Johnny Utterback, Author at Dotted Line

What does happiness in the workplace mean for your agency?

After two-plus years of the pandemic, our world’s relationship to work looks completely different from the way it used to.

We have a better understanding of what makes us feel fulfilled on the job and what leaves us feeling high and dry. We’ve learned that a rigid 9-to-5 schedule doesn’t work for everyone. We’ve decided that we deserve to do work that matters to us. In short, happiness in the workplace is more important than it’s ever been.

But happiness can easily fall to the bottom of your company’s priority list, especially in a high-burnout industry like marketing. Obligations to clients, deadlines and agency growth can overshadow whether the people you work with even like being there.

If you’re a leader at your agency, try asking your team a few questions to see how you can help them be happier on the job.

“Do you have the flexibility you need?”

One of the key lessons learned from the pandemic is that everyone works differently.

Some of us operate best with our coworkers buzzing about in the background. Others find a day at home helps them focus on pressing tasks. Some feel they only really need to be in person for important meetings, while others rely on in-person collaboration to spur creativity.

Your team members might have found that their pandemic-era setup worked unexpectedly well, but they might be hesitant to say so – especially if your agency has largely resumed in-person work. Given the nature of professional services, most agencies can offer some work-from-home flexibility without much trouble.

Try asking your team if your current attendance model works for them. If not, dig deeper and see what kind of flexibility they need to thrive.

“Do you feel valued?”

Nobody wants to be in a friendship or relationship where they feel unwanted. That sentiment applies to the workplace, too.

Feeling valued at work doesn’t necessarily mean a beefy paycheck. The highest-paid person on your team might feel undervalued if they get a paltry vacation allowance. Perhaps they’d like more learning and development opportunities, like going to that fancy conference next month. Or maybe they just want you to give them and their work the occasional shout-out.

People also feel more seen when others invest in them as people, not just coworkers. Sure, that office social hour or end-of-quarter party might seem insignificant. But events and team-building exercises help us bond over what makes us human: family, hobbies, culture – even embarrassing high school stories.

Show your team that you want them to feel appreciated, and then work with them to determine how you can make that happen.

“Are we doing meaningful work?”

People can’t be happiest at work if they don’t want to do … well, the work.

Doing work that helps others and feels meaningful can significantly boost your happiness, well-being and even your lifespan. (We’re not kidding.) That’s what’s so important about bringing on clients you and your team believe in. When your team gets to help make a difference, it will motivate them to perform their best.

But having the right clients isn’t the answer for every struggling team member. Sometimes, people just aren’t satisfied with their role on a team. When their responsibilities don’t play to their strengths, they’re bound to feel less accomplished, even if they’re doing passable work. Imagine being a knockout swimmer. Wouldn’t you be bummed if your triathlon relay team assigned you to the bicycle leg, even if you’re a decent cyclist?

Ask your team if they find their work meaningful. If not, encourage them to seek new responsibilities or (if possible) ask to work on a different client.

Finding our Happier Place … and helping you find yours

We’ve done some rethinking lately – about our goals and our motivations, how we perform best, and what makes Dotted Line a great place to work.

Creating a positive work environment is one of our top priorities, especially given how fast we’re growing. Thanks to open office dialogue, we recently took a few actionable steps to make our team a little happier:

We started letting people work from home up to three days a week;
We adopted an unlimited paid time-off policy with a four-week annual minimum;
We adjusted our profit-sharing model to more accurately reflect team members’ hard work; and
We scheduled a series of activities in May to commemorate Mental Health Awareness Month, including in-office yoga and a weeklong walking challenge.

One thing hasn’t changed: the happiness we get from doing work that makes others happy, too. That’s why we launched our Happier Place project earlier in May.

The Happier Place involves a simple, easy-to-use landing page. Just click a button to cycle through a roulette of smile-inducing GIFs hand-picked by our team. (We’re especially fond of the rabbit taking a sink bath and pretty much anything involving a hedgehog.)

It’s been a tough stretch for everyone in every industry. We hope this humble piece of creative helps you brighten a dull moment or wind down from a long day. Visit https://findyourhappier.place/ for a quick and easy mood boost.

If you think you need professional mental health services, it’s never the wrong time to seek help. Visit the National Alliance on Mental Illness or the Virginia Department of Behavioral Health & Developmental Services for important resources.

Scoop creative campaign embodies the spirit of Dotted Line

Last year, Dotted Line began taking steps to expand beyond its business-to-business (B2B) marketing foothold and deepen its business-to-consumer (B2C) portfolio. And when Associate Creative Director Mitchell Jordan and I hopped aboard in January, we came equipped with ideas to help Dotted Line make a real name for itself in B2C.

