5 min
Introducing Our Airtable Accreditation
History
Would you believe us if we told you our journey with Airtable started with color-coding?
It was 2016, and Thesis was working with one of the world’s largest sportswear brands focused on all things email — from strategy to creative.
We helped identify when certain emails would be sent to customized audience segments and were challenged with managing competing initiatives. We kept track of audience segmentation using a rudimentary spreadsheet with a very limited color set, making it hard to visually decipher how often an audience segment would receive a marketing email.
The system had also outgrown itself. It loaded slowly, showed errors on automated workback schedules, and required us to use a separate platform for project management and collaboration. We found ourselves in a constant vortex of: Email “A” moved back a day, now update tool 1, then update tool 2. Oof!
The status quo of that system remained a non-negotiable for years, but luckily, we have a knack for asking ourselves and our partners: How can we do things better?
Then, an unexpected meeting happened between the CEO of Airtable, one client, and one member of Thesis, and the seed was planted. We knew out of the gate that the color offerings alone would add value and could likely handle the rest of what the past system provided. So, we jumped in and prototyped.
The Airtable of 2016 was a breath of fresh air even then. Clean look and feel, simple UI, and us in the driver’s seat — no longer waiting for a ticketing queue to launch a critical feature we needed. Most importantly, it helped unite a handful of disparate tools into a single source of truth, removing manual efforts and streamlining communication.
We were also acutely aware that the creation and management of this system couldn't be done in a vacuum.
A tool without process is no more than a piece of software. A process without people is no more than a fancy flowchart. People without either are not having a great time at their jobs.
We built a team to not only manage the Airtable system but to also manage the work. We were producing content and were constantly on the lookout for improvements, including ways to reduce steps, add other teams or agency partners, automate reporting, and track important metadata.
TL;DR
Sell-in, political navigation, negotiation, and compromise all helped land us where we are now: The creators of a system going eight years strong. During this time, we managed over 2,700 marketing campaigns, 100,000 pieces of marketing content across campaigns, and 23 teams for a total of more than 1,000 individuals. This is just one example of how Airtable has driven efficiency.
Yes, we’ve built cool things for our clients using Airtable, but we also built our own house in this neighborhood. In 2021, we began the journey to find a system that could manage our work end-to-end from prospecting to recapping. We looked at some fancy, complex, and, frankly, expensive options that still required us to completely overhaul our way of working. Instead, we chose to go all in on Airtable and do it ourselves.
Enter ORDR — One Resource Done Right — our network of Airtable bases that allows us to collaboratively and connectedly manage our work through forecast, scope, project setup, project management, resource management, time tracking, billing, and hiring. Yep, all that.
We launched ORDR in three months, moving from the “Yeah, let’s do it in Airtable” moment to sunsetting our legacy systems. Was this fast AF? Yep. Was it perfect? Nope. But that’s the beauty of Airtable. WE are in control of our minimum viable product (MVP), including the types of changes we make, and when.
For example, we launched an initial system for time tracking that turned the process into a real chore, so a few months in, we crowd-sourced feedback and redesigned it, allowing our creatives to track their working time directly from their assigned tasks. Saving time at every turn!
So, what does it mean to be an Accredited Airtable Services Partner?
Our history shows that our passion for and expertise of Airtable has long preceded our official accreditation, but becoming an Accredited Airtable Services Partner means it’s official. We put a ring on it. We can drive without a chaperone. We got the diploma.
Technically, this means that we passed a test verifying we understand formulas, data structures, automations, interfaces, and how to teach users how to use Airtable. It’s also opened doors to work with new brands like Bobbi Brown and Comcast. We’re in the thick of pulling things apart and putting them back together with our new partners, which has been a fresh breath of momentum for them and immensely satisfying for our teams of Airtable experts and efficiency-finders to untangle. It sparks much joy!
Where do we go from here?
We’re excited to bring the cohesion and ease of Airtable to more than just our creative clients. The beauty of Airtable is that it doesn’t care if you’re managing Intellectual Property projects or million-dollar photo shoots. If you know how to take a complex problem, break it apart, and understand the challenges the humans using it are trying to solve, well, you have a pretty good chance of trading out your frustration for efficiency.
Click here to learn more about what we can do with Airtable.
Contributors
Molly Leaf
Head of Operations
Next up
Our fresh perspectives on mixed matters of work, news, and employee-led ventures.