The year we grew up
Tags: Challenge, Advertising Agency, Year In Review, New Year

Our journey began in 2014 and the majority of our projects were close to our expertise (social media marketing) and they were not putting us often out of our comfort zone. I don’t know if this was a good thing or not, but I have to admit that I enjoyed 2018 more than every other year before.

In a nutshell, 2018 was full of challenges:

We started a new department.

We grew our team.

We focused on video production.

We didn’t do things as good as we wanted to.

Looking back, I am very proud of our team, our clients, our partners & the results we managed to deliver in 2018. Congrats everyone! PS. Yes, we will do even better in 2019.

We started a new department

We have only been working on digital projects since the day we were founded. Call it social media marketing, website design & development, newsletter marketing or mobile app design & development, all our projects were about digital marketing. Nonetheless, communication should not and cannot be only in digital form. Real life experiences are much more memorable and can actually create feelings. As Maya Angelou said,

I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.

So, we had to start creating more feelings. And we did, by creating our own, in-house PR department. In July, we signed our 2 first clients: VANS & Eastpak.

Only a couple of months later, we did organise our very first event: The launch of Raf Simons x Eastpak collection in Greece. I can’t even describe how much anxious I was the days before. Long story short, the event was a huge success.

The Challenge

Starting a new department in our company has never been easy. Actually, it has been a terrifying process as we are stepping out of our comfort zone and we are getting into something completely new. As much terrifying it might be, it is equally exciting!

We decided to join the PR-bandwagon for a couple of reasons:

influencer marketing has been very close to digital marketing and even closer to YouTube content production (more on this, later)

the most viral videos online derive from offline content and, if we want to make great online content, we have to make great offline activations

digital should not act on its own; digital is part of a wider strategy where offline activations are equally important

our clients were asking us for this type of services

Of course, the PR department wouldn’t have been true without adding new members in our team.

We grew our team

Dora Papakonstantopoulou joined us in July as Communications & PR Strategist. After 8 years in PR agencies, Dora took the leap of faith and decided to join us by heading jetdrops’ PR department.

Her role in signing and running VANS & Eastpak has been crucial but her impact in the team has been even more significant as she brought in a different mindset.

A few months earlier, in March, Angelianna Prevezanou joined jetdrops as a Project Manager. Now, she holds a dual role, both as Project Manager and as Communications Specialist working closely with Dora in the PR department.

Angelianna’s commitment to delivering the project under all circumstances and her persistence made her a perfect fit for our team since day one while her curiosity has helped us to think out of the box.

The Challenge

Hiring new people has always been difficult for us. None of us has any HR background and we don’t have any solid internal procedures for hiring. When hiring a new person, we mainly focus on cultural fit. We want each new team member to be psyched to join jetdrops. Potential hires usually meet the majority of the team and we only make an offer when we are sure that there is a perfect match. It does not always work the way we want it to, but we are trying to minimise the turnover because, as in all small companies, people turnover hurts us the most.

Thus selecting a new team member is always a long lasting procedure in order to minimise the potential risk. Angelianna and Dora were not different as we had numerous & extensive conversations before having them on board!

We focused on video production

In Greece, when marketeers are asked to describe Social Media they respond mostly with Facebook & Instagram. We do love both of these platforms: Everyone is on Facebook while Instagram is the feel-good network for users.

However, both of them have a great disadvantage: they are not the first priority of the user. You might watch the latest Instagram stories of your friends while walking to your office or you might scroll through Facebook when watching TV. It is not very often that you solely focus on Facebook or Instagram.

On the other hand, if you open YouTube you have decided that you will wear your headphones and you will actually watch a video there. Branded experiences in YouTube are much more effective compared to Instagram & Facebook. Users in YouTube spend numerous seconds (if not minutes) watching a specific video while they only spend a second or two viewing a Facebook or Instagram post.

This is the reason we shifted our focus to video production. Currently, jetdrops is responsible for the YouTube content of Vodafone CU while we closely work with Anna Maria Velli, one of the most influential Greek YouTubers with more than 240.000 subscribers. Moreover, in 2018 we worked with Wolt on their launch video for the Greek market.

The Challenge

YouTube content production in Greece has not been very popular amongst marketeers mainly due to its high cost, compared to Facebook & Instagram content. However, we are confident that over the next couple of years, YouTube will be extremely hot and everyone will be doing it.

So, in order to be ahead of our competition, we had to read a lot of articles, watch tons of videos from Greek & international creators and experiment even more! Actually, we are still doing it.

We didn’t do things as good as we wanted to

During 2018 we faced numerous challenges; others were related to the projects and others were related to our operating model.

Growing up is not easy.

Dealing with these challenges resulted in not doing some things as good as we would like to.

Although we launched jetdrops’ Facebook page, we haven’t posted any content.

Although we posted some content in jetdrops’ Instagram account, we didn’t post as much as we would like to.

Although we posted 16 articles in jetdrops’ medium account in 2017, we only posted 1 in 2018.

We didn’t make as many proactive suggestions as we would like to to our existing clients.

We didn’t promote jetdrops at all; and it’s a shame.

We didn’t celebrate.

We didn’t work on any cool, refreshing & owned projects.

2019 Resolutions

So, this year we have to make things better and that’s why we will set specific targets.

Celebrate our successes. Post at least once per week in our Facebook account. Post at least once per week in our Instagram account. Write 20 articles in our medium account. Launch at least 2 owned projects. Make our people, clients & partners happier!

In early 2020, we will come back to this article and see how many of these resolutions will have been met. Fingers crossed, we will have made 6/6.

Spoiler alert: We did visualise this article in our instagram account; it’s dope!

Spoiler alert #02: We made it a behance project too!