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Young Agencies is a column produced by Brands Vietnam to introduce young, promising agencies in the field of marketing, communications and advertising in Vietnam today. Aurora Vietnam is proud to be one of the Agencies mentioned in this column. 

Joining the agency “playground” right at the time of the outbreak, Aurora encountered many difficulties on the journey of creative consulting for businesses. However, thanks to being persistent in understanding and providing appropriate solutions, Aurora is gradually moving towards its “light” goal.

In this edition of Young Agencies, let’s listen to the sharing of two co-founders Pham Thai Ha – CEO and Quach Tuan Anh – General Manager at Aurora Creative Consultancy, about the story of how to develop Aurora – “the brainchild”. ” was born right at the time of the pandemic.

* What motivated Thai Ha and Tuan Anh to decide to found Aurora? How does previous work experience help both of you in the process of building your own business?

Both Ha and Tuan Anh previously worked at Vingroup, until 2020 they both founded Aurora. The motivation for this “backwards trip” comes from seeing things that can be improved as well as seeing the specific needs of Marketing in the North. In addition, we want to create a professional advertising media environment for young talents to learn right here without having to go to Nam. Being able to do what you like with a suitable reward in the place where you grew up is a very meaningful thing for young people in the North; and first of all, to the two not-so-young founders of Aurora.

Up to now, Ha and Tuan Anh still appreciate the opportunity to work at Vingroup. During the work process, I participated in very large projects, had access to new methods, mindsets and many talents. That environment creates opportunities for me to practice and accumulate many good things on my career path. That is also an important foundation when establishing your own business: how to develop sustainably beyond the 3-year, 5-year and 10-year milestones. Determining a long-term vision helps us solve difficulties from the early days but also not neglect building a solid foundation to go far.

Ms. Pham Thai Ha – CEO and Mr. Quach Tuan Anh – General Manager at Aurora Creative Consultancy

* Can you two share more about the meaning of the name Aurora?

The name Aurora (roughly translated as Aurora) means a rare but real phenomenon. To admire the Northern Lights, you have to spend some time hunting, and each time the Northern Lights occur is different – unique. With this name, the founding team and team hope that Aurora’s products will make an impression and inspire customers. At the same time, “Aurora” is also a reminder that the team spirit must always be fresh, different and create excitement in each product so that customers can feel the spirit of “Light Chasers” – those who pursue light. .

The whole team also used the word “Aurora” as a central idea to build vision, mission and core values. For example, the agency’s core values revolve around light attributes such as “Challenge the Dark” – promoting the courage to explore new lands; “Better Everyday” – every day is an opportunity to do better, never compromise. Light also represents positivity, so “Believe in Good Things” reminds the team that the core of the product must come from kindness rather than external flashiness. Finally, the extremely fast speed of light reinforces the belief that everyone can do it, so “Never Set Limit” is the team’s fourth value.

With the name Aurora, the founding team and team hope that Aurora’s products will impress and inspire customers.

* Why did Aurora choose “creative consulting” as its main service instead of more intuitive services such as creativity or media? With that choice, how did the whole team build an operational orientation to make a difference?

The choice of this central service is partly due to the experience of the founding team – Ha and Tuan Anh themselves have both worked in customer-side leadership and management positions, so they always think in a focused direction. on efficiency and solutions that serve short-term and long-term goals. Ha’s strengths lie in general management, understanding customers and the market, while Tuan Anh’s strengths lie in strategy and professional planning. From there, we built a clear positioning for Aurora from the name – Aurora Creative Consultancy, focusing on creative consulting – meaning from understanding to provide appropriate creative solutions.

The reason Aurora chose consulting instead of media planning is because they realized that in the Northern market, this initial planning stage is still quite “invisible” (although very important). In our opinion, building a brand cannot eliminate the factor of long-term perseverance. Therefore, Aurora always tries to escape the “one-off” trap (activities that are only effective in the short term and sporadically) and puts all proposals under the lens of long-term integration and accumulation of 3-5 years to contribute to the overall effectiveness of the brand. If given the opportunity, the Aurora team will exceed the requirements in the “question” from the brand so that the consulting problem can be as complete as possible.

In order for customer consulting to be effective, we need to explain each step so that customers clearly understand each activity. At the same time, Aurora has a process called The Light Journey – a method of goal-oriented and effective creativity.

The first and most important step is to clearly define the goals and destinations to gain consensus with customers. The second step focuses on the starting point and available team resources so as not to get bogged down with unfeasible solutions. Next is the story of planning and planning, then comes the creative part and finally, indispensable is the control during the implementation/execution process. The Light Journey is a handbook to orient and engage all project members.

* Please share a little about Aurora’s recent outstanding projects?

In 2022, Aurora has two memorable projects: one because it is very strange – the other because it is very big and important. The first project on HMI (Human-Machine Interface – roughly translated: User interface / control panel) for a domestic car company. In essence, the main job is still creative design (like web/app), but the technical characteristics are very complex as well as the nature of the project is quite massive when having to communicate with experts in many places around the world. worlds like America and England. Thanks to Aurora’s adherence to the mindset of “identify the problem – implement the solution”, the project ran smoothly and achieved impressive results.

