By that I don’t mean I have no work/life balance. Rather, I mean that I am now able to bring my whole self to work. My kids have dropped in on more calls than I can remember and my oldest daughter makes PowerPoints on her iPad alongside me so often she should be on payroll.

Much of what I’ve learned in the year since Studios was launched is about life, not just business. North Sixth Group Chairman Matt Rizzetta, the original visionary behind Studios and one of my major inspirations, often talks about working and living for the eulogy, not the resume. While Studios has amassed an impressive resume this past year (rebrands, website launches, animated videos, white papers… seriously incredible resume-building stuff), my main takeaways can be applied to all facets of life. 

This may not be the typical “what we learned in our first year” post (apologies to Jeff, our content manager, who prescribed me just that) but when work is such a big part of your life, it is only natural that the lessons learned extend beyond the 9 to 5.

These are the adages that capture the lessons I’ve learned during Studios’ inaugural year:

If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room.

As the Head of Studios, I am consistently blown away by my team. I know most people say that—maybe it’s trite as a boss—but the team I am lucky enough to work with each day is driven, smart and truly cares about the work they do. Better yet, we complement one another in all the right ways. That’s the foundation of a great team and a well-rounded service offering. 

When I am in the room with the Studios team… I am very much in the right room.

The days are long, the years are short.

This adage rings particularly true as a parent of kids who have seemingly grown up overnight. It’s also true as an agency leader. 

The days and the projects can seem long. As an attention-driven team, we labor over every element. As a new business, the work can literally be endless as we grow our team, our roster and our processes. The year though? The year feels short. As we prepped for the Studios anniversary, someone remarked it feels like both yesterday and 10 years ago that we launched our logo into the world. 

The takeaway is to not get bogged down in the individual day or the individual tactic but to always look at the big picture. As an Outcomes-driven agency, we do this with our clients regularly. Sure, you want us to manage your social media—but why? It isn’t about any individual post’s performance; it’s about your company’s overall performance. 

Taking a step back from the day and looking at the year makes you realize you’re playing for the end game and releases you from the tunnel vision that comes with the short term.

Treat others the way you want to be treated.

To me, this is true as both a vendor and as a boss. Our clients want to be treated just as I expect my vendors to treat me: with honesty that is rooted in mutual success. During our kickoff calls, we tell clients that we are straight shooters with the best of intentions. We don’t sugar coat it. If the service you’re seeking isn’t going to make the impact you want, we’ll tell you. 

As the manager of a PNL, I don’t want my budget wasted. We aren’t in the business of wasting yours. 

As a boss, I do the same thing: work from a place of trust and honesty. We work a lot and it’s truly important to me that my team enjoys it. And not just in a virtual happy hour way, but in a way in which each person is challenged and heard. Their preferences for projects are respected to grow their skill sets and align with their professional interests. They have flexibility to take their dog to the vet or to go on a run in the afternoon. I know the work will get done and be better because of it.

These are the good old days.

These are the days we’ll look back on and say “Remember when?” Mike and Erik will be employees 2 and 3 of hundreds. The “newbies” won’t remember selecting the logo, building the website, figuring out service packages or selecting the best project management tool (we’re big fans of ClickUp, by the way). 

It’s easy to get caught up envisioning the future or the next big revenue milestone instead of enjoying the business as it is now: a hands-on, tight-knit team that delivers impactful marketing and has fun doing it. 

I want to enjoy the now. You all should too, no matter what you’re growing. 

I am so grateful for every member of the team—across Studios, N6A and North Sixth Group—who supported us this past year. More importantly, we are humbled by the clients who we’ve had the privilege to create with.

So here’s to Year 1 of Studios, a year of growth personally and professionally.

The post Year 1 of Studios: Life Lessons From a Year at Work appeared first on N6 Powered by KRMA | Fully Integrated Digital Marketing.

I have spent nearly 70 percent of my professional career, and 30 percent of my entire life, as the founder and CEO of N6A. It has become more than just a job and career endeavor for me.

