Alex Mathias, VP At Isadora Agency, Talked With Us About The Agency’s Working Process & The New Design Trends
We asked some questions to Alex Mathias, the VP at Isadora Agency, about the agency’s culture and their working style.
Alex Mathias told us Isadora Agency‘s business approach, their office routines and culture. He also mentioned his interesting predictions of the future of digital agencies and next marketing & design trends.
Q: What’s a typical day working as the Vice President of Isadora like?
Reviewing each of our partner accounts. Touching base with our clients often through calls and meetings. Discussing scope and progress with the team. Ensuring nothing is impeding us from delivering exceptional service and also looking for new ways and/or tools to deliver greater value. Constant communication with all partners throughout our collaboration is a big part of the job.
There is also a great deal of internal collaboration with team members and management on better ways to service our partners. I keep my pen and notepad handy as I am always taking notes. Our digital agency services brands from a range of industries, so you’ll always find me scribbling down notes and ideas from calls, events and team meetings.
Last but not least I spend a great deal of time with our strategists confirming clients are achieving the specific results expected. This goes a long way in ensuring your clients remain happy.
Q: After you receive a brief, how do you come up with new ideas, insights, and strategy for the project and what is your approach behind them?
We actually have a highly experienced team of resources including a Creative Director, Strategic Account Director and Marketing specialist that are tasked with doing the appropriate due diligence collectively.
Not all ideas are developed right away. High-level strategy is determined but we leave ourselves some freedom for additional creativity and innovation once collaboration begins with a new partner or on a new project.
Q: Could you tell us about a time you and your team struggled to reach common ground with the client? How do you manage issues of this sort?
In all honestly that just doesn’t happen as we spend a tremendous amount of time learning and listening from our clients. We may have a difference of opinion or preference, but a lack of common ground seems to fade away when there is thorough listening and communication.
Sometimes we spend months nurturing and communicating with a client before we even begin working. So that’s ample time to learn, build a strong rapport and establish common ground.
Q: What kind of online solutions are customers expecting from a top digital agency? How do you think these expectations will change in the future?
Clients are expecting to be guided and even educated every step of the way. Solutions will focus on the website or digital related products.
However top digital agencies are often getting asked to apply creativity in other marketing areas such as interactive social campaigns, PPC advertising, AdWords management and even creating physical booths and experiences outside the web for national events. I see clients eventually wanting digital agencies to provide expert AI and VR based solutions.
Q: What made you select the advertising industry as a career path? Which challenges did you face during your journey?
It was incredibly dynamic and always evolving and that was quite appealing. To think that I can do my job for 10 or 20 years and still be learning new ways to advertise is quite fulfilling.
My key challenge was deciding to go back to school and securing my MBA while working full-time. Though it took several years of diligent studying, it was well worth it. The experience and education I acquired remains one of my greatest accomplishments.
Q: It seems that you have expertise in various fields including UX & CX. What do you see as the major design trends for 2019?
User experience, for example, will always remain a central concept in various solutions. The user’s complete experience including every touchpoint (on and outside the web) will always be a top priority for marketing. It’s how the experience gets impacted through the blending of creativity and new technology that keeps things interesting.
One major design trend is crafting Design Systems to empower brands to design at scale, like never before. Isadora Agency is in fact collaborating with a hand full of global brands on large-scale, comprehensive design systems.
Q: We see that you give importance to maintaining lasting relationships through trust, results and tailored business solutions at Isadora. What is the secret behind this?
Having a portfolio of services that drive excellent business results is what all clients are looking for. In addition, you have to truly care and/or be interested in your client’s success. This helps you to stay focused on always doing the right thing for your client.
It’s these elements combined that help to forge a close relationship. Long-lasting relationships are what allow our agency to learn and offer even more distinctive solutions made from scratch.
Q: What are some useful visual design tools that help you and your team accomplish your goals?
We use many of the popular tools out there including adobe creative suite, sketch and adobe MX.
Q: How does being a DAN member contribute to Isadora Agency’s success?
DAN is one of those terrific long-lasting partnerships I mentioned above. We’ve been working with DAN for several years and will continue to learn and evolve for years to come. We’ve been introduced to some terrific brands and market leaders that came to us directly from DAN.
About Isadora Agency
Isadora Agency is a web design company and leader in transformative visual identity, UX design systems, enterprise development, eCommerce and content marketing.
