The Power Of A Digital Alliance vs. An Interactive Agency

Our bread and butter at digital-telepathy is creating or enhancing your web experience.  We accomplish this through an integrated process of strategy, innovation and design.  We also perform many other services from large scale web app development, usability testing, social media strategy, iPhone app development and much more.  We want to be capable of doing whatever it takes to grow your business.

Best In Class
Now we don’t pretend to be be the best at everything.  However, we are pretty damn great at forming a holistic strategy to build an effective online experience and accomplish your business goals.  So we prefer to stick with what we know best and bring in specialists to help us execute the strategies we develop.  The result of this process has lead us to create a powerful and integrated digital alliance.  At any point in a project we can bring in a company that specializes in the viral spread of new web applications, a PR team that can lobby Washington or a team that can harvest data faster than you can provide the criteria.  The benefit to our clients is that they get to work with the best in class for any need large or small.

All-Star Team Not Outsourcing
A digital alliance is very different from outsourcing.  We are not working with outside vendors and secretly scaling our proficiencies.  We are working as a team with contemporaries who are equally as good at what they do as we are at what we do. They are people and companies that we have known and worked with for years and that we consider to be partners and friends. We think of ourselves as a coach of an all-star digital team capable of building anything.

Large Interactive Agency vs. Digital Alliance
A convenience factor in working with a large agency is a single point of contact with account management that knows your business and needs.  That is why the secret to a successful digital alliance is a simple approach to centralized management. We manage all of our clients directly which enables our allies to be project managers for their direct involvement in the project.  This allows the allies to focus on what they do best while we maintain client delight and project vision. If an ally brings in a client, they perform the client management and we become a project manager.

With a large agency, you only have access to one CEO, one Creative Director and a single set of strategist, designers, developers and marketers.  They are limited by the culture, specialties and experience of their company.  With a digital alliance, you have multiple leadership teams that solely focus on their specialty. It blows the doors off the limitations of a single source of innovation and creates clear lines of accountability for performance and efficiency.

A large agency typically works with large retainers on an annual basis. Where is the accountability? How are you able to track the ROI of your spending across hundreds of projects? A digital alliance works with a small retainer to enable a proactive and strategic approach to managing your projects and suggesting new ways to increase your performance online.  The rest of the work is performed on a project basis, enabling you to control your budget and effectively manage your ROI.

Our partners are too many to mention in one blog post, however, I can share our process of adding an organization to our digital alliance.

1. Connect: When we first meet a potential ally, it is crucial that our companies share similar philosophies, regardless of how capable or impressive each other’s work my be.   If we are not able to align to a shared vision of services for our clients, it will not be a successful partnership.

2. Give and Learn: We spend 6 months to a year getting to know each other inside and out.  Typically we will trade services for as an opportunity to learn each other’s process to ensure it is a right fit for our clients.

3. Transparency: We stay completely open with our relationship to our clients. This enables our partners to fully engage with the client with no limitations.

4. Pitch Together: You can’t just set up an alliance and wait around until one of your partners bring something to the table.  It’s important to blend your capabilities and go after the business that you want together as a team.

5. Stay Connected: Don’t let you relationship get stale. Keep in touch on a biweekly or monthly basis.  Talk about new opportunities, services, discoveries and clients.  Keep the relationship fresh.

If you are interested in hearing more about these ideas, vote for our SXSW panel – Get Your Digital Alliance On!