To us, this is the new “traditional agency” model

By Mark Tungate

HeyLet’sGo! is breaking away from the traditional mold of the agency model and instead applying an ‘a la carte’ strategy to their services. We spoke with Tim Cawley, Founder + Chief Creative Officer, on their flexible strategy and hyper-efficiency, plus a visit from everyone’s favorite penny-pinching sea creature, Mr. Krabs.

Can you give us a brief overview of your structure and some of the clients with whom you work?

HeyLet’sGo is an ad agency that behaves like a production company. Our clients range from FinTech to HigherEd to Consumer Goods and Services and include Envestnet, Lawn Doctor, Play-Doh and Computershare. Several long-standing clients retain us. Other clients with large, retained agencies come to us with projects that are out of scope.

We’re happy to complement in-house agencies when they’re up to their ears or need an outside perspective. You can choose a la carte Strategy, Research, Design, Creative or Production. To us, this is the new “traditional agency” model. These are the deliverables in our wheelhouse: Advertising, Content, Brand Strategy, Research, Design, Filmmaking, Storytelling & Documentary.

Your elevator pitch please! How do you position your agency to a brand? Why should they work with you – what do you bring to the table?

We learn, listen and strategize. We conceive ideas. And, in large part, we produce them. This means unified, accountable teams. Hyper-efficiency. Tighter timelines. More deliverables to fill myriad channels with tighter budgets. With internal resources, we don’t need to make a production out of production and can execute great creative ideas very quickly.

Can you talk us through a campaign and how you solved a problem for the client or made a difference to a brand?

Envestnet is a $1.2 billion fintech company founded in 2001. As part of a brand campaign, they wanted to also demo an online dashboard that financial advisors use to track clients’ finances.

Instead of the standard, retirees-walking-on-the-beach approach, we worked with the creative team at Spongebob Squarepants to create a dashboard for the completely-money-obsessed Mr. Krabs.

We actually worked through storylines and past episodes with Paramount, figuring out Mr. Krabs’ expenses line-by-line (right down to selling Spongebob’s Soul for 62 cents in the “Money Talks” episode from Season 5).

There’s a full interactive dashboard we developed with our partner, Hello Monday, in NYC and Copenhagen. We shot three TV commercials, made about 20 pieces of web content, and produced a 3-minute film that lives on the client’s site detailing how Mr. Krabs lives an “Intelligent Financial Life.”

What does your roadmap for growth look like? Is it, for example, geographic expansion or joining one of the growing indie agency networks? Developing more project work for other clients?

Our growth goal is simple. Do great work we are proud of, so clients want to keep us around.

MARKETING Magazine is not responsible for the content of external sites.

The APPIES is an annual event that presents a rare opportunity for creative, media, digital and marketing agencies or brands to present their best campaigns to the industry.

This is the only event where Live Presentations meets Live Judging.

Similar to TED Talks, The APPIES is the chance for great presenters with outstanding work to show it off to some of the industry’s most important industry leaders.

This year’s winners will receive Gold, Silver or Bronze trophies for 21 categories, and 6 special Best of Best categories (red trophies) that require no submissions!