An Awesome Offsite

On Wednesday we gathered our entire 200+ employees to work together in taking Marketing with Meaning to the next level. Although we have been doing meaningful work for years, and have been using the model internally for at least a year, we felt the need to bring our community together for two reasons: (1) we wanted to share our progress and enroll our staff to help further build and leverage the concept and (2) we have a lot of new people to bring into the fold.

This brings me to one of the deeper benefits of meaningful marketing to the marketers and agencies that embrace it: Marketing with Meaning gives the work we do deeper meaning for us. I cannot capture this idea any better than Douglas McGregor did:

“People want their companies to stand for something, and they will give their best when they are working in common cause for something they can believe in, a product or cause that means something.”

A big part of our business strategy at Bridge Worldwide is to make our agency a great place to work. This helps us continue to retain and attract great talent as we grow quickly in a very competitive market. Over the years we’ve made several improvements in our culture and benefits to make our office a great place to walk into in the morning. And we’ve been named a Top 25 Small Business to Work For two years in a row.

But to keep our strong momentum and reach new levels of greatness, we need to do more work that excites and drives us. The work itself must be motivating, and meaningful marketing is getting us there. The bonus: Our clients and their consumers love the work, too.

Overall, the day really exceeded my expectations. The discussions were rich, folks really seemed to get the concept, and we generated a ton of meaningful marketing ideas for both our clients and our own organization. With every breakout session and every conversation over beers after the event, my confidence grew that we are really onto something - and we’ve got the people who will lead us to success.

One final cool thing to share is the video below that a sub-team put together to kick off the day. Enjoy.