Cerebra

Here’s an idea: “take this product and send this to some online influencers and get them to tweet about it.” Yes, that is a common brief to an agency, and no, you should not simply go ahead and get that done. Unless you’re the Reserve Bank and your product is money, simply sending stuff to an influencer is unlikely to achieve the campaign success you had hoped for.

The question of whether or not to use timesheets is one that every agency has faced, and one that needs to challenged on many levels. Teams who have never logged time shudder in fear at the prospect but it doesn’t need to a scary experience. This got me thinking of how we could adapt an essential practice into a dynamic agency that prides itself on being agile and innovative.

You’re asking people to tick off hours into a prescribed big brother model – confining them in a box and setting boundaries for their interaction with the work they’re engaged in.

I’m not married and I don’t have kids. The closest I have ever come to being a mom is looking after my two ageing cats. Yet this information became completely irrelevant when I started working at Cerebra, and one of my clients was an FMCG product that was targeted at mothers trying to make better choices for their families. I had to make sure that the brand voice was that of a mother, speaking to other mothers.

Recently (a fellow Cerebran) and myself visited the Johannesburg Philharmonic Orchestra as a team building exercise. While listening to the music I started thinking how Cerebra is like an orchestra.

It all starts with the composer
What do Beethoven, Mozart, Strauss and have in common? A bunch of composers and then John, Cerebra’s strategist … I promise it isn’t a riddle.

So there I was, chatting to a high school buddy and catching up on the past 6 years when he turned and said, “So you just update a status, send a tweet and get paid! Hook me up with a job.”

His sarcasm wasn’t appreciated. If it weren’t for him putting on 20 odd kilograms and living with his mother, I would probably have felt the need to defend myself. Instead, I let the heathen have his small victory while I quietly contemplated all it is that I do.

Here’s a day in the life of a content manager: