This worked well as it reduced overhead, allowed us to exceed client expectations, and made us very efficient. As workloads have begun to grow though, we’ve started to notice that we are having a harder time meeting those high standards we set for ourselves. We need to grow – but just a little.

Growing is a scary thing. We are at the stage where we know what makes our culture great and we know what to look for in candidates. Above all else, employees must fit into the culture here. We are all friends and we look forward to getting into the studio in the morning just to hang out a bit with one another. Adding people to the mix (especially overhead) can be disruptive to a company’s culture. I know that and the team knows that.

I try to listen to all my employees opinions. I really don’t believe this is just some bullshit I say to make us sound good. I really believe that I need to listen to and absorb the insights and knowledge that my coworkers have. Their perspectives are each unique and different from my own. I started by going through simple reviews with each employee and got ideas from everyone on what tasks they are doing a not so great job at. I want us all to be great and challenge everyone to be exceptional everyday. We are all humble enough to admit when we are falling short. From those interviews I developed my own list of “pains.” This was essentially a job responsibilities list. It was then necessary to figure out where these pains can be distributed to become roles and responsibilities of others on staff and when we couldn’t handle it internally it went into a bucket of tasks we aren’t great at… yet.

After those interviews and the development of the “pains” list, the group (sans me) got together for a little white-boarding session. During this session, Eamae led the group in a design exercise, lumping pains in buckets and pulling together what has led to a redistribution of roles.

So what happened after all of this thinking (which really only took 1 day)? Matthew, our engineering lead has stepped up and expanded his role to begin to manage technology development timelines. Heather has refocused her role strictly around marketing Deeplocal and our projects and taken on additional duties around measurement and analytics. Jenn has expanded her role to deal with internal project documentation. Eamae has expanded his role to take on more art directorial duties. I have begun the process of refocusing my own role, moving low value tasks off of my plate like managing our Quickbooks file and paying bills, giving me more time for business development. What couldn’t be handled internally became a few job descriptions that we will be looking to fill over the coming months.The first one is for an account manager. As you can see, we are looking yet again for an exceptional person that is excited about a hybrid role. For the right person, Deeplocal is a dream job. For the wrong person, this could be a nightmare. We love what we do here and we demand passion and sincerity in everything. So hopefully, we can find that candidate.

So, long story, but here (and in true Deeplocal transparent fashion) is our first job post to come out of all that I described above. I hope you can see how taking the bottom up approach to even hiring can often work better than the alternative. By asking everyone at Deeplocal what we weren’t great at, we developed a requirements list and then distributed that list when possible internally. When we didn’t think we could handle it internally, we formed job descriptions.

Help Deeplocal find our next team member.

Working at Deeplocal
Deeplocal is a small boutique design and development company based in Pittsburgh. While we are advertising several job openings below, we do not have a fixed time in which we need to hire for any of these positions. We are looking for the perfect person. We work on great projects with fast timelines and each employee must be highly driven, passionate about what they do, and be able to multi-task. If we find the right person for any of these open roles, that is when we are hiring. Please apply but don’t be upset with us if we don’t write you back. We are pretty busy and either you may not be right for the job or we may not be looking to fill that role at that time. We appreciate your interest in Deeplocal.

Benefits
- Stock options
- Bonus plan / profit sharing
- Full healthcare coverage
- Retirement plan with employer matching
- Work Anywhere program (allows employees to work from other cities for short periods of time)
- Company retreats and trips
- Paid vacation, three weeks annually
- Gym Subsidy

Account Manager – Full Time (hiring immediately)
Deeplocal is looking for a smart person with amazing organizational skills and attention to detail to work with our existing clients and our technology lead to manage deliverables and client communications. Technology development and design timelines will be handled by our Engineering Lead. The Account Manager role will work with the Engineering Lead to set and manage deliverables. At the start of new work, the Account Manager will define project goals and assist in measuring the performance of projects and creating reports to deliver to the client post-project. This role will be responsible for maintaining timelines internally, making sure our team is aware of deadlines as they approach, delivering materials to clients in a timely manner, having regular check-ins with clients, and spending a lot of time writing great emails.

