How a big question mark led to the future of marketing

This moment of defeat was the beginning of a whole journey, because we understood that we had to do something if we wanted to still be relevant ten years from now. We had to work smarter in this changing world. The big question was: how do we change with it? What is the future of advertising?

What do you think?

At the time, we were working with a business coach. "What do you think?", we asked him. He quite rightly bounced it back: 'You shouldn't ask me or yourself, you should ask the market!' No sooner said than done. Marieke interviewed 30 companies within her network with one central question: "What problems do you encounter in advertising?"

We got back that most companies were struggling with the following:

1. 1. How do I keep control of the brand identity on all these different channels?
2. 2. How can I create expressions quickly? I no longer want to join the back of the queue when I want to get something done with a designer or agency, especially for rush jobs.
3. 3. How do I get the cost down? The agency is too expensive for minor adjustments.
4. 4. How do I ensure that the various agencies work well together?

They did not yet have an appropriate solution for this. They were working with (hired) designers and advertising or marketing agencies. Beautiful quality, but it was not scalable, not fast enough. DIY tinkering with some cheap or free tools did not deliver the quality and anyway did not guarantee the quality and reusability of material from the designer.

This, on the other hand, is what they had in mind:

1. 1. They wanted to be less dependent on a marketing agency
2. 2. They wanted to produce more and diverse content faster
3. 3. More visibility and awareness needed to be generated at a lower budget
4. 4. They wanted to create consistent, quality content in consistently applied branding
5. 5. And never lose or misuse material again

Food for thoughts…

Done with repetition

At the same time, something else was happening. With us, within the company. We saw that we were producing more and more iterations. Expensive designers who poured the same design into a different format and only had to adjust a title, text or image. Then it was enough for the client.

For the designers, it was boring, assembly line work: they couldn't put their talent into it. For the client, it was cheaper than a new campaign, but still pricey because of the hours that went into it.

We saw it happening and concluded: this is time-consuming, expensive and frankly an energy drain on our designers. Clients were racing through their budgets. Designers were looking for a more challenging job. This was not desirable or sustainable for either party.

This gave us five challenges as an advertising agency:

1. 1. How do we keep the work innovative and challenging for our designers?
2. 2. How do we deliver our clients advertisements that continue to reinforce their brand?
3. 3. How do we avoid losing customers due to high prices?
4. 4. They wanted to create consistent, quality content in consistently applied branding
5. 5. And never lose or misuse material again

The 'Missing Link' for everyone in the organization

With these challenges in mind, we developed the "missing link. The way to speed up processes, simplify them and make them cheaper while maintaining the same quality we would offer as an agency. With a low threshold for SMEs, so that anyone, from PA to executive, from freelance marketer to sales expert, can create professional content. Smart Content Creator we called it, simply because it is a smart tool that allows you to create visual content.

Erik dove in with his technical and operational knowledge and Marieke with her knowledge of customer needs. When the software was 70% finished, we presented it to our customers. Then we added the brand portal and further improved the usability of the system. Very nice to see how developers and customers worked together to get this tool spot-on. We got super nice reactions. In fact, everyone was enthusiastic. 'You make DTP accessible to everyone', 'Finally we can always create content'.

The first real customer was ourselves. This allowed us to optimize the tool even further. We create the designs in Indesign, but the formatting of grids and existing designs is done by the Smart Content Creator. We love the fact that we can create new, high-quality marketing expressions for our clients at the press of a few buttons, keeping the price low for clients and the work challenging for our staff.

Corona stopped everything

And then came Corona. At the same time that we really launched Smart Content Creator. The whole country went on lockdown and companies, rightfully so, had their hands full managing this immense pandemic. The bucket was full and there was no more room for change. Although we watched this with pain in our hearts, because Smart Content Creator is just perfect for teams working from home, we accepted that the heads of SME managers were not up to it.

Our patience was rewarded, because with the opening of the society we also saw increasing interest in the tool again. The first customers who worked with it were wildly enthusiastic. For example, 1nergiek said "We could create more content much faster and at the same time our costs went down! And everything we create looks as professional as when you get it from an advertising agency. That wasn't possible before. We always compromised on quality when we did it ourselves'.

We also get this back from the other companies that are now working with the tool:

1. They work faster,
2. create more content,
3. move with the speed at which today's world turns
4. without spending more money.
5. In doing so, it is easier to control quality,
6. to find things back in the DAM system (media library) and
7. to add racy (free!) graphics to new marketing statements.

We are just at the beginning of our growth and continue to refine together with our customers and interested companies. This way, the software always fits the need that exists and the tool works pleasantly and intuitively for all users. We are constantly developing, moving nicely with the market.

With Smart Content Creator, every SME in the world can be visible and strengthen its brand, with infinite, effective content, without losing speed, cost or quality. That's our dream. That's what we're going for.