Streamlining AOKG Offerings: Only Done For You Sprints!
With all things pumpkin spice and back-to-school, we’re excited to announce an evolution here at AOK Group: we have eliminated Done-By-You Sprints (DBY). Over the past year or two, we’ve received consistent demand from our clients for hands-on help in getting to their goals. Across our three core sprints: Brand Building, Pitch Decks, and Startup Growth Strategy, founders gravitate more towards our Done-For-You Sprints (DFY), where we customize and activate our strategic frameworks rather than just give them a guide. As such, we’ve streamlined our sprint packages and are now exclusively a Done For You strategic branding consultancy!
When reflecting back on the different projects that we’ve worked on over the past few years, we crunched the numbers and found something that probably should have been much clear before now. Nearly 80% of 2021 projects that began as a DBY converted to a DFY (by client request) by the time the project had wrapped.
Thinking through why this might be the case, we clustered 5 core reasons that seem most prominent:
Who Can Do It Best // We can give our clients the frameworks to do all of these different elements themselves, but ultimately, it’s not just about getting things done it’s about speed and quality. Our clients deserve to take a load off, and oftentimes, that means stepping away from the actual creation process.
Ownership Issues // Our sprints are structured to kick off quickly, build momentum, add value, and then wrap up – we unravel a particular area of the brand, pitch, or communications, comb it out, rebuild sharper, and move on to the next challenge. Switching who is leading the charge back and forth as happens in DBY drains the momentum overall.
Time Constraints // Our clients are so busy. Kind of a no-brainer when you’re talking about founders and founding teams (who are each wearing about 3-4 hats at any time) but it’s critical to note. With DFY, we can keep you out of the process and keep your amount of ‘homework’ to a minimum so that you can focus on the things no one else in your company can do.
Reacting To Work // When clients come to meetings ready to give feedback and input on DFY work, they have a unique perspective and can benefit from the external standpoint creating it. Then, we’re able to nimbly implement and iterate, and that’s where generative partnership alchemy takes place.
Do It Once, Do It Right // While the leaner track option of our DBY sprints may have saved money for founders upfront, in the long run, they cost more if they need to be redone or refined by us. Founders and early hires are so swamped with everything they’re doing, just handing off their strategic marketing work to us is a wiser choice. Focus and time are both so critical for early-stage startups. We deeply value the time of our founders and founding teams so we’ve decided to step away from the leaner advisory/guided versions of our packages. Let us work our magic, so you can have space to work yours for your startup.
We hope this change in our offerings will be supportive and allow for more focus on your startup. Taking work off of founders’ plates is why we’re here – to embed into their growing company as an extension of their brand strategy and creative team supporting vision, honing mission, startup pitch, and communications. We’re grateful if you’ve read this far and would be happy to discuss this evolution of AOK further if you have any questions.