When I first started our business, it was just before my 27^th birthday. My wife was pregnant with our first child. We had just moved into a new house and had a mortgage to pay. My wife just left her job as a schoolteacher at PS 205 in Brooklyn to go on maternity leave. I had the crazy idea of starting a business despite all the life changes that were happening around us.

For the past 11 years, N6A has become an extension of my life and the most important source of pride and self-accomplishment outside of my wife and three daughters. This captures the essence of a founder’s connection, the connection that a founder has to his or her company. This is the reason it’s often difficult for founders to pass the torch to new operators as their businesses grow and scale.

Luckily for me, it was one of the easiest decisions in the world. Why, you ask? Because we get to keep it all in the family.

I have had the privilege of working alongside some amazing people over the past 11 years. Our new CEO Daniela Mancinelli is a world-class executive and an even better human being. We have been in the trenches together for more than a half-decade now, and she will bring an incredible humility, work-ethic and vision for continued growth that is so vital in today’s business climate. She will also bring a unique connection to our brand that is so rare to find in founder-owned businesses. I cannot wait for clients and employees to see her operate as a CEO.

We also have so many other people supporting us in new leadership roles, many of whom are longtime N6A-ers who truly deserve the opportunity to shine at the next level. There is no better feeling than seeing other people earn promotions from within as a result of their hard work, dedication and appetite for learning.

As for me, I am excited about what the next chapter holds, both inside and outside of N6A.

For starters, we have set up a family office holding company called North Sixth Group, which will own interests in N6A. This will be used as a platform to continue building the N6A brand, expanding our reach and capabilities to better service our clients, and to pursue strategic opportunities.

I will be staying on as Chairman of N6A so I can spend time working with our clients on entrepreneurial and business challenges, and to help our employees through culture and innovation programs.

Outside of N6A, most of my time will go to pursuing other passions, including strategic opportunities and investments aligned with the mission and vision of North Sixth Group, which is to invest in “Passion, Purpose and Progress.” Through North Sixth Group, I also am going to be dedicating time and resources to give back to the people who have supported me and played an important role in my journey over the past 11 years.

I can’t wait to share some of our plans in the weeks and months ahead. Until then, I couldn’t be happier to welcome our new CEO, and to keep things all in the family.

#EmbraceThePace

The post N6A’s New CEO: Keeping It in the Family appeared first on N6 Powered by KRMA | Fully Integrated Digital Marketing.

With Thanksgiving on the horizon, and Small Business Saturday and Giving Tuesday following in the subsequent weeks, it’s the perfect time to sit back and take heed of just what it’s taken to pull everything together in 2020. This year has put an even greater importance on connectivity in general, and team connectivity in particular. Who you surround yourself with has become increasingly more important to individuals throughout COVID-19 than what they are surrounded by — especially now when separated through Zoom calls and Slack channels.

In normal times, you spend more hours at work with your peers than you do outside of the office with many of your friends and family members. You usually go through life with these people just as much as with anyone. The pandemic may have flipped this notion on its head, but it remains important for individuals on teams to strive to become the most complete versions of themselves “inside the office” just like they want to become the most complete versions of themselves as people outside of the office.

N6A’s 2019 Thanksgiving Celebration

The shelter-in-place order has given each of us an opportunity to spend more time with some of our loved ones, and time to take care of our body, mind, and spirit. We have more downtime to do those things, which means we have an opportunity to positively impact others, our daily work routines, and on the way we collaborate with our teammates. 

N6A has been blessed to include some incredible people — over the last decade of the agency there have been many laughs, many shared strategies, and even more passion about working together for common goals that create a solid team bond. Business leaders know whether they’ve built a great culture based on how their teams respond to adversity, and that sentiment is being tested.

In this most unusual holiday season, taking stock of the teamwork initiatives that drive N6A’s spirit is more important than ever. 

N6A has tried to use COVID-19 to galvanize our teams, both when they’re logged on, and when they switch off at the end of the day, using everything from custom social media sharing campaigns, food deliveries, or even little impromptu things like shout-outs to top performers who are rising to the occasion each week in their remote environment. 

