Veronica Cremen was just 24 when she set up Vonnimedia. The digital marketing agency has seen continuing growth as it manages millions of dollars of client billings. B&T sat down with Cremen to chat about the realities of starting your own business in your 20s and setting it up for success in the long run.
Cremen was on B&T’s Women in Media Awards Long List in 2023 and was featured on B&T TV in June 2023.
B&T: Since starting Vonnimedia in 2019, what have been the biggest lessons in running an agency?
Veronica Cremen: I think the biggest one is that when you’re engaged to do a service, this is actually only a small component of the work. To grow a brand, you have to be a sort of growth consultant for the business. In Korea, for example, we’re engaged to do Facebook creative, but we’ve gone beyond that to get a full picture of their operations, what their logistics look like, their product development and making sure that they grow their brand sustainably.
Another huge one has been knowing when to bring an expert in. Hiring people when I need skillsets quickly, for accounting, legal, and finance, has been integral. I love the hiring process where I get to meet and work with people who are way smarter than I am!
B&T: Has anything surprised you along the way?
VC: One that surprised me is the good feeling of giving back. We’ve done a lot of work for not-for-profits. At the moment we’re building a co-working space and the feedback has been fantastic. When I started Vonnimedia, I was given a 3-month membership to WeWork. It’s great for a small team, or if you’re a parent wanting to get out of the house. It offers lots of things for different people. To facilitate that same environment that helped me for the next generation of creatives is really exciting.
B&T: What were the challenges you faced starting your own agency as a young person?
VC: One of the hardest things I found building a business at such a young age was not having enough experience of what good and bad looks like in business. There is a lot of ambiguity and being able to foresee challenges because you’ve been through them before is a superpower.
Fortunately, we’ve been lucky to work with clients and partners who’ve helped us as much as we’ve been able to support their business by having partnerships built on trust. These partners have acted almost like mentors, which was something I didn’t expect when we started.
B&T: What advice would you give to young people wanting to start their own agency today?
VC: Acknowledge that you don’t know everything and you can only do one thing well at a time, even as you scale up. It can be easy to try and say you can do everything for everyone, which ultimately leads to doing nothing for anyone well. We found that niching down, in the beginning, allowed us to hone our craft quicker and be more valuable to our clients.
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B&T: How have you managed the growth of the agency?
VC: A core pillar of how we operate is that we’re customer-centric. We care relentlessly about our clients’ needs, outcomes, and success. We work for them, and we want the best results for them.
Terri Milani, who started as a marketing assistant, marketing coordinator, and manager, has recently been promoted and is now our lead of client services, all in a three-year period. It’s really important to reward employees for working hard. Our people are the reason why we’re succeeding.
B&T: What do you anticipate for the agency’s future progression after some recent new hires?
VC: We’re excited to continue growing. We have so much work left to do. Our biggest focus is ensuring that we stick with our core focus and product, which is a social-led, full-service agency. Our new team members are helping to drive strategy and creativity and supporting our media buying services through their varied expertise.
We’re also focusing more on our consulting approaches and leaving heavily into how we can get better in that area.
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B&T: What is the importance of creativity in an agency specialising in paid social, paid search, and content creation?
VC: The ability to think creatively and out of the box while still aligning with a brand is important. It’s not just about a visually appealing brand that looks nice, it’s also about the strategic use of the platforms we’re telling a story on. We’re focusing on more emotional storytelling moving forward. In the past, we loved talking more natively to the customer and presenting lots of features and benefits and reasons why customers should engage. Now, we’re unlocking more emotional storytelling around branding.
We honed in on this when working with The Little, a Sydney-based jewellery brand that’s seen major growth over the past five years. They’ve been consistently utilising creative while being strategic about organic vs paid content and how they’ve carved out space in digital.
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Vonnimedia has seen a slew of new hires, with Laura Stead most recently hired as the new head of business development. We’re excited to see Vonnimedia’s continued growth and its focus on emotional storytelling in brand work.