In this episode, I’m chatting with Jim Jacoby and PJ Loughran of Manifest Digital, a Chicago based interactive agency with a unique ability to spark conversation.

If you can’t see the video, please click here. The music featured during the intro and credits of this episode is a song called “I’m Okay” from local Chicago band Molehill.

Here’s a transcript of my interview with Jim and PJ at Manifest Digital:

PJ Loughran:
My name is PJ Loughran and I’m the Chief Creative Officer of Manifest Digital.  My job is to make sure that Manifest is doing mind blowing work on a regular basis.  To really make sure the standards of the work we create are as high as possible.

Jim Jacoby:
My name is Jim Jacoby.  They call me a founder, a Chief Experience Officer, but really what I do is connect eclectic groups of people together to solve problems.

PJ Loughran:
We’re really not a marketing firm.  We’re really developing content, whether that’s software, some kind of narrative based piece.  We’re really using every tool in a creative or technology arsenal to help our clients do such a wide variety of things.

Something that’s interesting over the years is how this discipline has evolved over the last ten years.  It’s very hard to describe exactly what we do because there is a marketing component, a software development component, a game development component, a filmmaking and story development component.

Jim Jacoby:
Best way to sum it up is our moms have no idea what we do.

PJ Loughran:
For the last seventeen years, my mother has no idea what the heck we do.

Jim Jacoby:
They just give up and say ok, sure, you do computer stuff.

I kind of reflect on this popular culture thing, like the Mad Men series.  It’s kind of kitchy but what I think is overlooked is how in those days, advertising people were reinventing businesses and reinventing markets.  They had new technologies like TV and radio and billboards and so forth that had never really been exploited the way they figured out they could be.  We spent thirty to forty years running that out and squeezing it for everything we had and it became tired and old.  Now we have all these new tools crashing into each other in all these new ways and I believe advertising, marketing, business consulting – they’re all crashing together.  That’s what gets me up every day.  I can reinvent somebody’s business.

We’re the best in the world at not getting full of ourselves about being gurus in social media or whatever the next catch phrase is.  We’re the best in the world at being level headed about what’s coming next and the fact that it isn’t going to be another flash in the pan.  It’s about building a good business foundation and solving the problem of connecting a company or people to other people or audiences.

PJ Loughran:
It’s funny, I’ve had people say to me “What are you the best in the world at? What’s your thing? What’s your angle on this whole industry?”

It’s being great.  It’s being better than everyone else.

I know that’s sort of a simple or bold statement but it’s not an easy thing to do.  It takes a lot of focus and a lot of attention to detail.  But that’s the promise we make to our clients when they initiate a project or a relationship with us.  We’ll give you everything we have.

Jim Jacoby:
We joke that the world doesn’t need another interactive design firm.  There are enough of them, we don’t need another one.  We see Manifest Digital as less of a brand and more of an ethic.  It’s about working your ass off to get something done really well.  We’ve worked really hard and dedicated our lives to this career and brought all these people together.  We want people around us who are going to work really hard to get it done.

PJ Loughran:
We want people to walk away from what they’ve done and feel like they’ve done something really meaningful with that time.  I really believe that if you don’t really love what you’re working on, then people will see it.  But if you can find a way in every problem you’re faced with, every project, every challenge that somebody puts in front of you, a way of putting your heart into it and investing yourself personally in what that is, it’ll come through.

Arrogance is such a dangerous thing for anyone.  It’s the foil for the greatest failures.  You should never feel like you’re too good or you have too much money or success behind you.  Arrogance a recipe for failure.  We look for people who understand that, people who aren’t looking for awards.  I mean, I haven’t applied for an award in seven years.

Jim Jacoby:
The awards we get are when our clients get an award related to their business.  We’re not looking for our own creative or interactive rewards or anything like that.  When we hear somebody like the American Academy of Pediatrics is recognized by Oprah Winfrey for such and such, that’s incredibly powerful to us.

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