Category: Thought Leadership

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December 4, 2018 / Thought Leadership

How launching a wellness brand gave me the perspective to be a better leader.

Alyssa Toro

Senior Partner, Chief Creative Officer

In an industry not always known for giving space to live life inspired outside of the office, I am fortunate enough to work at a company that values ideas, whether they happen at the agency or on your own time. I had my hands full as a mom of two and working full time as Connelly Partner’s CCO, but had an itch to tie my passions for family, conceptual design and nutrition together in a new way. What was born was a brand called Goodee to help parents lay the foundation for healthy eating through the intersection of color, strong design and plant-based foods.

I joke that I earned an equivalent of an MBA through the process. I did everything from creating the physical product to designing the logo and packaging, photographing all of the food, prototyping, and figuring out the legal mumbo-jumbo before it was ultimately sold into 11 Whole Foods stores. And boy, did I learn a lot along the way. I learned the perspective of all the roles needed to launch a brand, how to get the best ideas out of others, and the opportunities to draw outside influences.

I spoke with Muse by Clio about how launching Goodee gave me the perspective to be a better leader. You can read more here: https://musebycl.io/worklife/how-launching-wellness-brand-gave-me-perspective-be-better-leader

 

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December 4, 2018 / Thought Leadership

Who the hell are we?

Sid Murlidhar, Group Creative Director

“Agency culture” is an oft-used, oft-misunderstood concept. Is it a truly symbiotic relationship between the agency and the culture? Does the agency define the culture? Or does the culture define the agency? As people come and go, does the culture shift? So many questions and no, there are no right answers.

When it came time for us to try and understand what it is our culture was, it was an opportunity for us to take stock of where we had come as an agency and where we wanted to go as a company. In the span of under 10 years, we had grown from a small family of 60 to a vibrant 170, spread across four floors and two countries. Whatever the culture was that existed a decade ago did not exist today. And that was nobody’s fault. Growth and conversely attrition is a culture killer. People come and go, clients come and go, revenue comes and goes and culture is shaped by all of it. So we had to find something inherent to the bones of this place. Something that was incontrovertible. A defining trait that cannot and will not change regardless of whether we are an agency of one or one thousand. And that one thing was humanity. Not humanity in the traditional sense. But a more fervent sort of humanity. The humanity that arises in times of struggle and that thrives in times of success. The humanity that exists in all of us now and in generations past. A unerring willingness to defend humanity in all its forms. Kindness, empathy, open-mindedness, along with the realization that while the world myopically relies on data, human instinct is still the most powerful tool we have. This is the one commonality, the one DNA string that has existed in all employees current and past. So when it came time to put pen to paper and qualify what it is we are, it was simple. We are now, have always been and will continue to be Defiantly Human.