Cross Productions: 'Small change can add tremendous value'

Cross Productions advises on, and educates around, the implementation of marketing solutions for businesses.

Cross is a team of creative thinkers who will go above and beyond to add value to clients and their brands.

The Leicester-based marketing consultancy develops both corporate and personal brand awareness by creating strategic marketing campaigns. 

It is also the publisher of Niche Magazine, the Real Entrepreneurs’ Magazine, and She Inspires Magazine. Cross also organises a host of regional events. 

The Cross team specialises in the creation of traditional and digital content.

Its members are bloggers, copywriters, and journalists who are skilled in writing press releases, news articles, features, blogs, social media posts, award applications, brochure content, and more.

‍Jenny Cross, CEO, told Innovative Leicestershire why Cross Productions is sponsoring Leicestershire Innovation Festival 2024.

Why is innovation important to your organisation?

Marketing is a creative industry. There is a requirement/expectation to keep coming up with new ideas, new campaigns, new approaches, and new channels through which to reach people. 

Companies that allow their marketing to stagnate will see a drop off in sales over time.

Your message ceases to make an impact once the customer has seen it again and again and again.

The message can stay the same, but the method, voice, and platform need a constant refresh.

Society evolves quickly these days, meaning the ways people communicate with each other, their likes and dislikes, and their aspirations are changing faster than ever.

To understand people and their motivations is to be innovative – marketers need to be researching new ways to track and analyse data, investing in new technology and refining processes.

For this reason, any marketing agency worth its salt needs people capable of innovation, creativity, and a passion for finding the next idea. 

How does your organisation encourage innovation?

In a variety of ways. Our staff are encouraged to put forward and undertake any training they feel would be of benefit to them and their job role.

In this way, they're constantly being presented with fresh methodology and personal growth.

To allow team members to pursue education in this way, we had to empower them with new roles and accountabilities.

Assigning heads of departments and leads in specific areas of the business was innovative of Cross Productions as it motivated each team member to strive and make a success of their area of responsibility.

In turn, staff who are on the look out for new training are a catalyst for further innovation that will develop our processes to increase productivity, our services to add value to clients, and our investments to see us become more efficient.

Signing new clients also gives us a refresh, as we incorporate new ideas to benefit them. These are then potentially applicable to existing clients.

Even though what's good for the goose isn't always good for the gander, it keeps us looking for new ideas -and while we're searching, we might find something useful that we can use. 

The theme of the sixth annual festival is ‘Small Change, Big Impact’ - do you have an example of this?

A small change we made in 2023 was to bring all departments into the same room, working side by side.

While an adjustment period was needed, this has had a huge impact on the team.

Relationships between team members are stronger as they’ve developed a deeper understanding of each other’s roles and bonded.

Strengthened team dynamics has allowed employees to feel comfortable in sharing their ideas and communicating their challenges to one another constructively.

It’s a small change that has added tremendous value to clients, as they’re benefiting from a collective team that wants to see each other’s projects succeed.