Our #Pitching4Purpose initiative, which was started in late 2019, is still going strong as a way to back up our hard work with actions that impact positive change. Each month, we continue to tally our secured client results and reflect those results in donations to a selected charity. All of the charities and organizations are selected by our employees, and hold a meaningful place in the hearts and minds of our team, clients, and colleagues.

We’ve had the pleasure of highlighting causes like Laughter Saves Lives, Camp Fatima of New Jersey, Citymeals on Wheels, Unity Performing Arts,  Black Visions Collective, Data for Black Lives , Equal Justice Initiative, Operation Backpack, the American Cancer Society, and the Loveland Foundation. 

One cause in particular we continue to spotlight is Al’s Angels, the non-profit founded by N6A President Al DiGuido that has grown to become one of the largest and most impactful charities for children suffering from cancer, rare blood disease and financial hardship across the country.

Another, which hits close to home for N6A founder and CEO Matt Rizzetta, was Quinn for the Win, the foundation founded by his friend and fellow Iona grad and N6A supporter Pat Quinn, who helped raise hundreds of millions of dollars to fight ALS by promoting the viral Ice Bucket Challenge. Quinn, who battled the disease for decades, passed away on November 22, 2020. 

Months before his passing, Quinn was slated to meet N6A-ers on March 13, 2020, and the company planned to unveil and dedicate one of our conference rooms — the “Pat Quinn Underdog Room” — to him while he visited. Right before his scheduled visit, COVID hit New York, and we had to postpone Pat’s visit. 

The Pat Quinn Underdog Room

In an op-ed honoring his late friend, Rizzetta said, “[Quinn] was steadfast in his commitment to share his mission and spread his message of hope with our staff…his spirit of hope, perseverance and optimism will live on forever in our company, and in so many millions of people across the world.”

The buck doesn’t stop internally either. This year, for example, we’re helping our client Mouse.org, a non-profit that brings technology to historically underserved youth, with a Giving Tuesday campaign. With less fundraising opportunities available this difficult year, they’re using N6A’s digital marketing team to create campaigns to drive support.

As the effects of COVID-19 continue to be dire, this pandemic will either pull the company culture apart or bring it together. If other companies are going to break through COVID-19, it’s going to require sacrifice, strategic ahead-of-the-curve decisions, and the ability to push beyond your limits at times. But we make sure to have our moments of laughter, our moments of thought, and our moments of tears. This has led us to develop the most special bonds across our agency and our pool of clients, and it has made our teams more connected in these trying times.

The post The Giving-Back Roadmap to Galvanize Your Team appeared first on N6 Powered by KRMA | Fully Integrated Digital Marketing.

As entrepreneur and angel investor James Altucher infamously wrote in an August LinkedIn post, “NYC is dead forever.” Many, including Mr. NYC himself, Jerry Seinfeld, came out to refute the claims and stand up for the city that never sleeps and has been through its share of ups and downs. This Silicon-Valley transplant is here to back up the believers and hopefuls. My creds? My team has been working throughout the pandemic with NYC businesses, from essential workers to cutting-edge innovators – their stories speak for themselves.

Among them — and very much not dead — is Alloy, an identity operating system for financial services firms, that closed its  $40M Series B in September (while one of its co-founders was pregnant no less). Throughout 2020, the Alloy team doubled its headcount in order to meet the growing demand for its services, all while building a culture that would be the envy of any top tech firm.

Photo by Jonathan Riley on Unsplash

Despite breakneck growth, it prioritized employee wellness above all, offering new programs including free therapy sessions through Samata Health, a no-questions-asked stipend to be spent on anything from a new monitor to pizza delivery, access to a telemedicine concierge through Eden Health, and remote experiences including cooking classes, a home ergonomics workshop, meditation and drag bingo. They also turned the office snack budget into a monthly Seamless budget.

