Community

Corporate Philanthropy Day

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Community, Marketing Musings

You wouldn’t think a company of fewer than 200 employees and sub-contractors could have as much impact on the wider world as Projectline does… but we’re a small company with a big mission: “To positively impact the people we work with, the people we work for, and the people in our community.”

Each month we volunteer locally with groups like Time & Talent in the UK, support 3 Kiva loan recipients, donate to a global organization chosen by an employee, and donate to a local organization where we volunteer. Annually we have multiple materials and fund drives to support organizations working to make a difference in our communities, such as Urban Rest Stop. We also have a Green Team in both our Seattle and Philadelphia locations to help us keep an eye on our environmental impact—from our kitchens to our commute. This year we launched a grant program so we can send at least 2 employees abroad to volunteer during their vacation time. Many of our employees are involved with global development, are leading events such as TEDxRainier, and give plenty of their own time and resources to their local communities too.

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MLK Day of Service: A Brief Retrospective

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Community, Marketing Musings

At Projectline, we draw inspiration from many sources. We’re inspired by forward thinking and big ideas. We’re inspired by efficiency and smart design. We’re inspired by innovation and bold technology. We’re inspired by people, too—especially great leaders. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is at the top of the list of those we look to for inspiration. So on January 16, we chose to honor him by participating in a day of service.

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Volunteer Pride

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Community, Marketing Musings

Here at Projectline, we’ve recently started a project to capture all the places we work and bring together our team around the world. Every weekday morning at 10:42 am, our team is invited to send in a picture of where they are, what they’re doing, or who they’re with. Each Monday, we’ll choose our favorite picture of the previous week and share its story here.

10:42 Jan 13, 2011 - Projectline Volunteer Hoodie Day

Today is Martin Luther King Day, and a national Day of Service. This is a picture of some of the amazing volunteers in our Bellevue office showing off their Projectline hoodies. You can only get one of these sweatshirts if you volunteer with Projectline more than twice. You don’t have to be an employee, but you do have to volunteer. Yep, that’s right, not even clients can get this coveted apparel just by asking. Wouldn’t you be proud to wear one, too?

Join us anytime! Email carolem@projectlineinc.com to receive an invitation to our monthly volunteer outings or join the Projectline Group on Facebook.

January 16, 2012: Honor Dr. King with Service

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Community, Company, Marketing Musings

Join Projectline for a Day On, Not Off

Those of you who know Projectline may be aware that we volunteer as a group once per month with local non-profit organizations chosen by employees. People sometimes seem perplexed by this volunteering habit—they can’t believe that folks who work together all week would want to spend evenings or weekends working even more. They can’t imagine committing to spend hours doing things that make their hands dirty or their backs hurt, all for an unknown recipient whom they may never meet. I suspect their confusion comes from a lack of experience, not from differing values. Until you habitually give up your spare time and direct your energy toward a shared goal, it can be difficult to see that the benefits of service outweigh the inconvenience (by tons).

This year, we are raising the stakes and participating in the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service on January 16, 2012. On this federal holiday honoring Dr. King, we hope that every single Projectliner will spend the day with their community, either volunteering with us or their own group instead of working. We also hope to sweet-talk our clients into getting away from work on this day to spend time with us too. As well, we are inviting vendors and subcontractors, employment candidates, past employees, future clients, Projectline Book Club members, and anyone else in the Projectline network who is interested in making January 16th a day on, not a day off.

  • When: January 16, 2011, 9:00am to 4:00pm
  • Where: Seattle, Philadelphia, Toronto, London and Bay areas or wherever you are
  • Who: You, me, and everyone we know
  • How: RSVP on this Facebook event page or email Carole Magouryk

Trust me, volunteering with Projectliners is one of the most rewarding, contemplative, and merry days of my month. Whether we are delousing sleeping mats, building fences, staffing a fund-raiser, serving or sorting food, or anything else we are asked to do, the time spent together as a team working for our community is worth every single second. I hope you’ll join us.

