CASE STUDY

Cella’s Transformative Approach Develops an Exceptional In-House Social Media Team to Create Brand Consistency

KEY TAKEAWAYS

The Problem: The client, a top global brick-and-mortar and e-commerce retailer, faced challenges with an outsourced social media strategy provided by a costly external agency. The agency struggled to convey the brand consistently to customers and incurred significant delays in content creation. The client recognized the need for reimagining and fine tuning their social media strategies.

The Solution: The client sought Cella's expertise to establish an in-house creative team, resulting in the creation of a fully functional embedded team within three months. The client invested in creating a customized managed solution, and Cella meticulously recruited, developed and onboarded top-tier talent to address the client's diverse needs.

The Results: Four years later, Cella’s thriving embedded team has become a core unit for our client, driving an on-point social media strategy for our client. The team’s success led to their expansion into support for influencer social media marketing. Today, they produce engaging, experiential social media marketing campaigns, keeping our client ahead of the latest trends – and the competition.

The Problem

Cella’s client, an omnichannel brick-and-mortar, e-commerce retailer needed to disengage from an underperforming social media agency. Core issues included misaligned communication, ineffective brand consistency, extensive content editing, resulting in time loss, delayed campaigns and increased costs, that had the potential to adversely impact customer relationships.

The content the agency produced wasn’t accurately capturing the brand voice. To complicate matters further, the content creation process had become inefficient, involving a considerable amount of revisions resulting in production delays.

The Solution

The client adopted a phased approach to bring social media management in-house, engaging Cella to implement their custom managed solution. We began by identifying the leadership team for the group, selecting senior art directors, a production manager and a copy lead. Cella provided an actionable plan to help the client build out each discipline for the team. The embedded team encompassed roles such as senior art directors, motion art directors, production managers, copywriters, designers, project managers and more. We swiftly identified strategic leadership roles, recruited for them and onboarded new team members within a 30-day timeframe.

This new team was tasked with capturing the brand voice, cultivating an engaging online presence and developing a dynamic social media management strategy. Initially, the team included 17 members covering a range of roles including art direction, graphics, creative production, copywriting, creative operations and design. Cella established a formal leadership structure and added team leaders who were identified, recruited and onboarded within 30 days. These leaders guided the team’s operations, and as the team began to successfully sync with their mission, additional staff were onboarded to meet the growing demand. This fully-assembled social media team represented a complement of disciplines and skills that met the client’s every need:

2 Project Managers
2 Senior Art Directors
2 Senior Designers
3 Designers
1 Motion Art Director
1 Motion Designer
1 Production Manager
1 Senior Copywriter
3 Copywriters
1 Merchandise Coordinator

This custom managed solution enabled the client to develop effective brand consistency and ensure creative output met expectations. Instead of battling lost time and rising costs, Cella’s efficient solution laid the groundwork for the client to begin realizing cost savings.

Blueprint for Success

Cella provided a comprehensive solution, understanding the client's needs, challenges and objectives. That solution, however, was based on our knowledge of how to establish and support a high-performing team. With the creative team expanding from 17 to 35 members, it achieved an impressive retention tenure average of 2.5 years. Cella's recruitment strategy aligned benefits with organizational values, fostering a motivated and flourishing workforce.

Cella’s comprehensive solution provided:

A thorough understanding of the client’s needs, challenges and objectives
Significant growth in the creative team in successive years
A retention tenure of 2.5 years demonstrating a positive workplace culture

Cella’s strategy included a competitive and appealing offer to creative talent:

By aligning benefits with the organizational values and prioritizing employee well-being and development, Cella cultivated a motivated, engaged and high-performing workforce poised for long-term success.
By implementing yearly raises, promotions and performance reviews, Cella has set an example of fostering a culture of continuous learning, growth and recognition. These practices promoted employee satisfaction, engagement and a high rate of retention.
Investing in learning, development, upskilling and career pathing initiatives was evidence of Cella’s dedication to supporting employee growth, satisfaction and retention.

By implementing a leadership structure that prioritizes client protection from co-employment risks, Cella proved its commitment to maintaining standards of integrity within client relationships. Because Cella creates a framework that motivates and empowers its teams, they are able to drive sustained performance, achieve organizational objectives and contribute to the client's overall success.

The Results

The embedded team evolved into a core unit for the client by seamlessly integrating with their operations, demonstrating innovation and showcasing their expertise and exceptional performance. The embedded team accurately captured the client’s brand voice, effectively engaging with their social media audience. Their expertise in creative production, copywriting, creative operations, art direction and graphic design blended together seamlessly, enabling them to deliver comprehensive and integrated solutions that are still driving the client’s marketing objectives today.

Cella is dedicated to employee satisfaction and retention. To demonstrate our employee-centric approach, we have provided yearly raises, promotions and performance reviews to cultivate growth and recognize the achievements of the marketing, digital and creative professionals on this internal team. We continue to invest in their learning, development, upskilling opportunities and career pathing initiatives. The focus on recruitment, development and retention of this select group of creative social media experts has produced a powerhouse team that continues to exceed expectations.

Conclusion

In just three months, Cella orchestrated the creation of a social media dream team, fully integrated under the client's umbrella. This expertly-assembled team exceeded expectations and quickly understood the client’s voice and developed brand consistency. Today, this social media powerhouse is driving an on-point social media strategy for one of the top 3 e-commerce sites in the U.S.*

And that’s something we like. A lot.

*Source: https://www.insiderintelligence.com/content/top-10-ecommerce-sites-us