Howdy! My name is Lauryn Jones, and I am a social media manager and producer of the Rec Room podcast. I had the pleasure of interviewing Sophia Aymond, an Associate Producer at Snap Inc. Sophia has worked for companies such as MotorTrend Group, NAPTE, and PBS. 

We discussed a multitude of topics in this podcast episode, from the ever-evolving social sphere to Augmented Reality and Web 3. One of my favorite topics we discussed focused on the benefits of working with agencies, specifically what a successful client and agency relationship could look like and what it involves.    

Tell us about yourself.

Sophia: I’m an associate producer at Snap Inc. I am a content producer and work on the marketing and advertising team. Many of my deliverables are mainly for social, web, keynotes, and pretty much anything digital that has to do with advertising. 

How did you get into this field?

Sophia:  Honestly, networking. I feel for most of my career, I have networked almost every opportunity and didn’t want to go into traditional broadcasting. And I knew I didn’t want to do journalism. So just kind of figuring out this new digital era. And I knew I wanted to do something in vertical content creation. So just figuring out my role in that world. I was a journalism major first, and then I switched over to create media because I shortly realize that, this is just something I don’t want to do.

So what did you do before getting to Snap inc? What did you do before?

Sophia: So before this, I had worked a couple of different variations of jobs. I was at Motortrend, a car magazine that started building a digital presence with social media. Many companies had to take their revenue from print over to digital and make that switch. And I think everyone was pushing out content digitally to build an audience while their primary source of revenue was still print. That was in 2019.

Can you tell me a little about your journey moving from a traditional to a digital realm?

Sophia: With social media in general and how much it’s grown before 2020, people didn’t realize how much. I think that was significant but still up the air. Impact it would have on consumers, how people viewed content, and what the future of content would look like…

People didn’t believe in social media or any vertical digital. That video would be as important as print or a traditional commercial. So after COVID happened, there was a huge switch, and many people realized, okay, no, with this new development and TikTok and that being a video platform. Then every other app adapting that just made it a hundred percent. 

With digital content creation, can you tell us a little about what you do daily? 

Sophia: As a producer, my role requires a lot of communication. I am a liaison for everything. My expertise is not only in production but also in marketing, creativity, and communicating with vendors. It just has to be able to translate all of that kinds of different forms. And a lot of other teams have a lot of different ways of communicating what they need.

I know that you’re in an in-house marketing role. So how is working with other agencies as, as opposed to working with your in-house agency?

Sophia: So, as an in-house producer, you’re more in fine-tuning things like “what are we going to do? What is going to be the impact of this creative? What are our deliverables? What is this campaign all about?” And just really being in the weeds of the process.

In a traditional agency, you’re already brought on, with the main foundations already figured out. Usually, the first steps are bidding, scoping the project, and creating your pitch deck. And then from your pitch deck, you get, awarded, and then you get kicked off, you start the project right away based on what you pitched. 

When you work in-house, I think the creative can definitely, change shift based on what your executives say, what your marketing team has to say, you have the ability to be more flexible with it. 

However, we work with agencies all the time, and what makes a really great partner are people who are definitely flexible with us. Things are always changing, there’s always going to be better creative. So I think just being able to be flexible is so helpful on an agency’s part to stand out.

What do you personally look for in a relationship with an outside agency?

Sophia: I think our best partners are just super flexible and understand what we are as a company and are partners who we’re able to completely rely on, knowing that this agency will produce the best content for our brand.

They’re going to understand our review process. They’re going to appreciate our feedback. I think that what makes great partnerships is when an agency can communicate effectively with us. We can effectively communicate what we want, and they can reciprocate that while having fun. There’s always a lot of fun creating content. And I think the best agencies are the ones that just have a lot of fun with us. 

Sometimes if you don’t hit a delivery date or if you’re not getting feedback in time, or maybe it’s not moving as scheduled, you never want a sense of urgency. You always want a nice experience like – “okay, we’re going problem solve here.”

And I have had so many agencies where, internally, I’m freaking out; they’re saying, “no, we got this, thank you so much for being here.” Especially when they act as an extension of my team because it helps so much to have someone say things like, “no, we got this.”

I think that’s one thing about agencies and working with agencies from an internal perspective. You don’t always have the capabilities to make what you want in-house because of specific resources, even if you’re constantly popping out content. When I work with an outside agency, it’s a support system, honestly. You need help. And I think having a reliable source to go to – will be the person you always want to return to.

Want to learn more? Tune into the podcast to hear more from Sophia Aymond.