Acadia

To friends, colleagues, clients, and my mom (!) who are very worried about the TikTok ban — I owe it to you to send out a POV and to share how we’re advising clients at Acadia. So here it is: The short version — - We are not advising clients to move away from TikTok at the moment and do not advise sacrificing the billions of users who are very much engaged. - We are advising clients to do a data backup, to save existing videos/reports, and to keep an eye on performance to note any dips due to the TikTok news. As always, if there's another platform that is out-performing TikTok, we would advise to shift efforts to that platform. - We are focusing on our clients' Instagram and YouTube accounts to ensure that they are optimized should we need to move to Reels/YouTube Shorts, or another platform. For majority of our clients, we've been posting TikTok content to YouTube Shorts to build up a library in preparation for a ban. My POV — I’ve been really optimistic for TikTok in the US until I read more about the ban in India. Poof, gone over night. As a Head of Social with many teamers and clients relying on my decisions, I am now acting as if there will be a ban to be the best steward of that marketing budget and overall client relationship. The good news? When you have worked in social media since 2013, you’re used to change. We have been at this for a decade plus. There are always shifts in attention. Threads was up and then down. Facebook was up, then down, and then back up. Remember Clubhouse? I share this not to be flippant, but rather to say, we will help our clients migrate and find the attention wherever it goes. My team has been spending time not only on the articles coming out daily, but on the platform itself. Influencers like James Charles have posted asking “Where will you go if there’s a TikTok ban?”. 5 million views and 10,000 comments later, we learned that Neptune is a contender, but you know what else we learned? Influencers are going to be a huge driver for which platforms users will flock to should this ban go into effect. One comment said “We’ll go where you go!” The response? “You can catch me on my Instagram page”. So much of these moments depend on human behavior, and we’ll be watching that, too. More soon on the topic as we learn over the coming days.

Inside Principal Media Buying - Why You Should Say No Join Acadia CEO Jared Belsky and the Association of National Advertisers on January 23rd at 1pm ET to discover the hidden pitfalls of principal media buying and their true impact on your brand’s performance. This session will delve into why this practice persists, how it compromises niche media sources, and what marketers can do to demand transparency from their agencies. Join us to learn actionable steps to ensure your media buys don't compromise your brand to prop up agency agency profits.

Congratulations to you Anouck Gotlib, Page Bowler and the entire team at Belgian Boys for this recognition! 🎉 All of us at Acadia feel very fortunate to have been able to work with you side-by-side through 2024 to reach such heights. Instacart is a tremendous channel for emerging brands to reach new to brand customers and sustain growth. We truly feel that with the right partner and strategy, more brands can find success like Belgian Boys. I am so proud of our entire Acadia Belgian Boys team (Danilo de Castro Alvares, Jana Stojisavljević & Ana Perez) for your meticulous daily work to help make this strategy and campaigns such an incredible success 🙌 If you want to read more about Belgian Boys's incredible growth journey, follow the link to the case study in the comments.

Feeling grateful to have ended 2024 with time off to rest, relax and reflect on what might be the most exciting, productive, creative and growth-filled year of my career. The year began with the opportunity to integrate our Digital, Loyalty and Marketing teams together as one unified department to connect and inspire healthier futures with our Customers, Team Members and each other. Then it all became a blur ((an awesome blur!)) because the team sky rocketed from one accomplishment to the next - whether it was creating operational efficiencies, fostering deeper collaborations, establishing successful partnerships or driving inspiring connections. While I'm most excited about, and grateful for the team-building and interpersonal growth across the department - I also have to acknowledge some of these awesome accomplishments... - Publishing an inspiring manifestation of the Fresh Thyme brand through our free Fresh Thymes Magazine now offered in all stores 4x/year - Launching a new eCommerce Marketplace through UberEats; allowing us to connect with even more Customers - Creating a fun, engaging go-to-market plan honoring Fresh Thyme's 10th Birthday; which we celebrated all year long with our Customers - Evolving our omnichannel Digital content and experiences - Exploring new ways to engage with our Loyalty and eCommerce Customers - Building a strong, strategic relationship from day 1 with our new Media/Creative AOR that has already been a fantastic partner to us (thanks Acadia!) The key skill that we got to hone in on building, was investing in becoming a cohesive change-adaptive team together, which we get to continue into 2025. It was a special year to be part of so much creativity, drive, passion and care. I always feel a bit odd saying *I'm* proud of others because I want it to be about them & hope that they're proud of themselves; but I am truly filled with pride and admiration for what the Fresh Thyme Digital, Loyalty and Marketing teams accomplished together in 2024. THANK YOU team! To wrap this little reflection up - a sincere thank you to my fellow Executive Leadership team for your support, encouragement and courageous conversations along the way! Now it's thyme for more FUN & excitement in 2025 :) Happy New Year! #newyear #freshthymemarket #team

