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agency work

The Fusion of Strategy and Design

February 3, 2020 —

The Fusion of Strategy and Design

The Best Branding Is More Than the Sum of Its Parts Since its founding in the 1950s, branding has largely been divided into two distinct disciplines: strategy and design. Strategy’s traditional role is to research, understand the competitive landscape, distill the meaning, and establish the market opportunity into a well-formed creative brief. At this point, designers typically take the brief and visually communicate against the strategic objectives. The handoff from strategy to design is not without its pitfalls. Oftentimes, key information gets lost. Strategists can work in intellectual...
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Looking for a Better Client-Agency Relationship? Look No Further

November 12, 2019 —

Looking for a Better Client-Agency Relationship? Look No Further

Sara Gaviser Leslie is a brand marketer, creative consultant, and former Emotive Brand employee. After years of thriving on the agency-side of the equation, she recently took an interim position at Course Hero to experience the client-side of things. If you’re looking to improve your client-agency relationship, here are her five tips to make sure every project is a success. *** The Client-Agency Relationship Until recently, I’ve never experienced a brand creative project from the client-side. I was always the consultant. But, recently, when I took an interim but full-time role with a client,...
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Who Thrives at a Brand Strategy and Design Agency?

May 21, 2019 —

Who Thrives at a Brand Strategy and Design Agency?

What type of person thrives at a brand strategy and design agency? Looking around our office, we have people from advertising, journalism, psychology, economics, sociology, sales, graphic design, media – and like any successful venture, a few restless English majors. Is there a through-line? In our line of work, we privilege business acumen, technical fluency, big idea thinking, writing prowess, collaborative mindsets, passion, curiosity, empathy, and an obsession for the details. We get just as excited by an experiential brand launch as an exquisitely organized messaging matrix. With our...
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Mind the Gap: Bridging Strategy and Design

April 16, 2019 —

Mind the Gap: Bridging Strategy and Design

Here’s a simple truth I’ve learned working at both design-led and strategy-focused agencies. Strategy and design work best when they work together – from beginning to end. The problem is that strategy and creative are often regarded as separate instead of complementary disciplines. They have separate teams, separate processes, different skillsets, different client interactions. They approach problems from different angles. They may sit on different floors, different buildings, or even different firms. And, typically, the biggest communication between the teams is a handoff from one to the...
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