It’s difficult to latch onto and retain profound ideas or thoughts while consuming so much information on a daily basis. Luckily, I had a moment a few years ago where a conference speaker uttered a simple, but insightful comment that has stuck in my head ever since: ‘keep the main thing; the main thing.’
In the hectic world of marketing and communications there is no greater compass for ensuring meaningful and effective work, than the ever-present reminder to keep an eye on what matters. Don’t lose sight of what’s important. Relentlessly focus on ‘the main thing’.

At the heart of every organisation is the desire to grow. Whether that is culture, turnover, profit, margin, products, etc. – it is always about growth. For communicators, helping realise that growth should be front-and-centre in everything we do; it’s ‘the main thing’.
Too many communications campaigns fail to focus on an organisation’s actual needs, instead delivering campaigns that have lost sight of the underlying necessity of delivering growth. And, even when they do, it’s easy to be drawn off track. Campaigns can be easily shorn of their purpose, because the original objective has ceased to be the main goal. On the whole, no-one wants that to happen, it just does; if left unchecked as the process progresses.
Communicators need to be well aware of this challenge, and that is why we put ‘growth’ at the heart of our approach.
It’s our objective north star; the defining principle that we use when creating campaigns. It helps ensure campaigns are rooted in our clients’ needs. Alongside an instinct for creativity, it keeps us on track offering a guiding principle to evaluate against.
Having a focus on growth isn’t just about working with clients. It’s the principle that we, as a business, operate by. We want to grow as people, a community and as a business. It helps us remain true to the reason why we established The Agency in the first place.
To bastardise a Teddy Roosevelt quote: it’s not easy to do, but then nothing worth doing is.
Article by: Blair Metcalfe
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