Allen Adamson - Focus and Forte: How Niching Down as an Agency Drives Success
When starting a career or growing your brand, should you go deep or wide? Should you offer one service and try to be the best at it or become a one-stop-shop for all the services you can offer?
Joining me on this episode is Metaforce co-founder, NYU Stern adjunct professor, and author Allen Adamson who believes that focus drives success and that going deep before going wide opens up even more opportunities for you and your career. For Allen, niching down does NOT restrict your brand's potential. It's all about figuring out what you're good at, honing those abilities, and delivering them well.
We talk about:
- His passion for film that he applied to advertising
- How he uses the intersection between business and creativity to solve nonlinear problems
- Starting his first job in New York at the age of 19 and how he landed his prestigious role at Landor Associates
- Shifting his career from in-house brand management to the agency side to better utilize his creativity
- The challenge of involving your client in the process without expecting them to have perfect creative judgment right away
- How creative decisions as judgment calls that don’t necessarily have right or wrong answers
- Building his personal brand to put himself and Landor on the radar
- How he came to write branding books to establish himself as a thought leader in the industry and win more client attention
- Why he thinks staying connected in what’s going on in the market is the most important criteria for business success
- The importance of being able to anticipate change and manage it in a fast-changing world
- How he built Metaforce as a consultancy that goes beyond consultancies that simply define problems or only sell solutions they can make
- Why he believes having the right team is a key to success
- How he sources talent through referrals and word of mouth
- Counseling clients when they’re chasing over the new “hot” thing like TikTok or Clubhouse
- His mantra for success that revolves around genuinely enjoying what you do
Mentioned in this episode:
Allen Adamson’s published works: https://us.macmillan.com/author/allenpadamson
Metaforce: https://www.metaforce.com/
To connect with Allen, head on over to his channels:
Email: allen@metaforce.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/allen.adamson/
Thanks for listening! If you enjoyed this episode of the podcast, head on over to the following links for more of my work and some valuable resources to get you started on your own branding initiatives. Until the next episode!
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The Brand Design Masters Podcast is targeted to entrepreneurs, designers, creative professionals, and anyone interested in brand strategy, business planning, graphic design, personal branding, trends and marketing.
Philip VanDusen is the owner of Verhaal Brand Design, a brand strategy and design agency based in New Jersey. Philip is a highly accomplished creative executive and expert in brand strategy, graphic design, marketing and creative management. Philip provides design, branding, marketing, career and business advice to creative professionals, entrepreneurs and companies on how to build successful brands for themselves and for the clients and customers they serve.
