Role/Projects: Working as a freelance copywriter and information architect for Modem Media, I helped lead a few different 3M projects, all in their Office Products division. I concepted and wrote a very successful online promotion for the Post-it® Note's 25^th anniversary. I also re-architected their popular 3M Meeting Network, which is a monthly e-zine devoted to meetings and meeting products (well, relatively popular—it's a select audience that relishes the art of the meeting). And I helped re-architect and re-write their online catalog for their Promotional Products Division.

The Results: The Post-it® promotion went over very well (even though we turned it around in a relatively short time), both with the client and their site users (or so I was told by 3M). Essentially, we were able to create an unobtrusive pop-up from 3M's home page, leading to a fun landing page with a quick form/entry for the contest (which was a chance to win some free, limited edition Post-it® memorabilia—and, yes, there really are such things).

The re-design of the 3M Meeting Network also went off OK, though I think the architecture, copy and designs we presented were quite a bit better than the actual implementation (i.e., it was less cluttered and more usable). While the client was thrilled with what we did in making it easier to use, read and navigate (the old Meeting Network was really quite awful), I still feel it could have been finished much better (for example, many of the copy blocks they have up now are just way too long—easily a few times as long as the snippets and teasers we originally wrote, with the intention of getting the user to click down to the deeper, more content heavy pages). However, it does a much better job of marrying 3M's office products within the Meeting Network's content—something that was a key objective of the project.

The Promotional Products project also was quite successful, though it, too, was limited in its effectiveness (as 3M employs a proprietary "products on the Web" database that really limits what you can do with the screen real estate). However, we were able to closely match-up the look/feel and effectiveness of their existing off-line catalog with the new site.

The Links:

• Post-it— Products: Note: I've had to take these down for the moment, but I'm hoping to get some archived screenshots up at some point.
  • Post-it® Promotion Pop-up
  • Post-it® Promotion Landing Page
  • Post-it® Promotion Thank You Page
• 3M Meeting Network: This links out to the live 3M site.
  • And, for kicks (and comparison), here's the old Meeting Network Home Page.
• Promotional Products: Just so you can get a feel for the volume of products I needed to audit and organize.