Process, process, process. It seems to be all agencies talk about these days – including us here at Acoustic. And yes, the bigger picture approach of (digital) transformation, business development and creating connections through ground-breaking communications is important. But that doesn’t mean it’s the right answer for every problem. It could be the opposite. Sometimes we all just need to get things done.

The beauty of a boutique agency is that it allows us to be versatile and nimble. As much as we advocate the longer extensive processes, we understand the needs of a client under time pressure, under budget constraints and under urgent need to make things happen. So, we are very happy to deliver those services. In fact, any agency should have the capability to maintain two lines of thoughts at the same time; “How can we provide stronger long-term value to our clients”, and “How can we work in an efficient way, so that the client can see more of the work and less of the agency?”. There is no conflict in this, it is simply a matter of the right cure for the right problem.

As a smaller agency, we can respond quicker, get more things done and still be able to turn back to solving bigger challenges for our clients. And we always aim to bring in the learnings from a small, quick project into the bigger picture at a later stage. And the clients seem to appreciate the mix of long-term commitment and short turn-arounds. In fact, one of our clients, Melinda Earsdon at OANDA Asia Pacific wrote this about a couple of projects we solved for them with short deadlines and moderate budgets:

“The team at Acoustic did a tremendous job with our recent advertising campaign. Despite being dealt an ambiguous brief with an incredibly short lead time from a client they had never worked with before, the team nailed our outdoor and television campaigns right off the bat, producing smart, funny, creative that perfectly captured the essence of our program and our brand. Acoustic also went above and beyond in terms of deliverables, by far exceeding the KPIs we had originally agreed on, with no hidden extra charges, and they skilfully managed the project, keeping our extremely busy team on track and making sure we didn’t miss our deadlines. They did all of this with good grace and humour, which makes them a pleasure to work with. I can’t wait to see what will come of our future collaborations.”

Now, of course, there are situations that don’t allow for these quick turn-arounds, but when the alternative is to do “nothing”, we are happy to help doing “something”. Having a fully integrated and collaborative team helps us to do that. Just be aware that these quick processes only work when everyone involved can make decisions and push things through on both sides of the client-agency relationship. And the deal is that we all have to have fun doing it. We’re happy to give it a go, if you are!

Erik Ingvoldstad is the Founder & CEO of Acoustic.
Follow Erik on Twitter @ingvoldSTAR, follow Acoustic at @AcousticGroupSG
Don’t miss out on insights, ideas and opinions from Acoustic, sign up for our newsletter here.

[Main photo by Edward Lee, under CC]