A Change is Inevitable
by Thomas Feldhaus & Aye Cofalka, JvM/TECH
2020 had a tremendous impact on agency-land. The nature of business is changing faster and faster. Clients are even more demanding these days, as the whole marketing landscape grows more complex and economic uncertainty rises.
Going through a rather painful process, agencies all over the planet, traditional and digital alike, had to rethink not only parts of their business - they had to rethink everything. If they weren't out of their comfort zone already, now they were.
What happened?
Corona hit like a hammer and we all learned a lot in a very short amount of time: how to pitch new business via zoom, maintaining our culture when working remote, adjusting team structures to meet our clients new needs and how to change lots of other stuff we thought was good. Old habits and beliefs were discarded, working from the home office became the norm and our collaboration models became more open as all of us adjusted to a new normal. But, at least we had a change and we all achieved great strides here.
But, while tackling all of this, another tale of change in our business which started pre-corona, evolved faster, fueled by the accelerated digitalization triggered by the pandemic. Increasing requirements in terms of technology, process quality and even stronger focus on user-centricity can be found in almost every project. Also, in creative standards.
For Jung von Matt/TECH as an agency, a lot of things happened in the last year. Let’s have a look at our experiences as an agency leadership team, adapting to a new reality in 2020.
Changing Teams and Culture
In parallel to more complex client requirements, we change the business models in collaboration with our clients and suppliers on a daily basis. We work as consultants on-site at a customer's location, in integrated teams with multiple suppliers and the client, set up agile project teams across the globe and even provide intensive support in hiring suitable people for the client's team. Always iterating: Try, learn and optimize.
When the markets changed, we also had to change our ways of working. This was only possible with an experienced, dedicated and flexible team, composed of employees who were ready to step out of their comfort zone.
We radically took every process and meeting online and enabled the individual team members to work at home or in the agency, connected through messenger services, ticket systems and a common culture of short meetings and agile methodologies.
We also worked on optimizing other parts of our toolkit to fit our new reality. Picking new ideation methodologies and lean agile processes with the right level of ticket details and a solid “definition of done.”
This approach turned out to be successful and will prevail, as employees and clients alike welcomed the new flexibility.
Adapting to a changing technology landscape
With all this in mind – to survive as an agency – we needed to optimize production processes and establish ready-to-use building blocks to increase our velocity. What is the nature of these building blocks? Traditionally, digital agencies like catering 100% custom build - but costly - solutions tackling exactly their clients' problems. But sometimes, you could find solutions out there on the web solving the same problem, but as cheap SaaS solutions.
For us, the sweet spot was to be found directly in the middle of those two poles. We picked mature components and frameworks we can use to build precise solutions, without trying to reinvent the wheel every single time.
These building blocks can be technical Infrastructure like AMP, a cloud-native content platform like Contentful combined with Static Site Generator pipelines, headless e-commerce but also included are many smaller things like consent solutions or oven-ready newsletter templates.
Contentful, for example, is a content platform designed from the ground up as an agnostic content repository that exposes content via an API for display on any device and touchpoint. It allows us to mix and match with the front-end technologies we need for a specific outcome or to integrate with our clients’ IT infrastructures.
Armed with these shiny building blocks we can serve clients faster, with a better value for their budgets. And the best thing about this is: We can be creative and invent new things where we want to, and not waste our energy on things providing little value.
Navigating a changing world
At this moment, we can observe big changes in all spheres of society, politics and also the economy. In our industry, we can observe trends like consolidation of well-established brands like the recent merger of AKQA and Grey. Different breeds of agencies with their own history and specific mindset with different portfolios are being merged with the goal to create something new. Both in terms of offering and culture.
But also new, pure digital players emerge like S4Capital, challenging giants like Accenture. These players are a totally new breed of agency or marketing services company, whether it’s in terms of culture or offerings. They bring a new mindset, focused on data and results.
Clients are readjusting their budgets to accelerate digitalization in their organization, but also in marketing budgets adjusting to the new reality. According to the Gartner 2020 CMO Spend Survey, respondents believed that budgets for marketing technology and digital channels will see growth in the next year.
So, what does it all mean for companies like us?
Well, we think of this a little bit differently after all of 2020.
With standardization, we have an opportunity to create new room for creativity, ultimately for a better digital product.
With leaner online-first processes, we can help our employees enjoy new flexibilities and a better work-life balance.
With new players emerging, the market creates new opportunities, as budgets are shifted, and marketing turns digital first.
In the end, it all boils down to delivering great products and handling an ever-increasing acceleration of change. But backed with a reborn culture and ways of working, shiny new tools and a lot of new ideas, we're looking forward to exploring new territories in 2021.
Thomas Feldhaus, JvM/TECH
Thomas Feldhaus has been developing digital products and platforms for blue chip clients like BMW, Mercedes and Google for 20 years. He has been working for JvM since 2009, where he is responsible for the interface between technology and modern data-driven marketing.
Aye Cofalka, JvM/TECH