One of our first steps was to demonstrate the agency’s knack for consumer-facing work by taking on several strategic pro bono projects. Mine and Mitchell’s partnership began several years before joining Dotted Line, where we worked on several grassroot creative campaigns, including an award-winning poster campaign for King of Pops, so that felt like a natural starting point. Beyond the obvious promotional incentive for the recipient, pro bono campaigns also offer creative marketers the opportunity to gain attention, attract clients and indulge in creative output that fuels the agency.

For our first pro bono creative campaign with Dotted Line, we pitched Scoop, a small-batch ice cream shop in The Fan of Richmond. (After a popsicle-based campaign, ice cream seemed like the logical next step). Dotted Line Account Director Christie Hach knew one of the shop’s employees, which helped us get our foot in the door. From there, we collaborated on, tinkered, went back to the drawing board several times and ultimately delivered a campaign as unique as their ice cream for the brand to feature on social media.

Scoop loved the final product and began sharing the new visuals online earlier this month. But beyond that success, our pro bono project was a real-world example of several of our agency’s key virtues. By exhibiting creative ingenuity, off-the-clock ambition and a bold embrace of fun, our Scoop campaign demonstrates the spirit of Dotted Line and hopefully gives other marketing professionals something to think about.

In-house innovation

While a contracted client would typically expect us to deliver a product that adheres to a set of previously established standards, our partnership with Scoop was a little different. We approached the company and said, “This is something we would like to do for you — money isn’t an object.” This less formal relationship allowed Mitchell and me to flex our creative muscles a little more and jump off from Scoop’s established visual identity to create something eye-catching and unique.

Since the shop first opened several years ago, its social media content has largely consisted of two-dimensional imagery, a pastel color scheme and close-up photography highlighting its frozen treats. This strategy has clearly been successful, earning the brand more than 12,000 Instagram followers and considerable levels of engagement.

But we wanted their images to take on a singular visual language of their own — not just for the sake of being different, but to parallel the uniqueness of many of Scoop’s culinary concoctions. (The menu features such flavor choices as “sweet corn and blackberry” and “strawberry-hibiscus sorbet.”) We opted to pair an eccentric visual sensibility with messaging that would promote Scoop ice cream as a rescue for hot weather — which turned out to be a fitting choice for this sweltering summer.

Our team eventually landed on visuals that blended photographs of Scoop ice cream with sunny outdoor landscapes as well as quirky, even psychedelic visual frills, topped off with punchy messages like “Treat the Heat.” Aside from photos of the Scoop product itself, everything in the frame was produced in-house, including photographs by Dotted Line Production Designer John DiJulio. This display of creativity is, we hope, a testament to our creative team’s range of skills and “let’s have some fun,” do-it-yourself spirit. But to see just how dedicated we were to the project, one must look beyond the final product.

Initiative, self-improvement and the extra mile

As our previous pro bono campaign earned us awards attention (including two Gold Cannonballs from the Advertising Club of Richmond) and inclusion in industry publications, Mitchell and I already knew that some of the most attention-worthy marketing work isn’t necessarily contracted. By taking on a creative side project to help put Dotted Line on the B2C map, we embodied the value of creating one’s own opportunities in the marketing space — even if those opportunities aren’t necessarily billable.

While we weren’t held to a concrete deadline (another plus of pro bono work), we wanted the campaign to come together by summer’s end so the weather-based messaging would remain effective. One early idea for the campaign involved engaging consumers in an online and in-store cups-versus-cones debate. Another involved close-ups of people eating ice cream while sporting face mask-shaped tan lines — which hit the cutting room floor when Virginia dialed back its COVID-19 mask mandates.

We could have gone with the first idea that came to mind, but a drive to refine the Scoop campaign to its best possible version kept Mitchell and me cranking. This ambition ultimately earned our product a spot in Scoop’s social media feed — and exemplified the extra-mile mentality that fuels all of Dotted Line’s output.

A feel for fun

While promoting Dotted Line and Scoop was our primary impetus, we were especially driven to take on the pro bono campaign because we simply enjoyed the work and the Scoop product. Passion projects with increased creative freedom serve as a reminder that — as Mitchell puts it — we marketers are “pretty lucky to do what we do for a living.” He and I also kept the rest of the Dotted Line staff up to speed on the creative campaign, and their enjoyment while watching the project unfold only motivated us further.

Even if it sounds paradoxical at first, having fun with creative marketing projects is a time commitment. It took us time to stretch our brains and stimulate our creative juices so that the product could embody the whimsy and spirit it was meant to evoke. You can’t come up with a graphic featuring an old-timey zeppelin, unicorn balloon animal, parrot and garden gnome all congregated around a cup of ice cream on the beach without having a good time.

