Dear Future Self

For more than a decade now, my plan was to retire when I was forty-five and travel the world with my family. As that age viciously approaches, it's time to shift into higher gear and prepare myself for times when my memory will not be as good as it is now. I'm pretty sure I will not remember much of how the year 2020 has been in a few years time (even though at the moment we are all pretty certain this year will be unforgettable). Here are a few notes to remind myself of my past agency life while I ride down some exquisite trails in Whistler, Canada as a retiree one day.

1. Great things are never done by one person. They are done by a team of people.

After winning Mobile Marketing Agency of the Year in 2018, and making it into the top 5 finalists in 2019, we were pleased to be victorious once again and were awarded the top agency spot in 2020. It is a true honor to be appreciated by 15 members of the international jury and be selected over finalists from the US, UK and Germany. What did this mean for me?

Firstly, it was proof that business can be conducted truly globally. This, even from a country where entrepreneurship is a nasty word and where the startup ecosystem barely exists.

Secondly, the victory reflects our excellent work and our dedication to be the best in the business. I’m really proud of what we are building every day, how we strive for top quality delivery for our clients and how we support each other on the journey.

You can take a sneak peek at our work and some case studies here: https://www.dhirubhai.net/company/10458218

2. Hiring as the biggest agency challenge

It’s clear how much we are growing as professionals and as a business year by year. It is becoming harder and harder to find talent able to meet our high standards. Surprisingly, many people who don’t pass our first round of job interviews are hired by other companies or agencies the very next day. I’m not sure what this says about us and the industry. ??

We welcomed five new colleagues to the family in 2020. It might not seem like a big number, but some of them were crucial for future business growth. 

Our COO, Grace, for example. Without her, I'd barely have time to get my own work done furthering the company vision while taking care of people's happiness, which is a lot of work considering there are nearly 20 of us now. 

Or Ania, who is helping to take creative strategies to the next level.

I’m confident we’re finally ready to double the team without having a negative impact on work quality and company culture. 

But first and most importantly, we need to free the hands of our Head of Marketing Martin to give him space for innovation and mentoring of new hires.

3. Fulfilling a yearly plan in an unprecedented year

Each January I give a major internal presentation on past achievements, new learnings and future agency goals, including financial. When covid hit and lockdown slowed down not only people's lives, but the agency business as well, it seemed impossible to accomplish the targets I had set out. But as slow as the first half of the year was, the end of the year saw a dramatic pick-up. An old agency saying rang true once again: “There’s never just the right amount of work, it’s either too much or not enough”.

What makes me happy is the traction we see now - not only that we started working with some amazing clients like Supercell but regular performance reviews and our rating on Clutch demonstrate that we are fulfilling our mission to create positive change for our partners. Most recently, we made it into the 1% of top-rated B2B companies globally, and I strongly believe this hard work will translate into us meeting our revenue and profit goals in 2021.

4. To be or not to be… in the office?

In 2020 even our approach to working changed, however, my view on the benefits of being in the office together hasn't changed. We all proved that we can deliver excellent work to our clients from our homes, but being under one roof, having a chance to collaborate and maximize our talents or having a small chat to build the feeling of one tribe, can't be replaced. We are social creatures after all and we’ve lived in caves and villages together for thousands of years. Covid in one year can't change that.

That's why I took a risk and rented a much bigger space for us, a beautiful three-floor villa with a garden in the city centre of Prague. I wanted to give my colleagues a good reason to come to work, and prepare for a bigger expansion.

Thinking about changing your job? Check out our openings at https://careers.appagent.co

If I have to defend this decision in front of the future CFO, I would justify this as an investment into the future, into people’s happiness and providing excellent work conditions. For me personally, the warm feeling I get when entering the villa or seeing the burning fireplace is enough to confirm it was a good decision.

5. Creativity is in our DNA

With the growing role of automation in marketing, we have put more emphasis on creativity. It’s one of the few things machines won’t be able to replace or differentiate. Especially this year, when everyone started blindly copying Playrix fake ads. 100s of ads were created to mimic the Plarix ads, which resulted in tons of videos that looked the same for different games and in the end, this killed the UA.

The core goal of marketing is to be different, to find a unique position on the market. That’s why we invest into deeply understanding the product and the audience, building a solid creative strategy, and testing fresh approaches. And we do the same for our own business by producing the inspirational Mobile Ad Eaters Youtube series, sharing our Ad Creative Execution Framework, writing about new production techniques on our blog, etc. 

Performance marketing and brand building are converging. We can already see the role of love brands in the world of mobile apps and games today (one example is Sweat created by famous fitness coach Kayla Itsines). Our background from ad agencies such as Leo Burnett or brands such as T-Mobile and lululemon at AppAgent helps us go beyond pure performance marketing activities and I’m excited to get to work on cool mobile branding assignments, like the one we did for the Clapper app recently.

A fresh video case study https://youtu.be/DWzkOtrM184  

In conclusion (a little bit from my personal life): I already started practicing for retirement :). Paradoxically, this year I traveled as I never have before. I spent 60 days and nights with my family in our caravan. During this time I became convinced that we could in fact live and work in such a tiny space for a couple of weeks in a row without issue. A finding that may come in handy for the future.

I really look forward to 2021 and I truly believe it's going to be a great year!