With over two decades of industry insight, Lassoo Media and PR is reshaping the landscape, simplifying complexities, and prioritising what truly matters for clients, partners, and the team.
This month independent agency Lassoo Media and PR launched its refreshingly simple brand promise – We Make It Easier.
While the industry has seen people and trends come and go, Lassoo’s philosophy of getting close and staying close to their clients’ business still holds true, and coincidentally (or not) has been the foundation for the brand refresh they have recently undertaken.
So, with more than 20 years business under their belt, Lassoo has taken this experience and distilled it into the Lassoo promise: to make it easier for everyone who encounters them. From the colleagues they sit next to, through to the partners they work closely with – by removing complexity and focusing resources on what’s important.
“We have seen the cycles of full service and specialist agencies, the rise of digital and social media and understand this has resulted in more fragmentation,” says Lassoo Founder and CEO Bridgette Smith.
“Some might say: less focus on creativity, more on data, but we strive to have both. In response to this fragmentation, we have changed the makeup of our media teams so we can continue to deliver on our promises.
“We still believe in and have the results to prove the power of creativity delivered to mass audiences.”
Integrity and supporting their clients and the industry is instilled in the business, with Lassoo being a proud, long-standing member of the Commercial Communications Council and recently joining IMANZ.
One strand of Lassoo’s Kaupapa is Kaha – being willing to have courageous conversations and stand up for what is right.
This has many layers across the business. Challenging clients’ strongly held views can only happen if the relationships are strong, and Lassoo is lucky to work with great clients that allow these conversations to be had.
“Perhaps that comes with the territory of being an independent agency and that’s why they have chosen us in the first place,” says Bridgette.
“We tend to do our best work when we can be a true extension of the clients marketing team, supporting them across media, PR, social, digital specialisations,” she adds.
Lassoo is lucky to have worked with longstanding heritage Kiwi brands such as Sleepyhead and Postie for many years alongside many others.
“We have what we like to call boomerang clients with one who has worked with us in multiple different roles over 12 years. We like to think we are brave, and it seems we attract brave marketers – they may not be the largest in their category but have ambition and that ‘can do’ Kiwi mentality.” Bridgette says .
The success of clients such as Electric Kiwi and Turners has been a testament to the willingness of their marketers to share confidential business information and objectives with Lassoo to really inform the planning process, with Turners having just been named a finalist in the Global Effie Awards.
It’s no secret that an agency’s greatest asset is its people and, in an effort to support a better work life balance for the team, Lassoo moved to a four-day work week – much to the envy of many in the industry!
During the trial period the company closely monitored client service levels and found that it has improved the output of Lassoo as a whole. Everyone was obviously keen to make it work, but that wouldn’t have been possible without the support of their clients.
Occasionally things come up on a Friday, but part of the deal is being available if you are needed and “everyone has been extremely cognisant of that”, says Lassoo GM, Daniel Currin.
This has become an important part of their employer brand; the team is re-invigorated, and retention and talent attraction is at an all-time high.
“Our clients have been curious about the experiment with many looking to see if they can implement it themselves,” says Daniel.
Another one of Lassoo’s philosophies, is that they have always believed they should have experienced practitioners working with their clients, as they are ultimately in charge of large amounts of money and play a part in business success.
“This year we have strengthened our insight, investment and planning resource, along with digital capability,” continues Daniel.
“We have a ‘resource for what will come’ mentality which perhaps is a luxury of a privately owned business rather than scaling up only when new business is won, leaving existing clients low on resource in the process,” he says.
On that note, Lassoo recently took a leaf out of its own research playbook, and initiated a regular Client Satisfaction Survey, with their initial June result delivering a solid +70 NPS® score – a high bar they’re looking to maintain.
On the topic of We Make It Easier, Lassoo were guided through this brand evolution by Head of Insight James Roberts, in collaboration with strategic stalwart David Thomason (DT) to develop a framework that ensures
making it easier continues to be at the forefront of everything Lassoo does.
“Because it’s in our DNA to be agile, honest, and innovative – we decided to look at everything in the business, including our brand,” says James.
“With DT’s help to drive the process and ensure we weren’t just existing in our own echo chamber; we conducted qualitative research across a range of relevant parties including our clients, asking them what was important when selecting a media and PR agency – but also the greater context of their lives and where our respective proposition lived,” adds James.
The most common insight uncovered was that marketing was getting harder, not easier.
The Lassoo team were interested in this finding given the promise of technological advancement in the industry – everything deployed at the speed of light with the optimum message delivered to target audiences, at the exact right moment, because they also look like someone who bought an expensive cat bed and a mountain bike last week. Surely that should make it easier, right?
“The reality is marketers are being asked to do more with less – or at best, the same,” continues James.
“There are more products, services, messages, channels, audience segments and ambitions and communicating
with those audiences due to increased fragmentation of media consumption”.
“It’s not only complex, it’s also always changing.”
Despite all of this, the research revealed that marketing teams typically have less people, time and money, and more pressure to deliver results. And work is only one part of a marketer’s life.
“Yet when we looked at the communications sector, everyone is pretty much repeating the same narrative,”
says James.
“We went through the exercise of taking a range of communication agency websites and looking at them without any logos, images, or design. It was basically impossible to differentiate them based purely on the website copy.
“There was a gap between what was offered by the industry and what at heart Lassoo has always built its foundations on – client service.
“Yes, we offer all the expertise, strategic nous, and everything you would expect from a media or PR agency but, we want our clients to feel like they can share their problems with us, or most importantly be the first partner they call when they have a problem that needs solving.
Lassoo understands that what’s important to their clients isn’t just what happens at work. They have lives, families and friends who want them to be the best versions of themselves as well.
“If we can make it easier to develop more effective work, we know this will mean not only saving time, energy, and money, but also reducing the stress our clients carry home.
“This has given Lassoo a revitalised sense of purpose and a goal to focus innovation around,” says James.
To add to this, in the new year Lassoo is partnering with Rich Rowley from Brain Badge to unlock the team’s cognitive potential. Like most organisations in New Zealand (with up to 30 percent of Kiwis experiencing neuro diversity) Lassoo want to unlock the team’s true potential and design cohesive ways of working to enable complex problem solving more effectively and efficiently.
Moving forward the Lassoo team will be asking themselves these questions:
- How do we get better at simplifying the complicated?
- How do we work better as a team?
- How do we collaborate better with our clients?
- How do we develop a more effective solution more efficiently?
“We often forget, amid all the busyness, pressure, demands, KPIs, targets, deadlines, and stress that there is an element of magic to this industry and where possible, we want everyone to enjoy the journey,” concludes James.
This article was first published in our December/January 2024 issue.
