As an advertising firm and consulting agency with offices in Austin and Los Angeles, we get a lot of attention from early-stage startups. Part of it is proximity and part of it is our reputation as an agency that will take a chance on an up-and-comer, which is a well earned reputation. We support underdogs because we are underdogs. We made our bones at Rock Candy Media by growing the kinds of businesses that are too small or too niche for most agencies to sign and we continue to embrace that ethos even as we’ve outgrown our own startup days.
As a nod to where we came from and an effort to help other up-and-comers succeed, we’re launching RCM Focus. The idea behind this is pretty simple. If you’re an early stage startup and can’t afford to go all in on advertising, we can get you pointed in the right direction for a low flat fee. For $500, our senior team will do a positioning analysis on your company, breaking down your messaging and branding, as well as the messaging and branding of your competition. Then you join us for lunch and we lay out everything we’ve found and have a brainstorming session on where to take your brand next. You’ll have the opportunity to ask anything you’ve wanted to know about advertising, from the practical, “How do I…?” to the philosophical, “Why do I…?”
In addition to our advertising insights, we’ll also help you work out new sales funnels, strategic partnerships, PR opportunities and other means of accelerating growth.
RCM Focus was sparked by a friend of ours with a fresh B2C startup. He was having trouble getting the feedback he wanted on his product and had been relying on focus groups (itself an expensive endeavor). He expressed these grievances with our CEO and said, “I wish instead of getting the opinions of a bunch of random people, I could just get a handful of opinions from people that I know are really smart.” Now, the opinions of a bunch of random people can be helpful when you’ve got a product that’s ready to launch, but early on, it’s probably better to rely on some smart folks with vision - thus, RCM Focus was born.
As much as we’d love to cook up and execute full-on retainer marketing strategies for startups, we know that they need to invest in themselves first. RCM Focus is our way of giving back and paying tribute to our underdog roots.
Kyle Gregory is creative director at RCM - WEST, Rock Candy Media’s L.A. branch. He works with content strategists to direct strategy and creative for all clients.
