Garrigan Lyman’s Chief Technology Officer Chris Geiser on the bright ideas powering digital 
marketing and creative advertising
“Web technology is like lighting a film set,” Chris Geiser says. “It’s the spark that brings the medium to life.” Once a lighting technician for the award-winning TV show Northern Exposure and now CTO of digital marketing and creative advertising agency The Garrigan Lyman Group, Geiser should know. “I’ve come a long way,” he adds, “but I’m still doing what I’m most passionate about: using technology to enhance the audience experience.”
As CTO, Geiser stays on top of technology trends that GLG is continually evolving and sharing with clients—from high-tech consumer brands like T-Mobile and Microsoft, to more traditional 
companies looking to leverage GLG’s digital marketing experience to reach new audiences, such as Dow Jones, Sherwin-Williams, Toyo Tires, and Quantum. Geiser spends much of his time providing insight, clarity, and thought leadership on these trends in client meetings every day.
“I’ve always loved explaining technology to the brands we work with,” he admits, “sharing my excitement about its potential. Our clients are dealing with so many technology issues that I’m often as much an advisor as I am an executor.” Some of the areas that come up most these days are cloud computing, mobile marketing, and the ever-recurring outsourcing controversy.
“A lot of clients are talking about cloud computing right now,” Geiser says, “and it’s something that means different things to a lot of people. Some seek a web/web application infrastructure that allows no fixed costs. Others want an application environment that enables the scaling of computing power with a mouse click.”
Though Geiser likes the advantages that the cloud approach brings, he balances his optimism with a dose of reality. “When accounting for the realities of backups, version control, and database sizes, every cloud computing environment needs its feet on the ground. While instant scalability is certainly tempting, clients must consider the entire strategy for the application, site, and storage, carefully and holistically, before putting all the pie in the sky.”
He’s equally frank about the topic of mobile marketing. “Phones are already the nerve centers of people’s lives,” Chris explains. “And Smartphone usage is in the process of surpassing PC usage.” But where he shows a healthy skepticism about cloud computing, his message about mobility is resoundingly clear. “Approaching mobile users at half speed,” he tells his clients “will only cause them to be cautious of you. And they’ll take their business elsewhere.”
One thing staying close to home, however, is development efforts at GLG. “We’ve tried outsourcing,” Geiser says, “and while goals can be reasonably met that way, offshore development shops have very little skin in the game once the code is delivered.” When accountability and extensibility are essential—always, in Geiser’s opinion—intimate collaboration between design, user experience, and development are key. “It’s an active dialogue,” he adds, and it’s easy to see why he prefers it that way.
Geiser has plenty of opportunities to share his enthusiasm for technology at GLG, but outside of work, he’s found other ways to share a passion he didn’t entirely leave behind on the sets of Northern Exposure. “I’ve always been a film buff at heart,” he explains. “And I’ve recently begun to explore that again, this time by teaching.” Chris teaches lighting, set design, and set building, and even a course for people wanting to start small businesses within the industry at the New York Institute of Technology in the Communication Arts and Television departments.
“I meet a lot of people who are good with a camera or an editing bay or who want to be producers, but who don’t know anything about business.” After seeing the variety of topics that spark his interest, there’s no doubt his thoughts on business are equally illuminating. [24×7]
Visit The Garrigan Lyman Group at http://www.glg.com.
