At this time of year, our marketing team asks people around the business for their predictions for the following 12 months. Whilst we can usually have a good stab at what the next year will hold, 2020 has thrown everything up in the air.
This time last year, very few people would have predicted a global pandemic, or the impact it might have.
So, who knows what next year will bring. But as I look ahead to 2021, I hope we will value bravery, of ourselves and those around us, and appreciate those who encourage us to be brave. A character trait that doesn’t always get the limelight, I think there are at least three specific areas where it will be valued even more than it has been in years gone by.
Marketeers across the board, from senior decision makers at brands to the agencies they employ, need confidence to follow the courage of their convictions. To be brave embracing new technology and risky creative ideas for their message to resonate in a crowded landscape.
Many of us have heard the adage “we’re in the same storm, but not in the same boat” this year. With friends and colleagues working from home, and at times physically isolated or in quarantine, we need to be brave for our friends’ sake. Brave by dialling down our own fear of rejection or being excluded and reach out to them. Demonstrating compassion for others, and making an effort to listen with empathy may for some be like rays of sunshine in their day.
And we need to be brave in believing in ourselves. To have increased confidence that we can do something which may feel challenging. Bravery in the hope and faith that tomorrow will be brighter, and we’ll get through this if we look out for each other and stick together.
If this thought resonates with you, and you want to wear your heart on your sleeve more than just figuratively, Relabelled Clothing is a local independent ethical business with some apt ‘Brave’ apparel for adults and kids.
This article was written by Andy Brown, Chief Financial Officer at Armadillo.
Automation of systems plays to the strengths of using computers. They can tackle mundane or routine tasks efficiently, without complaint, and without the avoidable mistakes that can occur when humans repeatedly perform manual tasks. Embracing automation ensures your engineers and developers can focus instead of solving problems and adding value to clients.
If you’re repeating something more than two or three times and the task is tightly defined (e.g. the data fields never change), it’s time to automate, especially if the tasks are very straightforward (such as adding data to a database).
Automation is often cheaper than you think, and the efficiencies it delivers can vastly outweigh the cost. Plus if investing in automation saves someone 1-2 hours a day or week carrying out a task, that time can be reinvested in solving other problems and delivering more work.
An obvious benefit of investing in automation is its ‘always on’ nature. Programs don’t take breaks, even during public holidays.
Automating can differentiate your services, meaning you can add value by solving clients’ challenges based on your unique knowledge and experience rather than performing mundane tasks that anyone could do. Automating routine work also gives you the space and time to tackle the harder problems – if you play to the strengths of the computer you can do 80% of the work with 20% of the effort.
Automation requires detailed planning to ensure the solution integrates with existing systems and is future proofed for any future developments. This will take time from experts. Depending on your existing systems, there may also be some software to purchase and bespoke programming to complete.
If implementation is rushed and manual processes pushed through first, it could take longer to unpick things and automate at a later date. Finally, automation does not mean automatic forever – maintenance will be needed from time to time. Context changes, systems change, data changes, clocks change – all of this needs to be managed and monitored.
So, spend some time thinking about the data you’re handling. How manual is it? Are you repeatedly discovering that data is missing when someone is on annual leave and only they know how to do it? Do you find that occasionally data is missing because someone copied and pasted into the wrong column? Are you frustrated that some data is in one system but not another, meaning you can never get a full picture?
If your answer to any of these is ‘yes’, and you want to streamline your customer data workflows, get campaigns, reports and insights delivered faster, it could be time to get automating.
This article was written by Nicholas Blake-Steele, Technical Director at Armadillo, and first appeared on AI Magazine.
In Armadillo’s Creative and DX team, we’re used to solving complex problems together. Planning complex test-and-learn strategies as a team. And developing ideas and executions side by side. As in any agency, it’s a collaborative effort.
When home working began during the first lockdown back in March, I was worried that the easy, energetic creativity that came with face-to-face concepting would be lost. As the UK hunkers down for its second lockdown, many of these same fears seem to be arising among those who will now have to return to working from home.
But this time it’s different. We’ve done it all before. We’ve adapted, or ‘pivoted’, as they say. We’ve settled into a new way of sharing our ideas that doesn’t hamper flow. It feels dynamic and agile and buoyant.
As we move into Lockdown 2.0, we can apply previous learnings to ensure we’re still able to produce great creative whilst working from home. Here’s how to turn that creative flicker into a full-on collaborative flame.