The next-generation, design and engineering platform nTopology, used by the likes of Lockheed Martin and the U.S. Air Force, also closed its $40M Series C. Its platform is not only being used on the front lines of COVID to help rapidly manufacture testing swabs, but is also being used to make manufacturing more sustainable by helping engineers reduce the number of individual components required to make complex parts such as jet engines. My favorite use case has to be the  pet prosthetics designed on its platform (click the link at your own risk, you may get hit in the feels).

Electric has been instrumental in helping our nation’s critical SMBs transition to remote work with its custom IT solutions. It reopened its $25M Series B in March to raise an  additional $14.5M from high-profile investors Dick Costolo and Adam Bain as it scaled to meet skyrocketing demand. The team answers an average of 11,000 tickets per month for more than 10,000 end users, and is on track to double its headcount for the third year in a row, having hired more than 75 people since the pandemic began.

It’s been able to attract top IT talent by building an  empathetic culture focused on preventing burnout with benefits such as no-meeting Thursdays and mandatory, company-wide PTO the first Friday of every month. While bolstering and growing its internal systems and teams, Electric has also been actively contributing to incredibly meaningful change. Among other initiatives, the company is part of NYTechCares, a program that crowd-sources funds, resources and donations to help low-income students in NYC access e-learning opportunities. Electric has also partnered with The Last Mile, a non-profit organization that provides coding and technology training to the incarcerated population across the U.S. 

Stealth Communications, a 25-year gigabit fiber internet provider for NYC businesses reaching the fastest internet speeds in the entire U.S., according to  Broadband Now, has been working for years to  close the digital divide in its backyard. In addition to providing connectivity for a variety of education institutions, the company was tapped to help build out the infrastructure for several local medical practices to support the bandwidth required for critical telemedicine services, including construction in Chinatown and Midtown to install new conduits. For all the hype, it wasn’t 5G or national ISPs coming to the rescue, it was New Yorkers stepping up to help their own in a time of crisis.

Unqork, the leading no-code platform designed to support mission critical enterprise applications, actually minted itself as one of NYC’s newest unicorns when it announced its  $207M Series C in October. Not only is Unqork now valued at a cool $2B a mere three years after its founding, but it also increased its headcount by more than 100% in 2020, now up to over 350, and tripled ARR for the third year in a row.

Unqork joined in the fight against COVID by helping leading municipalities use its platform to engage their populations and help track COVID. As a result, New York City successfully deployed a management hub in March that enabled the delivery of over two million meals to residents, accepted donations of essential medical supplies, and allowed NYC residents to self-report how they were impacted by COVID-19. That’s in addition to the total transformation of enterprise application development it is helping to usher in with customers that include Goldman Sachs, Liberty Mutual, Pacific Life and John Hancock. Opposite of dead if you ask me!

As Dustin Hoffman said in Midnight Cowboy, “Hey, I’m working here!” or something like that. The point is, NYC was a powerhouse of business and culture in 1969 and it’s still true today, 51 years later. NYC is not only alive and kicking, it’s helping to usher in the next generation of technological innovation that will impact the world for decades to come. This city has survived through the worst of history, and it will survive this pandemic. So, go ahead and cancel that Zoom funeral, we’ll be here.

The post Don’t Call it a Comeback, NYC Never Left appeared first on N6 Powered by KRMA | Fully Integrated Digital Marketing.

Although Customer Service Week may have come and gone, it’s never too late to find ways to celebrate customer service. No matter what industry you’re in, taking a year-round approach to improving how you engage with your customer is key to maintaining solid relationships and produce bottom-line outcomes.

As public relations professionals, it might seem standard to believe that securing media placements and nurturing media relationships are the only ways in which to create satisfied clients. While both are important, there are a number of other ways to keep customers engaged and happy during the course of any PR program.

Photo by Anna Shvets from Pexels

From getting off on the right foot to maintaining an agile communications strategy, it is important to create positive and transparent experiences when working with clients.  

