2020-Two is still not far enough away from 2020 to safely, confidently, and accurately be throwing out trends, so let’s call them cornerstones or tenets of our agency that all agencies should be practicing yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

Digital Storytelling is something if one isn’t already doing, they should be doing it now in spades. While some agencies are better at it than others, the current and most popular path to brand building, awareness, and sales start here. The combination of illustrative points made in many forms (audio or visual or both) across multiple platforms (Instagram, TikTok, YouTube) is an organic way to narrate, grow engagement and eventually increase sales or check averages (we have a lot of hospitality clients).

Covid has ensured we take on shorter-term projects from time to time, but for the most part Food Shelter prides itself on being a natural and necessary extension of internal marketing teams. Always has. Always will. Having this mindset breeds the necessary collaborative process over the agency hire and fire at-will vendor scenario. If this sounds more like a luxury than reality, it isn’t. We’ve fired many a client and struggled at times living this truth; but believe us when we say this paradigm lends itself to a by-far richer, long-standing, trusting, and happier relationship than the latter of the aforementioned.

The year of infamy made us aware as an agency we needed to initiate a few things. At the top of the lengthy list?  Developing an internal, ready-to-go crisis plan for our own agency to use as a starting point while at the same time understanding there may come times when clients need plans too… say maybe, in tandem and extremely quickly. While focusing on different needs. When the entire world is on fire. 

 A crisis is something we (as the optimistic bunch we usually tend to be) don’t care to think daily about, but really should. Like yoga, it should be considered a practice and it should be thought of often enough so everyone is fully prepared for Armageddon-type situations should they arise. A preventative and prepared thought process will never, ever go out of style, and it should be at the top of best practices for agencies.

So, there we have it. Although it may not be earth-shattering, or trendy, it makes a whole lot of rational sense. We should change the title of this post … if we didn’t have to proactively read an internal crisis plan or digitally tell a story for a client who has been with us for years!