How the Archer Group’s Todd Miller ‘lucked into digital design’

Staying current in an ever-changing industry is no easy task. That’s why companies hire digital design agencies like Wilmington’s Archer Group.
The front lines of digital trends is Archer thrives. Just ask owner and Chief Experience Officer Todd Miller.
Miller, who has a background in the fine arts, said he “lucked into design” during his time as an undergraduate at Kutztown University. At the time, messing around with computers was more of a hobby than a viable career option.

“I was one of the first students at Kutztown to have internet access and really want it,” he said. “If I was lucky, with my 14K modem, I could maybe download a 40K JPEG. It was really bare bones.”
Miller graduated on the cusp of the dot-com bubble and jumped right into a design job at PBS. That’s when he realized his passion for tooling with emerging technologies could become a career. He left to become creative director at then-startup Healthaxis, a healthcare IT firm.
Miller said deciding to fall in with a startup shaped his business approach. “I’ve definitely been drawn to scrappier organizations or organizations that really will do anything to deliver a quality product,” he said. “A lot of times, that gets lost in a very large company or agency.”
At Archer, Miller cultivates that same startup culture — even though the agency now harbors 60 employees.
“It was always about delivering a great product and creating a company that was going to be around for a long time,” he said. Entrepreneurs and startups, he said, would be wise to do the same.
“There isn’t a lot of conversation over, ‘Am I building the right culture or the right company, am I doing this for the right reasons, am I delivering value?'” he said.
As far as the startup ecosystem in Delaware?
“I feel like we can be better organized on how we support industry here,” he said. “There are a lot of different initiatives going on that aren’t quite orchestrated in a way that they should be.” The community, he said, needs to rally and unite.
“If industry grows here, there’s more people living here and there’s more around us that we can all take advantage of,” he said. “All boats rise.”
Miller will be sharing tips on and discussing digital marketing and technology trends at the Delaware Economic Summit on April 22, on a panel titled “Has Digital Killed the Newspaper Star?”
There’s that ever-present question in tech — how can companies stay on top of digital trends and remain current in an industry that evolves every day? One tip: mute the noise to find core value.
“Are you getting the right performance out of all the tools you’re using and all the technologies you’re juggling?” he asked. “People want to jump into everything [new], but they don’t necessarily know if they’re getting value out of it.”
On Wednesday, Miller will discuss digital marketing campaigns with measurable impact and what to expect on the digital front in the near future.