People Don’t Believe My Boss Exists: RCM Labs

By Rock Candy Media’s Lead Web Developer, Scott Mise

Annie Liao Jones is an anomaly. RCM Labs highlights that fact.

Rock Candy Media is no stranger to putting its own ass on the line. In fact, we have a rich history of exposing our pasty cheeks to the winds of change so our clients don’t have to. Also, it happens to be fun as hell.

When an outlandish campaign is pitched to a client, it isn’t out of left field – there’s a high probability that RCM has dabbled in producing elements of the campaign as part of RCM Labs. You may be familiar with the fact that Google employees are encouraged to devote a portion of their workdays to passion projects. Annie understands the value of this structure as well. At RCM, we are encouraged to test new marketing strategies and vehicles, and in the end everyone benefits – from the employees, back to our clients.

What happens in the Lab is up for grab(s).

RCM Labs projects span a wide range of subjects including pugs, celebrity personality tests, Spotify playlists, lousy stock photos, soundboards, and Google Chrome themes, just to name a handful. While these may seem scattered, they all share a couple common goals – lead generation and shortening sales cycles. When these goals are achieved, there’s isn’t much that’s more satisfying than passing our lab XP along to our clients.

Experimentation X Deliberation

Annie knows that beyond the face value benefits of experimenting with non-traditional marketing channels, there is more to be gained from RCM Labs. While our clients can reap the rewards of our collectively gained wisdom, the employees stand to gain just as much. Expertise in a new area is obviously beneficial, but there is also much to be said for just working on something weird.

In marketing and advertising, creative juices can become repressed by the nuts and bolts tasks of executing a campaign and generating results after the dust from the initial planning phase settles. Taking time to poke at something experimental, something that is a little less “life or death” than allocating a client’s marketing dollars, is a great creative workout. And at RCM, we like to keep our pasty cheeks toned.