Episode 138 / Adam Palmer / GoDaddy / Director, Creative Production Ops
Boost Productivity With a Personal Touch By Embracing Loom
Adam Palmer is the Director for Creative Production Ops at GoDaddy. He wants to be remembered as someone who challenges common practices and innovates on the day-to-day ways of working, respectfully. This is why his Shiny New Object is Loom – the visual platform that allows him to cut meeting times and boost productivity, all while giving people the opportunity to take ownership of their time.
Speaking about marketing books, Adam shared with me that his favourite one is called Orbiting the Giant Hairball by author Gordon McKenzie. As a creative person first and foremost, the giant hairball represents the rules and regulations Adam feels that creatives need to go through to get their work done. It’s a system not to be caught up in, that marketers need to learn to orbit rather than remain inside.
This is linked to the way Adam wants to be remembered in his career: as someone who has innovated, challenging the status quo. One of these challenges is his Shiny New Object, using Loom. This visual platform allows users to record messages using voiceover, screen sharing, and adding their own photo into the recording, too.
All these add-ons to a regular voice message or note allow users to personalise their recordings in a way that Adam feels enables a better level of communication. Moreover, Loom recordings allow the user to emphasise parts of the conversation, letting the inflections in their voice highlight elements of importance. Ultimately, this makes Loom a great substitute for meetings and gives leaders the opportunity to give more time back to their teams.
Is Loom a complete substitute for meetings? Perhaps not, but it’s part of a new way of working that makes the work environment more dynamic, a bit different, and perhaps more rewarding for those who regain time to spend on other interesting projects instead. All this without taking too much of the personal touch out of interactions.
To find out more of Adam’s top marketing tips and hear him talk about his views on the future of marketing and the best ways to energise teams, listen to the podcast.
Transcript
The following gives you a good idea of what was said, but it’s not 100% accurate.
Tom Ollerton 0:00
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Hello, and welcome to the Shiny New Object podcast. My name is Tom Ollerton. I'm the founder of Automated Creative. And this is a weekly podcast where I interview leaders of the industry about the future of marketing, and this week is absolutely no different. I'm on a call with Adam Palmer, who is Director, Creative Production Ops at GoDaddy. Adam, for those of the audience who don't know who you are and what you do, can you give us a bit of an overview?
Adam Palmer 1:16
Absolutely. So Adam Palmer, my currently with GoDaddy in the role of creative production operations. That's this is my first foray into into the brand side of the business which has been amazing, very interesting. Previous to the role that I'm in currently, which I've been in for three years, I spent 15 years, basically right out of college with Viacom working at MTV, out in New York City. Moved, moved up to the east coast to pursue that. I've worked in the brain creative side of the house there. So our work was mainly around promoting our MTV series. Our tentpole events like the VMAs, and Movie Awards, and some of our pro social campaigns, which was really just a balance of three very different styles of creative and promotion. So working working at the in the cable industry. And then making a transition over to brand side about three years ago, was a big change was really eye opening. For me, as I said, the difference between the two styles of creative and the teams that you're working with, has been really a welcome challenge in my career.
Tom Ollerton 2:40
So are you a marketing book person? Do you have any recommendations? Do you have a buyer marketing books for your team and sister read them? And if so, which titles do you like?
Adam Palmer 2:51
I don't insist on any pre read material for any team members, but I myself I do. I enjoy. I enjoy reading, you know, the nonfiction side of things. The the marketing book, actually I'm going to recommend is, it comes from an author Gordon McKenzie who worked at Hallmark for the large portion of his career. The book is called "Orbiting the giant hairball" - very much out of sync with what I think a lot of other traditional marketing, heavy books that I've seen. And I've talked to people who have extolled the virtues of the marketing, marketing fans, there's your word, and this one is great. It comes from an author who was carving out his own role within a within a creative industry at Hallmark ended up with a title of creative paradox. That was that was Gordon Mackenzie's title at Hallmark and I love the the idea the premise of the book is basically the the giant hairball it's this morass it's this series of rules and regulations, style styles and standing operating procedures for for business and how in the creative space we we tend to not really fit within those buckets, right the the ideation creatively the the way that we go about our work and how we foster creativity isn't something that necessarily fits within those standing operating procedures the day to day and and how work gets done. It's very much kind of the the the stepchild in a lot of ways. So the whole premise of this book is how do we get how do you take yourself out of that giant hairball and instead of getting stuck in it, how do you pull your sell out and orbit around it. So still from a creative layer, you're still serving the greater purpose, right? Whatever that employer is, or that client is, you're still applying the ethos of that. Have that brand or have that that client, you're still serving the need. But you're orbiting around it, you're not pulled into the heavy, the heavy rules and regulations, but I love it. I love how fun and really chilled the book is. There's a lot of illustrations...
