What I learned in two years helping to run a small creative agency.
I left Cancer Research UK to take up a role with William Joseph — a small creative agency who I’ve worked with for almost 10 years. Chris and Steph who founded WJ are two people i’ve always looked up to. The opportunity to help them move forward, solving more digital problems for charities and universities was too good to pass up.
In honesty I realise now, I had no idea what I was walking into. It’s turned out to be amazing, largely through luck and the kindness of others. These are a few things i’ve noticed in the last couple of years — all of which I had no inkling of when I started.
I hope they might help you if you’re about to make a similar jump — or if you’re interested in understanding more about the agencies you work with.
- Nothing is a no, it’ll just cost more or take more time.
- We need to be able to scale up and scale down our solutions to meet any budget.
- Always ask to see an org chart.
- You need to work in different ways depending on the capability of the client. If they are less confident, then you need to be more detailed in what is being delivered. If they are more mature in their ways of working and there is professional understanding and trust, then you can keep things more open and explore together.
- We can be better at coming up with collaborative creative solutions, that make the most of all the people we have rather than being a single person’s baby.
- Getting away from screens = more creativity.
- Mental health is like physical health and needs to be looked after and cared for in just the same way.
- Make content that will help people develop — reputation and new opportunities will come from that.
- We need to tailor our pitches more — always give the team’s first impressions of the brief. Say what’s missing, what we know about the audience and what our assumptions are.
- We need to be clearer on what our delivery process is for brand projects.
- We need to be able to explain what we do in one sentence.
- Getting into the design press and winning awards is important if we want to collaborate with other organisations — not for ego massaging.
- Cultural challenges are just as tricky to solve in a small place as a big one.
- Organisational vision, values and behaviours are key to talk about and define so that people can know what good looks like.
- Growing a business is about much more than just bringing in more money.
By better understanding the way that agencies operate, the better the work that we deliver together will be. The most interesting projects are always delivered in partnership between groups of humans that trust each other. Hopefully this gives you a few insights into the kind of things that people who run agencies think about so you can start the conversation on a level footing.
If you’d like to talk to us more about any of this, or have your own thoughts, drop me a line on Twitter or Email — james@williamjoseph.co.uk