The traditional Art Director/Copywriter combo is still a winner; just because you can now get the whole account team on it doesn’t mean you should. With too many well-intentioned contributors, an ideation session can quickly go off-course. That’s part of the skill of a creative team; to think big, but quickly sniff out the red herrings and move on if an idea doesn’t meet the brief.
Need to paint the picture? Help them see it? Feel it? Take a photo on your phone and WhatsApp it to the team. Add quick links to a project chat room. Set up a shared Pinterest board for inspiration, or create a mood board in Google Docs. Grab and drop. Cut and paste. An online whiteboard tool like Miro can be useful when you need to collaborate.
When it comes to capturing and collating ideas down as they strike, I’ll always favour analogue methods: paper, marker pens, white boards and blu tack. Embracing new tech is admirable and dynamic and forward-thinking etc. But if the thought of grappling with new systems adds to your pandemic-induced anxiety, go easy on yourself. We’re human. Our energy is a finite resource.
The concepting conversation remains the same; “What about if we…” *scribbles frantically*. “How about something like…” *sends screen shot*. Draw it out and hold it up to camera. If it ain’t broke…
A dose of nature can literally open your mind. According to Lieberman and Long, authors of ‘The Molecule of More’, “Nature is complex. It’s made up of systems with many interacting parts. Unexpected patterns emerge as a result of a large number of elements influencing one another.”
These unpredictable natural scenes can stimulate creativity, focus and cognitive understanding – three things I couldn’t concept without. So take that walk. Have that cup of tea in the garden. Step out of your work zone and away from the routine stimuli of your desk (or dining table) and watch the ideas flow.
Creative thinking involves gut-feels and hunches. Eureka moments and excitable reactions. But on those days when it feels like we’ve been lobbed out of our comfort zones like a half-finished milkshake from the window of a speeding car, coming up with the goods is hard. Neuroscience points the finger at the amygdala – the part of the brain that processes emotion and motivation; in particular, emotions relating to survival. Of course, the amygdala can only process so much, which is why it’s hard to follow a creative train of thought when your brain keeps getting derailed by pandemic anxiety. Perhaps it’s time to be realistic about your own output, or that of your employees?
Concepting remotely isn’t nearly as much fun as doing it in person. Conversations are less entertaining and trains of thought not nearly as random. So for me, finding a safe, sensible way to reinstate face-to-face concepting is the ideal. But I’m relieved to say that, until then, we’ve found a way to come up with the goods.
This article was written by Carolyn Carswell, Conceptual Copywriter at Armadillo, and first appeared on New Digital Age.
2020 has been a wild year for everyone. With the health scare of COVID-19 and the almost immediate culture shock of isolated working, it’s safe to say that things will never go back to the way things were, and that’s not a bad thing. Whether your business is just kicking off or growing bit-by-bit, the correct use of language is now more important than ever.
When you think about it, language usage is hugely prominent in our day-to-day lives: idle chit-chats; meetings; writing emails; reading a book on the train. And yet, I’d bet it’s not the first thing you’d consider when figuring out your business or brand identity. There are plenty of elements to consider, but your copywriter is the key piece in putting the ‘this is our sound’ jigsaw puzzle together.
Before you start contacting your customers to tell them everything about the products or services they simply can’t do without, you first need to figure out who it is you’re selling to. Old. Young. Married. Single. Animal lover. Coffee enthusiast. You get where this is going.
Unlike what your mum or dad told you when you were just a kiddie, nobody is totally unique. Groups of us have shared interests, fears, pet peeves, and desires. Even if you’re looking to engage people of varying ages, ethnicities and backgrounds, they should all have something in common.
For example: you sell miniatures for painting. Brian from South London is an 18-year-old student who works in a coffee shop. He recently signed up to your email list after buying his first miniatures set from you. Dora is a 40-year-old account executive from Manchester who has been buying miniatures from you, twice a month, for over a year. Brian and Dora might not have many things in common, but they both love painting miniatures. That’s a bit of a simplified example, but the point is that both Brian and Dora are reading your communications for a reason.
Once you’ve figured out your target audience, it’s a good time to think about your brand identity. What formality do you want to use? Have you figured out your tone of voice? This is all of the delicious stuff you need to think about when it comes to your brand guidelines, because your use of language will need to be consistent across the whole board. Social media, email, digital advertisements, press releases, train station posters, sky writing, the works.