Tom Ollerton 5:42
I need to know. I mean, that sounds nice conceptually. But how does that actually work?
Adam Palmer 5:46
Yeah, absolutely. So the, the idea is that you have this, you have this very rote process, right? within an organization within that structure, you're operating within these confines that are very much tied to timelines, budgets, and the creative process tends to really thrive outside of that. So it's not necessarily as, as wrote, but the author brings up this idea of growth. And growth is in the grope. Okay, you're out there, you're groping for, you know, tangible threads that you can start to pull on, right. And it's not necessarily a rinse and repeat process. So what I love about the the book, the way that the author carves it out is very much that, you know, you you have to make this sellable, right, you have to you have to build this trust and in build your, your, your grope process, very much outside of that, that rote factor.
So some of the some of the instances, you know, the the author is talking about how he's basically creating a new staff, creating a new department within the company, working with procurement to buy the furniture and design a very heavy creative space, right, I think we've all kind of been in those office spaces that are cubicle walls. Well, the author being a creative had this want to give his creative team a sanctuary, instead of this cubicle space. So he went with this procurement team and went bargain shopping, basically went to flea markets and, and got these roll top desks. They bought some doors and stained glass windows and hung them from the as partitions hung them from the ceiling and created this incredible sanctuary space for creativity to thrive. The the road side of things where like procurement said, we don't have a line item that says you can buy stained glass windows that's not part of that's not part of our program here. And basically tip it on its ear and say, well look. On the procurement side, we actually have about $5,000 per individual workstation. That's how much we have budgeted. And Gordon McKenzie and his procurement director said, Actually, we came in at about $3,000 per workstation so we can figure out how that how that fits into budgetarily our goals, we we made goals, we made it cheaper to have these creative spaces and I think that's it's kind of it goes back to the the mentality of like, it's it's kind of the spin that you put on it a little bit to get that process that you need to get the to get the inspiration for the creatives that's required to really, you know, foster that foster that process.
Tom Ollerton 9:10
So, how do you want people to remember this career where you've orbited the giant hairball?
Adam Palmer 9:20
Well first you have to find the hairball I guess. Now the How would I want people to remember my career if anybody remembers my career, fantastic in and of itself. I would love I would love to be remembered to those who I've worked for to my superiors. I would love to be remembered for challenging a lot of the the practices the common practices and being able to articulate new ways of thinking and new ways of of innovation within what we do from a day to day perspective, from a standpoint, that's respectful, but also challenging that status quo. You know, really bringing a full set of tools to every, to every assignment to every project, I would love to have a little bit of that rebellious spirit remembered. For those who have worked for me or my peers, I would love to be remembered a little bit differently. As a, celebrating them for what they bring to the table, I've had the benefit of working with some incredible teams, both at GoDaddy and my time at Viacom, I've loved for the incredible teams that I've played a small role in building and bringing people in to really feel like they have had a, you know, that they've been able to bring their full toolbox, think and ideate and innovate in their own way on their terms and, and doing so with, with a leader that help them to be their, their their true self and really challenged themselves.
Tom Ollerton 11:20
So quickly, what has been the best marketing tip that you've ever received, that you find yourself sharing most often, either recent, or back in days of yore?
Adam Palmer 11:33
Yeah, there's so many tips, right. And so some of them pan out, and some of them, some of them fade a little bit. But one that I think for myself has stood the test of time, and put it into practice as much as possible is really on the idea of pull don't push, I I've seen a lot of the push and I've applied it myself. You know, when you're when you don't, you don't align with the messaging coming down the pipeline, or a certain decision that was made it or initiative that is being pushed isn't really in full alignment or isn't, isn't the right concept of the right idea. I have seen and been party to a lot of that stalemate in my career, right? where it's like, we're gonna, we've got to fight this right. The idea of pull, don't push is such a great opportunity to show to show collaboration, right? It's not a, I'm not a no guy. I'm a let's pull on that. And let's actually, let's actually see what the the essence of that initiative is, or the project, the assignment, the creative direction, that we're putting into practice. I like to, I got this actually, from a philosophical peer of mine that I worked with at MTV for 15 years. Jeremy Hammond and I were, we started off our career together, and I got to see him from through his growth stages, he became a very philosophical leader to me, and, and this came from him directly, which I appreciate and I put that into a lot of what I've done in my career is, is not being the no person. I'm not setting up a, you know, an antithetical workstream i'm not i'm not going through that stale meeting process of, no, we're not doing A we should do B. The pull is great, because you aren't collaborating, you're looking at signing up for, you know, for seeing success out of whatever initiative that you're, that you're pushing forward. And then that collaboration becomes something that is when you're seeing that as being part of the solution. That's when you get to augment what steps and processes are next and how you evaluate, you know, creativity or how you evaluate the means to get you there.