Start Strong

During the initial engagement phase with a client, it is important to make a good first impression, and that should happen quickly. For starters, make sure the initial kickoff meeting is as efficient and productive as possible. To do this, go into the first meeting having gathered as much background on the client as is available.

Additionally, do some digging on their competitive set. It’s always great to provide a new client with potential recommendations based on any research conducted pre-meeting, to ensure you are maximizing the time you both have together. Post-kickoff, use the new insights you learned to further immerse yourself in the client’s business and, in-turn, create a strong and well-rounded strategy.

Be Transparent

Once you’ve gone through the immersion period with a client, and you’ve begun the outreach process, make sure to share status updates on progress. While it’s great to have opportunities lined up right out of the gate, some reporters might need a variety of story angles floated their way before something actually sticks, especially when working with a client that is newer to the media scene.

This means you will need time to pivot from angle to angle – a luxury that can sometimes be tough to come by when working in a fast-paced industry. In this case, sharing regular updates on an account, and the process involved, will help provide transparency for the client.

Maintain an Agile Strategy

As you move through the relationship with a client, observe what your clients like about your process, and what they don’t, and adapt.

Does the client understand your progress updates and feel things are moving in the right direction? If not, what are the ways in which you can change your communications methods to suit your client’s preferences? Additionally, are you properly articulating the time it takes to execute a strong PR strategy? Ensuring strong and transparent communications with a client, especially when a PR program is first getting off the ground, will help not only the client but also the team to land on a working style that aligns for both.

Ultimately, celebrating customers should be viewed as an ongoing exercise as delivering meaningful client service is multifaceted. There is not a one-size-fits-all approach, and it’s important to find the method that works best for you and the client. Then, keep improving upon the methodology. Avoid complacency. A true partnership is when a client can envision the PR team as an extension of their own. While this comes with time, there are different things you can do to get the customer appreciation process going. This process should become easier as you continue to provide regular updates and transparency to the PR program.

The post How PR Pros Deliver Meaningful Client Service Year-Round appeared first on N6 Powered by KRMA | Fully Integrated Digital Marketing.

Search engine optimization (SEO) and content marketing are like peanut butter cups — chocolate and PB are great on their own, but put them together and you get an unforgettable pair. Though these terms are thrown around a lot, and people assume they understand the basics of each, they’re really an essential symbiotic pair for companies looking to capitalize on content for ROI.  

So, about those basics: SEO refers to taking advantage of certain search engine-friendly keywords to increase the amount of traffic and quality visitors to your preferred digital destination — in this case, it’s usually your company blog; content marketing focuses on showcasing valuable company insights and perspectives via channels like blog posts, video strategies, and other tools to boost your entire marketing plan, which drives profitable customer engagement.

A lot of very successful people know that both are important to have, and they spend a lot of their marketing budget trying to incorporate each. But often, realizing that successfully rolling out a marketing strategy requires a coherent blend that overlaps SEO and content marketing remains elusive.

Photo by Caio from Pexels

Running each as separate methods isn’t going to provide your company with the results that combining them into one strategy will. If your company wants to grow search traffic, you can’t simply smash the SEO button in your CMS. If you want to generate more client leads, you can’t keep posting random blog posts without a unifying message. 

Think of it like a big success-focused marketing venn diagram. There are unique details on either side, but the true meaning lies in the area where they converge.

Optimized Optimization

SEO on its own is a narrower and more technical concept that can be applied within the broader content marketing strategy. Conversely, the more holistic techniques of content marketing can only be successful when companies implement precise SEO strategies. 

SEO techniques are the rules, while content marketing is the game.

The essential component of SEO is about finding relevant keywords to surface particular posts and rank them higher on search engine pages. All the keywords, buzzwords, and optimized terms don’t mean much without a contextual basis for the search engine to pull from — not to mention enhancing metadata, maintaining proper tags, and a good UX design. 

It’s important to utilize those key phrases in a way that follows an overall approach that syncs well with marketing. The SEO and content need work in a near-perfect balance. 

