What’s the most relevant business and/or creative lesson you learned in 2023 and how will you apply it to 2024?
It’s that the clutter of content out there is more confusing than ever before. That addiction to content, and types of content, is greater than ever in history. Binging on content is not something few of us, it’s become second nature and we do it unconsciously. Which means whatever we produce needs to not only stand out, but be binge-worthy as well.
While gazing into the crystal ball is a tricky proposition, we nonetheless ask you for any forecast you have relative to content creation and/or the creative and/or business climate for 2024?
It’s going to be a messy. Management consulting companies, tech companies and the like will want to drive AI as much as they can and will probably make it easier for clients to get volume content. The downside? Storytelling will suffer. Memorability will suffer. Quantity over quality will be the norm. Meanwhile, creative agencies will be left with the challenge of delivering quality content at scale. Coming up with great stories and crafting them in the right way is hard enough. Add speed and volume to that and it just makes everything that much more challenging.
Does your company have plans for any major diversification and/or expansion/investment in technology and talent in 2024 and if so, what? How will this investment or diversification add value to what you can offer to clients? If instead you have already realized any actual expansion, made such an investment and/or diversified significantly recently and brought on new talent and expertise, share those developments with us along with what they mean to your staff and clients.
Expanding our footprint into the digital world is top of list, beyond what we do now. That means being able to see strategy seep from brand all the way into data-driven digital campaigns designed to deliver results. We’re ramping it up and making sure we not only understand the challenges AI might throw our way, but instead how we can leverage AI to our advantage. While it’s a given that AI will be part of the mix of things, what’s left to be figured out is how agencies will customize it to suit their needs.
Are you involved in virtual production or experimenting with AI, AR or other emerging disciplines or new technologies? Have you engaged in any real-world projects on these fronts? If so, relative to experimental and/or actual projects, briefly tell us about the work and what you’ve taken away from the experience. If the work is complete and you’d like to share a link to it, please include.
As for AI, beyond using it for creating and adjusting images, and print production automation, we’re still in the experimental phase.
Gender pay disparity, sexual misconduct and the need for diversity & inclusion are issues that have started to be dealt with meaningfully. While the industry has made strides to address these issues, there’s still a long way to go. What policies do you have in place or plan to implement or step up in order to make progress on any or all of these fronts?
We consciously make sure our HR team provides us and helps us maintain a fair with a ratio balance of various genders in leadership positions. Same goes for ensuring all genders have equal training and progress opportunities. This year, we’re expanding our diversity outlook and looking at an even more formal DEP program to ensure we’re considering and are exposed to more than what we’ve done so far.
What was the biggest challenge posed to you by a recent project? Or share insights to a recent project you deem notable. Briefly describe the project, why it was particularly noteworthy or what valuable lesson(s) you learned from it. If the work is complete and you’d like to share a link to it, please include.
Three words: time to market. No idea is truly original because there’s likely a version of it in progress somewhere in the world. When clients take too long, keep ideas on the shelf longer than necessary or projects can’t launch because of layers of unexpected client approval, someone beats you to the punch. Not much agencies can do about it other than advising clients about the dangers of moving too slowly, but we try. Had an issue recently where close to launch of an integrated campaign we’d worked on for a year we discovered another brand with just one ad that seemed to have a similar approach. Was enough to make sure we adjusted our approach without killing the entire creative idea
