Despite degrees in Political Management and Poli Sci, a job on Capitol Hill wasn't quite as innovative as what Bethany eventually strove for in her work with government affairs consulting and technology company Legislative Demographic Services, Inc., and later at Mindshare.

In the six years that she's been with Mindshare, Bethany, now VP Client Services, has seen the firm grow tenfold from just four people to around forty. Just this week, she's opened the company's new Austin, Texas office with the goal of developing Mindshare's talent pool of designers and high-tech aficionados.

Bethany heads up the agency's client services team, overseeing projects involving Web site development, online ad campaign creation and placement, content management, and database services for trade associations, issue advocacy groups, and philanthropic organizations. The company has recently worked in conjunction with other agencies to promote the federal government's new prescription drug benefit plan, targeting seniors in certain geographic areas.

What are your favorite online destinations in the a.m.? Why?
To a certain extent I'm not a total news junkie. I go to The Washington Post and CNN--and now that I'm in Austin, I'm trying to get on top of the local scene, so I'm going to The Austin Statesman [Statesman.com].

What other sites do you visit frequently? Why?
I'm kind of into finances. I'm into going on Fidelity.com, and I spend a lot of time on my banking site....I have a 20-month-old baby, so I'm on WebMD and things of that sort a lot.

What is the most challenging part of your job?
It's probably working when clients think they have a special need, but they're not thinking of the overall objective of their campaign. What makes us different from a regular Web firm is that we just don't implement a client deliverable--we're concerned with client results. The problem is, everybody to some extent feels they're experts on the Internet.

Another challenge, particularly, is still educating people about the power of interactive marketing. [Working with public affairs clients] is different than on the commercial side. They're five years ahead....We're also battling traditional media people, trying to get clients to give a little bit of their resources towards the Internet.

What do you like best about your job; what keeps you interested?
I think just the versatility of our team. We're still small enough where I feel I can take a client and propose anything--and take the project and run with it and see the result.

Also, new technology--seeing how things are changing....The sky's the limit. There are always new ways to achieve different public affairs objectives using any interactive technique.

When will true media integration take place for public affairs advertisers?
In addition to the traditional media consultants, there's still not much of an understanding within the organizations themselves in terms of how to integrate their online with their offline [efforts]. They have their Web site, and it's viewed as good enough.

Another barrier with trade associations is that the online people are silo-ed from the communications department. The tech staff will hold their sites hostage. [At a recent event I attended], someone asked the audience who controls the Web presence at their organization, and half the people said their IT staff. They really made it difficult to use their sites as a communications vehicle.

On the advertising side, portals still need to do a better job of making editorial guidelines clearer....One example is--we were doing a campaign for an animal rights group that had some images of seals being abused, and most of the major venues wouldn't run it....When a lot of money was rolling in, a lot of advertising venues wouldn't accept any type of political advertising. Now most of them will accept it--it's just that they have complete discretion as to whether they can reject it at any time. Usually, we submit creative a few days before a campaign runs; it would be nice if they had clearer policies about what's acceptable and what's not.

What's the most divisive online policy issue right now?
The spam issue is really still predominant. [Spam legislation] is very willy-nilly in terms of whether that applies to the public affairs sector.

Spam filters are a problem too. The one thing we're out there talking about that people don't understand is that if you get a bunch of subscribers, the first time organizations communicate with them, [messages are] probably going to get caught in [recipients'] spam filters.

MediaPost's In the Trenches profile series aims to honor the real troopers of the interactive ad industry, the up-and-coming creative staffers, the ad sales underlings, the minds behind the technologies that make it all happen. Do you know someone who deserves a salute from MediaPost's In the Trenches? Let us know! Contact Kate Kaye at kate@mediapost.com.