Agencies aren’t platforms — and they never will be. Let’s not kid ourselves. At best, they’ve dabbled in platform cosplay; a pinch of data here, a smidge of recurring revenue there. But the idea that they’re about to shed their old-school holding company identity? Wishful thinking. Still, it’s a myth that just won’t die, enthusiastically recycled by holding company CEOs for years. In this piece by Seb Joseph, we speak to Joe Maglio of Barbarian, Charles Ping of Winterberry Group, Jared Belsky of Acadia, and Chris Novak of Eden Collective.

Schools often focus on hard skills, but soft skills rarely get the attention they deserve. The problem? Soft skills are a major factor in how companies and leaders make promotion and hiring decisions at higher levels. Jared Belsky Acadia David Novak #college #education #howleaderslead

You can listen to the entire episode here: https://lnkd.in/ejjwAqFa

“To what extent is my ad spend driving incrementality and total sales rather than just claiming credit for organic sales that would’ve occurred anyway?” It’s an age-old question fundamental to performance marketing. But it also doesn’t have to be a question without answers. On this week’s episode of Ecommerce Braintrust, Jordan Ripley hosts Instacart experts Robert B. and Juan Munoz Dominguez to discuss if Instacart might actually be the retailer marketplace that’s leading the way on pulling back the curtains of advertising’s impact on growth. 🎧 Give it a listen to learn: 🔶 How we should think about the idea of “organic cannibalization” and how a brand's tolerance to cannibalization should vary depending on their channel-specific priorities 🔶 The new metrics Instacart is continually making available for brands to calibrate their investments relative to category share data 🔶 Why any conversation focused on growth on Instacart must also be a conversation of distribution 🔶 A heated debate on whether, when ordering mac and cheese ingredients on Instacart, one should also include onions in the recipe Find answers to all of the above and more by searching for “ecommerce braintrust” in your favorite podcast app, or streaming via the link in the comments. A big thanks to Keegan Doheny for the support in enabling our team to take advantage of all the new Instacart developments, many of which became the focus of this episode.

🏆 Congrats to this year's Fastest Growing Agencies 🏆 1. Creative Currency 2. Salient 3. Saylor 4. LeadOrigin 5. Six Degrees Creative 6. Acadia 7. Idlewild Experiential 8. Majority 9. PixlGroup 10. SUPERHEROES The growth demonstrated by all of the winners is impressive: They’re defeating the odds to deliver rocket-like growth in a crowded and strained market. Each of these agencies has reached new heights by pushing into emerging areas of marketing, disrupting staid categories, and, most importantly, delivering breakthrough work that moves the needle for their clients. Check out the rest of the Fastest Growing Agency list here: https://adweek.it/40HO2kw

Acadia was named today by ADWEEK as the 6th Fastest Growing Agency. It’s an interesting thing to be named fastest growing as we just shared with our agency at our annual meeting the importance of “compounding small wins.” What has enabled our speed, is actually our focus on winning each day with great long-term habits.    We talk about compounding, learning, and trying something new every day/week. We talked about compounding careers and continuing to stretch and never just mail it in. We talked about compounding as it relates to our culture and doing the right things by each other, our core values, and fairness. In fact, the ONLY thing I don't recall talking about during our off-site was SPEED. We let others focus on being “first to market” while we focus on being “best to market.” We let others “hire those ready on Day 1” while we look to hire folks who will be “Great on Day 90.” I've been fortunate in my career to be a part of a couple businesses that have been able to quickly grow while staying true to their core values. Acadia was my first leap into the agency world and I could not be more thankful that I did. This is one of many 'wins' Acadia has been able to celebrate recently and there are even more to share very soon. I could not be more proud of everyone at Acadia, our clients, our families, and supporters. Showing up in Adweek’s Fastest Growing Agencies is a huge deal. We feel very fortunate today. Every single client, every employee, every supporter who has taken time to care about Acadia and invest in our community, this one's for you.    The growth that makes Acadia most proud is not our own, but rather when we help our clients and the brands they entrust to us grow. You can read more about our ranking and all the other agencies by following the link in the comments.