9 Inspiring New Year's Resolutions From Agency Execs

It's a rite of passage for entering the New Year -- the practice of making resolutions.

You consider your health, relationships, and career during the past year and resolve to be better. 

But your waist size and pocketbook aren't the only things that can benefit from a renewed focus. Your agency needs an examination of its work and business practices. There are resolutions you should make to avoid the mistakes of 2014 and plans to outline for a successful 2015. 

We asked agency executives what they will look to improve, change, or invest in to make 2015 their most creative, successful year. Read on for their resolutions:

Say What We Think

We think brands need to show more respect to their customers. They need to look like they want their business.

They need to be alert to the information that customers and potential customers share as they decide what and where to buy -- and create services that respect and respond to this information. In short, they need to design services that help buyers to buy.

We’re going to say this to our clients, then help them build technologies which harvest consumer intent and personalize marketing experiences in real work and digital. We’re going to use some clever maths to optimize where our clients spend their budgets to drive a bigger return.

And we’re going to make it simple, elegant, and beautiful.

- Matt McNeany, CEO | Code Worldwide

Make Great Work

We asked our staff for their 2015 resolutions. Here they are: To focus on our clients more. To focus on ourselves more. To be more aware of what’s happening in our industry. To stop looking over our shoulders, and create new ways of doing things. To make work we’re proud of. To win a beer account. To get free beer from our new beer account. To win awards for our work on that beer account, proving that we can drink beer and still come up with really cool ideas. To quit drinking so much goddamn beer.

- Tony Mennuto, CCO | Mister :-|Face

Focus

To stay focused on simple ideas that engage people. All the rest is noise.

- Patrick Scullin, Managing Partner, ECD | Ames Scullin O’Haire

Embrace Accountability

New Years resolutions fall into two camps: A hope for better things or a hope for fewer bad things. Eleven has been lucky enough to have some great things happen this past year -- business growth, winning Oakley, exciting work for Virgin America, and others -- and we find ourselves working closely on executive agendas that demand a certain type of earnest, objective, thoughtful candor.

Thus, my number one resolution is to embrace this accountability and teach our agency how make it part of everything we do. I intend for us to get comfortable with uncomfortable conversations, to reward early problem-solving, and to become an agency full of (respectful) truth-tellers. While it may stress some relationships or kill some pet projects, I think we will produce better work and deepen worthy partnerships. We will all be happier in the end.

- Courtney Buechert, CEO | Eleven

Invest in Talent

Finding and hiring the best talent will be Naked’s biggest priority in 2015. Bad hires damage an agency from the inside out -- negatively impacting client work and poisoning agency culture. At Naked, strict standards guide our hiring process. Our culture requires ‘brilliant misfits’ -- restless and inquisitive types who challenge the status quo and strive to find the smartest solution to a complex problem. Our talent doesn’t fit into traditional agency boxes; we require our people to be “slashes” -- a planner who art directs, an account manager who codes, etc. We encourage professional meddling because more perspective is better perspective. It takes a village to find great talent, so our entire leadership team gets involved by making recruiting calls and meeting every candidate that walks in the door. It sounds time consuming, but when your most important asset goes up and down the elevator every day, we believe that the time is well spent.

- Troy Kelley, CEO, USA | Naked Communications

Live With More Soul

We resolve to continue living into less sell and more soul and to help our clients’ brands do the same.

- Holly Aguirre, SVP, Co-Managing Director | New Honor Society

Live Our Purpose

Our agency resolution, New Year’s or not, is to infuse a true sense of purpose into everything that we do. For our people, it’s about providing meaning and context to why we work in the well-being space. For our clients, it’s about ensuring that they are appreciating the lived experience of the people who we serve and leading them to make healthier decisions. We believe that people need to feel something to do something that leads to well-being. Nothing is more emotional than one’s health and wellness, and infusing this emotion into our work and the experiences we create will resonate and differentiate us. Do this, and inspired colleagues, great creative, successful business results, and a healthier consumer population will all follow.

- JD Cassidy, EVP, Managing Director | Saatchi & Saatchi Wellness

Educate 

Attention’s New Year’s resolution is to make both consumers and brands merrier in 2015 by helping brands better understand consumer intent, where consumers are in relation to the brand, and where they are in their purchase decision, how to use these insights to craft more compelling content based on what really matters to their consumers, and how to deliver content when and where the consumer is engaged, regardless of channel.

- Curtis Hougland, CEO | Attention

Streamline Our Process

We will continue to prove our clients that relevant and creative marketing communications can have a big effect on sales and growth. We will enhance our One Team thinking across all our units in Amsterdam, Stockholm, and Helsinki to give clients an even more streamlined and cost-effective process through all communications channels.

- Ami Hasan, Founder | hasan & partners