John M. Hogan III
Where do you work? I’ve been the director of digital media at Dooley & Associates since 2012 and working in the tech industry since 2008.
What is your job title and what do you do? As director of digital media, my attention is focused on setting strategic and creative direction for our digital product offerings, including website design and development, social media management, digital advertising, search engine optimization and media production (photo and video).
How did you end up here? As we often (humorously) reference, my education is in philosophy — not marketing. But through a series of life events, I became interested and educated in digital marketing and creative production. Previous to working at Dooley & Associates, I worked for Kenosha News and was part of the team that launched their digital marketing department.
What do you enjoy most about your responsibilities? Creative problem solving. Every day we face new challenges, and every day we are working to find creative solutions. Our single goal as a company is to help our clients grow their business. To ensure this happens, we have to continuously re-evaluate and adapt our marketing tactics. Plus, the digital marketing environment and landscape is constantly evolving, which means we’re constantly having to learn and apply new techniques and solutions.
What work experiences bring you to this position? At the Kenosha News, I was part of the team that launched their digital marketing department. However, I would largely attribute my career journey with being born at the right time and taking advantage of the near infinite amount of information available to anyone who wants to learn. Growing up in the information age gave me access to the many evolving technologies that would eventually play a major part of our everyday lives — and, in essence, become principal marketing platforms. Plus, I’ve always been a student of the great American innovators and titans of industry, and they all have a common thread: consummate learners.
Where do you see your industry going in the next few years? Machine learning is the future of all business, including marketing. What machine learning is really about is prediction. Computers, as we have known them, are really just masters of executing instructions. A computer can execute very detailed instructions — very quickly — but they traditionally cannot intuit (which is an essential feature of intelligence), and this is how machine learning is going to change the game. Computers will be able to make qualified and quantitative predictions at a scale and pervasiveness that will fundamentally alter business and society. At Dooley & Associates, we have already begun using machine learning applications to improve our clients’ success.
On the Job is a weekly feature of the Kenosha News, profiling workers in our community. We’re interested in all manner of jobs and employment. To participate, email James Lawson at jlawson@kenoshanews.com.