Tag: UX

The future can be unpredictable, and current economic conditions have created some significant uncertainty. Many creative and marketing teams face the daunting challenge of budget constraints and cuts. Consequently, businesses across various sectors are feeling the pressure. For many, it is time to tighten their belts, but at what cost?  

With resources limited, organizations find themselves rethinking their strategies and seeking out creative solutions that enable them to thrive despite financial limitations. Are these challenges sounding familiar? Read on to discover ways to protect your talent planning, key initiatives, and project implementations. 

Understanding the Impact of Budget Cuts

According to the CMO Alliance’s ​​CMO Insights Report 2025, the impact of current economic conditions on revenue varies by organization size. ​​While 33% of enterprises report experiencing revenue challenges, a staggering 83% of startups feel the squeeze.  

Budget cuts can reverberate throughout an organization, affecting staffing levels, project timelines, and overall business operations. Creative teams, in particular, find themselves forced to do more with less, jeopardizing the efficiency, originality, and effectiveness of their output. This makes it vital for companies to engage in strategic talent planning, ensuring they can mitigate the risk.  

Doing More with Less: Creative Staffing Solutions You Can Implement Now 

For CMOs, resource constraints have become the standard rather than the exception. Marketing budgets as a percentage of total company budgets have fallen to 10.1%, down from 13.8% in 2022. Creativity in hiring, outsourcing, and enhancing operational efficiency is not just a competitive advantage anymore—it’s often a necessity. So, here’s where teams are turning… 

Freelance Talent

One of the most effective strategies to navigate budget cuts is to tap into freelance talent. Hiring freelancers allows organizations to maintain flexibility and achieve significant cost savings. By engaging freelancers on a short term or project basis, teams can scale their workforce up or down based on need without the long-term commitment required for full-time hires. And there’s no shortage of great freelance talent—with so many people opting to freelance, companies have many choices in nearly every field. About 64 million people worked as freelancers in 2023, and an estimated 86.5 million will be freelancing by 2027 — more than half the total U.S. workforce​​​​. 

Looking for freelance talent? Here are some of the most in-demand freelance roles right now. 

Creative 

  1. UX/UI Designer 
  2. Motion Designer 
  3. Videographer 
  4. Web Designer 

Marketing 

  1. Digital Marketing Manager 
  2. SEO Specialist 
  3. Social Media Manager 
  4. Public Relations Manager 

Agile Project Teams

Agile Project Teams allow businesses to adapt quickly to changing priorities or seasonal demands while optimizing resource allocation. By assembling teams tailored to specific projects, organizations can leverage diverse skill sets and drive creativity in problem-solving.  

These agile teams can often be assembled into a dedicated studio or flexible benches of talent for needs like overflow production, ad-hoc projects, special projects or unique capabilities.  

Here are the key roles that are often critical in establishing and maintaining agile project teams or studios:  

Use Technology to Your Advantage

Harnessing the right tools can dramatically improve team efficiency. Remote and hybrid working solutions have proliferated, and leveraging platforms that facilitate communication and project management can enhance productivity. Slack, Trello, and Asana streamline workflows and provide visibility into project progress, enabling teams to remain connected regardless of location. 

  1. Project Management Platforms (PMPs)/Workflow 
  2. Digital Asset Management (DAM) Platforms 
  3. Re-platforming/Platform Migration 

Leverage a Subject Matter Expert

Engaging with subject matter experts (SMEs) is a strategic way to optimize spending while maximizing impact. SMEs bring specialized knowledge that can enhance project outcomes without the need for permanent hires. Assess when there’s a need for specialized expertise and consider bringing in these professionals on a consultancy basis, allowing your teams to stay nimble while producing high-quality work. 

Here are common initiatives where creative and marketing leaders leverage consulting expertise: 

Justifying the Investment & Proving Value 

According to a survey by Gartner, “proving ROI with analytics” is a top three challenge that hinders tech marketers’ ability to demonstrate success. This can make it difficult to communicate with stakeholders and secure investments. The key is to quantify the impact on business objectives by directing eyeballs to the data. 

By first establishing foundational “building blocks” for metrics, data, processes, technology, and resources, you can continuously monitor, optimize, and showcase the marketing activities that align with your business objectives, as well as the talent driving these initiatives. Recognizing the importance of measurement in this way will allow you to better communicate the impact of your creative and digital efforts.

Depending on your industry, product, and target audience, choosing the right metrics will vary. Nevertheless, aligning your metrics with key objectives and formulating a strategy for your data collection will help you showcase progress toward strategic goals (such as revenue and customer growth) more successfully.  

Remember, standardized processes, the right technology and tools, and a clear plan for measurement are your foundational building blocks.  

