The Marketing Mission
WOTW has long touted collaboration as a core value. Our agency was built around hiring the best people for the project, then encouraging them to work together to create the best possible outcome.
A great example of how we do this behind the scenes is our marketing team… Contrary to most other marketing teams, ours is composed almost entirely of freelancers.
Reyna Levine, AV production and editing
Katherine Foote, paid ads and social
Molly Each, content and copy editor
Alex Lucke, art direction and development
Anthony Randazzo, graphic design
Samantha Gong, agency and exec assistant
…and myself, Acting CMO
Each member has their own specialized role and was brought on not only for their talent, but their ability to execute on a specific vision. We describe our design process as playing matchmaker with our developers and project managers (and also clients!), and we took the same for our marketing team.
Our weekly meetings are anchored by our collective goals. KPIs are defined by the collective work. The amount of blog hits is directly related to our social channel strategy, the editorial directive for that piece, our contributors, and more. So for one hour a week, our team puts our brains together, commenting and offering feedback on each person’s deliverables. Offering a range of solutions and approaches that make it easier to have synchronous strategies, but also stronger, multifaceted ideas. If we are all aware of everyone’s deliverables, strategies and overall vision, it makes it a lot easier to collaborate towards success in those KPIs.
That’s a lot of word salad, and in short, sometimes its simply about the vibes. Building a team that works well together is based on a few things, in my opinion: value alignment, respect of other people’s roles, and less hierarchy.
Value alignment can pertain both to what’s personal as well as an understanding that your value is directly related to the team’s success. The key is finding someone who has that specialized skill that is needed to execute on the vision. It sounds simple enough — but takes a lot of thoughtfulness.
Respecting other people’s work is about understanding the value your peers provide and honoring their expertise. In other words: don’t hijack a team member's job. The easiest way to make this happen is when a team has crossover disciplines. A graphic designer in an agency knows their way around a visual platform like Instagram, which has value to a social content manager. Working together is how you make something far better than if you were siloed and working alone.
In terms of hierarchy, I like to look at my role as acting CMO as someone that delivers the vision. My job is to break it down so everyone understands their deliverables. After that, my job is to encourage collaboration and help steer the boat. I like to become an active participant in every person’s work, offering guidance but generally staying as hands off as possible. My feedback is related to how something aligns with the vision. I generally find having a team of contractors levels the playing field and encourages more ideation and less fear of stepping on people’s toes.
The result is always better work, better ideas, better completed projects. and a feeling of accomplishing something big, together. As they say, many hands make light work, and with the support of a good team who cares, it’s much, much easier to carry the project across a finish line.