As Creative Director within the Direct Marketing and Print Department at Cramer, Loriann brings over fifteen years experience delivering creative solutions through leading and managing art directors, designers, writers and photographers.
With her strong creative and technical abilities and experience, Loriann works with clients to exceed their expectations while meeting crucial deadlines. While at Cramer, Loriann has worked on projects ranging from brand development to integrated lead generation campaigns.
Loriann studied Fine Art and Illustration at the Art Institute of Boston and received her B.S. from Northeastern University. Loriann was previously the V.P. of Web Products for a business-to-business e-commerce web site. Prior to that, she was instrumental in developing the creative department as the Creative Manager at Linsco/Private Ledger, Inc., an international financial services organization.
Confessions of a Social Media Virgin
OK. I can no longer ignore social media or hide from it. I’ve cringed at the idea of exposing myself online. I like being anonymous and it’s not like I’m a technophobe. I’ve been in marketing for over 15 years and embraced the web fairly early. (I had to look back at a quick history of the web to see how accurate my claim was…how time flies!)
If you’re like me you may have some of the same objections:
- Who Cares?
I sometimes wonder why some people blog. I mean, who cares what you think…right? But on deeper examination I realized I was constantly finding information on issues I did care about, in other peoples blogs. When researching about rebranding efforts I came across The Responsible Marketing Blog posting about Walmart’s rebrand. Not only was it funny, it was informative. I found that my research was directing me to all sorts of useful information in my day-to -day efforts, and much of it came from blog postings. - Everyone Else is Doing It.
OK, so this may not seem like a good reason not to participate, but if you are somewhat rebellious and pride yourself on being an individual, this may seem reasonable. This was a much harder hurdle to get over. The scale tipped for me when my old high school friends (the ones who are technophobes) harassed me because I’m not on Facebook and they don’t use email. Oh, and then there are the companies who have abandoned using a standard web page and have thrown caution to the wind, like Skittles. Do I really want to be that person who is stuck in the last decade and cannot think of vibrant new ideas? Definitely not. - I Like Being Anonymous.
Sorry sister. Those days are over. No one is really anonymous these days. I did a Google search and found seven accurate postings about me. That isn’t a lot, but I am out there. You probably are too. - I Don’t Have Time.
Full time career, family, dog, lack of exercise, my desire to make most of my food from scratch. There are a thousand things that take up my time each and every day, but, it really is a matter of figuring out what is going to reap the most value for time invested. Although I’ve tried hard to ignore the “social media thing”, I’m starting to feel like it would be career suicide to ignore it. With most of my colleagues on LinkedIn, I’m starting to feel left out of the loop and there is a big difference between being left alone and being left behind. And from an integrity standpoint, if I’m directing creative that has social media as part of the mix, I’d like to be able to offer input based on a user perspective not just from a viewer’s vantage point.
So I’m hoping my confessions and public exorcism of my internal social media demons will help someone else out there take the plunge. Let’s see if we sink or swim!