Noah joins us at a time of some acclaim for him, recently launching the noted Brand Tags project, an interesting experiment in user-generated content, brand image and perception, and the Internet. It’s up to 1 million tags and counting, and has even resulted in some mainstream press in places like the Wall Street Journal. He even coded it himself, which really endeared him to us – we love thinkers that can also actually build the stuff they think about. He’s also a noted blogger, blogging about the industry, brands, and the Internet in general at Noahbrier.com. (We’re gonna have to get him to do something about that design, though. Ha. We kid.)

One more fun thing about Noah: he’s also the editor of the Twitter feed holy crap facts, which is an insanely good read and one of the only reasons we really use Twitter.

On top of all that, Noah’s actually already in the biz, and a pro at it. He’s been working as a strategist over at the well-respected Naked for the last two years. So there’s no getting him up to speed on this whole brands, Internet, marketing conversation thing going on. He’s at the forefront.

We’re insanely excited to have him, and to beef up our strategic and planning thinking services for our clients. Welcome!

In thinking about the strategy and planning offerings at The Barbarian Group, it’s important to understand that we aren’t adding planning and strategy to our company, we are formalizing our offering and responding to increased, near-constant demand for planning and strategy that has thus far only been offered on a first-come, first-served basis by Benjamin, Bruce and Rick. Our clients have come to respect our insights into these areas and ask for these services more frequently, so the right thing to do was put a process around it, some discipline, and bring in a big brain to help us and ensure we do things rigorously and better than we did before.

Secondly, Noah is freakin’ awesome and we would have probably made a juggling department if that was part of his conditions for coming over. This is a joke, but intended to drive home the point that Noah was bright and there was no previous search underway for a new department or offering so much as he highlighted an opportunity and problem we had been ignoring until the perfect solution presented itself.

Thirdly, the ad-press-unnoticed addition last year of a User Experience department has been an unmitigated success. Like 1000% revenue growth in less than a year for the offering. Like pioneering-what-the-field-is type of stuff. Like we’ve been so busy with it we haven’t had time to write enough about it. And while this is awesome, User Experience at the initial side of things is heavily driven by brand and product strategy, and UX in the 21st century starts before the site, and begins to merge with your media strategy – Facebook app, widget, banner or game? Website or blog? That sort of thing. It all blends together, and our UX department has driven a need for disciplined strategic planning to drive it. And doing them both ensures a far more effective result. Just ask any startup company who has a brand strategist and a UX team at two different companies.

Finally, our aim is to offer every service under the sun in assisting organizations and individuals in forming, executing, measuring and capitalizing off of their interactive marketing. This is our organizing principle. Not being a production shop, not being an agency, not just creative, not just this or that. Everything in service to that goal. One-stop coordinated interactive brilliance for any type of organization that needs it. This is just another step for us in that direction.