Top-Notch Content

Technical stuff aside, for SEO to truly work there needs to be legitimate content. Thankfully, the word “content” is right there in the phrase content marketing. 

When you have keywords, you need to use them strategically across your content. Good content marketing consists of top-notch posts that utilize targeted keywords and topics that are relevant to the brand as well as industry

Fresh creative content that does this indexes more rapidly and ranks higher across search engines, as well as attracts new client prospects given each piece of content’s high-value perspective. Matching your creative ideas with embedded keyword strategy is the key to this very important motion of a company’s overall marketing strategy.

SEO and content marketing should not be seen as different departments, instead they’re essentially different employees working on the same team. They need each other to truly differentiate — content marketing is only successful if it has appropriate SEO and vice versa. Your SEO strategy will fail unless you integrate it across content marketing and amplification channels, and your content is going nowhere unless people are able to search and find it. 

The post Why SEO is Actually All About Content Marketing — and Vice Versa appeared first on N6 Powered by KRMA | Fully Integrated Digital Marketing.

Leading up to National Intern Day on July 30, we’re continuing our three-part blog series highlighting some of our former interns who are now part of our N6-fAmily.

In 2017, Cassidy Zuber was a junior at the University of Maryland, majoring in communications with a focus on public relations. It was then that she decided to apply for an internship at N6A to get a hands-on experience of the agency world.

Today she’s a full-time Account Coordinator at N6A. Cassidy spoke to us about how the intern-to-AC experience left a lasting impression.

What were your career goals in college?

Cassidy Zuber: Upon arriving at college, I was overwhelmed by the sheer number of majors to choose from. During my first semester, I made the decision to study communications and haven’t looked back since.

Over the years, my interest in agency work became increasingly apparent. In 2017, as a rising junior, I interned at N6A, which further solidified my desire to work in a fast-paced, collaborative environment.

What do you think makes a good internship program?

A good internship program provides students with the ability to build practical skills that cannot be taught in a school setting. The most rewarding programs instill a sense of teamwork and resourcefulness, while emphasizing the importance of professionalism.

At N6A, I was lucky to work alongside such intelligent and driven employees, all of whom were eager to mentor me. They constantly shared constructive feedback and practical lessons, which made the experience highly valuable.

Why did you choose N6A for your internship?

N6A’s culture of innovative, collaborative and respectful people is what drew me to the internship program. During my initial interview, I immediately got a sense of the company’s strong foundation and positive leadership culture.

What internship skill-building assignments helped you with your career today?

During my internship experience, I learned the ins and outs of building strong media lists and monitoring industry news, both of which are integral to my current role as an Account Coordinator.

Why did you decide to stay or return to N6A once your intern program was over?

N6A’s tight-knit company culture left a lasting impression on me. I still remember our weekly team lunches and our Summer Bash in New York’s Hudson Valley.

I witnessed firsthand how much N6A truly invests in its team through its quality of life perks, which influenced my return post-graduation.

Check out Compete and Care to learn more about our company culture and what it’s like working at N6A.

The post N6-fAmily Spotlight: How Teamwork Impacts the Intern Experience appeared first on N6 Powered by KRMA | Fully Integrated Digital Marketing.

On July 30, we’re joining thousands of other businesses to celebrate interns across the country for National Intern Day. Created by WayUp in 2017, National Intern Day is a holiday dedicated to recognizing the future leaders of the world: interns!

As part of the celebration, we’re kicking off a three-part blog series highlighting some of our former interns who are now part of our N6-fAmily.

N6A Account Manager Shayla Ridore recently talked to us about her experience as an N6A intern when she was a communications major at Hoftra University in 2015, plus her thoughts on what students should look for in an intern program.

What were your career goals in college?

Shayla Ridore: In college, my goals were to begin a career where I could see myself growing in the short and long term. I also wanted to make sure that the field I went into was something I enjoyed and that wouldn’t cause me to burn out and lose interest.

What do you think makes a good internship program?

A good internship program is one that is hands-on and allows someone to learn the ins and outs of a job that are more difficult to learn in the classroom.

