| Your name and title | |
|---|---|
| Amanda Ginzburg, Chief Growth Officer | |
| How many total employees does your agency have? How has this changed over the last 2 years? | |
| 43 total FTEs. In 2022 we had 50 and in 2021 we had 45, so overall slightly less employees than we had 2 years ago. | |
| What are the total revenues for the agency (substitute & indicate billings if this is the only available number): | |
| 19.67M | |
| List your clients for the past 2 years (please group by industry category and indicate past/current clients). Cut and paste from another document if this helps. | |
| Healthcare - 23&Me, Juvenescence, meQlibrium Finance - American Express, Affinipay, Goldman Sachs, Kiva, Menlo, Moodys, Cast and Crew Nonprofit - ASPCA, Good360 (current client), Partnership With Children, Audubon Society (current client) Retail - Bob's Discount Furniture, Chanel, Chewy (current client), Lightbox, Men's Wearhouse, NRF, Tommy Hilfiger, Under Armour (current client) Tech - Foursquare, Google, IBM (current client), LinkedIn, OJO, SAP, CM Group, DISQO, Optimizely, Lighthouse, SPS Commerce (current client), Lighthouse Professional services- Codal, Globant, HappyLucky, Stratascale, Wieden & Kennedy Education - Pearson , Kansas City Art Institute, Manufacturing/Textiles - Reju/Technip Energies (current client) Beauty - Rodan & Fields, Sol de Janiero (current client) Media - Time Magazine | |
| Bullet point the services you offer your clients: | |
| Business & Brand - services include: Purpose definition Brand strategy & naming Architecture & growth strategy Messaging & activation strategy Quantitative and qualitative research Organization & Culture - services include: Organizational alignment Purpose activation Cultural transformation Organizational design Employer brand Future of work Experience - services include: Creative platforms Visual and verbal identity Communications Experience design Design research | |
| What percent of new revenue comes from the following sources: | |
| 51-60% | |
| Expanding on your answer above, how has most agency revenue growth come in? | |
| Most of our agency revenue growth has historically been through our partner network. We also have a very strong referral network from current and past clients - many of our clients are serial clients who call us every time they move to a new company. As we've grown over time, we've also started to build our marketing presence and have brought in new clients through marketing efforts (google search ads, content, conferences, press, and so on) so we're starting to see a more sizable portion of clients come in who we are not previously connected to. We are also part of a larger network of independent companies called Dawn Network which refers business to us. | |
| How do you see these sources of revenue growth changing over the year ahead, if applicable? | |
| I think we will continue to see more growth from outside of our referral network. We are working on building out a sustainability offering and will be focusing there from a marketing perspective to build credibility and new opps. We are also going to be investing in a vertical specific strategy , starting with healthcare and finance which will yield new opps. | |
| What strategic resources are available to your teams? For example, do you have any proprietary strategy, research, data, tools, or any services you subscribe to? | |
| Limited resources. We have a subscription to DScout , a qualitative research platform. We also have subscriptions to many media properties (BoF, Fortune, Statista Pro, NYT and so on). If we need media data (like from a Simmons or Neilsen type platform), we can tap into a media partner of ours to pull it for us. | |
| Are account team leaders held accountable for executing and monitoring the initiatives and activities for client Organic Growth plans? Please explain. | |
| Not really. Success - or more importantly, failure, is not clearly tied to their performance /bonus. They are responsible but not accountable. The mechanisms for accountability do not exist. In most cases, we do not have clearly defined account ownership beyond partners that is tied back to clear KPIs against achieving organic growth plans. We are excellent at identifying opportunities but the follow through is not tracked and CEs are not always to own the growth of these relationships. | |
| How would you rate your account teams’ effectiveness at driving Organic Revenue Growth — based on having documented plans, a methodical approach, and being assertive? Please explain. | |
| Low. We have a plan but we do not have a methodical approach. The issue really comes up in the middle tier of accounts. If you look at our client list from the past 2 years and specifically big names that we aren't currently working with anymore, we have not been able to turn any "high growth potential accounts" into long term clients (moodys, bobs, rodan & fields, amex, goldman, pearson, tommy hilfiger). The first project finishes and we do not convert enough of them into serial clients (like our flagship clients IBM, Google, Chewy). We haven't turned any (or enough) new clients into flagship clients. | |
| When you consider Organic Growth, specifically, where does the team most need to improve? Where is the greatest opportunity for the team? | |
| We don't have enough success generating net new projects from existing clients - it is almost exclusively the client coming to us with an opportunity. Clients love us but they don't know how to continue working with us. Biggest improvement areas: making introductions to other leaders in our business (so introducing O&C to the Chief People Officer or Experience to the Chief Innovation/Creative/Product Officer, etc.) , expanding client relationships beyond the 1-2 key stakeholders -often we hear that x client left and we have no avenues back in. Greatest opportunities: clear growth plans that happen in the last 1/3 of the project. Often our projects end and then we're trying to figure out what's next and how to extend and by that time its much harder. Helping clients understand all of the other services that we offer and how to continue working with us. | |
| Is there a particular practice area or capability within the agency that you think is exceptionally strong or a competitive advantage? Alternatively, is there a practice area or capability you think is weak or needs improvement? | |
| Exceptionally strong and a competitive advantage - brand positioning, brand architecture, brand strategy, brand identity Needs improvement - ongoing Experience work (content, creative platforms, experience design). This should be where there is ongoing repeatable work in translating the strategy into design and experiences through the many manifestations of a brand /product but typically once we have designed an identity, we stop. -O&C capability to market fit. We have a best in class team but we have found we are typically 2x+ as expensive as either a. what the client wants to spend and b. our competitors. | |
| Is there anything else that would provide insight into your goals, opportunities, or challenges? | |
| Overall, we often hear that we are 2x as expensive as the competition and we often are far outside of the clients budget. Sometimes this means we lose the opportunity without a chance to negotiate. When we are able to have an open dialogue with clients we are usually able to find common ground on a price BUT we have a tough time reconciling our own expectations of what work should cost with our team model and our approach/process to the work. We often "can't help but do more and overdeliver" - that leads to great client relationships and people who would recommend us but not a great margin, burnout in the team and a smaller organic pipeline because we have overdelivered. | |