There will be a number of internal factors that might cross a few choices off the list for you – if you’re offering funeral services, it’s not a great idea to advertise with a chatty tone or use copy riddled with iffy ‘knock knock’ jokes.
That’s it! That’s the magic formula. Know your audience and know your product.
Once you’ve got those down, the fun part comes in: putting it all together. Writing short, snappy bits of copy isn’t an easy task. It’s a balancing act. Though creative communications are fun, they’re pointless if you don’t inspire your customer to react. Clicking on call to actions, heading to the website to browse, buying one of your products – this is the real goal behind you reaching out, isn’t it?
At the same time, you don’t have to stick your copy in a chunky paragraph and be done with it. Some people might enjoy it, but most don’t have the time to trawl through it. The real craft is putting your point across and keeping your customers’ attention.
Say you’re selling a new brand of pencils. Depending on who your audience is, you might call your business ‘Stationary Centre’ or ‘The Write Stuff’ or ‘2B or not 2B’, and from those we (the customers) already have a feel of what language you might use. Take the following sentence:
We offer HB pencils, mechanical pencils, graphite pencils and refills for all your writing needs. Visit our website to find out more.
It’s formally written, no nonsense, and gets the point across with no frills, and that’s fine. You could probably guess which business title above might go with it. But, if you wanted your brand to be a little less formal and more chatty, you might write:
Whether you’re filing your taxes, sketching your dog or drafting your screenplay masterpiece, our exceptional range of HB, graphite and mechanical pencils are an essential tool for all of your projects.
Though it’s longer, it’s nicer to read and gives your customer something to relate to (which gives them a reason to think about why they would need your pencils).
Look around you. You’ve got hundreds of examples of good, bad, and utterly bananas use of language, it’s just about figuring out what works for you, your customers and your products.
This article was written by Emily Sowden, Copywriter at Armadillo, and first appeared in Brand Chief Magazine.
Here at Armadillo we’re excited to announce that we will now be offering all staff external coaching with renowned confidence coach, Jo Emerson.
The introduction of external coaching follows our decision to move away from a traditional line managed structure. We have chosen to replace line managers with networked support; task-based support to bring clarity to deliverables, skills-based support to build expertise in key specialisms, and growth-based support. This is where the coaching will come in. We hope that this move will give people the headspace to work through their challenges, ambitions, frustrations and ideas, as well as empower staff to seek their own solutions and decide their own actions.
Fiona Craig, our Strategy and Planning Director, explains why external coaching was a must-have for us: “Internal support is very much focused on the work we do for our clients – you could say the client is the key stakeholder here, and all efforts are focused on doing a good job for them.
Fiona continues: “The support offered by external coaching is centred exclusively around the individual – often there can be a tension between the two areas of focus, and in a traditional structure, line managers can struggle to do a really good job of supporting on all fronts. So, this allows those who are exceptionally skilled in one area to excel, while the individual still gets supported on all sides.”
Jo Emerson is a confidence and human behaviour expert, author, and the winner of International Executive Coach of the Year (2019-2020).
Fiona goes on to say “Jo is highly experienced in dealing with change and confidence, and has a wonderful energy that felt right for us here at Armadillo. She will spark some great conversations and even greater ideas, we feel sure.”
Jo adds, “It’s a real privilege to be working with Armadillo at such a critical time and to support team members as they grow and develop within an incredibly fast-paced industry. Armadillo’s new networked-support structure coupled with external and objective coaching shows what an innovative and agile company they are!”
We hope you will join us in offering Jo a very warm welcome. We thoroughly look forward to working with her and cannot wait to see members of the Armadillo team succeeding in their career and self-development goals.
Let’s be honest, in the old world (read: 2019) we all loved a day out judging awards. The chance to swan into some lovely building, hobnob with the great and good of our industry, pick up a tasty lunch, grab a new professional head shot and take a goodie bag home. Oh, and there was the business of judging of course.
Tomorrow, I’ll be judging the DMAs from the comfort of my own home. My husband may bring me a coffee, lunch will probably be tonight’s left overs, and the only goodie bag will be the kids sports kit that they’ll dump in the hall at 4pm exactly.
So take away the trappings of a fun day out, and what do you have left? The entries, pure and simple. The strategy, the creative and the results. The hard facts of the case. And since I’m judging Best Customer Retention and Loyalty Scheme, every entry will have its work cut out this year.
