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Category : People

Buddy Lunch: The Best Things in Life Are Free

Starting out somewhere new is never easy. You’re tasked with figuring out a boatload of new information for yourself: what those acronyms stand for, which conference room you’re supposed to be in, or what your coworker’s name actually is because you’re pretty sure it’s Pat, but maybe you misheard him and it’s Matt, but it’s too late to ask now so you just decide to play it safe and avoid calling him anything at all.

It can be tough to navigate these new waters – unless that place is DiMassimo Goldstein.

I’ve had the privilege of being DiGo’s Client Fulfillment intern since December, and I can honestly say this transition has been seamless. From day one, I’ve been met with nothing but warm smiles, welcoming coworkers, and great opportunities to get to know them better. Perhaps the greatest opportunity of them all has been the Buddy Lunch.

I realize that this is not a widespread term, as I’m lucky enough to be at the company that’s at the forefront of the Buddy Lunch Revolution. To better clarify this DiGo terminology for our readers, I’ve created a definition:

Buddy Lunch (noun): a midday meal paid for by your company during which you get to  better know one or several of your coworkers, and thus, make new friends.

Example: “Hey, John. You seem like a really cool guy. Let’s go to Panera and chat it up!”

This might not sound typical, but keep in mind that nothing about DiMassimo Goldstein is typical. This is the same company where within my first two weeks, I experienced things like team karaoke, meditation, cats and dogs in the office (and no, that’s not a metaphor). So, a free lunch during work as a way to make new friends? That just seemed like classic DiGo – and I was all over it.

Unfortunately, my execution was not as effortless as my excitement. After several drafted emails later, I still couldn’t think of the right words. How exactly is the best way to say “Hey, you probably don’t know me, but that’s why I’m emailing you. Should we get some lunch so that we can learn each other’s names?” Didn’t exactly work. Luckily enough, some kind soul in the office saved me from my own awkwardness and invited me out to lunch. If you know anything about DiGo’s employees, you’ll know that this display of kindness is par for the course. To no surprise, it was a great time: flowing conversation and plenty of laughs over a pizza that was definitely fit for more than two people. Was I sure this was the dreaded “work” that all my employed friends were warning me about?

After that, I felt comfortable. I had a friend in the office, and I had the momentum to make some more. With every Buddy Lunch I went on, I felt like I became more a part of DiGo because I got to know the people who made it so special. Each person imparted their wisdom on me, wanting to give me the best possible advice on how to succeed at this company. Though I valued their input greatly, it was their willingness and enthusiasm to help others that most resonated with me.

I quickly realized that everybody at DiGo wanted the best for their peers, and the feeling was contagious. Whether it was pizza with someone from Studio, dumplings with the Account team, or salad with someone from the Marketing team, I felt such a strong sense of support from the people I was surrounded by, and it made me want to do the same for others. To me, that defines success at a company.

If that isn’t #InspiringAction, I don’t know what is. Power to the Buddy Lunch!

— Claire Holleran, Client Fulfillment Intern

Rebecca Weiser Recognized as a Rising Star in Financial Marketing!

We’re so proud to announce that Rebecca Weiser, our very own Director of Integrated Media and Analytics, has been named one of Gramercy Institute’s 2017-2018 “20 Rising Stars in Financial Marketing!”

We’ve known Rebecca to be a star since the day she joined DiGo as a Sr. Media Planner back in 2012. In the five years since, she’s proven that time and time again, growing through the ranks of the agency and continuing to be a true agent of the client.

Rebecca has played a vital role in inspiring action and growing the businesses of leading financial brands such as Ally Bank, TradeStation, Online Trading Academy, and Affinity Federal Credit Union through award-winning media strategies. In a constantly evolving media landscape, Rebecca considers all factors that could potentially impact media performance. She approaches each new business problem as an opportunity to provide creative, innovative, and thoughtful solutions. By looking at the story beyond the numbers, she brings unique insights to the table and offers actionabale analysis that has consistently driven growth for our clients.

Her leadership among the team provides clients with the ultimate confidence that their dollars will be spent efficiently and their trust in her has resulted in significant business growth year over year.

Congratulations Rebecca!

The Power Of The Buddy System

12039523_10100778309408609_378095294695668421_nStarting a new job can be a very exciting time in your life, but the process often leaves you feeling uneasy and intimidated. You’re the new kid on the block, doing your best to navigate your new surroundings and make a good impression. Most of us will quickly try to find allies in the office, but that isn’t always easy to do. It doesn’t help that stressful situations, back-to-back meetings and timely deadlines are not the ideal ingredients for relationship building.

In September 2015, Fast Company published an article breaking down the importance of having friends in the work place and why it is crucial to our happiness. The article claims that even though we spend most of our days at work, we are less likely to have friends in the office now in comparison to past years. Although this seems like a problem most directly affecting employees, it is also a troublesome problem for employers looking to maintain a positive, productive work place where they can groom long-term talent.

Since our mission at DiMassimo Goldstein is to Inspire Action, we set out to find a solution to this growing problem in the hopes of increasing employee happiness, productivity and motivation. The solution was to start a two-month lunch program that gives employees the opportunity to go to lunch with one another. Each lunch you get thirty dollars to spend with your buddy and the only guideline is that it should be with someone you don’t know very well.

