Opinion / 23.10.20 / 4 min read

We’re partnering with tech experts, and here’s why.

It’s time for a focus on what matters.

A 2011 university study suggested people check their phones 34 times per day – although industry insiders believe that number to be closer to 150 daily sessions. This is a crazy amount of time each day spent looking at a device.

Compound that with Zoom calls and the intense nature of working from home – our brains are actually suffering. The focus and quality of our thinking is slowly being spread thin. Those 1-2 hrs per day screen time on your mobile –endlessly going through your feed – that’s zombie time.

We’re partnering with tech experts, and here’s why.

Imagine if you read, wrote or discussed growing your business for a portion of that time. Or heaven forbid created something truly unique online. Now I know I’m generalising here, but it’s this uniqueness that I feel is getting lost in the tech-space. The mothership of Google and Facebook have pushed us to their tried and trusted formula, and for us it inhibits creativity far too early in the process.

I’m not saying we are going back to the dreaded Flash-based campaign microsites with annoying pop-ups, and of course search algorithms and optimisation need to be considered. But real uniqueness comes from breaking down barriers, looking sideways at an industry or competitive set and finding that distinctive insight.

As we know creating digital products is a clever business. We gather insight and data, we craft user experiences and seamless journeys and then the life can get sucked out of it with the mountain of tech jargon, scope creep, technical debt and change requests.

At the risk of sounding like a luddite, at Mr B & Friends – we don’t build anymore. We partner with real experts in specific technologies from multiple disciplines and together explore what’s really possible. Yes, we’ve got the UX, design, social and content down, but when it comes to code, it’s simply nonsense for us to try to cover every tech eventuality. So, we’re leaving that to our recommended friends at two or three trusted tech partners who collaborate with us to bring our brand magic to life digitally. There’s no hand-overs or mixed messages, we work seamlessly and stick to our strengths.

Having worked this way for most of 2020, I can honestly say – we’re doing our best work yet.

The benefits to our clients are four-fold:

  • Opinions from all sides. Tech and creativity have a left-right brain tension. We want to harness this, debate what really matters for our clients to produce the world’s best digital experiences.
  • Experts in your corner. Having run and built digital teams, we’ve seen the pitfalls. Now we act as our client’s brand guardian building a team fit for purpose, not cookie-cutter. We think on behalf of the client and the user.
  • Focus on overall experience. We have specialist strategy, insight, UX, content, creative, design and motion experts all working to provide the very best digital experience bar none.
  • User-first but tech-agnostic. We don’t push a specific technology, CMS or platform. That decision comes later after exploring the big picture and user needs. We think how and where the user will be and how they will consume our product. We think focusing our efforts on our expertise makes much more sense for us and our clients.

 

 

Sarah Dennis

Marketing Director