Additionally, the Account Manager role requires working closely with our Marketing Director to maintain stellar relationships with our clients and expand our portfolio of clients. This means being accessible by cellphone (into the evening when necessary, as we have a number of west coast clients).

Good candidates for this role should also have excellent communication skills and be willing to assist the CEO and Marketing Director in new business development (which is currently a shared responsibility).

The Account Manager should know at any given time where each project is as well as what a client is waiting on. We want someone who is proactive and will pick up the phone if email is too slow. We will consider applicants with non-traditional backgrounds but expect to see some kind of experience that relates directly to the tasks described.

Requirements:
- strong organizational skills
- experience managing clients and/or projects
- positive attitude
- charm
- good phone skills
- writes nice, thorough emails
- creative
- interest in assisting with new business development

Responsibilities:
- be accessible by phone and responsive to calls
- know where each project stands
- know what we are waiting on from a client
- push back on clients to prevent scope creep
- know what a client is expecting
- maintain project management software / share project statuses internally
- report any project updates back to our clients
- be proactive and pass new leads off to our CEO
- work with Engineering Lead, CEO, and client to set project goals and terms for measuring success
- assist in measuring the performance of projects
- assist in the development and delivery of performance reports to client
- assist in new business development and winning new business from existing clients
- report directly to the CEO when there is a change in scope or a potential risk

To apply: Write a paragraph about yourself, why you want to work here, and why you’re a good fit for Deeplocal. You should also include some sort of resume. Upload everything to http://deeplocal.theresumator.com/apply/bNvWMV/Account-Manager.html. Don’t hate us if we don’t write back. We are a pretty small company and despite the email address, do not have an HR department.

For a company that’s made up of engineers, artists, and designers, we do A LOT of writing and editing here…and we need the help of a smart, tech-savvy student with very strong writing skills. So, we’re offering a paid internship this summer that’s a combination of copy and proposal writing, editing, creative concepting, researching, and marketing. We’re looking for someone who’s excited about what we do (read through our website for more info) and the opportunity to make a real contribution this summer at Deeplocal.

Here’s some of the formal stuff:

Project Description

The successful candidate will be asked to meet the following objectives and deliverables:

1. Brainstorm and refine creative advertising campaign concepts that address the needs and desires of the company’s clients. These concepts will not focus on a specific technology, but should generally have both online and offline elements.
2. Collaborate with engineers, designers, and marketers to outline and write advertising concept proposals that sell clients on the proposed idea(s) by showing how they compliment the clients’ brands and goals.
3. Edit miscellaneous marketing and business materials
4. Support the marketing department in designing and writing Deeplocal direct mail and email marketing campaigns, planning and executing Deeplocal brand-building events, and other activities critical to building and maintaining Deeplocal’s culture.

Internship Requirements

1. Undergraduate & graduate students welcome; minimum GPA of 3.5
2. All Majors can apply, but a successful candidate will have exceptional writing skills and be creatively + strategically-minded
3. Must have an interest in advertising and a basic understanding of technology

Compensation

The internship will be compensated.

How to Apply

Send an email to heather@deeplocal.com with your resume and a description of why you want the internship. Please be specific in your email; it doesn’t need to be formal, but it should be well-written. After all, this is a copy writing position.

Work Anywhere Approach Helps Local Start-ups Compete Nationally

Pittsburgh, PA – January 25, 2011 – They’re based in a city that’s a plane ride away from the majority of their clients, but Pittsburgh-based Deeplocal has created a program that allows them to work side-by-side with their clients, most of whom are in New York, LA, and San Francisco, without relocating the company. The fast-growing Carnegie Mellon spinout company occupies a floor of the old Liberty Bank building in East Liberty, PA, but with Deeplocal’s new “Work Anywhere Program,” employees will be encouraged to travel to major cities of their choice where Deeplocal has current or potential clients and work for several days in a new environment—all funded by Deeplocal.