Being one of the newer employees at DiGo, I wanted to take advantage of this fantastic opportunity. My work life was very separate from my personal life when I first started in May, and although I loved my new role, I wasn’t as friendly with my coworkers as I had been at previous jobs. This new company program gave me the confidence and opportunity to reach out to coworkers in various departments including creative, strategy, operations, media and production. This also opened the door for me to reach out to senior staff members that I didn’t otherwise interact with on a regular basis.

There are so many reasons I have enjoyed this program, aside from my love of free food. After speaking with different people from different departments, I learned more about how each department functions on a day-to-day basis and ways the account team can better work with them. Having a reason to get out of the office and get some fresh air helped me focus better in the afternoon and increased my productivity level. I noticed I feel much more comfortable walking around the office, chatting with people before meetings or even bumping into them in the kitchen. Most importantly, I had the opportunity to ask advice from people with valuable experience which will not only help me grow at DiGo, but also as young person in the advertising industry.

When introducing this program to the company, Mark DiMassimo explained that the goal was for everyone to be able to say they have at least six friends in the office. After speaking with some of my new lunch buddies, I can confidently say that many of us have accomplished that goal and then some.

And they say there’s no such thing as a free lunch…

-Morgan Kelly, Brand Manager

SOURCE: http://www.fastcompany.com/3051290/lessons-learned/why-having-friends-at-work-is-so-important

 

Proove Accountable Media, The Way Media Should Be.

Media Agencies are operating in an old school fashion, marking up inventory, not being transparent, moving at a snails pace and not investing in the best talent. I felt there was an opportunity for an agency to be fully transparent, ethical, and to act as a true agent for the client. Built from the ground up, Proove is positioned as a challenger to the old school model and is set up to drive success for our clients in todays world.

What do our clients get from an honest agency?

No previous prearranged media, partner or data commitments…a realtime log of the daily optimizations made & a non-biased media recommendation that clearly maps back to what you need to accomplish in market. You will actually know where your media is running.

What does that mean?

Results.

Proove Accountable Media, the way media should be.

Read the full Business Insider article here.

 

What’s Your Measure of Proof?

There was once a man who refused to give up smoking until it was proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that smoking caused disease.

He didn’t live long enough to see the proof.

Today, there are direct (digital, mobile, SAAS, subscription, e-commerce, club…) marketers who refuse to improve their marketing success with an insight-driven multi-channel strategy until the perfect attribution model has been developed.

Every day, another one is buried by a marketer with a more reasonable measure of proof.

Is overall marketing efficiency your ultimate measure? Is making one dollar of marketing spend return two or three or four times as many customers your objective?

If so, you are an optimizer.

If you prefer perfectly attributable though small gains in discrete channels, then you’re an incrementalist.

Optimizers eat incrementalists for lunch.

Sometimes, in very big places, incrementalists work in the middle of a pyramid with optimizers at the top. Even so, they can only swim so far up before they hit a ceiling. Too late, they find that the open market is not a very friendly place for an incrementalist.

Why do incrementalists do it to themselves? Is it because they are trading upside for certainty? Is being sure more valuable to them than being successful? Is being right worth more to them than results?

Or did they just swallow a less intelligent idea of what it is a marketer is supposed to do?

Well … enough musing about the incrementalists, much as I would like to convert as many of them as possible to a life of success beyond explanation.

We are for the optimizers.

 

Freedom’s Pusher

We think we’re free, but we have habits. Our habits are tyrants. They dominate us. Hard as we may try, we can’t get free of habits, we can only build new ones. And we only feel “free” when we’re dominated by habits that empower us.

So, freedom is an addiction.

I help people form more inspiring, more empowering habits. I help marketers make more inspiring decisions, so they can help more people form more inspiring habits.

I’m Freedom’s Pusher.

Please Enjoy Responsibly.

Max Millington
Max Millington, Sr. Art Director at DiMassimo Goldstein

If you haven’t yet, all of you, my fellow DiGoners will be asked to describe your “Proudest” moment here at DiMassimo Goldstein. So I spent this last week mulling over the last three and a half years here, and I have come to realize that I cannot answer this question.

Simply put… it can not possibly sound BAD-ASS. Like, there’s just no way…

Actually, it would be some of the most down-right cheesy sh*t you may ever hear… ever.

And you know, who knows… some hot chick may read this post at some point in the future.

And I’m sorry, but I CANNOT afford to have some future hot chick not fall in love with me, all over some touchy feel-y mumbo about how I love my job. Or because whenever when I think back to the day when I started, I tend to get teary-eyed from the inspiring growth that I personally bore witness to. All I’m saying is, that if I ever said anything like, “It’s not a just job, it’s The Life.” it wouldn’t be easy to maintain any semblance of BADASS-ARY. There just isn’t a cool way to say: Every moment at DiMassimo Goldstein is potentially my proudest. And that’s where we run into trouble…

So, I have decided it’s in everyone’s best interest go another way with it entirely, and I sketched up a few possibilities of what this future hot chick could look like…

Please Enjoy Responsibly.

By MAx