AYLAB

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I work at RapDev, a technology software startup with experienced site reliability and DevOps engineers that began in 2013. We are passionate contributors to the open-source community. We build numerous enterprise-ready CI/CD pipelines to help customers adopt into infrastructure as code and help organizations be faster with their release cycles. 

I was brought in as an operations analyst about a month ago, and I take care of everything engineering- or software-related. I am in charge of general office upkeep, including customer invoices, working with AYLAB, and approving marketing alongside our CEO and founder. 

What challenge were you trying to address with AYLAB?

We are a new startup and we needed to do some branding work — we needed to define what our company would look like online and to customers. 

We needed someone responsible for marketing and branding items while our internal team focused on deals and building products for customers.  

What was the scope of their involvement?

AYLAB helps us with marketing, social media management, and branding collateral. They’ve created various branding materials for us, including product sheets for our new releases and product integration logos. 

We’ve been working with them to improve our online presence. We’ve been very active on LinkedIn, and whenever we onboard a new teammate internally, we send their name and title to AYLAB to post on social media. They’ve also created templates for us for social media posts, so instead of relying on them as much for posting, I can create and publish the post myself using the template. 

We’ve also been working to diversify the media that we publish, so instead of just being publishing links to articles, they’ll post videos with clickable links, images — we’re trying to make everything more interactive. We’re also thinking about starting a podcast with our engineers to have more sources of media for potential customers to engage with and consume. 

We’re now branching out to Instagram as the next step in our social media marketing project. I’ve been collaborating with their teammates on laying the groundwork for that. 

I’ve also been working on blog posts that our engineers write. Once they are written, I collaborate with AYLAB on publishing, graphics, and the schedule of who will write the next blog. Their team then monitors the blog analytics, including clicks and how many people have visited and read the blog. They also cross-post the blog on our social media accounts. 

What is the team composition?

I’m in direct contact with Nikita (Brand Strategist). 

How did you come to work with AYLAB?

We brought them on because we were very impressed with the work they’d done before. Our founder also has a connection who worked at AYLAB. 

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve invested $50,000 with AYLAB. 

What is the status of this engagement?

The partnership began in May 2020 and it is ongoing. 

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

We haven’t had a lot of feedback on our website, but I think it looks pretty nice. We do get a lot of feedback on our LinkedIn posts, especially about our blog posts. Most of our website traffic comes from people clicking on our LinkedIn posts about our blogs. 

I’ve also seen a definite uptick in our social media engagement since we’ve started posting more often and more dynamic images. The social media template they provided us has streamlined our posting process as well.  

How did AYLAB perform from a project management standpoint?

AYLAB communicates very well with us and we haven’t had any complaints about how we work together. 

Nikita is a delight to work with — I have a weekly meeting with her and another weekly one-on-one meeting with their entire marketing team. She and the entire marketing also have a weekly meeting with our founder. 

We mainly communicate new and ongoing projects via Slack and then we jump on a call to discuss further. They’ll then send us feedback, we then discuss it, and then publish it. Sometimes there are multiple rounds of feedback. I can send them a message and they usually reply within an hour, which is very nice.

They’re able to fluctuate between deliverables we need that day and longer-term projects to meet our overall marketing goals and deliver on time. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

One of the things we really like about AYLAB is their collaborative approach to working with us — our company focuses on ensuring everyone is in the loop regarding project progress. We appreciate that AYLAB does the same. 

The team is great — they’ve been kind and we have a good working relationship. Unlike larger marketing firms that can sometimes be out of touch with clients, we lean on each other for support to produce final deliverables. It doesn't feel like we’re sending out requests and getting back content that is out of touch with our company. 

I liked the one-on-one contact with the marketing team because I can request social media posts and they’ll publish them quickly. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

I can’t think of anything; they’ve been wonderful. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I don’t have any advice. 

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am Global Brand Manager at NIVEA MEN (Beiersdorf)

For what projects/services did your company hire AYLAB?

AYLAB has been hired for several projects ranging from product design, mood films, website design, ppt design, amongst others

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

We looked for someone that had a good eye for design, but also was experienced in Marketing so that there was a common understanding of goals to be achieved and could also participate in strategic thinking.

Describe the project in detail and walk through the stages of the project.

We usually have a briefing session were we communicate what is the project about and also what we need to be developed. After that, AYLAB comes back with any open questions, challenges and additional ideas/ input. Once we are all on the same page, AYLAB develops several draft routes and we agree to follow one (or sometimes a couple) that have more potential. After that AYLAB will finalize the preferred route and deliver the project in the needed format.

How many resources from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

Usually we worked directly with Ayla (1 person), as our main contact person.

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

We tested the three website routes that were delivered by Ayla with consumers and we got very successful outcome with double green results (super star concepts according to the Nielsen database). For mood films, we successfully shared them in internal presentations, which helped sell our projects through our main stakeholders.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Communication flow is effective, as we were always communicating with one person only (Ayla), who was personally developing the project and therefore there were no "misunderstandings" due to internal alignments on agency side.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

AYLAB truly understood our company's goals as well as the best marketing principles and therefore, will challenge our thinking and go beyond the "simple design" task.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

Sometimes it was hard to get the deliverables on the set deadline (maybe coming 1 or 2 days delayed), however we did have VERY tight deadlines (usually one week), which another agency would have refused to accept and deliver into.