The ad agency secret.

Ensuring you always work with the A team.

By Marissa Loper

A few years ago I flew to New York to meet with my client at her other agency.

While typing that sentence just felt pretty awkward, the meeting itself wasn’t weird at all. My agency and the New York firm shared a client but worked on different pieces of business. Getting to know each other would make us both better partners to our shared client, so I was grateful for the opportunity.

The president of the agency graciously showed the two of us around his drop-dead-gorgeous, primo-Manhattan-location agency.

Wow. I was impressed.

I couldn’t have dreamed up a more perfect looking office space for a marketing agency. The walls, windows and furniture were “industrial chic” and oozed with creativity. Black and white artwork adorned the walls, and brilliant pops of color and textures were mixed in to create interest. The agency was filled with beautiful young people. I instantly loved it.

He ushered us into his corner office, we sat down on his buttery leather sofa, and my heart was aflutter. I could hear the traffic below. The office hummed with energy.

Later that evening he took us out to dinner. While our client was in the restroom, our host politely asked me about Thinkwell. I grinned sheepishly and told him that it was nothing like the amazing agency he had built.

“We all work from our homes,” I told him. “My goal in creating Thinkwell was to strike a balance between work and life outside of work. So I hire amazingly talented people who want out of the rat race and are willing to work virtually. I’m not going to lie. It was a little intimidating to see your gorgeous New York agency today. When my team meets up in person, it’s around a farm table in my home office out in the suburbs of Memphis. Your offices are, well, stunning.”

I flew home the next day and confessed to my husband Brook that I felt a little daunted by the experience. There was a small part of me that longed to stay in New York and work in such a cool environment. But then Brook and I talked about how the president of the other agency had spent the evening with us instead of with his family. We tried to imagine how much he had to pay in rent for those gorgeous offices.

And Brook reminded me that the fabulous New York agency and my virtual Memphis agency both shared the same client. We had both won the business.

Skip this next part if mushy love stories make you nauseated.

This unabashed encouragement is Why I Love My Husband, Reason Number 1,483.

Brook makes it his job to remind me on the regular that I am, in his eyes, a total badass.

He and I make every major life decision together.

Early in my career, I used to dream about working at a big agency in a major market. The copywriter who mentored me predicted my next step would be moving to New York and writing commercials for the Super Bowl. How fun that would be!

But Brook and I wondered what kind of life that would offer us and our children.

Not the kind we really wanted, we decided.

Instead, we dreamed of a company where I could use all of my creativity to the fullest and enjoy a fantastic family life.

But I couldn’t find a place like that. So Thinkwell was born.

Okay, back to my story…

A couple of days after I returned from the New York trip, an email popped up in my inbox from the president of the other agency. In his note he begged me to teach him how to set up a successful virtual agency like mine. He was barely able to make ends meet. “Please help me,” he wrote.

Appearances can be deceiving.

Why am I writing about this experience?

• If you are a creative person and want to join an agency, I want you to know what’s out there.
• If you hire creative agencies to help you with projects, I want you to understand how agencies work.

First, to my creative friends: 

There are many large agencies in New York or Dallas or Los Angeles that are incredible. You can be assigned to some fascinating accounts, do some beautiful work and learn from talented people. You might get free access to a coffee bar or a gym in your offices!

But to balance the books and to pay for that beautiful office and all of those cool extras, your boss will likely ask you to work long hours. And unless you’re one of the lucky few at the top of the company, your paycheck will likely be smaller than you deserve. It’s not because your boss is greedy or heartless. It’s simple economics.

At my agency, I’ll pay you by the hour. The more hours you work, the bigger your paycheck will be. And I will pay you a nice hourly rate so that you don’t have to put in overtime to take care of yourself and your family. You can be proud of your work AND have a life outside of work.

This opportunity doesn’t come with a gorgeous corner office though. Your workspace might be in your spare bedroom or on your kitchen counter. This setup will allow you to use all of the talent God gave you AND be there to let the plumber in when your toilet backs up. You can throw all of your creative energy into designing a fabulous new logo and then pick up your daughter from school. You can rewrite a website while keeping an eye on an aging parent who lives with you.

These are a few of the benefits of becoming a Thinkwellian. It’s not perfect, and it’s definitely not for everyone—but it’s ideal for those of us who value balance and flexibility in our careers.

Now, to my friends who hire agencies:

If you are in charge of a big, sexy brand like Target or Starbucks or Apple, you can really benefit from the talent at the top of a tier one agency. Because the top talent will definitely be working on your account.