When those entries were submitted, many brands were haemorrhaging customers at a rate of knots (cinema, travel). Others were scooping up customers like there was no tomorrow (video streaming, home fitness). So how do we judge how good brands were at keeping customers?
For me, this is where hard customer data comes in. As I recall, when I judged this category last year, I was surprised and disappointed how many entries were still using brand affinity or other such soft metrics to measure retention. There were very few who were able (or chose) to show the volume of customers over time. This surely is the ultimate measure of an effective retention scheme – keeping your customers. I’m happy to accept context-appropriate entries (we lost X but regained Y), or entries where value and volume are balanced (we gained Y but at value Z), but I just want to see the hard facts of the matter. Prove how well you kept hold of your customers. Not what they thought of you, how you stole them from competitors, how likely they said they were to return.
This year has given us all ample opportunity for some clear strategic and creative work, so if you can prove to me (using clear thinking and hard numbers) that you’ve kept hold of your customers or won them back, despite external conditions, you’ll get my vote.
This article was written by Fiona Craig, Strategy Director at Armadillo. For more thoughts from Armadillo, visit our blog.
After the pandemic, simple practices can make the difference between an agile and innovative company and one which becomes distracted and irrelevant, says Ann Hiatt. This is what separates the disruptive from the disrupted in competitive industries.
Nothing is as damaging to our mental health and productivity than feeling a lack of control. 2020 has proved a difficult environment in which to make informed decisions for economic survival. With no one knowing where this crisis’ finish line lies, it’s hard to budget our time, resources and energy and this can lead to exhaustion and overwhelm.
Sprints are pervasive practice at tech companies for moments when survival is on the line; such as a product launch to beat a competitor to market. A repeated series of timeboxed, focused work for developing, delivering and sustaining complex goals within a short amount of time, there has never been a greater global need for coordinated sprints.
I have been through many formal sprint exercises at both Amazon and Google over the last two decades. They are a key part of what keeps these companies agile, innovative and cutting edge in addition to their long-term strategy planning. This Silicon Valley secret deserves its spotlight.
My five steps for sprint success:
Define success
There is a good chance that your organisation has had a major strategy pivot since the beginning of the pandemic. If that’s true, you are in a sprint whether you knew it or not.
Has that pivot been effectively communicated and applied at every level? It is essential that you and everyone who reports to you has the same definition of what success looks like, to help people prioritise how they spend their increasingly limited time and resources. This definition may differ from your long-term plans.
An analogy popularised by Steven Covey, the author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People illustrates this well. Covey talks about filling a jar with as many rocks, pebbles and sand as possible. It turns out that the order of execution is an essential part of its formula for success. Put the rocks in the jar first, followed by pebbles and finally with sand, which fills in any remaining gaps. The rocks represent your major milestone goals. These are the non-negotiable tasks and deliverables which will keep your company competitive and winning. The pebbles are the tasks surrounding the shorter-term goals and the sand are the minor tasks which don’t individually drive success. If you put the sand in the jar first there is no room for the rocks.
Many employees feel like they are already stretched too thin with family commitments, inefficient setup for working from home and overall stress about the state of the world. In this environment it is very tempting for workers to check off a long list of ‘sand’ tasks in order to feel like they have been productive. They also might think they are working on ‘rock’ tasks based on what was asked of them in the former business model. You need to be clear which tasks are now considered core and which have now been re-categorised as non-essential.
Set the time frame
Help your team see that the current sprint effort will come to an end even when you aren’t yet sure when that will be. You need to give them a controlled finish line for today before you build them up for their next big effort.
Back in pre-Covid life, I attended a spin class. Our usual instructor, Rebecca, consistently gave the class a clear overview of the challenges she had planned. At the beginning of a new track she might tell us that we were going to do three thirty second standing springs with thirty seconds of rest between. That helped me pace myself and push myself harder during the sprints, allowing for recovery time.
Erik took over when she was on holiday. He ran similar workouts but he didn’t have the same habit of telling us in advance what we could expect. I noticed that my calorie burn after Erik’s class was significantly lower even than my average with Rebecca, even with the same activities. Turns out that with Erik’s approach, I was subconsciously conserving energy and not pushing as hard as I was otherwise capable of doing.
