I frequently get asked the question, as, a creative agency what’s your core area or expertise? Are you guys specialists in one area? Do you just do creative or are you focused more on the strategy?
Many clients are actually surprised that we do branding for both retail environments and e-commerce web sites such as SmithsonianStore.com. The reality is that for our firm we are all about shaping experience – the whole experience a consumer encounters with a brand or company. We can’t avoid getting involved in everything.
The Pizza Slice Approach
Many companies, large and small, end up going to one firm for brand creation, then another firm for their website or e-commerce experience, and then another to create their retail environment and still a completely different agency for advertising. And, this trend goes even further with different agenciesfor online marketing, PR and social media. How do they all keep it straight? Most companies don’t worry about the differences and the customers know it.
If you look at the marketing and creative agencies that are most successful at engaging, developing and nurturing customers for their clients, they see the customer relationship to their clients’ brand as one of a whole experience. Now in creating and nurturing this relationship there are a ton of services that are part of the game. In our process we start with research, interviews and a whole assessment of the market. How can even guess what direction to go in if we don’t know the landscape? Then we add to this an analysis portion, positioning and then a creative platform that results in further slicing of the branding pie with the development of a new identity, naming, creating a retail environment, and then there’s the web or e-commerce services that again focus on where the brands customer engages with the client.
The customer doesn’t give a hoot about how they get the brands they love. They care about the consistency of the experience and the delivery on the brand promise. It’s about cultivating consistency and delivery through language, messaging, environment and interaction that creates an ongoing and living consumer-to-brand relationship.
So, when we get asked about our services, I say you gotta buy the whole pie. It’s not better by the slice.