Taking on the tyranny of distance

The world is getting smaller, a shift enabled by technology that is bringing people and businesses closer and closer together. It’s now possible to communicate and transact with almost any country in the world from the comfort of your internet connected office, home or coffee shop – which brings a world of opportunity to our fingertips. In this article we’ll take a look at what this means for modern marketers.

Globalisation and the success of cloud technology giants including Google, AWS, Microsoft, Adobe and others, as well as a plethora of collaboration apps, have resulted in a homogenisation of platforms sharing, working and transacting across borders and over any amount of geographical distance. The result is an amazing opportunity, with a flat and immediate landscape enabling clients and their marketing agencies to work together because they share values, ideas and ambitions, rather than because they happen to be in the same town or country.

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But these days, when you’re looking for the best skills and experience, the country of origin can be of little consequence.

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In North America, particularly in bigger businesses, there is a more longstanding tradition of working with a distributed network. Due to the size of the country and the market, working with suppliers, marketing agencies and collaborators in different cities, and even different time zones, seems more natural. This is because, despite the distance, they’re still working in their own country. But these days, when you’re looking for best skills and experience, the country of origin can be of little consequence.

Marketing sans frontières

At The Walk, we have a track record of successfully collaborating with clients in Australia, across APAC and in North America. Our work travels well in both directions, with clients from inside and outside of Australia producing marketing assets for our local market, as well as us working from Australia to produce work for other markets or global audiences. For example, we collaborate with clients on marketing campaigns across Asia Pacific (APAC) and produce work that’s rolled out across the region, localised for some territories where language is a barrier to communication, pursuing great results and measuring, reporting and learning from our experiences across territories. Are there challenges? Of course, but even something like a time difference can be made to work to an advantage, with our team able to work “overnight” for the Northern Hemisphere, so that requests that come up at the end of their day end up as solved and in the inbox first thing the next day.

Talent trumps kilometres

Our clients come to us from across the country and the world because they connect with our ethos and our way of thinking. The great thing is that there is also a world of talent out there and we can find like-minded, highly skilled professionals at the top of their games by reaching out beyond our own borders and sourcing, training and collaborating with talent from different backgrounds, time zones and countries who offer different skills and experiences – which we can then make available for our clients. The result is an amazing illustrator from Toronto, ninja developers in the UK, Portugal and Venezuela, our presentation guru in Colorado, our motion graphics guy working from Berlin and so on and so forth. All these awesome talents know how we work, know our clients, work to our standards (Including having signed confidentiality agreements) and are available for your projects through The Walk. They complement our in-house team plus our local regulars from Adelaide, Sydney and Melbourne in creating a complete capability to deliver on briefs across the entire integrated marketing function.

Elastic fantastic

We call this model “Elastic Fantastic”, because while it’s partly about elasticity and scaling for volume of marketing campaigns, it’s also fantastic for other reasons. The availability of talent and the benefits of a distributed talent pool are multiple. Our model will always be to keep experienced, senior staff on our client accounts, bringing the high-level thinking and strategic nous to our work. But when it comes to executing across a range of channels with integrated marketing campaigns, our network is invaluable in being able to quickly deliver across multiple media to an international standard. It’s all part of our commitment to drawing from not only our own backgrounds, but from diverse and interesting experiences wherever we find them, to enrich our own marketing knowledge and bring those learnings to work we do for all our clients.

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Our model will always be to keep experienced, senior staff on our client accounts…

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Working with The Walk

We pride ourselves on being able to work seamlessly and execute effectively for different businesses across the world and have a commitment to working in the way that makes the most sense for each client and their individual requirements. Our experience allows us to navigate diverse client environments, fitting in where we’re needed and stepping back where we’re not. Our passion is to work where we’ll make a difference and make a real impact, so we’re just as happy collaborating with in-house teams as we are working with other agencies and internal stakeholders alike. So, wherever you find yourself, don’t let distance be a factor. Come and take a Walk, we look forward to collaborating with you, from wherever you are.