Charting immense growth in 2013, Brand.com, led by president Mike Zammuto, continues to shake up the online brand management industry. As the new year begins, Mike Zammuto notes the importance of solid cultural values to encouraging growth, innovation, and integrity in operations. In short, he says the secret to keeping clients happy is prioritizing innovation—staying ahead of the curve in an industry that is changing rapidly.
“Brand.com builds a culture around innovation,” notes Zammuto. “Leadership needs to set the tone. We have to set big, audacious goals, and we push very hard.” Zammuto believes that it’s important for the company’s chief executives—including himself—to publicly and visibly prioritize innovation, leading by example.
He continues, “We reward innovation by demystifying and publicly valuing it. We openly celebrate the failures as well as the successes. As soon as companies start focusing more on protecting what they have than on what they need to build then the culture of innovation is lost.”
Continuous Growth
“A lot of people want to settle into a groove and keep doing what is working,” Zammuto continues. “We force ourselves to continually build new capabilities. Being a growth company actually helps that. When you are doubling size every few months it is easy for people to understand that what works today won’t work in the near future.”
Mike Zammuto goes on to explain the importance of having every single Brand.com team member dialed into the mission of innovation—something that makes innovation not just a core concern for the R&D division, but also HR. “We worry about every new hire, which is harder and harder to do as you get bigger,” he remarks. “We grill people on our strategy and plaster that strategy and our core values all over our walls.”
As online brand management (OBM) is accelerating, Zammuto is not looking for team members who sit idly by while the OBM industry charges forward. “Ultimately, innovation is about attracting the right people and then rewarding them for jumping out of their comfort zones.”
A Bi-Coastal Vision
That culture of innovation is leading Brand.com to make a big change in 2014. The company—which is based in Philadelphia—is expanding its operation, opening a new center for tech R&D in San Francisco. The new Brand.com R&D center will allow the company to tap into the innovative talents of Silicon Valley while expanding the capabilities of its technological hub, the Brand.com Command Center.
“The spinal cord of our strategy is the Brand.com Command Center,” Mike Zammuto offers. “It connects everything, and it is how we are able to leverage technology to solve problems in all new ways. It unites our internal systems and processes to create carefully-integrated workflows that have helped us to grow efficiently.”
A new location means new hiring opportunities that uphold and reinforce the company culture. “The San Francisco R&D center will get us access to talent that will help us tackle all new problems. 2014 is the largest expansion in R&D in the company’s history,” Zammuto notes.
The Command Center’s Capabilities
The Command Center provides the company’s clients with a convenient way to access all of the data and tools necessary for controlling their campaign.
The Brand.com Command Center is essentially the dashboard from which clients can access:
- The company’s industry-leading reputation monitoring tools, which include up-to-the-minute reports from Google, Yahoo, Bing, and leading search engines, plus online review directories.
- The company’s social media management tool, which functions in a way that is similar to Hootsuite.
- Up-to-the-second reporting and “attack watch” alerts, including alerts when a company’s name is used in tandem with a “negative” term like scam, scandal, or complaint.
- Review moderation tools, which allow corporate clients to gain control over the way their brands are portrayed on online review sites.
- The Brand.com Content Management System, which allows for the easy maintenance and modification of campaign assets.
A Growing Portfolio
According to Mike Zammuto, he and his Brand.com team are restless to develop their technological portfolio further, all in the interest of providing clients with new solutions. This client-centeredness is one of the keys to Brand.com’s technological growth. “We don’t really believe in innovating just to innovate,” he comments. “We believe in pushing forward so that we can provide out clients with real results. We want to offer solutions to those looking for greater control over their online branding.”
Zammuto’s goal is to keep pushing the Brand.com team to chart new territories for the online brand enhancement business—something that he hopes will come to pass through the opening of the new R&D center. “Again, we’re not content to rest on our laurels. The Brand.com Platform delivers solid results, but we want to make it better and better,” comments Mike Zammuto.