Reflecting on Our First Year
Time certainly flies when you're having fun. I can't believe it's already been a year since starting this little experiment. Quite a bit has changed, but most of our original hypotheses have held up.
One year ago we were fortunate enough to launch with two incredible anchor clients; one in financial services and another in clean aviation. In the 12 months since we've helped other clients from a Swiss asset manager and an innovative chain of veterinary clinics to an NFT collectible marketplace and an independent art marketplace (to name a few). We've been fortunate to tell a diverse range of stories with many different commercial objectives.
We've grown. But more importantly, our unique value proposition remains differentiated and sought-after. And we've learned a great deal about how to better articulate just what that value proposition is.
“We tell influential stories & build transformative marketing capabilities for innovative brands." is now a very deliberate tagline.
"Tell influential stories" - We knew that brands needed help articulating their stories and translating them into concrete marketing strategies. Brand strategy, campaign design, and what is increasingly being called "content strategy" - these were all apparent needs from the outset.
"Build transformative marketing capabilities" - It's become even clearer than it was just twelve months ago that companies also need guidance and support developing the internal capabilities to actually execute a content strategy themselves over the long term. Outside of the media business, regular content development, production and distribution is still not a native or readily executed capability. It may be true that to acquire customers every company now needs to behave like a media company, but that's easier said than done. Although storytelling remains one of the most ancient human behaviors it is also one of the hardest to master.
"Innovative brands" - This isn't just lip service. The clients that came to us over the past 12 months were already radical innovators in their respective industries. I think that disruptive DNA made these companies more accepting of new strategies and tactics than they may otherwise have been.
As I look ahead to the next twelve months, I am excited about the opportunity to further hone our practice and methodologies, and to bring these capabilities to even more firms across sectors and around the world.
I’ll leave you with a powerful quote from Annette Simmons’ The Story Factor I’ve shared with every client this past year:
“People don’t want more information. They are up to their eyeballs in information. They want faith - faith in you, your goals, your success, in the story you tell. Faith needs a story to sustain it - a meaningful story that inspires belief in you and renews hope that your ideas indeed offer what you promise.”