Deeplocal, recently profiled in Forbes Magazine, is an innovation studio that is known for building on- and off-line advertising campaign experiences like the award-winning Nike Chalkbot for the Tour de France and Nike Write the Future for the World Cup. The company has been recognized for its innovative ad campaigns that bridge the online and physical worlds.

Non-major cities are showing that they have the resources to compete in national markets. Take Pittsburgh, which offers undeniable benefits to start-up companies, including access to top universities and talent, funding and business acumen from seed-stage investors, a culture that fosters entrepreneurship, and inexpensive overhead. However, cities like Pittsburgh also pose challenges for operating a business. For Deeplocal, it means working with agencies and brands that largely call cities like New York, DC, LA, and San Francisco home. For this reason, Deeplocal has commonly had to replace in-person meetings with phone calls, a less-than-ideal substitute.

Keeping with their culture of deviance, Deeplocal CEO, Nathan Martin, devised a solution that’s anything but typical. “The Work Anywhere Program supports keeping our base in Pittsburgh by giving each employee the ability to travel and operate independently. We can be where our clients are without having to move our office. Deeplocal is a team that trusts one another; the Work Anywhere plan is an extension of that trust.”

The Program gives employees yearly travel budgets and asks that they schedule a few meetings per trip with current or desired clients. Evenings and weekends are considered personal time for employees to experience the cities they’re visiting with the option of extending trips to take personal vacation time, thereby eliminating vacation travel costs.

“The Program allows me to see other exciting places without giving up the things I love about Pittsburgh, like cheap rent, and great friends,” Eamae Mirkin, Deeplocal Interaction Designer and former Apple employee explained.

Deeplocal must be onto something. With last year’s resume alone including a One Club “Best of the Digital Decade Award” for their Nike Chalkbot campaign and other accolades that include “Best of Interactive” by Communication Arts, a Grand Prix at Cannes Lions, “Most Contagious” by Contagious Magazine, a Gold Award at the Clios, two Webby awards, and an Andy award, not to mention being named one of the Best Places to Work in Pittsburgh by both Pittsburgh Magazine and Pittsburgh Business Times, operating from Pittsburgh doesn’t seem to be hurting the company, in fact, it appears to be an asset.

With more start-ups coming out of second-tier cities, challenges like sales, marketing, and employee retention are increasingly important. Will more companies in unconventional locations employ radical approaches to compete with companies in major cities and give top talent a reason to stay?

I’ve met Iain and talked with him about the Deeplocal philosophy and his own interests and very much respect his ideas and thinking. Like Deeplocal, he is passionate about creating great work – all terminology aside. I then read several other posts by people reacting to Iain’s article. I thought about the debate a bit and couldn’t help but be reminded of the common and unnecessary terminology debates in fine art that I have watched happen first hand in my previous life as an artist. It is for this reason that I thought I would like to share my own opinion on the term post-digital, what it means to Deeplocal, and why this debate has little to do with our actual process or culture.

A hacked Nintendo game called Super Kid Fighter was released by the Carbon Defense League in 1998.

Deeplocal is a company founded by actual artists. What I mean is very literally, an art group morphed into a company. As an art group we were a part of a genre that came to be known as tactical media (now the subject of a book by Rita Raley bearing the same name). The art group, known as the Carbon Defense League, prided itself on this term. It was used to describe what was seen as a small group of artist/activists working often with technology to infiltrate mainstream media. The term came to mean many different things to different people with the focus being primarily on immediacy (think tactics over strategies). The term was often debated with one of the major arguments being that tactical media was nothing new, requiring no name at all. To some audiences and in some contexts it was simply activism, in others it was hacking, and in some it was simply conceptual art.

Super Kid Fighter was a tactical media project.