 Does your organization need help proving its ROI back to stakeholders? Try leveraging key roles such as a marketing analyst, digital marketing manager, SEO specialist, marketing operations manager, performance marketing manager or customer insights manager. 

What’s the TLDR? 

While budget cuts pose a challenge to creative and marketing teams, they also encourage innovative thinking and resourcefulness. Creative Circle is here to support businesses during times when budgets are tight, and progress is required. We’re here to provide top talent that can be deployed as freelancers, full-time staff, subject matter experts, or as a part of agile project teams. We offer flexible staffing solutions that cater to constrained budgets while helping to demonstrate the value of creative work back to the business and its stakeholders. 

What started as a simple screensaver has become a dynamic destination. What?

If you let a Roku idle for a bit, you land in an immersive, magenta-hued cityscape, where you can explore art deco theaters, cozy diners, elegant cafes, noir-ish mansions, and a romantic moon-kissed lagoon, all with a Blade Runner-esque vibe. This noteworthy screensaver has taken on a life of its own — known on social channels as Roku City — with fans dreaming of packing their bags to move in. That’s the power of some seriously good UX.

When most folks flick on their Rokus, the streaming hub that says it has more than 70 million active accounts, it’s generally because they want to watch a movie, show, or event. However, what has become quite clear is that many of these people are also spending a bit of time watching Roku’s dynamic screensaver.

“This particular screensaver has taken on a life of its own,” said the New York Times last year, pronouncing that idle Rokus had become “the unlikely venue for a massive public art experiment.” With the sheer size of Roku’s customer base, millions of homes peek into Roku City every night, providing a window into its dazzlingly enigmatic streets. “It’s always golden hour in Roku City — it’s really appealing to everyone,” shared Cheryl Singletary, a design director at Roku. And over time, an enthusiastic subculture of Roku City devotees has emerged on the web.

This digital cityscape was born in 2018 and was designed by Kyle Jones, a freelance graphic designer at the time who now works at Pixar. He imbued the digital urbanscape with 30 plus movie references, from the emerald city of Oz to Sleepless in Seattle, King Kong, Spider-Man, and more — crafting an aesthetic that dances between Art Deco and noir.

In the foreground, we see a shining strip of theaters with lit marquees, romantic restaurants, cafes, and apartment buildings. But across the river is a more pleasingly frightful affair, with rampaging monsters, voluptuous volcanoes, and other assorted chaos. This friction-y contrast is part of what makes Roku City so mesmerizing and easy to space out to as your mind wanders into the contours of this land that is, yes, a screen saver.

Now, this digital Gotham is folding in something new: advertising.

While it’s a nascent endeavor, it’s a sign that Roku is pioneering new ways to grow at a time when other streaming services are cutting costs to stem subscriber loss. Roku had a strong last quarter of 2023, growing total revenue 20% year-over-year and, for the first time, opened Roku City up to major brand advertisers like MaNel and McDonald’s, integrating those brands’ visuals into their now-iconic screensaver, presenting a new way to engage their audience.

Earlier this summer, Grimace appeared in Roku City, bringing McD’s Golden Arches and all to R.C.’s Main Street, part of the first branded ad deal on the screensaver. Barbie’s marketing campaign this summer included adding an extravagant three-story Dreamhouse to Roku City, complete with an extensive shoe closet, hot pink slide, and rocking dance floor — along with a Barbie-branded Roku Movie Theater, with billboards showcasing the film’s trailer — representing a revolutionary approach to movie marketing. And more recently, an Acura dealership and a Walmart opened their own virtual storefronts, leaving some to speculate that Roku City may be spawning Roku Suburb.

Right now, it’s not clear exactly how much money Roku City ads may be bringing in, but Roku has said that there is more to come, suggesting that demand is higher than capacity. What is clear, however, is that Roku is building an ad-friendly digital city — which has become increasingly valuable real estate.

Last May, Paramount+ muscled into the Roku City space with its own “neighborhood” vis-à-vis a brand takeover that reimagined R.C.’s digital streetscape with Paramount-centric landmarks, from its logo to visual homages to Star Trek and Top Gun: Maverick among others — with billboards in this Paramount corner leading straight to Paramount content. What makes these engineered spaces valuable is the UX that makes them believable. Digital innovation is entering a new era of invention — and stellar UX is at the helm.

 

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Takeaway

The contours of the marketing landscape are ever-changing; Roku has crafted a monetizable digital metropolis, birthing a completely new way to engage with its customer base. Marketers, take note. If you want to lead your company’s UX marketing innovation charge but need help figuring out where to start, Creative360 can help you dream up a whole new world where you can proudly plant your very own brand flag.

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