The ability to turn to dedicated managers who show you the right way to complete tasks and explain why things are done a certain way is crucial for an internship program because it sets you up to succeed once you fully enter the workforce.

Finally, a good program is one that fully immerses the intern with the full staff. Getting to experience true working relationships and make connections is key to learning how to be successful on teams in the future.

Why did you choose N6A for your internship?

A friend of mine was finishing her internship with N6A right as I was in the process of applying to begin one. She spoke highly of her experience with N6A and mentioned how it was a small but quickly growing team at the time.

I loved the idea of getting in on the ground floor of something that was going to be big in the industry.

What internship skill-building assignments helped you with your career today?

From the start of my internship with N6A, I was taken in as a member of the team and began working on assignments that I would have been assigned in the entry-level position as well, except with more help and more time to complete them. This propelled me for my career today because I was actively learning and honing skills that were going to be important moving forward and contributing to the team.

Once I joined N6A as a full-time Account Coordinator, I was able to hit the ground running because I was already familiar with the tasks I would be completing in my new role.

Why did you decide to stay or return to N6A once your internship was over?

By the time my internship with N6A was coming to an end, I knew this was a company that would allow me to reach my career goals, and have a fun time in doing so. The company culture and scrappy startup mentality drew me in and I never left!

My internship ended and two weeks later after graduation I was back on the team full time.

Check out Compete and Care to learn more about our company culture and what it’s like working at N6A.

The post N6-fAmily Spotlight: Going from Intern to Account Manager Superstar appeared first on N6 Powered by KRMA | Fully Integrated Digital Marketing.

The new landscape of the COVID-19 era will bring potentially permanent behavioral and business pattern shifts. Will business leaders revert to their previous practices once they’re able to return to their normal routine? Will there even be normal routines anymore?

A lack of clarity around how businesses need to respond, and how long the restrictions could last, means it’s critical to adopt a proactive stance with expanded services above all else. Clearly it’s up to business leaders to establish what is possible and how to thrive.

Photo by Ivan Samkov from Pexels

1. Providing the Most Value to Customers

This was the number-one mantra in-practice for businesses before the COVID-19 era, and it’s guaranteed to be even more important as the pandemic continues. In fact, it’s more important now to truly dig down into this mantra as more sustainable patterns emerge and companies learn from every possible scenario to sustain growth and maintain ROI for clients. 

Consumers want to see brands as a living, breathing organism in the market. They associate enterprises with normalcy, especially if those brands continue to drive results for them. This will force businesses to choose their post-COVID partners more wisely. With budgets shrinking and increasing speed-to-market pressures, brands will assess their collaborators with an eye toward ease-of-execution over anything else. Knowing the breadth of the wide range of in-house services in a single agency can help brands consolidate functions for more streamlined success.

2. People are the Most Important Asset

If businesses want to win, they need the best people standing together to serve customers across all touchpoints. Brand advocacy will help drive future growth as positive information spreads via word-of-mouth on various channels. 

This requires business leaders to make whatever sacrifices they need to make. It may sound easier said than done, but targeting the right areas in your business will ease up on making some truly gut wrenching decisions. Expect to run thinner margins, enact travel and hiring freezes, and dial back on meals and consulting costs — especially if it comes with the benefit of team preservation.

3. Embrace Inorganic Growth Opportunities

Superficially it may not seem like it, but now is the time to take even smarter risks towards innovation. 

Most businesses have already changed the way they function. The way they service customers, communicate, and engage is much different than a couple of months ago. Technology, communication, the supply chain, education, and many other core parts of the consumer’s daily lives are completely up for grabs. The agencies flexing new functionalities and services will create solutions for clients in brand new areas.

There is an opportunity to innovate and consolidate functions for customers like never before. Now more than ever, there is room to create great opportunities to diversify revenue streams, capabilities and vertical footprints. Quick, previously unorthodox moves now can create sustainability to both serve brands and succeed into the future. 