I was lucky enough to see the interpretation of the term and the work by a number of different cultures or genres that I had some relationship to: the big A art world, the hacker scene, and crusty anarchist punk rockers. Each had their own criticisms of the others’ use of the term. I came to learn that what I cared about was that the work the Carbon Defense League was doing was having an impact, satisfying my curiosity, and telling a good story. I learned that while I liked having a term to describe my work, it wasn’t necessary. It was the idea that we were doing something different. It wasn’t about the media at all. It was about the action and the process and ultimately the user experience.

Recently, I have seen a similar debate (and all too often participated in it) locally here in Pittsburgh as a renewed and institutionalized interest in the combination of art and technology has been the focus of workshops, events, and even awards. We have won some of these awards and I am grateful for them. This has also raised some debate about why, in fact, art and technology is really anything new at all. I work closely with the Mattress Factory here in Pittsburgh. The Mattress Factory is an internationally recognized installation art gallery. I first worked with MF as an intern in 1997. I have spoken with the founders, Barbara and Michael, about this art and technology debate and have come to take their opinion as my own. This art and technology thing is nothing new. While it may be interesting to use this phrase to create a new category for awards, funding, and display, it is in fact nothing new. Many artists have and will continue to work with new technologies. The artists exhibiting at the Mattress Factory often do, looking at everything that is around them as media. To the Mattress Factory, even the term “installation art” no longer applies. The terms are simply placeholders or bookmarks. The work and the process is what matters yet again.

It is this experience in the art world that brings me to my explanation of what post-digital means to Deeplocal and to me personally. I admit, more than necessary perhaps, that I am not from the advertising world and several years ago would have not believed that this is where I would be at age 33. I love what I do and I love making great work. I did not know this is how it would be accomplished but that is not something I feel bad about in any way. I am very happy and continually amazed by the talented and incredible individuals I am surrounded with at Deeplocal. We have great ideas and we bring them to life. As I write this I have an engineer/artist on site at a rural farm in Minnesota with no electricity or internet,  creating a project for a client that will be live in one week. I can’t say much about what he is doing there but I can say that we are yet again working with tools and media we knew very little about two weeks ago. This is what the culture at Deeplocal is about – learning, adapting, and solving. Our goal will always be to produce great work and create awesome and magical experiences.

Post-digital to Deeplocal means not that there is a new media after digital that we are working in. In fact, post-digital, as we have adopted the term, has nothing at all to do with media. It means in fact that “by any media necessary” we will get to the experience. My naïve understanding of the advertising industry allows me to look at the ad world with amateur eyes. This is often very valuable and insightful but also has its drawbacks. I tend to oversimplify the problem. For your own understanding I will share with you my admittedly naïve perspective.

I don’t understand why the divisions between agencies exist. Why is one agency digital, another mobile, and another traditional? This may be a product of evolution, but what the divisions seem to ignore is that creating a great experience has little to do with what media was used to create it. In fact, users do not care about the technology for the most part. Digital, as a descriptor of media, or especially of advertising, means very little when a user moves seamlessly between physical, online, and mobile worlds continually. Well done projects ignore the individual distinctions and focus on whatever tool or media is necessary to create a given experience.

This is post-digital: a world where the divisions between analog and digital or mobile and online or connected and unconnected are no longer relevant descriptors – especially for the advertising industry which is trying to meet users where they are at all times. Brands can be very confused, which is why they may need to employ numerous agencies to execute campaigns across media. So again, I am admittedly simple-minded and a newbie to the industry, but I am not a newbie to creating compelling interactions and experiences.

