It’s a new year, and with it, a slew of new challenges for Twisted Toast Digital.
With two weeks of the new year now under our belt, the Toasters are settling in nicely to 2012. We hit the ground running, with clients requesting work from the very first day in. In two short weeks, there’s been a plethora of meetings, old friends popping in, status reports, client coffee chats and even a trip down to Cape Town to sample the fine cuisine of the Constantia winelands (and meet with some prospective clients).
Our focus for 2012 remains much the same as it was for 2011 — to utilise the power of new and traditional communication channels to deliver return on clients’ marketing investment. Brand content remains the cornerstone of our focus, but as we’ve discovered over the past nine months, we really do whatever it is that the client needs! From Facebook to brochures, from radio commercials to mailers to print advertising, Twisted Toast is truly a full-service creative agency, and we relish the challenges that come from dealing with a disparate array of communication channels.
Top of the list of goals for this year are to increase our client base. Although we’re sitting with a very respectable group of wonderful clients, growth and expansion are everything. With new clients come new challenges, but also opportunity for staff expansion and to grow our own repertoire of skills.
There’s also significant opportunity for horizontal expansion among our existing clients. As we’ve found from experience, small jobs have a way of leading to much bigger jobs — we’ve seen web development projects lead to complete corporate identity recreation, we’ve seen Facebook campaign management lead to radio advertising. We’re excited to continue our partnerships with our existing clients and to adding more of the Twisted Toast touch to their brand content communication.
There’s also a few pitfalls we’re looking out for — chief among them the retainer trap. Retainers can be incredibly positive, but they need to work for both the agency and the client. We’ve heard way too many tales of retainers where the agency is feeling overworked for the budget, while simultaneously the client feels hard done by considering what they’re paying. We approach proposed retainers here with a fair deal of caution — at the end of the day, we want to deliver excellent value and return on investment to the client, and retainers aren’t always the best way to go, comforting as it may be to get that retainer EFT at the end of each month…
We’re pumped about 2012 and excited to take our existing and new clients on a great journey of discovery with us this year. We’re incredibly optimistic about the year ahead, and if the Mayans are right and the world is ending at the end of the year, we at Twisted Toast plan on going out with a bang!
