Chad Franzen 8:37
Would you say that the primary primary channels that you might use for communication or for marketing related communications have changed quite a bit or stayed similar?
Arne Hurty 8:47
Well, they do. I mean, we don’t we don’t do the media buying, per se, BayCreative so we’re more focused on the creative. Yeah, certainly, they’ve changed right social media, how video gets used has changed dramatically. You know, it’s gone from it’s gone from, you know, a, almost an untouchable medium for so many small and mid sized businesses to something that they can just overdo very easily if they’re not careful. So that’s been interesting. And likewise, presentations and the focus on you know, hybrid work and people, people meaning just like you and I are meeting right now, you know, the, the lack of the drive to an office or, you know, find a meeting place, and sitting down and looking at people in a room, you know, those days have just kind of withered away. And the onus now falls so much more heavily on the quality of the materials you have to show because you don’t have the opportunity with body language or I don’t know, pheromones in the room. Um, you don’t have the opportunity to supplement what you’re doing in that same way. So if anything, I think it’s driven, it’s driven a stronger, a stronger push towards quality in, in design and in story flow in graphics. It’s, it’s the industry has kind of pushed things in that direction. Another one is this AI, you know, AI is coming up and haunting all of us and nipping at our heels. And in some cases, it’s very, very exciting. But, you know, we had an internal creative discussion not too long ago. And one of our team said, you know, well, one of the big differentiators is AIs are never going to feel and, and, you know, certainly they can emulate feelings and emulate emotions. I imagine that’s the case, but they don’t actually feel and what, what comes out of actual feeling? And how does that influence the work we’re doing? I think is a is an important direction to look right now. And certainly, it’s one that we’ve got our eye on at BayCreative.
Chad Franzen 11:03
What would you say are some keys, you may have already answered this on the couple of other questions I’ve already asked you, but what would you say are some keys to running a successful agency with the kind of staying power that BayCreative has shown to have? Well,
Arne Hurty 11:17
I would say, not giving up not checking out, you know, if you have your if you have, you know, a sturdy, you know, commitment to you know, sticking with it, that’s, that’s kind of what’s what’s kept us through in a big way, it’s like, there really isn’t much else I want to go do. So that helps, that certainly helps. And then, yeah, and then just, you know, treating customers, right, you know, looking looking to the relationship, looking to sustaining a relationship, and, you know, finding ways to stay relevant with your customer. And, and, and being in there for, for them moving forward. You know, we’ve, we’ve done that our customer, many of our customers have been with us for, you know, 10 years or so. And it’s exciting because we we’ve, we’ve been able to see how, within an organization, new people moving in other people moving out, we become some, and some of the ways we become the old, the old ones on the guard, in a way we’re able to carry forward what’s been happening already there with, with a new person at a company. So
Chad Franzen 12:28
it’s interesting. Speaking of not giving up, how has, how is BayCreative kind of survived things that are out of your control, you know, like the COVID pandemic or the recession in 2008? How have you guys kind of plowed through those?
Arne Hurty 12:41
I mean, that’s a really good question, too. It’s a like, using the metaphor of, you know, a boulder and a pebble. And you know, the two in an earthquake, right, the Boulder is going to crack, the pebbles just gonna get pushed around, and you know, bumped up against some other pebbles, right. And we’re kind of small. And so, you know, being being the size we are, you know, we kind of that’s kind of what our experience has been when there’s been an economic downturn or when there’s been we’ve been through a few of them now. We’ve kind of just found ourselves getting pushed up against other opportunities. And, and it’s worked out pretty well. We’ve been able to kind of keep pretty steady the whole the whole stretch.
Chad Franzen 13:21
Good. Very nice. Yeah. With, with everything you do for your clients, how important is it to do marketing for yourselves?
Arne Hurty 13:32
That is, that is the bane of our existence. Right. It’s, it’s the cobblers kids don’t have shoes, right? So it’s no different. I mean, we’re just, you know, it’s, it’s like pulling teeth to get our own stuff going. So, you know, we do our best. And we’re, we’re kind of in the middle of a push right now to get a few things together. But it’s, it’s it’s always a challenge, because we’re always putting the customers first though.
Chad Franzen 13:58
Yeah, so many, you know, I’ve spoken to other kind of leaders like yourself, and you guys all say very similar things. What do you think that is?