Follow @MLKDay and @projectline to learn more about the MLK Day of Service or just to discuss this important day. We want to hear what you are planning. If you want to talk to me about integrating volunteering and giving into your work community, find me @AnikaMarketer.

“Life’s most persistent and urgent question is: ‘What are you doing for others?’”
-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Eating Healthy at Work?

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Community, Company, Marketing Musings

About six months ago, Projectline re-launched its Green Team, an internal group of employees committed to measuring, planning, and improving Projectline’s impact on the environment from a corporate perspective. As the leader of the Projectline Green Team, I felt like I would be a hypocrite if I didn’t start practicing what I preached, so I began to live more sustainably: taking the bus when possible, walking more, conserving energy, buying local. I found out how interrelated my sustainable lifestyle was with my health, especially EATING! I just felt better when I wasn’t putting a lot of chemicals or processed food in my body (though I still have a huge weakness for lime chips).

“Eating right” is something we hear a lot, but it’s not something that is usually part of a company’s core values. Projectline prides itself on being people-focused and really caring about its employees, and in early summer, the company informed me and my coworkers that it would be updating its FREE snack service for employees to include ORGANIC, FRESH, RAW produce in the office, chosen and prepared just for Projectline. The leadership had come to the conclusion, after a recent internal Projectline health fair, that the company should redesign its food purchasing to be more in line with its philosophy: Less sugar, salt, corn syrup, and processed food, and more raw, local, organic, whole foods. As someone who has recently embraced the healthy-eating lifestyle, this was great news!

According to sustainabletable.org, we spend about 90 percent of our food budget on foods that have been treated in some way after being harvested or butchered. To be more proactive with our working habits, Holly Noll from VeganShortcake.com has been at both our Bellevue and Seattle offices every Monday to prep the week’s fresh fruit and vegetable offerings. The new snack regimen supports less packaging, more local food, fair trade, and our health(!) with organic and non-processed foods.

Projectline’s new offering has already inspired a healthier lifestyle both at work and in the personal lives of Projectliners. Since the service launched three months ago we’ve already seen increased education and awareness; there has been a brown bag on healthy eating, plans among a few employees to join a CSA (community-supported agriculture) service, and healthier eating both inside and outside of the office. Personally, I’ve evolved a bit—I’m nearing the end of my 30 days of veganism! Me, vegan?! It’s actually been really fun and fairly easy, now that it’s a habit. Have you ever thought of trying to take caffeine (I know, that’s blasphemy!) or dairy out of your diet for a month?

Holly_PL_Kitchen

Anika Lehde, Vice President at Projectline, said, “Like other areas of our company, my hope is that wherever we put money, even snacks, can be a reflection of our work to be the best company possible.” The company continues to reflect and evolve in its focus and support of its employees. This truly is a special company to work for.

What types of snacks do you have in your office? Ever stepped back to see what you are eating a lot of and how much it’s processed? Food for thought.

Our Favorite Quotes From TEDxRainier 2011

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Community, Company, Marketing Musings

This weekend, a handful of Projectline employees attended TEDxRainier. We donated to this event in our clients’ names because we know that they are interested in “ideas worth sharing” as much as we are. If you’re familiar with TED Talks, then you know the caliber of progressive minds we were exposed to from 10 am until 7 pm. We were motivated and inspired and wanted to share a few of our favorite quotes with you:

“Every act of communication is a translation.”— Chris Bliss (favorite of Ann Naumann, Sr. Manager, Content Strategy, @naumannclature)

“Is your perspective giving you the quality of life that you want?”— Jim Sorensen (favorite of Jeremy Russell, Seattle Office Manager, @JeremyJRussell and many other Projectline folks)

“Life’s biggest gift is our ability to better the lives of those less fortunate than us.” — Adnan Mahmud (favorite of Erica Hansen, Director, Customer Engagement Group)

“Morale is a multiplier of velocity across a team.” — Joe Justice (favorite of John Bush, Campaign Desk Coordinator, @JBushSeattle)

“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” — Jenn Lim (favorite of D’Laina Boynton, Marketing Consultant, @dlaina and many others)

“Pick a dream that’s longer than a lifetime.” — Daria Musk (favorite of Karin Zabel, Sr. Manger, Social Media, @kazab)

“Time bows to authentic commitment and stretches to accommodate it.” — Will Hewett (favorite of Anika Lehde, Co-Owner, @AnikaMarketer—actually everyone liked this one a lot!)