Our creative team and the rest of the Dotted Line family bring innovation, ambition and enjoyment to every task — whether on or off the books. By employing these attitudes, creative marketers can both foster their own growth and deliver the most effective possible product for their client. If that’s the mentality you seek in your own marketing strategy, we’re here to create exponential impact for your business. Click here to contact us.

The Indispensable Blueprint at the Heart of Your Communications

By Mitchell Jordan

I challenge you to think of a complex project that doesn’t start with a blueprint. An interior designer would never furnish a house without first consulting the master floorplan, and a novelist can’t delve into character development without at least mapping out a rough table of contents. The same logic applies when designing brand communications: no business leader should consider launching a television spot—or even uploading a new social media avatar—before establishing formal brand guidelines.

What exactly are brand guidelines, anyways?

Brand guidelines summarize the most important aspects of a brand and explain how (and how not) to communicate a brand’s essence. Not to be confused with simplified style guidelines, brand guidelines simultaneously govern visual elements (from logos and fonts to color palettes and photography) and lay out rules for structuring communications according to a brand’s philosophy, tone, and voice. When working with a remote team or collaborating with external partners, a set of clear, comprehensive brand guidelines anchors the creative process and helps forge a readily recognizable brand identity across multiple channels and different campaigns.

Prioritizing brand guidelines may seem like a no-brainer, but brands often bypass this step and jump right into creative executions. In the case of busy startups, a backlog of time-sensitive projects and a scrappy approach to budgeting can take precedence over the nebulous task of hammering out brand guidelines. In other instances, asset creation may fall to a single individual who already knows the brand inside and out and doesn’t see the need to formulate official guidelines.

While extensive brand guidelines may seem excessive or redundant for small, emerging brands, it’s important to keep your long-term growth plans in mind. As the scope of your communications broadens and the size of your team expands, brand guidelines save time and money by streamlining the creative process. Even more importantly, they ensure thematic harmony across all of your assets. Without any formal guidelines in place at the outset, the creative process can spiral into an organizational headache and a financial drain, and you risk producing disjointed creative that dilutes the power of your brand messages. Clarity and consistency are key when it comes to being taken seriously by clients and consumers, so adhering to brand guidelines is vital for establishing integrity in the long run.

Best practices for brand guidelines

There’s no universal template for crafting brand guidelines—they’re highly variable depending on a brand’s specific needs and the scope of its communications. But there are a few key considerations that every brand should focus on when developing its guidelines to ensure the final product is on-strategy, effective in the long-term, and simple to work with.

Start with strategy

As we say again and again at Dotted Line, always start with strategy. Since every brand approaches strategy from a slightly different angle, your brand guidelines may look totally different from examples you’ve seen before. For instance, incorporating highly technical photography standards into brand guidelines makes perfect sense for an interior design firm, but would feel out of place for a small IT startup. Furthermore, a brand’s strategy evolves over time as new opportunities emerge, so brand guidelines should be crafted with scalability in mind, ready to extend to a new application should the need arise. Whether pivoting from image-based social content to video or extending your new-age brand voice in traditional markets, accounting for upcoming strategic shifts ensures that brand guidelines bend—rather than break—as your business changes.

Play the long game

When committing to a set of standards that will steer your future creative projects, it’s natural to wonder how often you should refresh your guidelines and tempting to leave ample room to accommodate tweaks over time. But while brand guidelines need to be scalable, they should generally maintain a degree of rigidity and stability. After all, the whole point of a brand is to offer its consumers a sense of consistency and security over time. Exercising patience and continuously reinforcing foundational brand elements are key to achieving widespread and long-lasting awareness among consumers. When it comes to modifying your brand guidelines, augment them sparingly and thoughtfully as your brand grows, and resist the urge to make hasty changes every time a trendy new color palette or writing style crops up.

Focus on your team’s different needs

Even the most stunning, thorough brand guidelines can be rendered pointless if your team lacks the know-how or motivation to leverage them effectively. As a creative, I love it when clients hand over a hefty volume of brand guidelines for me to sink my teeth into, but most brands don’t have the need—or budget—for such expansive guidelines. And while your marketing department and creative partners require a certain degree of specificity, be realistic—your colleagues in IT don’t need ten pages of brand voice exploration to update the company-wide email signature. Consider developing smaller appendices to your brand guidelines tailored to different departments’ usages. Ease of use should be a primary consideration when rolling out your brand guidelines, so be sure to present assets to your team with accessibility in mind.

