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Our Cucumber Marketing team have experienced life both from working within a brand’s marketing team as well as for a marketing agency. There are some distinct differences between the two that we find very interesting.
Throughout November, we’re discussing the ways we can plan ahead for 2018 (instead of saving it all for December, which many of us are guilty of) and here lies the first key difference between a marketing agency and brand marketing team. Planning styles.
Systems
If you’ve ever worked for a marketing agency and marketing team, you too may have noticed the different planning systems. One major differentiating factor is that for a marketing agency, a deadline is very firm. An agency is working for a client so they are obliged to honour pre-determined deadlines. There is less of this pressure on a marketing team but could that pressure be a good thing?
Have you ever found that when you know you have less time you are more productive? We’re certainly not recommending the student technique of leaving things for the night before the deadline, but perhaps making a rule that no deadline can be changed could be useful. At Cucumber Marketing, our planning systems deems that before we begin any project, we schedule how many hours will be needed. This ensures our whole team works as efficiently as possible to make sure we meet those important deadlines.
Variety
If you’ve been working in a brand’s marketing team for over two years, we’re sure you must be an expert in knowing your brand tone but have you thought about how you’d find producing marketing materials for a different brand? A huge benefit to working for a marketing agency is that you work on a whole range of clients which forces you to be able to adapt to different brand personalities. While it pays to be an expert in your brand’s voice, perhaps it can enhance your copywriting skills if you imagined you were producing marketing materials for another brand. Maybe you could implement team marketing days where you work on pretend creative briefs for a different client, perhaps a competitor! It’s a great way to strengthen your all-round marketing skills!
Marketing Trends
Agencies are constantly pitching for work against other agencies which means they have to show the client they are the most knowledgeable team out there. If you’re reading this, we assume, like us, marketing is more than a career, it’s a hobby. Sometimes however we can lose track of the newest marketing updates if we’re not being forced to stay up-to-date. Pitching for work is the driving force behind marketing agency employees keeping themselves in the loop with the newest trends. While producing groundbreaking campaigns that lead to sales is an incentive for a brand marketing team to stay up-to-date, taking time to read the latest news is often seen as a luxury rather than a must. We know that some marketing teams do spend time in meetings sharing interesting industry news that they’ve come across, we do the same in our Cucumber team meetings. This is a simple way of forcing yourself to keep ahold of advertising and marketing trends.
If you’d like to find out more about the Cucumber Marketing way of working, give us a call or pop by our Downtown Vancouver marketing agency office – we always have chocolate!