Social Media Agency Feature: IZE Creative - a Content Marketing and Digital Branding Agency

Who are we?

IZE Creative is a Content Marketing and Digital Branding firm based out of Kochi, Kerala (Expanding to Bangalore in a month’s time). We specialize in creation of any and all sorts of content – blog posts, newsletters, company profiles, copy writing, illustrations, cartoons, podcasts and videos.

Started in the fall of 2011 as a Social Media Marketing firm, we gradually shifted our focus into a more niche field of content creation, owing to the rising demands of the market and the specialization of the team.

At present, we broadly focus our services on three verticals – Content Marketing, Digital Branding and Live Streaming, each supported by a different team. While Content Marketing remains the centrifugal point of all our ideas and strategies, all of our Digital Branding services are via consultancy. Live Streaming, on the other hand, is a big-time project on its own, in its Secondary Phase of launch and execution (which is as a JV with DayScholars Innovations).

What's in the name?

Ah well, the story goes like this. In 2011, our founder Vijay and another one of his friend spent quite some time to come up with a sensible name with the domain name available too.

7 weeks, millions of Google searches and hundreds of dictionary pages later, we zeroed in on a word “ize”, which is an adverb used to add-on to the meaning of a word, as in strategize, visualize etc. We decided to go forth with it, under the meaning that we would be adding-on value to the clients.

Thus IZE Creative was christened.

What we do?

Content Creation, Content Marketing, Digital Branding Consultancy and Live Streaming.

Why we do it?

As mentioned, though we initially started off purely as a Social Media Marketing firm, over a period of time most of our works were shifting purely to content creation. When we analyzed the market more from that perspective, we came to understand that even Advertising and Digital Marketing firms were facing a dearth of quality content. Utilizing the opportunity, and since we were still pretty small, we shifted our focus into pure content. And not a moment too late.

Since shifting our focus into content about 8 months back, we have received more business than the previous 20 or so months combined!

How we evolve?

The firm does its best to sponsor its team members to attend conferences/meet-ups of their interest. This keeps each and every team-mate engaged with the industry and involved with their work.

We hold weekly lecture sessions where each member has to take a presentation on a topic of their interest. For example, the designer might explain the nuances of UI design which eventually would be helpful to the developer too. This not only helps each member evolve their own skill, but also the team’s as a collective force.

Social responsibility in social media

Almost all our team members are involved with one Non-Profit organization or the other. As individuals, we help in forming Social Media Guidelines for them. We also take sessions for the public and students on “How to Safeguard Your Social Media Privacy” and “Social Media Profile Optimization for Students”.

Even when helping clients, we first ensure that they understand the “power of social media” and how “with great power comes great responsibility”.

Need of the hour

The overall knowledge about Social and Digital Media field is still not widespread. This ignorance amounts to a lot when we try to meet clients, not just from an individual agency point of view, but from the industry as a whole.

We, the industry, should take it up as our responsibility to spread the knowledge about the pros and cons of this communication medium, not just from a marketing perspective but also as an obligation towards the society.

If you have the candle, spread the light where there is darkness.

We learned the hard way

When we started off, we were so emotionally attached to our work that at many times our work reflected on what we thought was the best for the client, rather than understand their requirement and their needs. Couple of kicks and unpaid invoices later, we understood what we were doing wrong and adapted. Now, all’s well!

Did we just share that?

Not something with happened with a client, but more with us.

This past April Fools Day, we posted a prank blog post saying that IZE Creative had been acquired by a big shot media company. Only the last line stated that it was a prank.

A good number of people did not read through the whole post and even upto 3 days later we were still receiving congratulatory notes :D

They work with us

Grand Kerala Shopping Festival, Emerging Kerala, Carnival Group, Kerala Management Association, Paramount Assure, Invis Multimedia, Extravelmoney.com, Veeble.org

Industry as we foresee

More and more firms, especially small and medium scale firms will start building an internal SM Team, as outsourcing will keep getting more and more expensive for them to handle. Larger firms will build an internal team but majority of the work would still be outsourced, especially specialized works like Integrated and Multi Screen Marketing Campaigns.

A day without Internet

We do that once a while in the firm. After scheduling a day’s work, we take the whole team out. Might be out to the beach, a movie, pizza or just a game of cricket. But during that whole outing, no one’s even allowed to use Whatsapp and phones are to be used only in the case of an emergency.

P.S. Whatsapp is allowed only in urgent cases when a guy’s newly committed :D

Lastly, are you hiring?

Presently, only part-time content writers.