The pandemic challenge was strangely similar to Erik’s workouts. Because no one knows when or if things will return to normal, many usually high performing people have found themselves in a state of passivity or productivity paralysis with a subconscious need to ensure self-preservation.
Leaders need to create expectations of short sprints which are essential to basic company survival within the context of the long marathon effort for pivoting to new business models for strength and market security post-crisis. These can be a single week of outreach to your core customers to save existing contracts, or a month-long challenge to create a new product delivery pipeline.
Make sure your message is absolutely clear and that your teams understand what is expected of them and when.
Plan for pivots
Every single one of my global consulting clients found themselves in a huge pivot moment during Covid where they needed to adjust their business strategies, company policies, expenses and work environments just to survive. This remains essential as we attempt to create a new normal. Leaders need to set up systems to not only stay connected and present with their employees while working remotely, but also on how to be seen as a confident leader despite the lingering feeling of making things up on the fly.
Employees need to hear an acknowledgement that things are hard and messy and frustrating. When leaders try to be too perfect or confident amid global uncertainty, it has the opposite effect to that intended. What brings teams together is acknowledging the shared hardship and human side of the situation.
Measure the impact
What you measure and reward is what your team will focus on producing. Once you have directed your team to what they need to focus on, you need to connect that to how they will be rewarded accordingly.
This is where it is vital to commit what is being referred to as random acts of leadership. Reach out to your managers at lower levels and/or set up a free form Office Hours session where anyone in the company can bring their questions, concerns and observations to your attention and quick action. The teams will be grateful for the additional leadership contact and you will benefit from instant response to your strategy vision.
Examine your company goal setting and tracking system. If you don’t already have one, I highly recommend the Objectives and Key Results (or OKRs) which are used by both Amazon and Google for aggressive goal setting and clear, measurable, actionable tasks to accomplish them. Measure your progress consistently and clearly across your organisation and immediately reward those who have contributed effectively. This is not a time to wait for a year-end review.
Repeat
This will not be a one-and-done process. Even after the pandemic these practices can make the difference between an agile and innovative company and one which becomes distracted and irrelevant. This is what separates the disruptive from the disrupted in competitive industries.
Remember, the best ideas often come from the lower levels of the organisation rather than the senior executives.
Despite all this ambiguity, there are specific things that can help you as a leader regain a sense of control. Establishing clear sprints for your teams will be the key factor to creating a framework for focus, productivity and measurable success for your company now and in the future.
Article by Ann Hiatt, NED at Armadillo, originally published in AMBITION
With home internet usage at an all-time high over recent months, I have been thinking a lot about customer experiences. It’s shocking how many online customer experiences are still slow, clunky and confusing. When you pick apart so many customer journeys you can see that many that look good are filled with sticky tape solutions and cracks that are exposed as you go through.
Customer journeys today are varied but most customers now have a low tolerance for friction. Cult make up site Trinny London has a very well-managed customer journey and provides a great example of the customer experience done well. The site has seamless UX that follows the user across channels to remind them what their colour set is, and what products they’ve already bought. Next also provides a very seamless experience across all channels. The company undertook a full digital transformation early on and can now build on a stable platform. But there are plenty of opposing examples. I logged into Harvard Business Review on all devices but when I click a link from Twitter or elsewhere, I’m still asked for login details. Firewalls are certainly a big source of friction for customers.
There’s also Made.com where a colleague bought a rug and was subsequently sent a reminder email asking if she wanted to buy a rug. She continues to receive rug-focused emails even through the same email address used to purchase.
A common trait among poor customer experiences is that nearly all of them are non-linear. They move from social media to an app and sometimes even to human interaction. Comparing experiences makes the flaws of a platform blindingly obvious. Take logging in to Netflix vs Amazon on your smart TV for instance; Netflix makes you use whatever horrid UX your TV and remote have to put in your full email address and password. On the flip side, Amazon gives you a simple code to put into your phone/tablet/computer and that’s it. Putting the user and their real-world context first always removes friction and this is a prime example of that. So, how can businesses strike the right balance between user experience and strong security? When security is linked to respecting your data and privacy, rather than being bloody-minded or a hangover from legacy systems, then I think customers can be more willing to accept a little friction. They don’t mind logging in again across multiple devices if they know it’s for their own security. If not, it looks like sub-standard UX.
