Keeping it simple

Globecreative Advertising and Design opened doors in Cape Town five months ago with the desire to keep the advertising delivery process simple and – wherever possible – facilitated by technology – enhanced communication channels, like the internet, to cut out meetings and shorten delivery times. Founder, Matthys Ras answers three questions about his agency’s model and the market’s reaction.

1.How do you explain Globecreative’s model?

Globecreative Advertising and Design works on the principle that simplifying things and making them easier will result in less confusion, less time wastage, less costs, more creativity, more clarity and more sales. That, we believe, is what all marketers are after. Or to put it another way how many times have you enjoyed the brilliant time wastage of a nice long meeting explaining your brand to your agency? How many times have you wished that they could just get it and get on with it? How many tries does it take an agency to create that ad that simply captures your brand and what you’d like to say?

Shouldn’t you just be able to email a creative brief directly to the Creative Director and let the creative team come up with a mind-blowing campaign? Or do you feel that having a messenger, aka client service person, dedicated to briefing the creatives works better? Don’t you feel that having a phone on your desk that miraculously links you directly to your agency’s creative department can make your briefing much clearer and effective than relying on someone else to take that responsibility? Does that person have the same passion for your product as you have and won’t something get lost in translation?

If you believe advertising is NOT about the “status” of sitting in a huge boardroom with highly paid client service people, big plasma screens and reclining leather chairs which you’ll end up paying for you’ll empathise with our model.

2.How has the market reacted to this model?

The initial and natural response when dealing with a new agency without a reputation is ‘caution’ and we’ve seen that in the projects we’ve worked on since starting the business. But, with only five months under its belt Globecreative has clocked over 150 projects on its traffic list. Clients are beginning to show more and more confidence in its abilities to handle high profile projects. The decades of advertising and design industry experience of the team certainly proved to provide the confidence that new clients may have lacked. Clients find that they pay small agency rates for creativity and service they’d find in some of the top agencies. Less the politics, of course. The Globecreative team is a highly creative group of individuals all with a true passion for selling brands while upholding the integrity of the client and what they are portaying about their product.

3.Do clients have enough confidence to brief you via email?

Yes, for example, two of Globecreative’s regular UK based clients, ERM Worldwide and Title Research, have shown this confidence – increasing the workload by briefing in more print and press campaigns and corporate identity projects including exhibition material, corporate newsletters and brochures. Another new client, Zenith Product Design, a high profile insurance company aimed specifically at the upper classes of society, has taken on Globecreative on a retainer basis for the next year. The finished briefs included a full new corporate identity including a print campaign, website and all corporate communication material. We believe the future is bright for our team of highly focussed brand builders and their administration team. With a firm belief that more clients will seek the clarity in communication that working with Globecreative brings, only the traditional love for the big dusty old 20-seater boardrooms can hold us back now.