mike beard : interactive

Social networking sites have come upon us in a flurry. Their use must be maximized in any new communications endeavour.

In 1994 I came down with a serious case of interactive. That's when I launched the first mikebeard.com as a presentation and portfolio site.

Shortly thereafter, I joined eCommerce Inc., a dot com startup where I designed and produced first-ever sites for national clients like: EMI (Capitol Record) Music; Grammy winner, Tom Cochrane, hip hop artists, Dream Warriors and New York Fries. I had been regularly uploading personal ideas on my site, in what would now be called blogs. In 1999 I summed them up in the eMarketing/CRM presentation, Swimming With Customers.

Joy to the World Wide Web was a first site (1996) for Torstar Metroland community newspapers. It introduced online advertising in my local Newmarket, Richmond Hill and Barrie, Ontario locales while demonstrating the vast capabilities of the coming internet era to thousands of local subscribers.

In 2001 I created a viral, database-building contest entitled, "I Hope You Win!"

For a textbook of online advertising and marketing, one that features gear shift navigation, see Drive This Site. Shifting through the gears will take you through five stages of Customer Relationship Management automotive style.

During 2001-2002 at Saatchi & Saatchi I launched the interactive 'first peek' at the new hybrid vehicle, the Toyota Matrix . I led the interactive group to produce a series of Flash banner and skyscraper ads to support the newly launched web site.