Businesses often fall down when apps aren’t comfortable making use of the customer’s device. For example, I have two banking apps on my phone, one only uses fingerprint, the other allows me to use facial recognition which is much quicker and more convenient.
There’s the expectation that if you share a certain level of data with the brand, your experience should then be seamless. It is vital that you are able to deliver and it’s always been the case. How often have you been driven mad by call centres passing you around departments where you keep having to give the same information? If you can convince someone that they will have an easier life because they told you something, they usually won’t mind telling you. In most cases, handing over data is hope over experience. The trick is for brands to give people a good experience from the start, so they understand what they are signing up for and what the clear benefits will be to them.
Really, Customer Experience (CX) should never be a department, but a state of mind across all business areas. The minute organisational structure trumps the customer experience, it becomes sub-standard. You must always remember to design with a customer-first approach – it sounds trite but is still depressingly the exception rather than the rule. If necessary, share your KPIs across business units to ensure alignment, and force silos to consider the impact of their actions. It’s easy to fall into the trap of different business units actually working to different objectives – for example, one team is tasked with reach, another with conversion when the real KPI is sales.
All decisions made should be in order to remove the barriers between the customer and the goal. There’s also a huge value for working closely with customer service. It gives an invaluable understanding of what real people do when they use products, interact with brands, and so on. Businesses should look outside the standard channels for new employees and find people who have lived the life they are trying to service.
This article was written by Rob Pellow for PerformanceIn on August 25th 2020.
Our industry has just experienced its worst quarter ever. With almost 64% of panel members registering a decrease in marketing spend and two-thirds forecasting a pessimistic financial outlook, July’s IPA Bellwether Report has given us the hard data to prove what we have previously surmised.
Agencies need to respond fast or risk being side-lined. Three areas where I think we can make an immediate impact are: measurability, speaking the CFO’s language and the contribution we can make to our clients’ bottom line.
Clients are faced with a bewildering range and volume of different agencies and Covid-19 has given brands a good excuse to prune – as Ramon Laguarta, PepsiCo’s CEO, also says: “Sometimes a crisis helps [a company] to be more selective and to be more impactful, to generate internal momentum against simplification and focus against fewer and bigger. That’s what we’re trying to do.”
There’s also a growing threat to agencies of clients bringing elements in-house – both as a potential cost-saving exercise and as a response to ‘always on’ marketing communications. As Laguarta acknowledges: “[through in-housing] we can actually get the same or more value for less money, which is obviously a terrific outcome for the company.”
However, brands disrupted by Covid-19 need transformative ideas more than ever. Agencies are in a unique position. DDB founder Bill Bernbach sums it up well, gendered pronouns aside; “We think we will never know as much about a product as a client. After all, he sleeps and breathes his product…By the same token, we firmly believe that he can’t know as much about advertising. Because we live and breathe that all day long.”
Historically, our industry has not been brilliant at drawing a line between what we do and things the brand’s CFO would recognise and value. We now need to get better at developing this dialogue. In tough times this is harder, but even more important.
As agency people, we need to ask ourselves if we really understand the goals and objectives of the finance people amongst our clients. Have we got under the skin of their targets? These will be different to those of the CMO.
We need to establish what our common ground is and communicate our value in their language. Marketing done well can make a significant difference to a business’ bottom line. You only need to look to companies like Coca Cola to see how the intangible value of its brand value underpins the net worth of the company.
How much of the marketing jargon that we use in our industry day-to-day resonates with the CFO, and, in turn, how much financial shorthand do we understand? If having direct access to them is proving difficult, let’s look to our own resources. Are we making good use of our own finance people, for instance? They have all been schooled in same language – use proxies where it’s helpful to do so.
Equipping everyone with a basic grounding in the business side of the industry we’re involved in is important – a course like the IPA’s Commercial Certificate can really help with the fundamentals.
Demonstrating measurement and effectiveness is nothing new. However, given that client budgets won’t be getting back to pre-Covid levels any time soon, marketing departments and their agencies will be under more pressure than usual to deliver tangible results. That means even greater scrutiny for every pound spent.
We are up for that challenge at Armadillo. Our focus has always been on cost-effectiveness – it’s baked into our DNA . We are lean and results-driven and have consistently delivered good value for clients which has led to long-term relationships with clients such as McDonald’s and Disney. Despite working with a major client in the severely-impacted eating out sector, we’ve seen them double down on CRM activity. For example, while other channels have been cut hard, our budgets have grown. That’s mainly thanks to proving strong ROIs on a continuous basis pre-crisis.
