How to Keep Your Creative Agency Cutting Edge

Working within the realm of creativity, one should have a fair bit of leg room to come up with innovative ways to stay ahead of the pack. With an ever growing number of agencies in the creative space, what can you do to differentiate your creative agency? Well, you can actually do plenty!

Practice What You Preach

Most ad agencies out there thrive to create awesome work for their clients, and manage to deliver the goods with superb execution. After all, you are only as good as your work. But how many times have you landed on an agencies’ website, only to be underwhelmed with their own self branding, presentation, or lack thereof? I have to say that I’ve been left scratching my head a number of times thinking “What the?” or “Are these guys an Advertising Agency? Really?”

Remember that first impressions always count. So before you go on fixing someone else’s brand or image, take a good look at your own, and ask yourself “Are we cutting edge? Do we look like we are leaders in our field? What can we do to improve our own image that would translate into more success and credibility?”

The Aesthetic

Creativity is largely about the ‘aesthetically pleasing’. While it is important to be aware of current trends, design principles & technologies, why be a follower when you can be the leader? If everyone is doing ‘X’ you should be doing ‘Z’. Think outside of the box. Being an early adopter or innovator, and going against the grain, does comes with some risks. However, it can also pay dividends. It may be useful to brainstorm with your team various ways to improve how your agency is perceived by clients and competitors alike, online, in print or otherwise. In the same way that you use creative briefs to outline client projects, creating a brief for your own work is a way to make sure you stay focused on what you really want to communicate.

Maintaining focus, while keeping things simple and concise, can often yield amazing results. This is where collaboration and the process of elimination come in. From the ground up, analyze, scrutinize and refine every aspect of your client facing communication and branding. And just when you think you’re done, do it all over again! Remember your collective vision, company goals and culture. Your own branding and presentation should have these values woven throughout. Never remain complacent with where you are in the present.

Change is Good

Resisting change is part of human nature, yet change is something that should be promoted within your team as a process of re-invention and resurgence. After all, with your creative juices combined, you can truly come up with some remarkable things. Invigorate each other and energize the team! Enforce excellence across the board.

Some Examples:

– On a regular basis, introduce unique elements to your website or to your collateral

– Mix things up

– Instead of a conventional sign above your reception desk in the form of a light box, why not mount a large screen that will better communicate your brand through the use motion graphics?

– Have your company staff pics retaken, aka Brady Bunch style? Or why not have each team members photo replaced with an Anime style character equivalent?

The bottom line is, have fun and don’t be afraid to push the envelope.

This article was written by former Function Point employee, Daniel Pantic.