Paper Stone Scissors is an award-winning international creative design agency with clients such as Hilton Hotels, Uniqlo, and Hugo Boss. Their highly recognised work spans across branding, advertising, digital, and photoshoots.
The Brief
Advertising agencies all face a three-way business squeeze: intense undercutting by competitors, clients taking work in-house, and constant poaching causing high turnover. Paper Stone Scissors is no exception. I came in as a consultant for their Shanghai office to establish clarity on strategy, marketing, and sales. My main objective was not only to improve the business and grow profits, but to put it ahead of the competition.
What were the obstacles?
1. Market of Undercutting
China’s business culture is plagued by undercutting. The competition reduces costs by cutting corners and work with paper-thin margins. On top of this, clients are unable to evaluate the quality of creative work due to excessive copying. This meant there was little room for marketing spend.
2. Creative vs. Business Culture
With all founders being creative directors, it was only natural that company leadership was dictated by creative. This leads to a higher quality product, but with the negative side effect of business-related work being pushed aside. There was need to push for a productive balance between the two.
3. Lack of Differentiation
Ironically, the advertising agency industry is one where every company feels identical to the other. Because clients could rarely differentiate between competitors, this left the sales process deep in the area of price battles and excessive networking.
Privacy is taken seriously, thus certain details have been edited to maintain confidentiality.
What did I do?
- Consulting
- Strategy
- Data Analysis
- Sales Optimisation
- Marketing
Section 1: Business Strategy
Establishing clarity on the most crucial business actions to take.
For every great initiative, there are many mediocre ones that seem worthwhile on the surface, but don’t actually affect the bottom-line. Every business is heavily weighed down by these mediocre tasks — the difficulty is knowing which is significant, and which is useless.
To alleviate pressure and excite the team, having a crystal clear strategy moving forward that was backed up by evidence was the first essential step. The process begun with a complete audit of the core business: from customer lifetime value down to lead generation of individual channels.
1. Data Collection & Analysis
Avoiding natural assumptions and biases was imperative. The process begun with collecting data across the core business activities and allowing the numbers to paint one side of the story. After analysing the data and combining it with the team’s experience, a more complete picture of the situation became clear.
Note: This data has been altered and is for visualisation purposes only.
2. Extrapolate Key Insights
Some insights deeply changed pre-existing notions of the business, while others re-established strong beliefs. To ensure the company was motivated enough to make changes, I visualised the insights as infographics. These showed the marketing channel conversion rate, cost per acquisition, drop offs in the sales funnel, and more.
3. Informed Business Strategy
After combining numbers as tangible evidence with team experience as intangible evidence, a clear strategy to move the business forward was made. The tactics prescribed all fell under three large strategy umbrellas: raise customer lifetime value, improve team efficiency, and develop sustainable business channels.
Section 2: Sales Optimisation
Capturing maximum value from the business pipeline.
Naturally, a creativity-driven team hates sales. Before I applied statistical analysis on their sales funnel data to locate the critical areas for improvement, I first focused my energy on shifting the team’s mentality towards business and sales. This required speaking in their language — such as my business analogy of a hot-air balloon.
The concept of reducing the amount of fuel (clients) that leaks out of an engine pipe to keep the balloon (company) afloat deeply instilled the importance of sales to the team.
Afterwards, the process of improvement was multi-faceted. Data insights drawn from funnel roadblocks and channel cost-per-acquistion provided accurate diagnosis of key problem areas. This ultimately enabled us to methodically create solutions for specific issues and employ training to mitigate future re-occurrence.
Repeat Business System
Affectionately titled ‘Hotcakes’, a system was devised to increase repeat business from existing clients. This involved repeatedly providing free value over a specific intervals. Behind the scenes was software and routines that ensured its consistent execution.
Digital Client Proposal
To land a compelling first-impression with new clients, we created a new website with easily customisable landing pages on the backend. This enabled the team to efficiently build digital proposals tailored for specific clients when in pursuit of new business.
Sales Psychology Training
Ultimately, the success of a company always depends on the people driving it. Sales psychology training adapted to the Paper Stone Scissors creativity-driven team was employed. It was effective in shifting mindsets and providing a wider array of useable tactics.
Section 3: Work Systemisation
Intentionally designing cultures and systems for productivity.
While generating revenue is one side of the coin, improving efficiencies to increase profits is the other. Fortunately, happy team members who find meaning in their work are highly effective employees. Therefore, it’s good for business to design a culture where people enjoy their day-to-day and reduce frustrating work with efficient systems.
Culture
The Handbook
Culture happens regardless — one might as well intentionally design it to serve the company. A handbook was created that outlined the culture and essence of the company. It played an instrumental role guiding the type of mentality and behaviours desired in the team, ultimately leading to closer team bonds and better work. In conjunction to this, we designed a thoughtful onboarding process that gave a right first impression for new recruits.
Systems
The Playbook
Employees learn, but companies don’t unless there’s a system in place. The Playbook is the system created that covers all of the ‘how-tos’. It documents all of the best practices and ensures that work meets the expected quality standards. Learning is accelerated and the company grows. With clear instructions in video and written format, there are guides for essential work processes across all departments. It teaches the new recruits and reminds the old veterans.
Section 4: Outcome
The main achievements that made a difference.
1. Generated significant year-on-year growth.
I helped grow the revenue of Paper Stone Scissors in Shanghai in less than two years. In parallel to that, I improved the efficiencies of key work processes which ultimately led to higher profitability.
2. Clarity on business and marketing strategy.
In a highly competitive landscape, I provided internal clarity on what are the best strategies to move forward on. This involved cutting out non-essential marketing initiatives and doubling down on those that worked well.
3. Effective team culture & systems put in place.
Set up the foundation for a productive culture to flourish while having the right systems in place to maintain the high quality standards. This led to better communication, work, and happier team members.
“Kaye is the consummate business consulting professional. His eye for detail has helped us to implement changes that made our company more efficient and profitable. He is one of the main reasons why our organization has been successful in generating a year on year growth. I therefore have no hesitation in recommending him. In many aspects, we owe much of our success to Rob Kaye Han.”
Atia Cader — Cofounder & Creative Director
Paper Stone Scissors, D&AD Judge