Graham Lubie is director of interactive/technology at (add)ventures, a communications firm based in Providence.
PBN: Can you tell me a little bit about your background? How did you get into this industry?
LUBIE: Over the last 10 years, my work experience has been very focused in the intersection of marketing and technology. I started my career with Accenture as an analyst in their systems consulting group doing system development, process improvement and project management work. After leaving Accenture, I got my MBA in marketing from Kellogg Graduate School of Management. That was followed by working in leadership positions in marketing, product management and professional services at two high-performing technology startups. Joining (add)ventures has been a tremendous opportunity to leverage my consulting, marketing, technology and business experience while working with world-class client partners to evolve their interactive and social media capabilities.
PBN: Now that (add)ventures has hired you as its director of interactive/technology, what exactly will you do in that role?
LUBIE: It is a very exciting role where I am accountable for leading the interactive and technology group. This role has a great balance between working with client partners to implement their technology-based marketing and social media initiatives, while staying on the leading edge of evolving technologies. Basically the interactive/technology group is responsible for everything from designing, developing, measuring and evolving marketing technology platforms like high performing websites, to social media tools and mobile apps.
PBN: What’s the biggest trend you expect to see in interactive marketing over the next few years?
LUBIE: In the mid-1800s, John Wanamaker, the department store pioneer, said, “I know I waste half the money I spend on advertising; the problem is, I don’t know which half.” His quote has been accurate for the last 150 years, but we are finally starting to see a change. Technologies for marketing automation, social media, and mobile applications are evolving extremely quickly and they are becoming more and more important to corporate marketing campaigns. These technologies can generate a tremendous amount of data that can be used to drive marketing decisions and understand the effectiveness of different advertising and marketing programs.
Over the next few years, the biggest trend, or acceleration of a trend, will be around using these metrics and tying all interactive marketing to the results that are delivered. To give you an example, all the websites and online applications that we develop have visitor-tracking and usage-measurement components built in. That way, our clients can quantitatively measure the success of their online advertising (banner and pay-per-click), direct mail, PR and social media campaigns. This is counter to Mr. Wanamaker’s adage – we now have great data on the effectiveness of different marketing activities. With the right analytics tools, marketing departments have an unprecedented amount of data available to make better business decisions.
PBN: When you were at Accenture, I would imagine you spent a lot of time examining other companies. Are there any big lessons you learned, or other insights you took away from consulting with various firms?
LUBIE: As a consultant at Accenture, I worked on a lot of very large, high-profile technology projects, and found one common component – process excellence is critical to ensuring that high-quality results can be delivered on time and on budget. I have found that process excellence is critical in the marketing and interactive world as well. Without defined processes, it is very difficult to deliver world-class websites or Web applications repeatable within schedule and budget. To avoid this type of problem, at (add)ventures we have a structured methodology with defined phases and deliverables that is used on all of our interactive projects.
PBN: In announcing your hiring, (add)ventures CEO Stephen Rosa praised your “overall coolness.” Can you tell me something cool about yourself?
LUBIE: Steve can answer this one best, but I suspect that he was referring to me being very passionate about what I do, but also not taking myself too seriously. Life is too short to not enjoy yourself, so do what you like and like what you do.•
