• Written by Paulo Marques
• Tagged as Branding

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There are already a significant number of digital marketing agencies around to choose from. Although it might sound cliché, the whole point of creating Marq:s was to come up with something distinctive. All the individuals involved in the Marq:s project have been working within the digital marketing industry for at least ten years, across numerous projects in some capacity with different employers. Among our team, some of the achievements include:

- Managing media relations for a young fashion designer who gained nationwide media coverage as well as winning the 2013 ACTE European Contest of Young Designers – Italy;

- Customer acquisition which averaged 1000 new leads per month with 3% of those converting into customers after three months – online retailer (industry awarded project),

- Increasing small retailer revenue by 19% (after six months) through PPC campaign – local search,

- Increasing small retailer revenue by 12% (after three months) through organic content marketing strategy

These are just some of the few things we have been up to for the past few year.

At Marq:s we all know each other on a personal level which made things easier in terms of outlining the overall concept. Prior to creating this project we would frequently converse among ourselves the tasks and challenges we encountered at work. As time progressed we started noticing a pattern in terms of how we perceived things but also how they were being done. This also played a part on why we decided to take it upon ourselves to create a digital marketing agency.

Our strapline: “Enhancing brands, enabling ideas”; summarises our intent as a solutions provider. We want to ensure that the brands/businesses and individuals we work with live up to their potential. The belief among us at Marq:s is that we are only able to achieve that if we build an authentic and committed relationship with our clients and prospects. Far too many times most of us have been in cases where the priority was to acquire the client/account and deliver the project/campaign (regardless). On those cases the research on the potential client and relation building – agency & client; is set mainly prior and during the pitch stage. With the project/campaign in motion it appears that is rather more common than we expected that some sort of distance between agency and client is established. Another aspect that came to our attention is that businesses/brand (not openly) deemed as “smaller accounts” are likely to be left in the agencies back burner.

The focus here is not necessarily to criticize how some run their business. What we want to put across is that we are committed to a completely different approach in terms of our strategy as an agency. We are fortunate that although taking our first steps, we have clients in different countries – United Kingdom and Portugal. Each of these clients have very specific requirements and work in very distinct contexts. For each one of those and new ones we want to provide tailored solutions. The “one size fits all” approach is something we don’t want to subscribe to. Some of our team members are based in Portugal whereas others are in the United Kingdom. This gives us an outstanding opportunity to fully understand the context under which our clients operate. Not implying that you must be from your clients country. The fact that we are just works as an advantage for us. Besides this we are in regular contact with them and relay to them any new tool or possible opportunity from which they may benefit. Honestly we haven’t been put in a case where we had to “grade” one of our clients as a “smaller account”. Nevertheless the pledge we made internally is to not fall in that particular “pigeonhole’.

This strategy is also the reason why we recently decided to support a project we also have been working on. Although we are starting as a company we agreed to support this project. The decision was made based on the fact that we all believe it has tremendous potential, but also because we can relate to what it stands for. We benefit by associating ourselves with what we see as an extremely good brand but also having the chance to be exposed to its audience. Its target audience comprises of young professionals, based in the major cities across the world that work and/or are very keen in the creative industry – design, fashion, photography, arts, etc.

“Do not read success stories, you will get only message. Read failure stories, you will get the message coupled with ideas to get success” – Abdul Kalam.

This quote coupled with a few others have greatly shaped and defined the ethos of VMM. The name VMM is an acronym for Voix Meets Mode. Voix and Mode are two French words with the first meaning voice and the latter Fashion. As a project VMM couldn’t be further away from “failure”. Actually the latest edition, Vol. 5 – Modern Muse; has sold out. It is the first time this happens and we are extremely proud of their feat. We consulted with them strategy wise so we would like to think we contributed towards it as well.

As a brand we understand that we don’t have a smooth path in front of us. Many challenges are likely to come our way and not all will produce the expected outcome. The aim is to develop a unyielding brand able to grow consistently in a sustainable manner whilst adding value to every project we engage with. Supporting VMM is the right thing to do for us since it also shows our intent in doing the right thing. We saw an inspiring project with potential and we want to work with it from the ground up.

“Inspiring creative minds”

Vol.5 Modern Muse is already sold-out but you can check out more of their amazing work here.