99 and 1/2 Days

Alaskan crab fishing may well be the most dangerous job in the world, but being CMO is the most dangerous in the enterprise. The average tenure of a CMO is 40 months, or 1200 days.  You'd be nuts to give a CMO a mortgage.

Today in my 99^th day at Limelight.  I only have 1100 days left – to fix the marketing operations plumbing, fill the pipeline with a steady stream of opportunities, increase brand awareness, improve analyst relations, build a user community, build out international marketing, and develop ‘thought-leadership’ whatever the heck that means. 

Maybe I should just jump overboard now and get it over with…

Nah.  Having too much fun.  And, I don’t get seasick. Much.

We did land at least one whale in my first 100 days.  Today, we launch our new Digital Presence.  And, like hitting one good crab-pot in a string, this one is going to make me get up tomorrow morning and keep fishing. 

Check out http://www.limelight.com

Oh yes, it’s a radical departure.  Written in a fresh, jaunty style that represents a brand direction for Limelight – confident, approachable, down-to-earth, no BS, but with a sharp sense of humor – it’s good fresh digital bait. 

We hope you find our new online digital presence engaging, informative, and perhaps even enjoyable. We’re particularly pleased with the new corporate video – filmed with help from our Tempe employees just last week.  You will find it on the Limelight Video Player embedded in carousel frame #6 (Make It Stick.)

The new site tells a story – The Story of the Customer’s Story.  It’s about the challenges people face in getting their stories across in today’s digital marketplace, and the value we provide in delivering stories. Every Way. Every Where.

The medium itself stands as a testament to our message.  We didn’t just eat our own dog food on this project; we got shipfaced on our own champagne! 

Starting with a full-on Digital Presence Assessment in partnership with Limelight Global Services, we stared at our digital navel, and it was not a pretty site.  

Getting the story straight was no smooth sail, either.  We dumped plenty of fish guts over the whiteboard rails before limelight finally dawned on marketing’s marble head – it ain’t about us, Salty.  It’s about the customer, and the customer’s story.  We’re just digital bookbinders, Mate. 

Once we got that net untangled, the rest of the work was setting the pots.  We built the site on Limelight Video Player and Dynamic Site Platform – our SaaS based web content management system. As a long time user of crusty in-house CMS systems, let me tell you this is a thing of beauty to a wave-worn marketing geek like me.  I spent days in this CMS, all by my lonesome – editing, writing, posting, fixing – and believe you me, if I can do it…well, so can you.

We integrated social media and hosted the whole thing in our Agile storage cloud.  We bridged the site with virtually every one of our internal business systems - the new UCS system, Marketo, SFDC, Live Chat, our NASDAQ microsite, and our support systems. 

We did nothing – not one thing – special or difficult to get the site to run on any mobile device anywhere in the world.  Try it on yours.  Pure magic.

The new site uses, or will soon use, virtually every service and interface Limelight has to offer.  It is a holistic example of what we do for our customers. 

It is Orchestrate. 

We hope you enjoy this first step in Limelight’s digital presence transformation. 

For now, it’s back to cutting bait – only 1099 days left in this fishing season.

Wish me luck!

PS - We hid a few surprises around, just to keep things interesting.  Hope you get a smile or two when you trip over them.