Agency Spotlight : Eccentric Engine – A Day At Eccentric Engine

This is part of our Agency Spotlight where we bring forth agencies who are doing kick-ass work with their clients and helping them achieve their business goals. For this month, we’d like to showcase Eccentric Engine. 

On a busy Monday morning, Eccentric Engine hosted me at their Andheri Office in Mumbai and led me into a fascinating world of gaming, technology and social, all under one roof! Eccentric, a self-explanatory word is exactly what they are made of. The agency happily functions under the four directors Varun Shah, Nitant Soni, Gaurav Rane and Ankit Mishra who are the strong pillars of the agency.

Each one has their expertise ranging from operations, tech, gaming and brand strategy. My day at the agency helped me understand how integral gaming, technology and videos are to the world of social media. My perspective expanded from the usual platform centric approach to a more tech friendly social media strategy for brands.

Why Eccentric?

Eccentric Engine lives up to its name considering the way it functions. It is in complete contrast with the usual agency set up. The video division comprises of 4 employees and is led by Zakir Farooqui. This team works independently on brands like Thomas Cook, High Sierra, LG and American Tourister.

The brand strategy team has about 6 employees and they collectively handle the three brands: High Sierra, American Tourister and Pest Control India. The team is led by Ankit who believes in letting creative minds do what they are best at and takes up all the report making work himself. This is what bosses are made of! Each brand has a dedicated writer and designer, working without a social media manager, which takes off the umpteen number of approval processes.

The gaming and tech team are a bunch of 7 employees who work with wonderful devices and hardcore technology inbuilt in the agency DNA. The team is led by Gaurav and works with brands like Red Bull and ICICI, building gaming portals, mobile apps and web browser games for them.

The vibe within the agency talks of an open culture, happy employees and some serious work put together as one big team.

What Does a Day look like?

A normal day at the agency starts at 9:30 in the morning and the founders believe in wrapping the work by 5:30 in the evening. The brand strategy team has a daily morning meeting where they strategize on building realtime content.

“Realtime content is a success on social media owing to the high interaction received on such posts. People connect instantly with such posts and thus we believe in spontaneity. The planned 2 weeks content is always in place but what really differentiates us is the immediate action taken towards building content around the current happenings. All employees have their feedly and subscription links set up and half an hour is given to them to skim through such news,” says Ankit while revealing his content planning strategy.

Ending the day with taking stock of what the team did is a routine process. The agency believes in keeping minimal work towards the day’s end. The gaming and the tech division work with 3 devices: Leap motion, Kinect motion and Oculus Rift and this gives them a superior experience with technology.

Very few companies have invested in such expensive devices. I was lucky to try the Oculus Rift, a virtual 3D gaming device, recently bought by Facebook.

Approach to Clients

Working with lesser clients on specialized services gives this agency an extra edge at what they do. Eccentric Engine takes ownership of each account and delivers a clear set of ROIs and strategy.

The social media ROI that a brand receives are divided into two parts. One where the client receives a report of numbers in terms of time spent, email subscriptions, unique engaged users as well as social shares. The other which the agency truly believes is brand building through social media. The first step for the brand strategy team is to create Content Hub for the brand and then proceed with platform wise strategy. Since there is no social media manager, the writer who is in the brand team is also client facing, thus making the whole process a lot simpler and more importantly faster.

While the gaming team makes 3D web and mobile games, they are seamlessly integrated with social media. Eccentric Engine tries to address the key Brand challenges by means of Gaming Technologies. They are aided by their own Brand Strategy team in this regard. Often, in cases where Eccentric Engine is not the agency on record, it works closely with the Mainline Agency of the client to ensure it stays true to the Brand. Eccentric Engine, for example works closely with ICICI Bank to gamify the products to induce understanding and drive up engagement.

Varun opined that  “Social is a tool and it should not be complacent. Our agency believes in working closely with the clients and delivering unique content driven ideas.”

Culture is what defines your company

It is often said that culture is what defines a company and agencies are best known of some of the best work cultures. At Eccentric Engine, the team celebrates with a pizza party every month and bonds over an annual trip to eccentric places within Maharashtra. Their last trip was to Koyna Lake near Pune.

Huge glass walled meeting rooms full of scribbles and no partition between desks defines a very transparent and an open culture.

P.S. You must ask for Coffee here. It is as amazing and warm as the people who make this agency!