There are plenty of cliche movie tropes out there. Like the hero who walks calmly away from an explosion. The hardboiled detective who needs to solve “one last case” before retirement. Even the aliens landing and demanding “take me to your leader.” But there’s one movie trope that I’ve always loved most: the “getting the gang together” montage.
Think about action classics like Armageddon, Gone In 60 Seconds, and Ocean’s Eleven.
There’s something about someone faced with an impossible task—saving the world, stealing the car, defeating the zombies—assembling a team of niche specialists. You just know that these experts can achieve impossible things once they come together.
What does this have to do with digital marketing?
True, the obstacles that you face with your digital marketing team probably won’t include hurtling asteroids or robot takeovers. But we still play a significant role in the success and visibility of your business, which can feel as dire as the apocalypse.
It’s essential to have a deep understanding of who your team is, what their specialties are, and what you can expect from them. After all, you wouldn’t want to send your IT guy into a gunfight with the alien overlord.
As a full-service digital marketing team, Savy does advertising a little different
Our “getting the gang together” montage happened years ago when we built our in-house team of experts. And we’re not saying the way we do it is the only way. But after over 15 years working together as Savy, we feel like we’ve got a pretty good thing going. Because we’re a small team, we don’t have a top-down structure. Instead, we’re all specialists in our own niches, collaborating to create effective results.
So now, without further ado, we’d like to introduce ourselves, our roles, and what you can expect from every member of our team.
Agency Director (AKA The Team Captain)
As the “big picture thinker” on the team, the agency director charts new courses, makes connections, and maintains long-term relationships. They’ll often be your first point of contact, working with you to identify marketing goals and then briefing the creative team about your project before kickoff. With a deep understanding of process design and execution, business development, sales management, and team leadership, the agency director serves as a touchpoint for client success.
You can usually find him: putting together briefs, meeting with clients, and ensuring the team has the information and resources they need to get the job done correctly.
Creative Director (AKA The Visionary)
With a position that’s equal parts art, science, and intuition, the creative director is the team’s North Star. They serve as a guide; they’re here to recognize, nurture, and protect other people’s good ideas. The creative director is a jack of all trades. They might spend mornings brainstorming taglines, afternoons reviewing website designs, and evenings thumbing through reports, dreaming up your next big campaign.
You can usually find her: leading brainstorming sessions, combing through reports for relevant data, and crafting beautiful, effective brand strategies.
When asked about her role, our creative director, Christina, said:
I love it. I was born creative. I’ll never forget constantly getting in trouble in kindergarten from drawing outside the lines and making new ones. It’s no different today. I love the process of creating ideas that push boundaries, change directions, get attention, move people, and inspire action.
Project Director (AKA The Wrangler)
What happens when you put a bunch of creatives together in a room? Let’s just say there’s a fine line between chaos and creativity. Luckily, the project director stays grounded so that the rest of us can keep our heads in the clouds without bumping into each other. This is the team member in charge of both top-level and “down in the weeds” organization. Whether she’s orchestrating schedules, ensuring project benchmarks are met, or managing spreadsheets, she does so fastidiously.
You can usually find her: drafting a project check-in email with one hand and messaging the creative teams with the other while live-chatting tech support to improve our project management software.
Asking Lauren about her role went down like this…
Lauren 1:29 PM
I’m assuming you don’t need a quote from me?Brenda 1:29 PM
I mean, I’ll take one if you’ll give it 😉Lauren 1:33 PM
I’m an extra on videos
Damn straight, Lauren. Just keep doing your thing.
Content (AKA The Wordsmiths)
Far from being “just the words people,” the content team includes strategists, planners, dreamers, and doers. Under the content director’s guidance, the team helps bring ideas to life through skilled copywriting. They’re the down-in-the-weeds team players who agonize over synonyms and are always on the lookout for the verb that brings your brand to life.
Content is your team of bloggers, website copywriters, social media captioneers, and newsletter expositionists. They’re the ones who pour their heart and soul into your three-word tagline and make sure your website copy is captivating and relevant for both people and SEO bots alike.