Tom Ollerton 14:38
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So we're at the halfway stage now. So we are going to talk about your shiny new object which is Loom. So I know what Loom is, I'm a Loom user. But can you describe what is fundamentally a visual platform on a podcast?
Adam Palmer 15:35
Absolutely, I will do my best I might look to you to fill in some of the blanks, I am in beta test user mode right now for myself and how I'm going to implement it. But I am hooked on this idea of utilizing people's time in the right way. And also to have a messaging that that aligns with what I'm really trying to say or what point I'm trying to get across. So I through my peers at GoDaddy, we we started using Loom as a way of basically kind of subverting an email, or Slack, or God forbid, another meeting on the books. And what I love about Loom in a visual sense, from a visual standpoint, what you're actually going to see when you create a Loom is the capability of utilizing video recording and desktop or mobile recording simultaneously. So what we always see is this little porthole view of the speaker overlaid with whatever it is that you're trying to convey, right could be somebody's timesheet could be an order requisition, a legal contract, or it could be your, your meeting agenda, right. And you're just kind of going through that and speaking to it, it puts your face and your voice to what it is you're trying to get across. And I think a lot of us and especially in this pandemic phase, we've got our calendars just impeded upon to a point where, you know, the meeting in and of itself is great. But when you don't have time outside of the meetings, you know, your productivity is going to lack. And I think it just gives less efficacy to the meetings. When I'm beta testing, as I said, Tom, is I love the idea of giving people 25 minutes out of that half an hour meeting back by having a curated voiceover. Here's what I need to get across in this in this in this Loom. And I've given you all of the details that I need without incurring taking time away from your busy schedule.
Tom Ollerton 17:56
So just to help the audience fully understand what it what it does describe it from my perspective is that you have your screen with your slides on it, or your video on it or whatever you want. And then the bottom left hand corner is a circle, you know about the size of a golf ball or something with your face in it. And so you just you just press record and you go, Hey, guys, this is my presentation about where we should go for the Christmas party. Here's the first option, it's a hotel. The second option is bouncy castle. The third option is a camping trip, whatever. And then that's kind of it and it's quite professional, but unpolished I would say. So it gets the the audio across and it gets the kind of point across but your innovative use of this is just saving time for presenting right. So can you give me the exact uses that you've used this for? And can you give me examples of the pushback and the the successes of it? Because I'm really interested now to try this at AC? So yeah, curious. Tell me more.
Adam Palmer 19:02
Well, I think the Christmas party ideation is probably going to be an early use case scenario here. Now that you brought it up, so for me, it's within the team that we have standing hour long meetings, right? And really what, what I'm looking at is, how do I save that time and utilize a 10 minute, here's what you know, here's what I see on our agendas, and then walk through it in you know, hopefully clever detail so that it's watchable, but it's also something that you can go back to it and watch it again. You missed something you can come back to it. But it's more interactive than a than a text message or a note an audio note. So our uses basically at this point are going to be looking at it as a standing meeting, but without Without having to have that interface. It's just kind of dispensing updates and information. So the weekly meetings are definitely going to be something that, you know, in, in lieu of a speaker just viewing How can I utilize this more fully, to take away those standing meetings?
Tom Ollerton 20:21
So let me let me see, let me see if I've got that, right. So you will go, right, it's Monday morning, it's, we're gonna have this call at 9am, where we kick off the week, and we've got five teams doing these five things, and we've got problem X, problem Y for Team A and B, they're gonna do that. And then whatever is that is that really mean you're just you're doing a list, but with your face, as opposed to just sending a like a Google Doc?
Adam Palmer 20:45
Exactly, exactly. Walking through the walking through what needs to get done, prioritizations, kind of the, the tactical, you know, Where, where, and when necessary, you're still obviously, it's not an end all, you're still going to have the back and forth that's necessary. But if you just knocked out an hour a week, and you've just, you've just solved for that time taking that off of people's calendars, and you're not asking them to, you're not asking them to sit idly by and hear the rundown of what everybody's got going on. Because they know that in the in the five minute loop that you've just created for them.