“Words are flimsy messengers for the fullness of our experience.” — Will Hewett (favorite of Damian Hoffman, Director, Marketing Operations Group)

Want to talk with us about the world, communications, business, marketing, content and meaning? Follow us on Twitter and tell us your favorite quote.

#SIC2011 Attendees Tell the Conference Story Via Twitter

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Community, Marketing Musings, Social Media

This week, I attended Seattle’s first annual Seattle Interactive Conference featuring the connection and convergence of online technology, creativity, and emerging trends. If you’re in the social media or digital marketing space, you probably attend dozens of conferences and events each year to stay current and active in a fast-paced industry. If you’re not able to attend a conference, I recommend simply searching the event hashtag to read all of the attendee comments—good and bad—about the content shared. I’ve read recap after recap of the Seattle Interactive Conference and decided that I’m not going to summarize the event in my own words; I’m going to let the attendees do that. Here’s what they had to say using the official conference hashtag on Twitter: #SIC2011.

Day One: November 2, 2011

I registered and picked up my badge at the Battle of the Geeks event on Tuesday night…

But many did not attend and therefore, stood in a really long line on Wed morning.

If you made it in by the first session, you would have caught the “official” keynote speech by Jeff Barr of Amazon. When I put official in quotes, it’s because there were other sessions going on during the SIC claimed keynote, which is very unusual for a conference.

The Mad Woman Panel was packed! Moderated by Hillary Miller of Wunderman, she brought up some interesting topics around how well Don Draper from Mad Men would do in today’s society using clips from the show.


Shauna Causey of Nordstrom and SMC Seattle kicks off the co-creation talk by taking a picture of her audience and tweeting it. She shared valuable insights on the importance of co-creating with your consumers. If they say “that was my “idea” you know that you have won.

At the end of the first day, Ben Elowitz, Founder and CEO of wetpaint, shared stories of his start-ups and what has been successful for him via social media platforms.

While I was in a different room, Rand Rishkin of SEOMOZ said this:


The first day was quite a haul. From SEO and UX to cloud talks and women panels. It was time to hit up Shabazz Palaces at the Showbox Market.

Day Two: November 3, 2011

On Thursday, there wasn’t a registration line, but people were sure lined up to see Sir Mix-A-Lot. He talked about how we spend a lot more on music now than we used to. We’re not walking into record stores, we’re buying it on Shazaam, iTunes and other digital spaces because it’s convenient.

In the afternoon, Yelp and Urbanspoon presented on social media reputation models and how to respond to positive and negative reviews on their site. In fact, both companies admitted that they will flag and remove reviews that come from the same IP address. What do you think about that? Some reviews may be legitimate from same person, but it could also be the owner of that company trying to increase their positive reviews.

In the social media analytics panel, Founder of Meteor shared this interesting stat:

Then we heard this, which shouldn’t be news to the folks who run communities. It’s the same stat.

For my last session, I attended the #SoLoMo panel (social, local, mobile) which focused on the rise of social behavior and connecting through physical locations. Two panelists were from MapQuest and Glympse. Knowing where your friends are at all times used to be considered stalking or creepy but now it’s called location-based marketing.

For example, the leader in location-based marketing is Foursquare…

It was a long two days, but full of information, networking and fun. Out of all the 2,500+ tweets with the #SIC2011 handle, this was one of the most re-tweeted.

Hopefully in the future, you’ll follow me at other social media and digital marketing events. For now, cheers!

Karin Zabel
@kazab