But if your brand is only medium sized or (gasp!) small, you will most likely be assigned the B (or even C) team. And that’s a mixed bag of nuts. You could very well get amazing results from young creatives and account managers who are itching to prove themselves and move to the next level. Or you may get mediocre results from team members who are new to the business and don’t yet know what they don’t yet know. And you will pay handsomely for that B- or C-level work.

Either way, you’ll likely feel the impact of the revolving door of talent that many large agencies suffer from due to the high turnover in this business. Because big agencies can’t afford to pay their young employees well, the best talent will agency-hop for just a slightly larger salary offer. And you’ll need to train their replacements about your brand and your style and your objectives. Over and over.

But there’s another option to consider.

Yep, you guessed it: Thinkwell.

At Thinkwell, we don’t even have a B team.

Because I don’t have to pay rent, my overhead is low. So I pay my people extremely well. And when I say we are family friendly, I mean it. Working from home means my team gets to be the spouses they want to be, the parents they want to be, the children they want to be and the volunteers they want to be. They control their own schedules, and this flexibility is my most effective recruitment and retention tool.

And here’s the best part: Every single person on my team could easily be working at the top of a tier one agency. Their individual and collective creative talent blows my mind. When I review their work, it’s like Christmas morning. My team is full of seasoned professionals who know how to drive results.

When you hire Thinkwell, you really can enjoy the best of both worlds. All of our clients are “the big clients” and so all of our clients receive our best effort.

And I hope this doesn’t scare you, but here at Thinkwell, we really dig long-term relationships. For example, we’re still working with one Fortune 500 company that hired us 19 years ago. We know that company’s culture and brand and history as well as (or sometimes even better than) its own employees do.

So what am I saying here?

Don’t be fooled by big city zip codes or gorgeous office spaces.

If your account isn’t a big fish at a large agency, come be a huge fish at our agency.

You will work with a fantastic team of A players. You will receive exemplary service. And you won’t pay a huge retainer for our services. (Honestly, we’ve found no one wins in a retainer situation.) We charge a reasonable hourly rate and can set up a budget for each project up front.

Ultimately, we’d like to become an extension of your team.

When you need our help, we’re there for you.

And we promise to always bring our A game.

Who's essential?

Making sure your team feels important.

By Marissa Loper

It was my very first agency gig.

Originally brought in as an account manager but later recruited by the creative team to “move over to the dark side” as a copywriter, I was young and full of hope and bursting with excitement to be part of the company.

Then one day a job folder landed on my desk. It was an internal campaign for my agency, and it wound up breaking my heart.

Well, okay, I’m being a smidge dramatic here. It didn’t break my heart, but it definitely broke my enthusiasm. And it taught me a lesson that I’ll never forget.

Don’t make anyone on your team feel non-essential.
This statement is a no-brainer. Of course as leaders we want everyone on our team to feel important. Logic reminds us that if a person weren’t essential, that person would no longer be employed. So why in the world would anyone need advice about how to avoid making your team feel unimportant?

Here’s the simple answer: Because most leaders don’t mean to make their team feel insignificant. It happens by accident. And the negative repercussions can be huge.

So what happened at your old agency?
Right, back to the story. So an internal job folder landed on my desk one afternoon. The owner of our agency wanted to go after new clients with a very strategic, multi-pronged direct mail campaign.

First we would send the potential client a gorgeous, custom chess board. Then a week later we’d mail out half of the chess pieces. And finally we’d complete the chess set and include in the package a leather binder chock full of information about our agency and why we would be incredible strategic partners.

I was fired up about the concept. My task was to write the notes that went along with each mailing. I had a blast figuring out the perfect words to describe each piece of the campaign. Oh, what fun!

Then I saw a copy of the three-ring binder that accompanied the final mailing. Inside were several tabs designed to organize the content. Most of the names on those tabs were what you’d expect: What we do, Our philosophy, Our clients, etc.

But there was one tab that really stood out to me.

The “Key Personnel” tab
I flipped straight to the Key Personnel tab to read the content. A whole page was dedicated to each team member featured in that section. And it wasn’t just a headshot of the employee. It was a professional, full-body image of that person, carefully and cleverly posed in an environment or activity that made sense for that person’s job at the company.

The photos were terrific. The bios were engaging. But there was only a handful of people featured in the Key Personnel tab.

I remember feeling my stomach drop. I was self-aware enough to understand why my bio didn’t appear in the Key Personnel section. Of course the most junior member of the copywriting team wouldn’t be highlighted in the client binder. But it sure made me feel, well, not-so-key.

And when the rest of my teammates found out that only a few folks in the company were in the key personnel section, they felt crummy, too.

So, as a writer and a deeply empathetic person who happened to have a light workload at that time, what did I do? I created my own set of bios for us disenfranchised team members who didn’t make it in the binder.