Tom Ollerton 21:21
And how has this been responded to by your team?
Adam Palmer 21:25
Thus far, by seems like people are into it, right? Like they understand that their their schedules have been impacted in a negative way over the course of all of the meetings that have kind of landed on our books. So a positive, there's still certainly the aspect of this, that you need that you need the back and forth, right? Which is, which is still fundamental to, you know, ideation, creative or in production. But so far, good ish. I'd like to see other people doing it doing the heavy lifting, I would love for this to be kind of more institutionalized, and, and send up a send through your updates to the team in the same way, right, so that we have kind of a full, full team, autonomous, update giver, in the Looms.
Tom Ollerton 22:21
Alright, well, look, I'm gonna be a negative person about this just for the sake of argument, why can't you just under lists, never to do it doesn't require any back and forth, then you're just sharing information? Why can you just go look, these are the three venues for the Christmas party, choose one.
Adam Palmer 22:39
Totally fine. What I love though about this is you still get the human touch, right, you still get the signature, you're still there and present. And quite frankly, I think it also is that personalization of the message, you're, you're pushing that up in the inbox a little bit more, right. And the idea of efficacy of having somebody who's sent a personalized walkthrough here, all the here all the options, here's here are all the to do's that we have on our list this week. I think that personalization gives people a little bit more higher level of attention, when it's coming from a personalized speaker write in email. Yeah, you can, you can totally check that off the box. But if you're trying to get something across it, you want to give emphasis to certain parts of what you're delivering. You want to have some some inflection in your voice and, and here's something that we're getting really excited about that we have to tackle this week, right? You get to have that opportunity with Loom and I'm kind of excited about finding additional uses for it too.
Tom Ollerton 23:50
So you're not gonna like to use the S word, but this is sales, right? They get creative people sell ideas to other people, whether they call it sales or not. That's what it is. Right? You're selling you want the the audience to quote unquote, buy it, right. And creative people celebrate it when Oh, yeah, they bought the idea like that. You sold it to them. So what you're really doing here is you're adding like, an emotional level level of data on top of the fact which increases the amount of people are going to buy this thing whether it was a Christmas party list or you know a to-do for the week, if I got that right. So what other use cases are rattling around your head? What would you what would this be too far for like, I don't know, like an anniversary present or something but like, how, where would where does this stop working?
Adam Palmer 24:45
What I would love to test into is actually utilizing this as a as a almost like an onboarding piece for in my day to day work with talent. Featured subjects, right, we're gonna have somebody on a, on a series program, or we're gonna have a host of a podcast, as part of that talent recruiting, I would love to have that as part of the part of the recruiting pitch, right? So when...
Tom Ollerton 25:22
Areyou pitching the brief to the employee or them pitching themselves to you?
Adam Palmer 25:26
I both in either I think it works both ways. But the but what I would love to see, I think this is reached a level of success, if we're able to do that our external facing, right, so almost like that, like a casting brief to an agent or to a management team, or a talent that we want to work with. I would love to see that as like, okay, here are the five things that we want to do with your, with your talent, how can we work together? here's, here's the brief, really, again, just that personalization, that that level of being able to emphasize parts of, you know, where you might not necessarily have the opportunity to jump on a conference call with a management team or you're in casting. So really, this is tough to personalize in a way that you can jump on a conference call with, you know, 10 different potential subjects for a web series or for a podcast. So I would see this as like, that's next level, if we're utilizing it that way. If we're able to evolve the way that we utilize the tool, I would love to see that.
Tom Ollerton 26:43
Unfortunately, we've got to wrap this up now. So I think I know what the answer this question is. But if someone wanted to get in touch with you, how would you like them to do that?
Adam Palmer 26:54
I would. I miss personal contact. Last couple of a couple of strange months, to a year and a half at this point. We've talked about Tom, we talked about our love of camping and the outdoors. I'd like to I'd like to have somebody come on a camping excursion with me. But if they were looking to reach out and touch base, would I love to see a LinkedIn, absolutely.
Tom Ollerton 27:22
Great. And what's the best place for them to send that to?
Adam Palmer 27:25
I would go to my, my LinkedIn, Adam Palmer on LinkedIn, resident of Bend, Oregon and current GoDaddy employee.
Tom Ollerton 27:35
Fantastic. Well look Adam. That was an unusual, surprisingly enjoyable podcast. Thank you so much.
Adam Palmer 27:42
I really appreciate your time.
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