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It was a reaction to having been inside a large company for many years. I have always found ways to change and adapt to market demands and work with talented, nimble teams. While the mega-companies have a secure place in the ecosystem, as they grow and acquire other companies, they patch different cultures together with middle management and digital busywork, and it becomes much harder to stay flexible or responsive … or happy. Internal processes become the product and that is just not my cup of tea; I’m not wired that way. Clients feel it because they just don’t get the adaptability that they need to make their jobs easier and less painful. So, we wanted to build something that had client needs front and center and not deviate from that. It’s not about us, it’s about the client. And to be real, it’s a lot more fun that way. Instead of bending a client to our process, we want to make it simple and easy for them.
The truth is, ‘coopetition’ is a market-driven shift, both on the client side and the supply side. It’s a response to several different factors and has become well-articulated without anybody shouting it. On the production/creative side, this shift started to happen gradually before the pandemic and then accelerated as a lot of talented people opted out of the industry or decided to reduce their workloads. Companies that previously did three things well found that they only did one or two things well, and rebuilding with experienced people was close to impossible. Add to that the fact that a lot of the generalists aged out and the new talent coming up tended toward specialization, and you’ve got the ingredients for another chapter in our industry’s story arc.
On the client side, internal stakeholders have become less willing to go solely with generalists and umbrella companies. They want responsiveness and deep talent that mirrors their individual departmental contributors’ needs and budgets. The meeting managers may want a specific staging company or GC, the communications team may want specific writers and graphic designers. There may be a need for really niche strategy specialists. And so, especially with the larger buyers, this was not a request. It was a way of ensuring that their stakeholders got the attention they wanted on a granular level from an individual or a group that would focus on them and share their specific vision or way of working.
The high-end side of the creative/production portion of the industry has always relied on interconnected relationships. So making the leap from umbrella company to open cooperation was not a huge task, but it does require different thinking. The intersection of where all these different specialties come together can be a train wreck if not managed correctly, especially with the exacting demands of the technology today. So, yet another set of skills is required for that.
Keep in mind that even before clients first started reaching outside the umbrella, most of us in the industry knew each other and had good working relationships, and in many cases even friendships. We might compete aggressively from 9 to 5, then hang out after the pitch. So, it happened organically that we not only learned to work together in the service of our clients but also complement each other’s work. One of the unexpected knock-on effects of working with people who might have previously been competitors or subcontractors and are now ad hoc partners is that they are more likely to refer you or bring you in for your specialty. Whereas before, they didn’t want to expose you to their client. So now, we are not only pitching to clients directly, but we’re also pitching to clients as a group formed specifically for them or even pitching to each other. It’s refreshing because the client is at the center of some very interesting groupings.
We have a mantra: Simpler, Faster, Easier. And that stems from making everything client centric. It’s certainly a methodology that others will claim, but we have developed a set of proprietary tools that help us get quickly to what is worrying the client. And that is the differentiator.
The holy grail for me personally is messaging architecture. It is undoubtedly one of the most important elements of any project and one that always seems to be in jeopardy. The integrity of the message and its delivery to the attendees are so often the victims of a brutal production process, scheduling insanity, overworked planners, internal politics, and what someone smarter than me dubbed 'The Tyranny of the Outlook Calendar'. This translates into you are so busy that you just run out of time, so you open the doors.
At the heart of almost every project is an intention, a desire to change, reinforce or validate behavior, to introduce a new concept or idea, and to take advantage of one of the most focused opportunities to speak directly to your most important audience either in-person, virtually, or both. It is the DNA of the event, and it is crucial for a truly good ROI, ROE or any R you can think of. So often, in the increasing pressure and complexity of delivering an event, this key element falls by the wayside, is minimized, or maybe even reduced to just a theme line or logo.
I love the current tech that is available. So much is possible, and the meeting and installation environments we get to create have endless possibilities. You want a football field-sized room full of LED, we can do that. You want drones to form dragons over your outdoor function, yep. You want to put a motorcycle race through the middle of a downtown area, we’re there for you. Given the budget and time, or not, the ability to make an impression has never been as versatile. As cool as all these possibilities are, they are just the platform on which the message is delivered. In good design, it supports or reinforces the message, but it is not the message.
Same goes for speakers and entertainment. You want Alicia Keys to amaze you, or Peyton Manning to make you laugh and inspire you, or almost any ex-President to explain their version of why they were awesome, we’ve done that, and it is a fun part of the business. Networking opportunities and social activities are critical. And yet all these memorable elements are, at their core, just attractors. And, as such, they are just table stakes. You must have them because they are essential elements, but they do not modify behavior or facilitate change. The message is the rug that really ties the room together.
If you ask attendees leaving an event what impressed them and they say, “Magic Johnson was inspirational”, or “the poolside party was over the top, I met so many of my peers”, that is undeniably good. If you ask what is the one takeaway message that you can put into action and they stumble and say, “the staging was really amazing”, well then, to us, we impressed them, but we didn’t reach them. If you ask them that same question and they say, “I really learned what a brand promise is”, then you’ve made a difference.
Every meeting planning kickoff starts with an intent to communicate a critical message in the right way at the right time. BrandSync has the tools and skill set to make sure the message survives the gauntlet of real-world event production and arrives intact in a way that the attendees will remember it.
Messaging architecture and delivery are a passion with us at BrandSync and it is something we truly want to share.
Make us prove it.