I should point out that while I’m a writer by trade, I’m also a pretty decent photographer. Plus, my best friend at the agency was a graphic designer. When writing jobs were slow, I’d lurk in her office, pull my chair up behind hers and watch her navigate the design programs. (She didn’t mind. We kept each other entertained.) After a few weeks of these casual design classes, I had become fairly adept at Photoshop.

So I scheduled time with each person who had been left out of the binder. I interviewed team members about who they were, where they came from and what they liked (and didn’t like) about their jobs. Together, we decided what that person would wear to the photo shoot, which I set up in the hallway near the elevators. And then I took each person’s photo (in costume!) and used my hack Photoshop skills to cut out the background and duplicate the format of the Key Personnel pages.

Only I called us the Not-So-Key Personnel.

The Not-So-Key Personnel tab
I had a blast writing the bios. I really got to know my teammates and what made them tick. I wrote tongue-in-cheek references to the things that stunk about our jobs. For instance, the receptionist dressed up like a genie because she was constantly changing travel plans at the whim of every executive in the company. I dressed up like Braveheart as I was in charge of fighting the good fight for the non-essential workers. My designer friend dressed up as a superhero with papercuts from the Exacto knife she used to create mock-ups. You get the idea.

When the bios were complete, I printed each one out and hung them up on a bulletin board in the main hallway of the agency. And then I held my breath. What would the boss man say?

My boss’s response bewildered me.
The Not-So-Key Personnel pages were on the bulletin board for several days before the big boss even saw them. He stood in front of the board and read each one. He was very quiet. Then his shoulders began moving up and down. It took me a second to realize he was LAUGHING.

I took a deep breath and walked up to him and asked him what he thought of the team bios. He looked right at me and said, “These are hilarious. I wish the real bios were this funny!” And then he walked back to his office.

I stood there, rooted in place. On one hand, I was glad he thought my work was funny. Because those bios were funny.

But on the other hand, he had completely missed the point.

Now I run an agency.
I wound up leaving that agency to start my own. For the last 19 years, I’ve been the boss, and it has been lots of fun on occasion but also ridiculously exhausting.

I can relate to my former boss in many ways. He had a lot going on—demanding clients, a company that was struggling, and a wife and young children to support. I also understand how taxing it is to bear the burden of constant decision making and problem solving. So I try not to wince when I think back on the Not-So-Key Personnel story.

But I never want a single person on my team to feel unimportant. Because I only hire ROCK STARS. Every single person I bring on offers such insane talent to our team. I couldn’t be prouder of them, and I want them to know it and to feel it. (Team Thinkwell, are you reading this blog post? If you ever feel underappreciated or unrecognized, please reach out immediately!)

Here’s one of the things we do at Thinkwell to demonstrate that every single person is incredibly important. If you go to our website, click on Team in the navigation bar. You’ll see the beautiful faces of every single person who calls Thinkwell their work home. Every. Single. One. And if you click on those faces you will read some of the most fascinating bios you’ve ever read on the World Wide Web. I promise.

Our bios don’t read like resumes. They tell intriguing stories about the people with whom I’m lucky enough to work. Here’s a sneak peek at what you’ll learn if you read up on our team:

• Stacey’s parents wanted her to become a doctor or scientist, but their plan backfired.
• Anna was forced to line dance on-the-regular while working in a Western-themed steakhouse.
• Melanie abhors the song “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.”
• Bethany coached cross country and track at an all-girls high school.
• Shoshana once trained as a gymnast for the Olympics.
• Kristen R. knows how to drive a tractor.
• David loves karaoke and “man”tiquing.
• Kristen B. used to work at E&Y in NYC and now does the books for both Loper businesses.
• Melissa has lived in Germany (twice!), plus Washington, Texas, North Carolina, Alaska, Georgia and Tennessee.
• Ashley used to faint on airplanes when they closed the door.
• Meghan once served as a test case to see if banking cons worked.
• Christy owns 3,500 baseball cards.

Aren’t they amazing? Don’t you want to meet these people? That’s the point.

At the expense of sounding like a country song, my business would be nothing without these tremendously talented creative folks.

I bet your business would be nothing without your team, either.

We can help you honor your team.
If writing funny and insightful team stories isn’t your cup of tea, hire Thinkwell to interview your team and write their bios. We’ve done this sort of thing for loads of clients, and, hands down, it’s one of our favorite assignments.

This effort will honor your company’s most critical assets. Your website will become so much more interesting. Your team will discover zany facts about each other that they never knew before. You will all feel pride as you realize just how incredible your team really is.

And no one will feel non-essential.