Read on for an inside scoop on the lives and thoughts of our Managing Partner and Chief Content Strategist.
Walk us through a regular day in the office.
Vincent: There’s no ‘regular’ day in the office, but most days usually start with a stand-up meeting conducted by Mina on the day’s objectives for everyone. Then everyone goes off to start doing their work.
Mina: Some days of the week we try to chain ourselves to our desk and answer emails, make phone calls, but most of the time we’re out for different kinds of meetings. It’s usually periods of brainstorming and planning punctuated with periods of execution. My favourite things are probably the Pow Wow meetings when we get together with different team members to come up with new ideas and strategies. The whiteboards are always a mess after that, but it’s very satisfying to see the kind of ideas the team comes up with.
Vincent: And then you see people in the office working while lying on beanbags, or working while playing with the animals…
Mina: Now that we’re setting up the Manila office, we also spend more time over there. As it is, we’re there at least one week a month.
Vincent: Once the Manila team is ready, we’ll be doing morning stand-ups with them as well via webcam before everyone gets to work.
Since Hashtag Interactive has a pet-friendly office, is there a favourite for each of you among all your pets?
Mina: NO, I LOVE THEM ALL. Vincent has favourites, he’s terrible…
Vincent: I like the ‘alphas’, so like Mikey (the mongrel) and Patchy (the cat).
Mina: I think that’s why they’re alphas because they know they’re favoured.
What are Hashtag Interactive goals for 2015?
Mina:We’ve already hit the first goal, which is to set up the Manila office (July 2015), and we’ve managed to find a really creative team that we’re confident we can work well with.
Vincent: Our next goal is to develop our in-house marketing tools to help automate and optimize some elements of what we do. And by the end of 2015, we aim to have a total team strength of 20 and move into a new office.
What is something people may not know about Hashtag Interactive that you wish they did?
Vincent: That we’re not just a social media agency. Our strength has always been in strategic digital marketing, which is a lot broader than just social media marketing. We like looking at the whole marketing mix and seeing how digital can fit in and help improve on what our clients are doing offline. Also, the way we operate and structure the company is very different. We created a flat organisation where everyone has the opportunity to lead a team or project or join in on other team’s projects and campaigns.
Mina: I want people to know that we absolutely love what we do and we have an awesome fun creative team. Vincent and I have built a company that we’ve always wanted to work at. We’ve both been around the block a bit, but at the end of the day we wanted to create an environment where we could breed and facilitate innovation and creativity. And now everyday I come to work happy – I love what I do, the people I work with are fabulous and I get to have animals at my feet.
Vincent: We think happy people produce better work, so we’re going to keep working at keeping Hashtag Interactive the kind of company our team would want to work at and our clients would want to work with.
Will there ever be too many animals in the office?
Vincent: Probably not. We’ve probably reached the maximum head count for now though, so we’re looking forward to moving into a bigger office by the end of this year.
