Adam Harvey is technology director and principal at Glad Works Inc. in Providence.
PBN: There is talk of a burgeoning economic recovery. What are you hearing around your industry? What are you seeing at Glad Works?
HARVEY: Perhaps more than ever, we’re seeing our clients using their resources on things like digital advertising and other vehicles which offer more trackable return on investment and can directly affect the bottom line and shorten the sales cycle. And although most folks we work with are still living with the tightened budgets they created last year, we’ve seen some cautious optimism.
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PBN: Glad Works started building iPhone apps not long after the App Store debuted. Is there still buzz around apps? Have they had an impact for the organizations you’ve built them for?
HARVEY: There is still a dynamic market for apps, and with new devices continually hitting the market, we don’t see that need going away anytime soon. Added to that fact, several of our clients have multiple apps and are continually requesting upgrades and expansions to their first-generation apps; to date, we’ve cranked out more than 250 smart phone apps. In terms of impact, we find that those who get the biggest bang from their app really market it through blogs, pay-per-click campaigns and social media just like they would for any other product or service.
PBN: Now Apple has released the new iPad. Have you built any apps for it yet? What is your take on the device?
HARVEY: While we’ve not yet built any iPad apps, several clients have approached us about creating iPad versions of the first-gen iPhone apps we’d originally built for them, and we’re negotiating to develop two brand-new app ideas. We think the iPad will fill a growing niche for how businesses communicate their brand. This device makes it incredibly easy to present information like websites, product lines, presentations and creative portfolios at face-to-face meetings, and now that the 3G version is available, it can be used virtually anywhere.
PBN: Mobile advertising is also growing rapidly, with Google and Apple both making high-profile moves and analysts saying it could be a big market. What are your thoughts on mobile ads?
HARVEY: Mobile ads are definitely one of the newest frontiers. They allow clients to do more with less, and they offer some huge benefits: it’s easy to track metrics and quantify ROI; a mobile ad is even more cost-efficient than a banner ad on a website (costing as little as 25 percent of what a Web banner ad does); and because smartphones are GPS-enabled, it’s possible to create intuitive, geo-specific ads which display in response to a search query.
PBN: The explosion of media we’re seeing has a lot of companies thinking about content management. What are you hearing from (and doing for) your clients? What are the trends there?
HARVEY: Recently, we’ve seen a few clients opt to add a content management system to website projects already in process, usually as a way of containing costs and being more self-sufficient. For about seven years, we’ve been using an open-source Drupal-based CMS system which is not only a great cost-effective solution, but it also gives our clients access to a huge selection of customizable modules. In the same way, we’ve also seen clients more interested in e-blast and e-newsletter templates: with these, they can use the same design and replace content themselves – all at a fraction of the cost of creating a new piece. •
