• by Kate Kaye , May 6, 2004

Maneuvering the transition from print to the Web can trip up even the best players in the publishing business. But for this week's In the Trenches subject, Kathleen Mohlmann, vice president, partnership marketing at iVillage, managing the new medium involves the same singular mission--finding out what keeps her clients up at night.

Basic Training
A publishing industry vet, Kathleen spent 12 years with b-to-b publisher Reed Elsevier before being snapped up by iVillage through a former colleague. She's not the first to "fall into" sales, but Kathleen has found that the account management side of things fits her well. Starting out with the female-focused Web publisher in 2000 as an account manager, Kathleen wasn't fazed by the move from traditional to interactive media.

"I still needed to meet my clients' goals," she concludes. "This was just a different medium." In fact, as far as Kathleen is concerned, the enhanced campaign reporting enabled by the Internet has only made her life easier.

Daily Drills
Kathleen serves as the linchpin for iVillage's sponsorship campaigns, meeting with the firm's tech and design departments, ad operations team, and editorial staff daily. Take the site's recent alignment with Volvo. The intense process from brainstorm to launch, like most iVillage sponsorship projects, was squeezed into about six weeks. Kathleen first met with the client and agency to develop the campaign focus (in this case, safety) and media plan. Once a timeline was determined, says Kathleen, "that's when all the wheels started grinding."

Throughout each campaign--from design to tech and quality assurance-- Kathleen is at the helm, ensuring that each element functions optimally. This might involve working with iVillage's in-house designers to help create client mini-sites or house ads, meeting with the ad operations department to check campaign performance, or assuring that research conducted on behalf of sponsor clients goes as planned. It's no cakewalk to oversee anywhere from 8-12 campaigns at one time.

Tough Battles
The clock is Kathleen's most formidable opponent. With multiple project timelines in play at once, managing the overall operation requires nimbleness. "If a client slips on one deliverable, it can set us back for that launch date," explains Kathleen, who admits that such occurrences are common. That's when she recalibrates things on the iVillage end and crosses her fingers. It's no wonder she loves it when people stick to deadlines. "That makes my world," Kathleen declares.

Base Camp
Working on 7th Ave. near Times Square can be too close for comfort, but once she's inside the iVillage offices, Kathleen's got plenty of room to stretch. "I have a double-wide cube," she quips, alluding to her spacious cubicle. The company's open floor setup features a series of six-cubicle pods; Kathleen's account management pod partners sit adjacent to the ad ops and design pod people, which makes for smooth communication.

It can inspire some kooky camaraderie, too, says Kathleen, who recalls one holiday season when she and her pod mates won iVillage's coveted "Tammy Faye Baker" pod-trimming award for their especially garish adornments. "We got a tube of mascara," she chuckles.

Mission Possible
Advertisers could use a little foresight when it comes to integrating Web components with offline campaign efforts. The Internet, stresses Kathleen, "should be a must-have on the media plan." She's willing to acknowledge that the shift from relying on traditional media to incorporating both traditional and interactive media is gradually occurring. But the sooner the Web is added to the media mix, the more time she has to improve campaign performance. "I'd like to see it happening a little quicker," she adds.

Do you know someone who deserves a salute from MediaPost's In the Trenches? Let us know! Contact Kate Kaye at kate@mediapost.com.