Creating the experience is what Deeplocal is good at – in fact we are great at it. One of the reasons being that we are technology generalists. We have a wide range of skill sets and do not shy away from learning new skills. This allows us to truly focus on the idea and the execution. Agencies often have to string together a series of agency specialists (often we are one of the specialists) to execute on a campaign. While this process works well in many cases, Deeplocal doesn’t need to worry about complex organizational logistics or the red tape of subcontracting and vendor management. Deeplocal simply makes things happen. In most cases, we have no time for the bureaucracy. We can, however, be counted on to execute on a great experience when given the freedom to do so. We get shit done and it works. This is what I am most proud of when I walk into work each morning. We are a team of makers that have little concern for what media we are operating in. We are generalists, not specialists. We are very difficult to describe. We are best described in the work we do; we let that work stand for what we do and what we are. That, to me and to Deeplocal, is what post-digital is- creating experiences without regard to media.

Like tactical media and like art and technology, we can debate when the term post-digital is appropriate, what it describes, if it is being misused, and even if it is unnecessary and describes nothing new. That debate however, will be held between the makers and the people that need the terms and the categories. To Deeplocal, we don’t fit well into any known category. The people that experience our work don’t think of us as post-digital and it means nothing to my parents (they simply think the Chalkbot was cool). That’s what we aim for and that is also what I have witnessed Iain Tait and the amazing team at W+K aim for as well. I think while we may disagree about the term post-digital, we can agree that it is meaningless to those that matter: the users and the participants (the moms and dads and cousins and siblings of the world).

So yes, Deeplocal will continue to describe our work as post-digital. To us it means that we create work that is agnostic of media or technology. To others it might mean something else. As with everyone, we rely on our work to truly describe what we do. There is no term that is capable of making the cut. Tactical media didn’t quite describe my art practice, hardcore or metal didn’t quite describe my band’s music, and post-digital will never quite describe what Deeplocal is and does. What we are is a team of interesting and talented people with a pretty exceptional culture creating great experiences with great agency and brand partners in the now very cold and snowy post-industrial city of Pittsburgh, PA. The post-industrial discussion we’ll save for another day.

Deeplocal is a contributor to Good Magazine, and Colin has been working on some infographics for them (so keep an eye out if you read Good). Check out the illustration he did for the most recent edition of Good below:

Deeplocal does not come from an advertising industry background; as we often express, we’re artists, designers, and computer engineers and our company is run by Nathan, who is a former punk-rock scream/hactivist that operates the company like a band. So you can imagine what a great learning experience the tour was for us. These are a few of the many Gutter Tech Tour Takeaways:

1. Deeplocal is very unique in this industry. Call me a braggart, but we were told time after time by agency producers, creatives, and account managers that our company’s background and ideals are refreshing and energizing. We understand how to interface digital inputs with physical outputs because it’s what many of us have been doing since high school, as artists and hobbyists. We’re generalists, which means we aren’t constrained by the rules that govern an expert’s thinking, yet we have a solid understanding of or can quickly learn how to turn “post-digital” campaign ideas into realities.

2. Our work-life balance at Deeplocal is rare. Ok, here I am bragging again, but talking with agency execs that work very long hours made me appreciate our 9-5 work day even more. I just don’t believe that working longer hours equals more efficiency. I’ve never worked for a company where no one takes breaks, or watches YouTube videos, or kills time on facebook, until I started working at DL. So that’s the “secret” to eight-hour workdays- just work hard while you’re at work and then get the hell out the office. If only it were that simple though. It also takes a boss to create a culture where employees know that they aren’t evaluated by how much time they spend at their desk. I should add that not every agency we visited has crazy work hours; several didn’t, including Razorfish and Victors & Spoils.

3. You know you’re working at a cool ad agency or company if:
Your dog poops on the conference table…which means you’re allowed to bring Fluffy to work.
You have a basketball court…but nobody really plays on it.
You sit on stadium bleachers for company meetings.
Your admin is named Lucky or Sky.
Nap time is encouraged- with a nap room, of course.
Parking spaces are named after famous pro athletes.
You have an auto body shop in your office.
Cruiser bikes are available if you feel like taking a lunchtime ride.
You have a snowboard rental shop; the boards are free, of course.
…I could go on and on; these are just some of the perks we encountered.

