Join Sara Helmy, the Founder and CEO of Tribu, as she discusses unconventional advertising and branding strategies. Tribu focuses on human connection and uses innovative, progressive advertising media to develop consumer loyalty. They emphasize the importance of embracing change in the digital world and highlight the role of artificial intelligence in shaping the industry. The episode also explores the use of branding and digital marketing to build strong tribes for clients and emphasizes the need to start with SEO as a foundation for agency success.
Sara Helmy is the Owner of Tribu Marketing, Advertising, and Design, a creative agency specializing in digital marketing and graphic design. With over a decade of experience, she’s a seasoned entrepreneur and marketing expert, known for her passion for human connection, consumer psychology, and innovative branding strategies. Sara’s leadership in advertising and her commitment to creativity make her a valuable guest for discussions on entrepreneurship, branding, and the digital marketing landscape. Here are a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Masters in Marketing Agency:
- Tribu offers clients direct access to their team, allowing for a more personal and efficient partnership.
- Started with Part Apparel in college by raising funds for the working poor by selling artist-designed t-shirts.
- Unconventional approach of earning money for a cause instead of relying on donations.
- Tribu’s unconventional approach includes no account executives and creating tribes for each partner, fostering direct relationships with the creative team.
- They employ a subscription model for 80% of their business, providing predictability and allowing clients to add services over time.
- Progressive advertising means embracing new capabilities and technologies to improve marketing strategies.
- Starting with SEO provides a solid foundation for agency success.
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Quotables
- 28:00 – “That is one of the things that makes it hard the way that we’re structured. We talk about scope a lot at the start and we set expectations there at the same time, like we don’t want our partners just to stay within scope, to stay within scope. We want to grow our relationship with the brands that we’re lucky to serve, so another unconventional tribute is that we have a sales department, some agencies have their new business team. We have three solutions consultants, that’s what we call them. And their entire function is to listen to a tribe. When a tribe is saying “Hey, whose partner needs this? And then go execute and have that conversation, so there is a resource internally inside of tribute where if you’re working on a tribe and you see that there is a need for something that is not within that scope.”
- 32:50 – “If you’re a partner or a customer or dealing with any agency, there’s so much onus on you to know exactly what you need. And the reality of business is that it changes really fast. And something that you thought you knew exactly what you needed five months ago has drastically changed. And in the act of discovery in this type of work, maybe the partner thinks that, “oh, I want this” but they learn “actually guys, we both kind of agree we need this”, so that flexibility I think is something that customers really enjoy the ability to say “I thought this was going to be my number one priority in Q2, but actually we’ve got this event coming up and now this is it. Instead, let’s use our resources here and they don’t have to go back to a contract every time, you know? So that helps”.
- 34:34 – “We all try at Tribune, we’re not perfect at this, but we try really hard to like, “Let’s please not have like this scheduled recurring repeating meeting that bogs down everybody’s calendar that both sides eventually end up feeling is just another meeting on top of many meetings I have to attend.” Let’s make that once-a-month discussion really count and let’s just pick up the phone and call each other in between.”
- 45:50 – Sara: “If I had to teach something to other marketers, what would it be?”
Josh: “To be honest, I think everything you’ve said in this has been very focused on that question. But I guess I’ll squeeze the grape and see if you have anything else.”
Sara: “I think the number one thing would honestly be to fail fast. And to not overcomplicate, keep it simple or fail fast. I think we get really lost in coming up with a perfect strategy and it’s like, “hey, don’t ever forget that execution is where the truth is told.” And get to execution, and fail fast.” - 20:43 – “This ability to work directly with your graphic designer and develop a relationship with your designer as well as the person doing your website as well as the person publishing your social and like that really direct and close relationship with the hands that are actually touching the work has been born in that. I don’t know if that fully answers the question, but that’s kind of just the general gist of how it came to be. That’s one of the ways we’re unconventional.”