Role Model Agencies
From Innovationclass
== I. The Wexley School for Girls ==
I chose Wexley as one of my choices to use as a role model for the creation of our agency because I love their work. Professors have often told me to take a closer look at the agencies whose work I admire. So, when I found myself engaged and clicking on lots of ads on Wexley's website I thought there must be something about the way this agency operates that we can draw from for our own agency.
Do Your Own Thing
They seem to have a "take no prisoners" attitude and that's probably what gives them the ability to create such strange, but great, work. Personally, I love odd and quirky advertising because its eye-catching, cognitively involving (you have to figure out what the hell the creators/client were thinking) and, typically, it's rather humorous. I would hope that the agency we create could, also, produce offbeat ads. Aside from my stated personal reasons for liking such advertising, it seems that college students are naturally inclined to thinking in this fashion, anyway. College students spend a large amount of time scouring the Internet for funny videos, pictures, games, etc to amuse themselves – they are actively seeking this material out.
Do What Makes Sense for Your Clients
Wexley lives by the premise that they, as a creative agency, are defined by the needs of their clients rather than defining their own set of parameters by which they work. This is an admirable trait that we should adopt for our own agency because it makes the agency adaptive to change.
== II. Big Spaceship ==
I picked Big Spaceship as another one of my role model agencies because they are an agency that is progressive and on the cutting-edge of trends in media and technology. In fact, they consider themselves a digital creative agency and I don’t think that’s a bad place to be considering the direction advertising is moving in. Go to their website and play with their interactive pieces, but try not to get carried away or you’ll be there forever!
Structure and Specialists Are Overrated
Big Spaceship makes a good role model for an agency at CU because they aren’t structured like a traditional agency. Joshua Hirsch, a technology master at BS, explains, “We’ve got a crew with a set of skills. Those skills can be utilized and deployed in a number of different ways. We say that we’ve got a broadcast division and an interactive division, but it’s all the same people doing the work.” Thus, BS operates in a manner of “inclusive creative flow.” Projects come in and they are given to multidisciplinary groups that include employees of many different specialties. The resulting work is phenomenal because it was exposed to a wide variety of mindsets and open to adaptation and opinions. If we had an agency as CU, ideally, we would want to take on projects in the same manner. The students come from a diverse background and, thus, would be at a great advantage in the process of creating.
Happy Employees = Good Work
Additionally, BS has an interesting employee culture that naturally parallels what we would face as an agency in a college. BS hires almost no freelancers, but instead focuses on developing a loyal, in-house team. Likewise, at CU we would be wise to not hire freelancers, but instead pull from our resources within our school to find other students who could help out with projects when necessary (ie a computer science major, a TAM kid, an engineer, etc). BS hasn’t recruited big names or superstars and they have tried to build a friendly work environment by encouraging steady work habits rather than all night onslaughts. As much as the school will try and entice the best students to come and attend the university, we aren’t really going to have much control over recruitment of “superstars.” Also, encouraging steady workflow on projects will make outside clients more comfortable contracting with such an unusual agency and it will teach good work habits to the students.
Keep it All in Perspective
Another admirable quality about BS is that although they have turned into a leader in their field, they haven’t become too cocky and tried to take on too much. They have remained the same small, consistent agency with steady workflow by picking and choosing what they are going to do. This freedom to choose gives them the ability to try their hand at a variety of clients. Also, not taking on too many projects ensures that they will be able to adhere to their employee culture of a friendly work environment while continuing to produce top work. An agency at CU would be wise to follow this lead, even if it wasn’t a wildly in-demand agency.
Own Your Ideas and Run with Them
At BS, they are concerned with the ownership of ideas. Joshua Hirsch said, “If you’re building someone else’s ideas, you’re automatically going to be careless. The work’s not going to have that same detail and polish.” BS strives to only work on projects that it has been invited into at the beginning. This gives BS control over the direction of the project from the start and it, also, keeps motivation high. This would be an important idea for our agency to steal because if we didn’t “own the ideas” we may not get proper recognition for our efforts, something that will be very important to students emerging from the program. Additionally, just like at BS, ownership of the idea would keep the motivation high at any agency, including our own.
Big Spaceship
Check out the article in January/February 2008 issue of Communication Arts
== III. Tribal DDB ==
At first, Tribal DDB doesn’t seem to fit in with my other two choices as a role model agency. It’s large, global and a powerful arm of the corporate giant Omnicom. However, despite all these seemingly negative connotations, if you look into the culture of Tribal DDB Worldwide, you’ll find that for such a large organization it’s very personalized, aside from being wildly successful at what it does.
Be a Truly Connective Network
What makes Tribal DDB an especially interesting case study for us is the fact that despite having a wide-reaching global presence, the overall agency seems to be tightly networked. Different locations keep in close contact with one another, they work collectively on projects and they make an effort to share great work and practices with each other to promote learning within the company. Employees are encouraged to be in communication with people in other locations and they are, also, given the freedom to move about between offices. This practice encourages talented people to stay in the network, as well as encourages the spreading of great ideas and formation of a “connective tissue” throughout the network. It’s no wonder then that Tribal DDB was named AdAge’s 2008 Global Agency Network of the Year.
Reading about how Tribal DDB is so connective gave me ideas about how our agency could draw from this idea of networking. We could build relationships with normal agencies operating out in the business world. Such relationships could foster a sort of exchange program where we could invite talented individuals, from creatives to account planners to management, to come to CU and moonlight as a professor for a semester or two. This would encourage a network of ideas at CU by learning from the best in the field from a multitude of agencies. Similarly, we could offer programs to students in similar fields at other universities, almost like a study abroad, but within the same country (or maybe not!). Whether it’s visiting professionals or other talented students, bringing more talent to our agency could only benefit everyone who is involved.
Promote Innovation and Exploration
Another reason I chose Tribal DDB is because they promote innovation and freedom of expression within their agencies by recently formalizing a program for employees to allow time for exploration of emerging technologies, much like already established programs at other companies, like Google. Letting their staff explore what they want on company time both increases retention and happiness of employees, as well as builds employees’ knowledge and creativity. It seems to be a win-win for the company and the employees. Taking off from that, our agency could, also, allow time for exploration. Currently, the SJMC has a very structured minor or certificate requirement for students in the advertising program. Maybe they could rethink this and offer a more wide-open minor requirement that would allow students whose majors were an integrated part of agency operations the ability to fulfill this requirement with a certain number of randomly chosen courses. Students would then be able to explore a number of areas without having to get in too deep, but over the course of a semester they would likely learn enough to influence their creativity and thought processes.
Be Good at Things Outside of Your Specialty
Tribal DDB is, also, outstanding because despite the fact that they are a digital agency, they have found success in other non-digital fields of advertising such as direct marketing, sales promotion and media. A remarkable example of this was in the summer of 2005 “in which the agency turned London into a virtual game board using taxis, GPS and hot spots” for a Monopoly Live promotion.
Adaptation and Brand Insight
Tribal DDB has become highly regarded by the clients it works with, not only for its talents, but also for its adaptive capabilities and its insight to the brand. Not only are they great on the web, and in other related areas, Tribal has a great understanding of branding and the important role that plays in the creation of ideas. John Vail, the Director of Interactive Marketing for Pepsi-Cola North America has said, “I think of [Tribal] as a full-service agency. They have executed for us when needed, they’ve done multimedia work, they’ve shot video. They’ve definitely pushed us. We tested early on with widgets, rich media and consumer-generated opportunities probably before they were in vogue.”
