How Creative Agency New Aesthetics Leverages Rock To Maximize For Deep Work

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In this case study, the founder and creative director of the design studio/creative agency New Aesthetics, Maximilian Helldörfer, talks about his company’s experience on transforming the way they work by using Rock.

Maximilian shares tips for marketing teams facing challenges related to remote work, having too many tools, and deep work.

An all-in-one approach helps New Aesthetics document information and manage communications without constant platform switching

New Aesthetics journey on Rock started around one and a half years ago. Before that, the agency was mainly using Slack for communication and Trello for task management. In addition to that, the company's clients would often come up with more suggestions for tools, like Microsoft Teams or Google Drive.

Maximilian describes the point in time when the agency decided to look for a solution which would help to keep all their communication and documentation in one place.

‘We realized that we can’t use so many different tools based on our clients as it gets all over the place. That was the moment when we decided that we need to look for a new tool which has an all-in-one approach.

Having all their work centralized in one tool has improved their efficiency and given more time to focus on deep work.

Tasks + messaging in one place to bring order to the chaos of multi-channel communication

New Aesthetics shares that the biggest challenge before using Rock was information management across platforms.

‘If you use many different tools and send emails around, it’s inevitable that some information falls through the cracks. Also, it might happen that things are more up to date in one place which can cause confusion. This can be avoided only by having one tool which offers everything you need. Somewhere where you can store information and communicate, and this is exactly what Rock offers.

An all-in-one approach means teams don't have to juggle apps and update work on different channels. With everything in one place, one update is more than enough.

The agency found that Rock replaced the combination of Slack and Trello and allowed them to keep everything in one place, which was their main challenge before discovering Rock. With functionality that natively switches between mini-apps, one can save time and easily jump, for instance, from tasks to messages or notes.

Leveraging tasks to collaborate more asynchronously, document information and organize work while working remotely

The Tasks mini-app quickly became a crucial part of the New Aesthetics workflow. The agency uses different labels to track the status of a task, for example, 'awaiting for client feedback'.

Maximilian shares that tasks helped them to save time by indicating the statuses instead of constantly chatting or meeting to share progress. The time which is saved can be used for deep work which is the key for making good progress.

Their team also loves the Activity panel feature: ‘It gives such a great overview of what the team has been working on’. One more unique feature which the team enjoys is the Set Aside panel. Set Aside allows users to store relevant tasks, messages, and notes in a dedicated panel.

Whenever a person says they can’t answer or do something straight away - I always suggest to set aside and do it later. It’s so nice that there’s a feature which you can refer to in those ‘I can’t answer now’ moments!’ - shares Maximilian.

Collaborating with clients on Rock to reduce inbound emails and platform switching for new projects

It was easy to get clients on board, too. Maximilian shared that the agency does not accept emails anymore and tries to bring their clients on Rock to collaborate. Even though some clients do not know about Rock at first, it does not take long for them to get used to it and start opening their own spaces.

We were curious about what New Aesthetics would suggest for creative teams who are looking for an all-in-one solution.

Just get started, experiment and find what workflow is best for you. Rock gives all options to find a way that works best for your specific case. Especially if you are a creative agency, you don’t want to make a burden for yourself by over organizing! Rock gives you the opportunity to create your workflow in an easy way.

4 tips from New Aesthetics on getting started with Rock as a creative agency

Switching platforms can be a big change for teams. It often comes with transferring tasks, restructuring everything and getting used to new workflows. Here are some suggestions from Maximilian for creative teams looking into getting started with Rock:

  • Try out different workflows: Rock provides teams with resources to find a way that works best for your specific case. Give yourself some time to think about how you want things to work.
  • Experiment with features: Rock is flexible and provides different ways of customization. Experiment and find a way to organize your work the way you want.
  • Start at your own pace: In the first weeks you might not need much complexity and depth. When you get more familiar with Rock you can incorporate more and more features.
  • Fine-tune task management: focus on task statuses, assignee statuses or labels, or all of the above, to organize your tasks.

New Aesthetics’ story shows us that constant platform switching and scattered client communication can be avoided when communication is centralized. Tasks + messaging provides the foundation for more productive teams. Deep work is prioritized with asynchronous work, leading to a more productive team.

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