It’s short-sighted to think of brand guidelines as a tool that only large, unwieldy brands working with an array of partners need—they’re a must-have for any growing brand, regardless of size or industry. And while implementing any brand guidelines is a step in the right direction, the more comprehensive they are, the better. Between strategic alignment, long-term planning, and team-specific considerations, it’s no surprise that developing brand guidelines can be a daunting undertaking, and the process can often require in-depth theoretical knowledge or technical expertise depending on your brand’s needs. We’re here to ask the probing questions and formulate the best approach to create brand guidelines that work for your brand. Click here to reach out.

Why No Two Website Strategies Should Look the Same

By: Jason Anderson

If there was ever a time to dive headfirst into a website design project, 2021 is that time. As stay-at-home guidelines push businesses further into the virtual realm, compelling online touchpoints have never been more critical. Plus, with so many big projects on hold, this unexpected downtime presents a great opportunity to undertake a website launch or refresh.

It’s tempting to seek out shortcuts to fast-track the website design process, especially with COVID fueling a particularly scrappy approach to business decisions. Perhaps you’ve considered repurposing one of your other brands’ site layouts or replicating features from a competitor’s website. But while those are great places to look to for inspiration, they shouldn’t be the primary drivers of your design process. Every company possesses a unique business approach and a distinct set of short- and long-term objectives, meaning that a one-size-fits-all, cookie-cutter approach simply won’t cut it when it comes to website design.

So where exactly should you start your website design process?

Start with strategy

At Dotted Line, we find ourselves constantly reciting the mantra “everything starts with strategy.” Strategy highlights which challenges a new website should address, and it serves as a gut check underscoring every phase of the creative process. When in doubt, asking “Is this on strategy?” can differentiate between which site features are truly essential and which are just flashy bells and whistles.

Sometimes a strategy-first approach requires hard cuts. When a client struggles to explain how a site component fits into their strategic roadmap, that’s a clear indication that a better solution exists, just waiting to be tapped. Business leaders must remind themselves that “all of our competitors are doing it” or “a customer suggested it” isn’t enough justification on its own. Committing to staying on-strategy pushes a company to think critically about the role its website plays in the customer journey and lays the foundation for the most relevant and effective brand storytelling touchpoints.

Flying Phase’s website is a great example of the branded through-line resulting from a strategy-first approach. While the world of financial consulting is often marked by rigidity, Flying Phase is anything but. From its cutting-edge name—derived from a pioneering America’s Cup design that literally lifts elite racing vessels out of the water—to their forward-thinking “business beyond the horizon” positioning, Flying Phase stands out from stiffer, more traditional competition. This differentiation strategy is impossible to overlook in their website design: marked by a stunning hero video and a vibrant color palette, Flying Phase’s sleek site goes hand-in-hand with their innovative approach to consulting. In this case, Flying Phase’s strong strategic backbone proved key to setting their site firmly apart from other industry players.

Take it in phases

We think of website design as a dynamic, phased process. A static site that only addresses a client’s immediate needs isn’t practical in the long-term—the most effective websites grow alongside a company as its business evolves and its brand story deepens.

A phased approach is especially crucial when we work with trailblazing startups launching a website for the first time. While established companies often initiate design projects armed with an arsenal of multimedia assets and branded copy, burgeoning startups enter into the design process virtually from square one. These websites need to be flexible enough to tell an abbreviated brand story in the short-term and accommodate new brand assets, features, and copy as they arise three, six, and twelve months down the line.

EDai’s new site accomplishes exactly that. After months of fine-tuning a tech-based approach to economic development, EDai celebrated its official public launch in early 2021, and is still in the throes of establishing its brand story. In the meantime, they needed a clean-cut, polished website to promote their proprietary LocatED tool and consulting services, while leaving room to expand their online storytelling in the future. The resulting design ticks both boxes, nimbly telling the story of EDai’s consulting firepower and laying the foundation for adding thought leadership content as the business and team grow. The clean, straightforward design mirrors the ease of use of their tool and the direct professionalism at the heart of their company ethos, all while remaining adaptable as EDai’s online content evolves.

A path to the most effective website design

Since no two companies approach their strategy or scaling plans in exactly the same way, it follows that no two website designs should look exactly the same. But developing a website from scratch that’s laser-focused on your business needs is no small task. Synthesizing strategy and anticipating future developments (while maintaining focus and staying in-scope!) almost always requires expert guidance, which is where we can help. We’re no strangers to website design, and we pride ourselves on meeting clients where they are, regardless of business stage, project timeline, or design complexity. Plus, we work to cultivate a diverse extended team with wide-ranging capabilities. Whether your focus is content strategy, user experience design, or anything in between, we tap the right experts to get the job done. At the end of the day, what matters most to us—and you!—is crafting the most effective website to support your specific business needs.

Have questions for us about how to kick off your website design project? We’re ready to help. Click here to reach out.