How Elephant’s unified team is leading the agency’s next evolution of growth

As a creative agency, Elephant prides itself on the strength of its work and the people behind it. But like many agencies, Elephant faced a number of major challenges during the pandemic years—both client-facing challenges like large-scale campaigns suddenly having to be put together remotely and internal woes like Zoom fatigue setting in.

In April 2022, during a thoughtfully planned out unifying of the company, Cara DiNorcia took the helm at Elephant as its new president. After five years at the agency in various managerial roles, DiNorcia had an enormous new task at hand: To revamp the organization to be fully remote and borderless while optimizing the employee experience and the options available to clients.

Her solution? An enterprise internally referred to as “One Elephant.”

Ad Age Studio 30 spoke with DiNorcia about how the transition to a One Elephant mindset reframed the company’s narrative, how approaching hiring with a borderless model helped achieve DE&I goals, and why Elephant feels nimbler than ever.

Ad Age Studio 30: You have said the idea behind your One Elephant restructuring was to unite the company’s East and West Coast offices so that they could collaborate more as a single entity rather than as separate outposts. What prompted that transition?

Cara DiNorcia: One Elephant came out of taking a long, hard look at how our work, both internally and externally, was impacted by the pandemic.

While we weren’t gathering in offices, we were still producing some of our strongest work for our clients. There was no longer a need to tie employees to a particular physical location.

Combining operations across all our offices to work together as one cohesive company made more and more sense. And becoming completely virtual gave us the ability to hire across the globe and continue to diversify our talent. We now have more flexibility to design the right team for our clients and our work.

Was the staff enthused by the prospect?

When you drive an organizational change like this, you have to truly believe in it and get your leadership to believe in it as well. I’m so proud of how everyone has been rallying around One Elephant and getting excited about the work and the team we have in place.

In some ways, there was almost that feeling of starting a new job, where you’re learning a new team and a new collaboration style. And once we were able to address logistical kinks like time-change differences and transitioning folks onto new clients and teams with people they hadn't worked with before—it all started to come together.

I also think the client wins we've had during our One Elephant transition came from the new energy of our team. When we're able to give people more options around what they work on and who they partner with, they become more excited about what they're creating. There are more opportunities to ideate and problem-solve, as well as to grow and be challenged professionally. And that's what's important and where I like to focus—what's most valuable and motivating to our team ultimately inspires their best work.

You’ve done away with offices in favor of occasional collaborative workspaces. When do you use those?

I really believe in the power of collaboration and that awesome ideas come out of feeding off one another's energy and having healthy debates over the work. We’ve organized sessions to bring teams together in a central location to hold client workshops, or to respond to a pitch or an RFP.

In-person collaboration is still really important, especially while going through an evolution. We’re bringing people together who haven’t had the opportunity to work together before, or newer team members who started at Elephant virtually. It sounds old-school, but we’re creating key moments around our work for people to share ideas with one another as well as a meal together at the end of the day.

It’s that human connection that we’ve missed. Having in-person time to get to know your colleagues is where you build trust and understand how everyone works as a team. Those moments have always been important; however, they feel even more special now. 

Elephant has been very forward with its DE&I goals and was among the first companies to publicly post its commitment to change. Elephant has also developed its XD Academy to help change the face of the industry by training up new talent. How did diversity initiatives factor into Elephant’s transformation this year?

Our DE&I initiatives are a core part of Elephant’s DNA. We strive for diversity not only in the work we create for our clients, but also through initiatives that will make an impact at Elephant and more broadly in our industry.                                                          

One of the ways we’re investing in BIPOC futures is through our Elephant XD Academy, a free virtual boot camp designed to teach the core skills and foundations of digital product design. The program is focused on BIPOC talent and sourced through Elephant’s partnership with 4A’s MAIP, who have an interest in the field but limited exposure to it.

We also formed partnerships with two amazing organizations that are making a real impact—Fulfillment Fund and All Star Code—to inspire and raise up the next generation of diverse talent.                                                       

Diversity is at the core of our conversations as a company, too, and we give updates on our progress when we gather as a team. Our evolution to borderless working has inherently helped these initiatives. The ability to cast such a wide net and hire from any state, any location—not having to look at specific regions—has undoubtedly helped us increase the diversity of candidates and allowed us to focus on finding the best talent.

So, is it fair to say that you see Elephant’s transformative 2022 as a success?

Absolutely. Our team is stronger, our work is stronger.

This model simply makes sense given our size and how we partner with our clients. Committing to being one united, cohesive team—and ensuring that’s truly how we work—is the right way for Elephant to continue to grow.

Our goal is to be nimble and smart as we navigate through 2023 and beyond. In addition to looking at business growth, we're always prioritizing internal growth and what we can do to make Elephant a place that strong talent wants to join for years to come.