From start up...to scale up

In late 2017 I got this crazy idea to wind down our long established boutique ad agency Top Drawer Creative Inc. as more and more headwinds buffeted our industry. After 25 years we, like many ad agencies, were struggling to be relevant in a market where consultancies and technology companies were playing a bigger and bigger role in marketing.

I gathered a few trusted thought leaders and subject matter experts around me and we collectively imagined and designed what a new model of marketing agency could look like, without a lot of detail but with a clear purpose - to turn the tide. In June 2018, we officially launched our start up theturnlab - a values driven, consultancy led, marketing, technology company. What the..., you ask?

During the extensive research we undertook to help build our new model, we found that clients were no longer looking to ad agencies for deep audience insights, market research and high level strategy. They were more and more hiring consultancies like Deloitte and Accenture to build marketing strategies that addressed the business objectives of the C Suite and the board. And they were hiring specialist digital agencies to help build the technology assets to support the strategy. In the middle are left the ad agencies, whose focus had narrowed to primarily areas the client C Suite were not that interested in - creative and media. In other words, the power shift was well underway.

However, many marketing leaders remained frustrated with the gaps and friction juggling all these disparate players in their marketing eco-system. In general, agencies, consultancies and technology companies don't play well together in the sandbox, which leads to more work for the client. The epiphany for us came when one of our clients proposed to pay us to review, translate into layperson's terms, summarize and help implement a quarter million dollar marketing study they commissioned from a tier one consultancy! The gap between thinking and doing was more apparent than ever.

To see if we could bring all the practical and applicable aspects of a research consultancy, the creative and media chops of an ad agency and the digital expertise of a technology company together, we started a little experiment called theturnlab. While the experiment continues, there are clear signs the model is working. (As a quick side note, our tiny start up was funded 100% by debt. Apparently it's very costly to wind down a 25 year old company so in the 6 months the process took, we burned 7 figures in severances, contract terminations, winding down old clients and many other unforeseen costs.) So with very little financial wiggle room, we began building a little team and a modest client base leading with our thinking, research and evidence based strategy and leaning on the creative and digital firepower from the talent we were able to bring along and bring on board to execute on that strategy.

3 years later we are now officially a scale up. From a dozen folk three years ago and slowly building over the first years (as we stubbed our toes and learned) during COVID we rapidly doubled in size to over 60 full time team members. And there is no sign of slowing down. How? By becoming the organization that leaders look to in order to solve their most pressing marketing and technology challenges. The evidence based approach, the culture of inquiry and experimentation became a clear differentiator as companies grappled with COVID and accelerated digital transformation. This approach has helped us win 7 figure technology assignments, re-invent multi-million dollar AOR engagements and even create our own sharing economy platform launching later this summer. Just recently, we were awarded a global brand strategy project against award winning agencies from London, LA and NYC because of our unique approach.

So where do we go from here? With our purpose as our north star and our culture as our engine, the sky's the limit. We have built a team of values aligned and hyper talented humans, curated a roster of clients that feed our desire to learn, grow and have fun, built up a solid financial foundation and we are now more ready than ever to take on the big challenges keeping business leaders wide awake at night. Solving problems is our reason for being and we head into work (virtually or physically) every day relishing the exquisite journey of inquiry, revelations, hypothesis and the joy of manifesting game changing outcomes into the world that turn the tide for our clients, our community and our world. Much more to come!

Learn more at www.theturnlab.com or follow on Insta @theturnlab_to