We believe the goal should be to have an end-to-end relationship with customer – tracking all the way through from first point of interaction through to purchase, to help influence the decision-buying journey.
Now is the time for agencies to create clearly defined market positions in line with commercials. We need to fulfil our role of trusted advisors, drawing on and demonstrating specialist expertise, experience and performance. We need to stay focused and be even more open to collaboration.
Whilst this is not a time to be naive, we must also try to balance our pragmatism with optimism. The world is not coming to an end just yet. Take our worst hit client in the travel sector. We prioritised pivoting to meet a dramatically different set of challenges – by thinking like stakeholders in their recovery rather than hard-done by suppliers, we’ve seen projects start to flow again far sooner than we might have expected.
Agencies must keep scanning the horizon for opportunities and be prepared to move the business in new directions to stay in the game. We’ve long positioned ourselves as nimble and responsive – those that can now display those attributes will prove invaluable.
This has not been an easy time, but we need to avoid giving in to nostalgic defeatism. A crisis like this could kill agencies off, but equally, if we could get more on the front foot, learn from past successes and fuse those learnings with the good things we’re doing now, this could also be the start of our renaissance.
This article was written by Chris Thurling for the IPA on 17 August 2020.
Pre-Covid, creative teams benefitted from being in close proximity. This is mainly because one of the driving forces of creativity is (ironically) its infectiousness.
Being part of a creative idea gaining traction – being able to see, hear, and feel its potential – is why most of us do this.
Now, with the panic of lockdown beginning to fade, and the possibility of remote working remaining part of daily life for a while yet, we’ve been evaluating the ways we’ve adapted over the last few months.
While our technology enabled us to switch locations immediately, our creative habits needed a little aligning to ensure a smooth transition.
Seeing people’s expressions and body language is vital when briefing, sharing, reviewing and presenting ideas.
Being able to notice the difference between silence when they are excited and scribbling ideas, and silence from them drawing a blank, ensures you can keep things moving.
Creativity needs energy and nurturing, and audio alone is not enough.
Creating a way to bounce ideas around as a team when our four walls became two-dimensional was an initial challenge, whether they were conceptual ideas, executional solutions or UX planning.
We found using collaborative programmes, especially Google Chat, Google Meet and Google Docs, meant we could share work straight away.
Sharing screens and documents in small groups for live ideation, or sharing screen grabs or photos of sketches in larger project chat groups, ensured the momentum was never lost.
None of these programmes recreate the beauty of walls covered in layout sheets bursting with ideas; but programmes such as Miro allow us to get nearer to the satisfaction of problem solving with Post-it Notes.
It’s easy to become task-orientated when you can’t physically see your team and without strong intentions individuals can become siloed.
But it’s vital that ideas are seen and challenged by others. A fresh perspective will ensure ideas are robust and refined.
We have staggered project team video ‘scrums’ each morning which serve to not only align us to our goals, but also alert us to opportunities to collaborate outside our initial tasks.
When you’re physically surrounded by creatives the unplanned check-ins that occur when you catch a glimpse of a colleague’s screen, or overhear an exciting idea, are often the times when projects gain momentum.
To attempt to create these naturally and informally without the pressure of a booked ‘meeting’, the team is encouraged to frequently share roughs, and experiments either one-to-one, or in small groups, via screen shares in video chats or screen grabs or sketches in chat groups.
When things get exciting and we want to share wider, the seconds it takes to drop a Google Meet link into individual chats is far quicker than running around a studio looking for other team-mates.
All this constant sharing means that the team has also had to allow for calm times in order to focus and produce the work.
We’ve had to become better at prioritising our time; knowing when to ask for time to focus and how ensure others are getting it.
We’ve found that early afternoon is when we can carve out concentration time; and for this isolated working can be a blessing.
The last few months have affected our work lives more than any impactful event I have experienced during my career; whether worldwide, like the 2008 recession, or the more localised and terrible 2005 London bombings.
Everyone is navigating their ‘new normal’ in different ways, at home and at work. This makes finding the right time to check-in and support each other a bit of a challenge.
But I think our communication and transparency has been forced to improve; bringing us closer, and making us far more efficient as a team.
This article was written by Art Director, Hannah Waters, and first appeared on Mediashotz on 15 July 2020.
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