3 Key Tips Known by Successful Agency Teams
Hey I’m Mike Matthews from CultureSpan Marketing, we’re a full-service advertising agency here in
El Paso, Texas.
I wanted to share with you a few insights I’ve learned over the years about building and working with a team for advertising, marketing, creative… you name it. Now, whether you’re a big agency, a small agency or an agency of one, these ideas still apply.
So, I used to make the terrible joke that there’s no “I” in advertising. And many years later that joke is still terrible, but the principle is true: Great teams produce great results.
For us, every team project starts with clarity.
Now, it might seem obvious but you’d be surprised how often a lack of clarity can derail a project before it even begins. So, be clear with your objectives. That way it’s easier to determine the steps it takes to reach them.
For me that generally begins with a full team on-boarding meeting and ideally a creative brief, and it should be just that, brief. Brevity is clarity. Boil it down to the essentials.
Trust me. It’s a lot easier to get everybody on the same page at the beginning than it is to try to catch somebody up in the middle of a project.
Next is collaboration. Now, this one can be tricky sometimes, especially if you’re working with off-site teams, or let’s say there’s multiple phases of a project. But if you want to reach peak collaboration, the best thing you can do is specifically define the roles of each team member. And make sure that you’re marrying the right person to the right task. Remember, you’re going to cover a lot more ground and get a lot more done if you don’t duplicate efforts.
And finally, conversation... More than communication, I think conversation is key. Just talk it out. I feel like you can get just as much done in a hallway chat or a break room conversation than you might get in a long, drawn out conference room meeting. I’m not saying that those aren’t important, but if you workshop your ideas before you actually get to the table, it’s all about executing them.
And just as a final bonus tip. I think the best way to start a conversation is over a cold one. Cheers!