You can usually find them: typing 85 words per minute with their eyes closed while pressing a thesaurus to their foreheads as if they could absorb the words telepathically.
Our content team says:
I feel like my job as a content and copywriter is a lot like playing dress up. With each brand I work with, I try on a bunch of different voices, tones and writing styles. And if I’m doing it right, I become a sort of mirror, reflecting the brand back to the business owner so they can tweak and adjust the “costume” until they finally see their vision come to life. — Katie
As the Senior Content Writer for Savy, I get to do my favorite thing every day—play with words. I love to discover their possibilities, whether that’s short and snappy for a social post or strategically poetic for a site’s About page. Best of all is seeing how our collective roles—from design to development—come together to bring a brand’s message to life. — Molly
Leave it to the “word nerds” to sum it up so perfectly!
Design (AKA The Artists)
The visual thinkers and creative professionals, designers are the heart and soul of your digital marketing team. They take concepts, words, and strategies from the rest of the team and transform them into show-stopping, beautiful brands. They’re the ones who understand color theory and how images evoke emotions. As a result, they can distill your brand’s identity, ethos, and emotion into something as small as a logo or expand it writ large across an entire website.
When you work with a full-service design team, you’ve got graphic artists, web designers, animation experts, and social media designers in your back pocket. And, because we handle it all in-house, you get cohesive visual assets across all platforms, which shows your brand’s authenticity and reinforces consumer trust.
You can usually find them: wearing their earbuds, streaming lo-fi hip hop beats, and sketching out website designs more intricate than the Sistine Chapel.
From our design director, Luisa:
The creative process is always sweeter when we have a team that shares the creative flow in a way that inspires and motivates. It makes a huge difference to know that we’ve got each other’s back and that we will do what it takes to get shit done. No ego, just honesty, creativity, and hard work. Creating something beautiful comes with learning something deeper about ourselves and the people around us.
What designers do in a day, according to designers:
Check my to-do task list, plan out the day. Research. Implement. Scroll TikTok for inspiration. Ok, back to work! Check the list again. Have I made any progress? Yes! Add more things to the list. Brainstorm with content. Brainstorm with designers. Ask Lauren questions. Create, create, create. Break for food…probably a burrito of sorts? And then get ready to do it all again tomorrow. — Audrey
I spend my days creating logos out of lines, designing a website from a white page, and going down rabbit holes of color palettes. Lots of doing and undoing and redoing again. Having a team who has each other’s back and can bounce inspiration and ideas off one another definitely makes the work week better. — Kalea
Development (AKA The Tech Wizards)
Every action or adventure movie needs a tech specialist. Someone who can make sense of blinking green lines of binary code and, with a few deft flicks of the keyboard, make things happen. It’s no different for your full-service digital marketing team.
In fact, our in-house development team sets Savy apart in our market. Because our developers are dedicated full-time members of our team, they get to know you (and your project) on an intimate level. They’re involved at the ground level, so they understand your vision, needs, and expectations. And they work closely with the design and content teams to help bring their creative concepts to life.
You can usually find them: Listen, I’m honestly not sure. Sequestering themselves away with their computers and emerging with brilliant coding solutions. Is it sorcery? Is it science? I don’t know and don’t care, because it gets stuff done.
When we asked our lead developer, Mihail, about his role, he offered up the following words of profound wisdom:
Well said, Mihail. Well said.
Full-service digital marketing teams: saving the world one brand at a time
Ok, so we’re not blasting down asteroids or saving the world from zombies. But we get to do something that’s just as important. We’re helping build the brands that make the world a better, brighter place.
We’re honored to be the team you trust with your ideas, ambitions, and livelihoods. We know the stakes are high. And that’s why we treat every morning like a “getting the gang together” movie montage.
So, the next time you think about the team behind your marketing, I hope you picture Savy’s digital marketing team slow-motion walking towards our desks every morning. Your expert team of niche specialists—assembled and ready for another day of getting shit done on your brand’s behalf.