Calling the loss of Danone “briefly inconvenient,” Robinson said, “We made all that revenue up pretty quickly and there was never a question that we would sacrifice people for that.”
Janness attributes the wins to the agency’s operational model, which gives strategy a seat at the head of the table. “The reason why I personally wanted to start Orchard was to rebuild the model because it’s so broken at agencies” by giving strategy equal weight with creative, said Janness. “I think that’s evidenced in not only our new business wins but the demand we now have in the pipeline.”
Kolbusz calls the approach “unreplicable. It genuinely is the fusion of creative and strategy and the work coming first. We don’t have creative director teams, we don’t have copywriter and art director teams. We have strategists and creative teams. And it’s a competitive advantage.”
“What I found so specifically unique about Orchard is the role of strategy and creative living in parallel,” said Brad Minor, VP of global brand marketing and communications at Etsy, which hired the agency last June to handle holiday creative. “Sometimes (with other agencies) it can be strategy handing off to creative, but this felt rooted, and there was no room for miscommunication in a handoff or lack of prioritizing strategy in the handoff. It was all inextricably linked.”
For Etsy, Orchard seized on a nugget mentioned in a client communication: mission shopping. That drove the creative approach of people on a literal mission to overcome what Kolbusz calls “the high-stakes moment of dread to find the perfect gift.” The nail-biting musical theme from “Mission: Impossible” underscores the spots, that show, for example, a woman on the hunt for a one-of-a-kind gift for her very tall significant other who loves to cook—a custom-fit apron.