Hello, readers of The Current, my name is Will Cobb, intern and good luck charm at liquidfish. I say good luck charm because liquidfish has done suspiciously well scoring new business since I started showing up every day in June (12 new clients, 16 projects). I’m from San Marino, California, near Los Angeles, and am entering my senior year at the University of Oklahoma. I was lucky to have my first internship experience with liquidfish this summer, which was a dream come true. I have been so fortunate to have this experience and my utmost gratitude goes to those who believe in me, and agree I’m a wonderful fit at liquidfish. The view of the fish tank in the front office of our great location here in Bricktown, OKC may have inspired some of the metaphors below... Let’s dive in.
As I begin to write this piece, I feel sort of like Nemo’s dad on the East Australian Current because this internship has been a rush. Digital marketing and custom web design are an industry as fast-paced and radical as the turtles who helped Marlin and Dory travel the EAC. One day, work will be for a college, then meetings with a hotel, the next a magazine, then a vinyl wrap supplier, and the next for an NBA athlete. This summer has truly flowed quickly. My internship has taken me from the nitty gritty of inputting about 8 magazines worth of content into a CMS, or creating about 50 online forms for a college website, to filming b-roll on a professional Hollywood photo shoot involving my favorite NBA player.
In the ocean currents of the digital marketing and web design industry, no one navigates the waters more adeptly than liquidfish, thanks to one important word we apply to our work: custom. The Google definition for “custom” (adj.) is “made or done to order for a particular customer.” This definition rings true for liquidfish and the work we do. The same way that no two seashells on the ocean floor are exactly alike, no two websites or digital marketing plans from liquidfish are the same. This makes sense because no two clients are exactly the same, so how could their websites or digital marketing plans be? From a development side, that attention to detail and dedication to custom craftsmanship is important when making sure a website or app is sending any user data to the proper place, or that all the pages flow in a logical manner. This is similar to the way it is important to make notes of everything a client says in a meeting — from big project adjustments to what they like for lunch — in order to best manage the relationship.
While out on a business trip to Los Angeles with liquidfish founder, Cody Blake, and one of the finest graphic designers in the country, Jon Benson, we had an in-depth conversation about “self-fulfilling prophecies,” or positive feedback loops between belief and behavior causing the terms of prophecy to come to fruition. For example, when liquidfish says, “Of course we can do that, and more!” to what a client asks, we create a self-fulfilling prophecy as a company that feeds into our own positive feedback loop to succeed for our clients and keeps liquidfish swimming. In the same way, I’ve seen liquidfish, across all departments—creative, project management, development, client services, SEO, copywriting and social media—tell itself it will succeed the past couple months, I told myself I would succeed at this internship. I’ve loved being able to watch liquidfish navigate the waters of custom design, development, and marketing this summer.