4. Nothing can replace an in-person introduction.

There’s nothing wrong with phone calls, emails, and social networking connections, but meeting someone in person and having an honest face-to-face conversation is invaluable. We came away from the Gutter Tech tour feeling like we have a really good understanding of who we want to explore partnerships with and what the culture and people at each company are like. We met some awesome people on this trip who we genuinely enjoyed having business conversations with as well as hanging out with (usually over too many vodka sodas in my case).

5. Prototyping and documentation are critical to gaining buy-in from clients.

Post-digital advertising is completely new and unfathomable to many brands. It requires taking a risk for clients and being able to sell an idea through for agencies that’s difficult to understand. For those reasons, it’s important to prototype quickly and document progress throughout a project so that agencies can share the feedback with their client. If a picture is worth a thousand words, a video is worth a million. For the Nike Chalkbot, before a contract was even signed, we very quickly gave Wieden+Kennedy a proof of concept- a video that showed one nozzle printing. We knew if we could make one nozzle print, the idea was possible; Nike understood this too, and they took a huge risk on our tiny company…a risk that paid off tremendously.

As for the JetBlue All-You-Can-Jet passes- they were worth the $500 we paid for each of them, and the extra legroom vs. flying on another airline. Trip planning was a nightmare though, since JetBlue has such limited routes and flights and all of them route through JFK, Boston, or Long Beach. Wanna go from Denver to Austin? You’ll have to fly through JFK. I rest my point.

Now that we’re chilling out in Aruba for a few days, I finally have time to recap our visit to Nike. But before I do that, I want to extend a huge thanks to the team at Wieden+Kennedy for hosting Nathan and I for two days. We have a lot of respect for you and hope to do more great work with your team soon. W+K also wins the coolest agency office contest- they have an awesome space, complete with stadium seating, a basketball court, a nap room, a coffee shop, and overall a really stylish building.

Growing up, working at Nike was my dream job, and although my desires have changed, I was pretty stoked to see their campus. We arrived at the Mia Hamm building (after getting lost in the network of roads that run through Nike’s expansive campus). We avoided parking in spots with athlete’s names on them (I was surprised that none of the spots were named after me- especially considering how good I am at cornhole) and gawked at soccer memorabilia inside of the entrance. The enormity of the building reminded me of my days at Ford Motor Company, although the employees looked vastly different. Dressed in Nike gear from head to toe (the cool shit that you can’t buy in stores), it looked like a summer sports camp for adults. We met with a guy who runs the extreme sports division and then spent too much time (and money) at the Nike employee store.

After a red-eye flight to NYC and a day in the city and nearly missing our flight to Aruba, we’re oceanside and spending a few days sleeping off the trip on the beach before heading back to Pittsburgh for the weekend.

I can’t say we’re big fans of LA, but we did meet some fantastic people there, including smart team of Creatives, Producers, and Technologists from Saatchi & Saatchi and Chiat/Day. Chiat/Day’s office was unreal. Check out the mountain of boxes from a recent order of Apple monitors. LA was all work and no play for Deeplocal.

Now we’re in Portland, OR, which is such a comfortable city to be in. The building architecture is modern, public transportation is effortless…I could go on. West coast office perhaps? Pretty sure that SF would win out though, since we have several former San Franciscans (Dimitry, Jenn, Eamae, Matthew, Nathan).

Upon arriving in Portland, we checked into our hotel- The White Eagle Saloon. Talk about unique; this bar with rooms for rent upstairs was a former brothel. Let’s just say it’s not for everyone, but I think it’s awesome. Our rooms are $50/night with a shared bathroom and a free concert every night, since live bands at the bar are clearly audible in our rooms. When I woke up this morning, I looked outside of my window and saw a fellow hotel guest taking a shortcut to the shared bathroom by crawling out his room window and into the bathroom window; seriously.

Tomorrow we visit our good friends over at Wieden+Kennedy and possibly tour Nike’s campus.