Human-Machine Interface – an outstanding project of Aurora.

The second project is an important milestone for the brand – a customer gratitude campaign within the framework of Vietcombank’s 60th anniversary of operation. The solution proposed by the Aurora team is quite new: compose a rap song with a simple, easy-to-understand message and well integrated with the overall activity. At the same time, this idea brings a more youthful color to Vietcombank – which is also the bank’s rejuvenation and digital transformation orientation.

Vietcombank celebrates its 60th anniversary

From the beginning of 2023 until now, the team’s most satisfactory campaign is the project to change the brand positioning for the amusement park segment of a multi-industry corporation – which took place during the industry’s peak time last summer. The main communication product for the project is the music video “Wonderful Summer” performed by Duc Phuc, which skillfully conveys the highlights of the new positioning without giving the impression of being a corporate communication product. .

Team Aurora convinces customers to use a clever and gentle way of conveying the brand to be more different than the direct way of conveying the brand often used before. As a result, the song reached the Top 6 Trending YouTube and the song’s melody was used in more than 250,000 videos on TikTok, as well as views reaching more than 11.5 million organic views after 3 months. This is a testament that Aurora’s approach is appropriate and helps align the brand with the summer spirit as an ideal destination.

MV Mua he tuyet voi

Another project that the Aurora team is also very interested in is the project celebrating the 30th anniversary of Vingroup’s establishment, with the MV product “Proud to fly high”. From planning, project orientation, contacting partners, recruiting up to 1600 people, to actual production and getting the final product, all wrapped up within 10 days. . This project marked a journey in which the Aurora team together surpassed their own limits.

Vingroup celebrates its 30th anniversary

* Aurora’s initial customers are all large corporations. They don’t know if this is their intention (because corporations already understand communication and marketing) or will it expand to SME groups in the near future?

Aurora itself is also a startup and SME, so it also understands this group of businesses, which more or less makes life-or-death decisions every day. Although the problem of many corporations is also complex, the “difficulty” of SME feels… more difficult. SMEs often have small budgets and require more intuitive and short-term returns – Aurora is still having such implementation projects.

Aurora’s policy is to always accompany customers if two conditions are met: building a common understanding and permitting resources. Recently, an SME customer in the furniture sector (quite specific) came to discuss with Aurora and the team also advised the customer quite a bit. However, at that time the team was focusing all its efforts on other projects so could not accompany this customer. Even though we haven’t had a chance to cooperate yet, the understanding is more or less there, and if the fate is right, we will definitely meet again.

Aurora does not aggressively advertise to attract people, but its customer base mainly comes from referrals. There is a regular customer of Aurora who met each other through a chance to work together on a small project. Because you were impressed with the team, you then moved to another company but still gave the bidding opportunity to your team. In the end, Aurora was selected and has now cooperated effectively since the beginning of 2023 until now. We just wish we had more time to learn and accompany more customers. Because the whole team always invests heavily in research even before meeting customers to form the desire to accompany customers within themselves first.

* The first days of building Aurora were also when the COVID-19 pandemic broke out. What challenges did the team encounter at that time and how did they handle them?

Actually, just when we had the idea of starting our own business, the pandemic hit, but we felt like things weren’t out of control yet, so we both continued working. In early 2021, Aurora has its first beautiful small office with 6 members. The whole team is in the mindset of getting things right from the beginning, so they spend a lot of time researching the market and customers in the North. But then the epidemic became complicated, upsetting almost all calculations, but because of determination, the team persevered to troubleshoot each problem.

After three years of operation, Aurora has partly achieved its initial goals in terms of working environment and corporate culture.

First is the customer – the team has carefully considered which customers and projects they can approach during this period. Next is the model, method of operation and types of services provided. Aurora’s first project was to launch an electric car product for a domestic business (and COVID-19 made this extremely difficult). Aurora proposed the livestream story as the center as well as the connection between online and offline at each point of sale. Luckily, this solution has brought very good business results and surprised customers. Flexibility in thinking to solve each situation is the core thing that Aurora always keeps in mind. A successful debut project also helps Aurora’s business operations run more smoothly.

Next is the issue of management, how to maintain efficiency and cohesion when the company cannot work together. At that time, many activities were proposed such as connecting daily, exercising together and exchanging… There were many difficulties to recount in the beginning, but the most important thing was that we had to believe we could do it, then the solution was suitable before and after will also come.

After three years of operation, Aurora has partly achieved its initial goals in terms of working environment and corporate culture. Regarding business ambitions, there is still some distance because there are difficulties that only when you start doing it will you know and understand better. The achievement that the team feels is one step closer is the opportunity to accompany the leading brands in the North, thereby demonstrating the quality of their output products. There is a bullet point about the training segment called “Aurora Academy” that has remained in Aurora’s plan since day one. The team hopes that next year they can activate this product to complete the big plans of the first day of their career.

* Thank you for sharing Thai Ha and Tuan Anh.