As SoCheers celebrates its tenth anniversary, co-founders Mehul Gupta and Siddharth Devnani share the tale of their agency's inception, challenges in their journey, goals, and more.
Short for ‘Social Cheers’, SoCheers was founded with the intention to celebrate brand stories, accomplishments, and individuals. What began in 2013 as an end-to-end Digital Marketing Agency, with the aim to inject creativity in the ever-evolving advertising technology, completed a decade on April 8, 2023.
It started with three interns and SoCheers now has a team of 200+ enthusiastic professionals panned across Mumbai, Delhi and Bengaluru.
In conversation with the former employees of Naaptol and now the co-founders of an independent agency, Mehul Gupta, Co-Founder and CEO, SoCheers and Siddharth Devnani, Co-Founder and Director, SoCheers, Social Samosa decodes what it takes to build an independent digital agency in this day and age.
Inception
In 2011, SoCheers started out as a social networking site but later in 2013, the two co-founders, Mehul Gupta and Siddharth Devnani, re-launched SoCheers as a full-fledged digital agency.
Gupta explained that they were drawn to digital because of the opportunity it offered for brands to connect and interact with audiences in fresh and creative ways. Their entrepreneurial spirit and mutual enthusiasm for this dynamic industry drove them to spend countless hours generating ideas, investigating market trends, and creating strategies.
Gupta said, "We gathered our resources and founded SoCheers, a full-service, independent creative digital advertising business, with unwavering resolve. Though we initially started small, as time went on we expanded our set of offerings to meet the changing demands of our clients."
The co-founders had a strong passion towards establishing or strengthening brands' digital footprints and decided to take that plunge.
Devnani said, "It was at that point that we decided to take this risk. Risk, because that was a time when explaining a brand about Digital, was a huge challenge in itself. However, despite all the difficulties we had along the way, we enjoyed the entire process of starting from scratch to create the agency that we are today."
Creativity
Whether it is the emergence of Metaverse or Aritificial Intelligence, the advertising landscape changes as technology evolves. So, in any digital agency, it is crucial to have creativity at the center of technology, which remains constant.
Speaking about the role of creativity, Gupta said, "Hands down creativity did play a vital role in helping us evolve our skill sets and create some remarkable campaigns. Digital evolves now and then, thus one has to evolve their creative cells too, to stay abreast with the changing needs and demands of your audience."
Apart from creativity, diversity, equity and inclusion are a few other important pillars in shaping any organization’s value. The agency values diversity and has built a culture that supports it.
"We have created a cultural potpourri by bringing together people from different backgrounds."
Mehul Gupta
Devnani explained the agency's open-flat structure that allows unrestricted access to all members of the organization, especially the leadership, increasing efficiency.
Gupta shared that they believe in giving team members at every level of the organization an equal opportunity to contribute, share their inputs, and see their ideas come to life. "Inclusion helps employees achieve their best and diversity helps them see the world through different lenses, which adds unique insights to the campaigns they create," he added.
Speaking about the gender ratio at SoCheers, Devnani said, "Currently, we have a 61-39% split of women to men in the agency, and 50% of all senior leadership positions are held by women."
The agency does not believe in just building a digital presence for brands but immersive experiences along with driving business goals.
Speaking about their work, Devnani said, “From eye-pleasing, compassionate DVCs out of SoCheers Films to engaging content to clutter-breaking influencer marketing campaigns that get everyone talking; we breathe life into the brand goals and Make it Happen! “
As digital offers the potential to reach more people, Gupta intends to use it to leave a mark.
“We feel that the time has come to harness this potential to generate a positive impact and encourage individuals to take action to promote positive change on a global scale. This will help us to raise awareness and pique interest in issues that can benefit society, which is critical to achieving meaningful progress,” he said.
This is what led to the launch of a new vertical - SoCheers Spark, which Devnani says aims to take creativity to the next level by creating campaigns for brands and NGOs that initiate conversations around social and environmental causes.
Challenges
As a digital agency, SoCheers has encountered numerous challenges due to the constantly evolving digital landscape and consumer behavior.
Apart from keeping up with the medium to stay ahead of their competitors, Devnani spoke about finding a talent crunch.
“Attracting and retaining diverse talent is also a challenge for their people-first agency (with an employee count of over 200), as they strive to foster a work culture that promotes innovation, efficiency, and creativity,” said Devnani.
To address this, Devnani claims that they have been working towards maintaining their work culture to attract top talent.
Starting a new agency in the current era
With mounting inflation and funding winter, it is getting more and more challenging to start a new agency. Reflecting back at his journey and observing client behaviour, Devanani shared a few pointers that beginners should make a note of while launching an ad agency in the current scenario.
He explained that agencies should think of themselves as a business problem solver and utilize creativity, design, branding and media as tools to achieve business objectives. Agencies should make sure that they understand the ‘why’ of the client's ask at every step.
"Let your work speak for itself and brands will want to work with you. There's no shortcut."
Siddharth Devnani
According to Devnani, small and medium-sized (SMBs) agencies facing inflationary pressures can adopt the following strategies to mitigate their impact.
“Keep an eye on revenue leaks, monitor margins, strengthen receivables and growth mindset - a growing number of projects managed in parallel and the scale of projects, will ensure one can beat this. Costs will always increase, scaling up faster than that is the key.”
Future of SoCheers
SoCheers’ focus will be to keep up with the memento of not being called ‘just another digital agency’ and build its team.
Gupta said, “Our goal is to increase our team, brand portfolio, and outreach, and to become the go-to option for brands seeking influencer marketing, digital advertising, and media buying and planning services. Our objective is not just to expand, but to cement our status as the top choice for brands, leaving a lasting impact on all of our brand partners.”
As they expand their team, SoCheers will also aim to strengthen their environment so that their people are happy.
“In short, we will keep cheering louder,” concluded Devnani.
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