Arne Hurty 14:04
I mean, it’s, it’s, you know, frankly, I think it’s a little it’s a little bit of negligence, right? I mean, we really ought to treat ourselves as our own as one of our own best customers, you know, and afford ourselves the same care and respect and attention that we would any client, right. So it’s, it’s a little bit embarrassing not to not to be doing that. But I would say it’s in and it’s also the kind of thing that you don’t want driven out of just pure, you know, gross necessity, like, Oh, my God, our numbers are down, we gotta go push, you know, and then it’s a scramble and then it’s disingenuous in so many ways. I mean, it really I think the best work you know, comes from, you know, taking a step back and relaxing, deciding about who you really are, who you want to be as a company, how you want to project that and can Keeping an eye on, you know, keeping your brand tied to its roots, basically, I mean, that’s what we tell our customers, when we work on brand projects with them, we, we focus strongly on connecting the brand, to the roots of the organization, the vision, the purpose of existing. And, and then and then you have more freedom in what you do and how you express yourself. And so that that works for any of our customers as well as it works for us. Right?
Chad Franzen 15:30
Hey, you, you founded the company, like we said, in 1997, it was kind of driven partly by your entrepreneurial spirit. So you are an entrepreneur, but that was, you know, in 1997, do you still feel like you have that same entrepreneurial spirit? And do you bring that to the table now? In your regional responsibilities with BayCreative?
Arne Hurty 15:49
Yeah, I think so. But but certainly supplemented by the other people that we have on the team that we’ve got some wonderful people at BayCreative and, and I think everybody there has has a notion and idea about entrepreneurism. So it, you know, again, we’re small enough to have that kind of shared approach and goal. So, you know, people step right, it’s wonderful, um, you know, wanting to help develop the art, the organization and build it out, and, and keep us growing. So,
Chad Franzen 16:22
do you have some kind of specific goals? What are some of your goals with BayCreative moving forward,
Arne Hurty 16:28
we have, we have definitely focused our attention around some key service areas. So you know, brand cultivation, is something that we focus on, we focus on presentation, excellence, so presentation work, we focus on motion, we say motion, because video makes you think of, you know, one or a few things, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s short video pieces, it’s the animation, it’s all things associated with that. And then we’ve we’ve had a really strong, we had a really strong support in sales enablement, with organizations. So helping sales teams learn and understand and stay focused on what they’re doing, providing them with all the materials and tools they need. both internally and externally, it’s been something that we’ve been very focused on. So we’re kind of zeroing in on those four areas, as part right now. And that’s been a Strategy of ours, you know, moving ahead here. So it seems to be seems to be resonating well, with with, with our customers.
Chad Franzen 17:32
Very nice. Hey, I have one more question for you. But first, tell me how people can find out more information about BayCreative,
Arne Hurty 17:38
gladly. Easiest way to do that is just come to BayCreative, that’s BayCreative.com. If you land on our site, you can poke around there, we’ve got contact forms, and, you know, you can always send an email to marketing@BayCreative.com as well. We’re not overloaded, you know, again, we’re a smaller company will will certainly be able to read the the message and and look forward to hearing from people.
Chad Franzen 18:06
Okay, awesome. Hey, last question for you. Are there any daily rituals that you find particularly important for yourself? What’s kind of a typical day?
Arne Hurty 18:16
Typical day is is just for me personally, yeah, typical day for me personally is, is you know, getting up I, you know, I keep, I tried to keep a couple of books by my side, and I tried to never about business. And I tried, and I tried to give myself, you know, 1015 minutes here and there during the day to stop and read a chapter. And it’s just a real nice way to separate and break away from the, from the daily thing. And, you know, that kind of perspective is, you know, gained from just doing that relaxation from doing that and just lets you step back in in a nice way.
Chad Franzen 18:59
Sure. Any recommendations, based on recent books you’ve read?
Arne Hurty 19:06
Let’s see here. I like Alan Watts, and excited about reading doesn’t matter. Kind of a recent. It’s a recent acquisition by me. I have never read that book by him. So I’m excited to dig into that and look at that.
Chad Franzen 19:22
Okay, sounds good. Hey, Arne. It’s been great to talk to you. Thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate your story and your perspective. Thank you so much.
Arne Hurty 19:30
Absolutely. Thank you so much. Take care.
Chad Franzen 19:32
So long, everybody.
Outro 19:33
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