The creative agency and COVID-19
There is no doubt that all of our lives have been impacted, in some way, shape, or form by this global pandemic. In fact, most of us (myself included) are still caged like animals, under quarantine. That said, most seem to be focusing on the negative. But, in this article let’s take a quick look at a glimmer of a silver-lining for modern digital marketers, creative agencies, agile small businesses, and freelancers, alike.
Ad agency, pre-plague
Prior to this unforeseen series of events, a common global strategy we employed at Vulcan — my digital marketing agency — was to speak with prospective/existing clients about how our streamlined skillset could help offload internal work. This is also a regular practice with many marketing companies, freelance iOS and Android app developers, graphic designers, and similar industry professionals.
However, if you’ve ever taken the plunge down this route, you probably know the common line. “We do it all in-house.” In fact, at one point in 2018, CNBC estimated that 78% of businesses had some form of internal design staff. No problem! At least for our team at Vulcan. We’ve set ourselves up in a way that our skillset complements and empowers existing teams, as opposed to obsoleting them. I’d assume most design agencies do something similar.
That said, this was still a common roadblock. Decision makers (and, to an extent, people in general) enjoy the familiar, and are intimidated by the lack thereof. If their self branding strategy was uplifted via their existing team, it would usually be a “no” to us.
On the other hand, companies were always, *always* hiring. Large and small. They still are, if you’re paying attention. But for the remote professional, or (worse) an agency/group of contractors, odds were they didn’t want to give it a chance. Which makes sense, bringing someone onto a team means they need to be taught to meet the company’s internal needs. And, in most cases, imbued with the company’s culture. This is easy to do if someone is completely focused on the task at hand, and not remote, working with clients, et cetera. As the hiring company, it was always safe to assume this mitigated risks. Having someone in the office every day, breathing the same air, talking with the same people, and focusing on the same immediate goal at the same time was to be worn as a badge of honour.
Notice, I’ve been writing in the past-tense this whole time…
The new way: remote digital marketing
Fortunately for all of us who have been working on this remote, contractual skillset our entire careers, the tide has changed!
Continue reading for free on the Vulcan blog.
