Great Companies: How did you get your idea or concept for the business?
Pratik Agarwal: After working with a couple of ad agencies, I always felt there are three things that I see as gaps in the region where I was working in.
1. Everyone understands that this is a high pressure industry (especially when the agency is new) because of the kind of challenges you face everyday and some creative and new ideas may take longer than expected, it doesn't mean that the agency cannot be fun to work with. A good supportive, creative and motivating working environment in most of the agencies was missing. Taking care of your team while you take care of the clients is equally even more important at times.
2. There is a lack of transparency with the clients in terms what they should be looking at or expecting from an ad agency with short term and long term goals for the brand. Along With the same maintaining good service standards for the client and making sure that your team understands how important it is, because ultimately they are the people who are going to render the service to them.
3. And the last. Not enough focus on the strategy department and providing the client with core strategies before designing.
These were the three things which kind of motivated me to start an agency. Till this date I am trying to achieve and improvise on all of the above.
Great Companies: What are the various services provided by The Grey Metaphor
Pratik Agarwal: We are a 360 Service Provider for brands for Ads and Marketing. However the major focus areas are Digital & Strategic Marketing, Branding Solutions, Brand Consultancy, DVC/TVC Production.
Great Companies: What makes The Grey Metaphor different from hundreds of other similar service providers?
Pratik Agarwal:
Our focus on short and long term Strategy, Working on both client and their customer experiences, Dedicated departments for each function/stage of executing a campaign for a client
Great Companies: What were the struggles and challenges you faced and how did you overcome them?
Pratik Agarwal: I was fairly new in the city and hence didn't have a fruitful network. Also there was a long road ahead for us to cover in terms of learning from failures and finding our core expertise. Over the period of time we focused more on creating a network through different organisations and indulged onto different platforms which can help us spread the word.
Great Companies: How do you plan to grow in the future? What does 5 years down the line The Grey Metaphor?
Pratik Agarwal: We want to be an digital first agency, expand to 2 more cities and build a team of 60+ people across 7 departments by end of 2023. If you talk about long term planning like 4 or 5 years down the line - we are planning to work towards technology integration in advertising and specifically digital and omni channel marketing.
Great Companies: If you had one piece of advice to someone just starting out, what would it be?
Pratik Agarwal: Don't focus on just today but plan your next few years wisely and keep a track of the same.
Website : www.greymetaphor.com
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