The post How Nimble Agencies Can Survive and Thrive appeared first on N6 Powered by KRMA | Fully Integrated Digital Marketing.

Over the last several weeks, N6A has fielded requests from clients, industry peers and business leaders seeking counsel on how to effectively navigate through the COVID-19 pandemic as it relates to their employees, customers and key stakeholders. To give our perspective and insights, we created a business guide around best practices for  communications and a toolkit for the  C-Suite.

But we wanted to dig deeper, and speak to the people directly involved in efforts to combat COVID-19 on the frontlines — registered nurses, delivery workers, police officers and grocery workers.

To let these brave individuals tell their own stories, we launched a new video series called “Essentially Heroes,” where each day we interviewed an essential worker to hear about their experiences and, most importantly, to thank them for their indelible work.

Here’s a roundup of the heroes that have displayed leadership, sacrificed for others and went above and beyond to help beat this crisis. 

 Dr. Justin Shafa

• “Everyone is supporting each other, departments are supporting other departments…we’re anxious, we’re scared, but we’re coming together.”

Shafa is an M.D. and chief radiology resident in New York City, and talked to us about his firsthand experience being pulled away from his primary responsibilities to help COVID-19 patients directly.

Latoshia Henderson, M.D.

• “It’s very trying times, but I hope that everyone is staying safe. The most important thing in prevention for this coronavirus is to practice good hand hygiene. Wash your hands, use hand sanitizer; if you’re coughing, wear a mask or cough into your elbow; try to limit the spread of any respiratory particles; and if you feel sick, please, please stay home.”   

A 4th year resident physician at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, Henderson talked to us about her experience on the front lines of COVID-19, and the importance of practicing everyday preventive actions now.

Chris Sawin, Kroger

• “We have a lot of people who thank us for being there, and doing what we can to help out.”

Sawin, assistant department head at Kroger in Houston, Texas spoke to us about what it’s like to work at the popular grocery store and providing essentials to people affected by the coronavirus pandemic.

Grant Hubsher, M.D.

• “Ever since it’s really hit the hospitals, there’s been a real push to get everyone to come together. The doctors are all working with nursing, who are also really working with the in-patient team  — we’re all really trying to do our best to care for these patients.”

Dr. Hubsher, Emergency Medicine Physician from New York-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital, talked with us about how everyone is coming together to care for the increasing numberof COVID-19 patients.

Amber Gundlah, Amazon

• “A lot of policy changes have gone into effect in order to keep our employees safe and healthy. We’ve established a six-foot social distancing rule, so we’ve had to change some of our shift start-times to make sure people are coming in staggered. We’ve changed around our workstations to make sure people are separated more, we have different routines for how we clean everything, and we’ve been doing about 24 different safety audits a day.”

Gundlah, operations manager at Amazon in Spartanburg, South Carolina, spoke with us about the extra measures Amazon has implemented at its facilities to protect employees on the front lines helping customers receive essential items during the pandemic.

Andrya Hernandez-Robles, Teacher

• “We’re all in this time that is very uncertain, so [students] still need time to be kids. I’m trying to give my kids a lot of time to self reflect and just figure out who they are through all this. It’s very different. We’ve never been through anything like this, and school still needs to be a priority. They need that structure.”

Andrya Hernandez-Robles, a high school teacher from Westminster Public Schools in Colorado, spoke to us about keeping students motivated as schools moved to conducting virtual classes online, and what they’re doing for kids that may not have access to virtual essentials. 

Stephanie Culler, Persephone

• “What we scientists think is, similar to how we fight cancer, we have to take a multi-pronged approach. Cancer is so complex, it is so challenging, that we have to sometimes take multiple therapeutics and combine them. We may have to do that to really fight off and end the coronavirus.”  

CEO and co-founder of Persephone Biosciences, Stephanie Culler, speaks to us about the company’s unique approach at understanding how the gut microbiome impacts the human immune system, and the development of an AI-driven immune-boosting microbiome therapeutic to help prevent and fight COVID-19.

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