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During
my agency tenure, both on a full-time and freelance basis, I have developed
key initiatives and approaches to a number of agency components that
are
handled very
differently
by various agency and individual leaders. Although there is more than
one successful approach for each component, depending on the agency
culture and agency type, the following is how I personally approach
each agency facet...
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| I
believe the right mentoring must come from deep-rooted experience - and
an even-tempered approach. Your team looks to you for insight and guidance
- and they need to know that your vigilance in the pursuit of creative
and strategic excellence is to always get the best from your team. Understanding
each team member's role and encouraging strategic and creative
excellence
must come from an atmosphere of encouragement and team spirit. It is important
to understand each individual career path and alert them to areas of
opportunity in approach, process and participation. |
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When
you are in a creative role, it
is most productive when you have a leader who sets and guides the 'parameters'
and fosters the generation of creative ideas. And this is how I
lead. Creative leadership
cannot be a dictatorship - but rather a mentor who provides intuitive
and thorough information about product, target audience, client objectives
and strategy. A great leader can orchestrate effective brainstorming
sessions and sort-and-simply raw and complex data into actionable items.
Will the creative turn out exactly the way you would have written or
designed
it? No. But the right leader can effectively guide foster creative
excellence - and reel in team members when work heads off strategy,
off brand or gets
too
complicated
or cumbersome.
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| Although
it may seem like it at times, the client is not a dictator looking for
the agency to serve as pure production - they are simply trying to provide
all the information they believe is relevant for us to create the right
campaign to reach their core business and marketing objectives.
They need us to be highly strategic, creative and insightful
- and they have a need/want to participate in the process. The stronger
the
relationship
you establish with your client in ongoing and open communication and
dialogue, the stronger the relationship will become. |
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| Yes,
projects with very tight deadlines and limited budgets are a nature of
the business - but this is not the time to throw your hands up in the
air by delivering sub-par work. Knowing the skills, availability and
capacity
of each creative
and production team member - combined with fast-tracking the front-end
phases of project review, q&a, and strategy, will allow sufficient
time for the creative and production team to do great work. |
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| The
key to time management is knowing the skills and capacity of each individual
team member in relation to their assigned project - bringing in support
from other team members to complete the project on-time. Divide and conquer.
You can't expect great things from your team if you burn them out or
allow for unfair project weightload. Creatives can also over-analyize
certain
stages and it is important to establish key checkpoints during creative
execution and production and be available to review and make timely decisions
in the trenches. Managing accurate measurement of time reports is also
key in sustaining proper billing and revenue. |
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I
have established a certain process to know the current skillset(s)
and capacity of every team member - and allocating resources appropriately
to meet timing and budget based on workload and availability. You must
always leverage the resources you have available and develop
an outside resource of
talent to call upon when there is an influx of assignments. Stretching
your team too thin can have a negative impact on on-time deliverables
and creative quality.
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From
an operational standpoint of any
growing agency, it is crucial to maintain financial statements and
spreadsheets to oversee and summarize current revenue, cost and expense
for individual projects and collectively on regularly scheduled intervals.
Proper management of P&L provides the information you need to show
the ability to generate profit - generally by reducing costs to increase
revenue. Having clear and accessible information on P&L allows
you to manage time and allocate resources
more efficiently.
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| Just
like any company, there are two opportunities to grow an agency - expanding
existing client work and pursuing and attaining new business with new
clients. I have proven experience on both accounts - working closely
with account service teams in fostering positive relationships with our
clients - by delivering highly successful
creative
and strategic campaigns - and always delivering strategic and thought
leadership for a brand - even when it goes beyond the scope of the project
at hand. |
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And
as for new business experience and success, I had the unique opportunity
to spend nearly two years pitching big brands full-time - with a 67%
(2007) and 74% (2008) win-rates (industry
average at 10-12%). The key is to be included in the RFP process
and be ready to allocate adequate resources to each new business opportunity.
I have personally led the creative and strategy for new business
pitches and pulled keyteam members in based on available
resources and skillsets - and personally developed a
10-step process to winning consistently.
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| Whether
it's taking heavy product specification documentation, complex client
objectives, elaborate marketing spreadsheets, target audience research
data and analytics, or team brainstorming-generated ideas, I have
the
unique
ability
to
quickly sort-and-simplify complex information and deliver effective strategic
roadmaps. I use my personally-developed techniques on nearly every project
I am
assigned. From this newly sorted-and-simplified data, strategic direction
is more easily identified and results in more effective on-target campaigns. |
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