“Efficiency is doing things right. Effectiveness is doing the right things.”
Peter Drucker
Every family has one.
The person who shows up early, not to socialize—but to quietly make sure no one ruins anything.
In my family, that person was Aunt Marcela.
She’d arrive twenty minutes before anyone else, armed with a shopping bag full of mystery items: two lemons, a roll of masking tape, a backup potholder, and—on one memorable occasion—a single stick of butter wrapped in foil “just in case.”
Before anyone had figured out where to put the coats, Marcela had rearranged the prep station, rotated the cutting board 45 degrees (“you’ll see why”), and swapped a chipped bowl for one from the back of the cabinet. She had a sixth sense for what was about to go wrong and a quiet genius for making it right—without interrupting the story you were telling.
She was always in motion, but never in the way. No flair, no fuss. Just the right move at the right moment.
And by the time the doorbell rang and someone shouted “We’re not ready!” Marcela had already lit the stove, set out some cheese and crackers, and pre-poured the drinks that would keep the early arrivers occupied until the rest of us caught up.
She wasn’t the reason we gathered. But she was the reason it worked.
The Unsung Role That Changes Everything
I’ve thought about Aunt Marcela more times than I can count—at conferences, in pitch meetings, during the fifth revision of a client deck that was supposed to be “final.”
Not because I needed comfort food (though, yes, always). But because I started to notice a pattern.
The most successful teams I’ve worked with—the ones who make it look easy—always have a Marcela.
Not a spotlight-seeker. Not a miracle worker. Just someone who quietly does the things that matter before anyone realizes they needed doing.
The spreadsheet is cleaned up. The metrics are aligned. The client-ready version is already exported, with the logo in the corner and the right dates in the right cells.
And no one’s exactly sure who did it. But everyone’s glad someone did.
That’s the role that changes everything—not because it demands attention, but because it gives everyone else the space to shine.
The Agency Reality
Agencies are full of talent. That’s never been the issue.
Strategy? Sharp. Creative? On point. Client instincts? Uncanny. You can walk into a room with half a brief and still come out with a campaign that feels like it’s been in development for six months. Agencies are, by nature, fast, adaptive, clever.
But even the best teams hit a wall—and it’s almost never about ideas.
It’s the other stuff. The prep, the cleanup, the translation layer between brilliance and execution.
It’s trying to scale personalized strategy across five (or fifteen) client accounts without pulling your analysts into a spreadsheet spiral.
It’s reformatting the same donor data six different ways because no two systems want to talk to each other.
It’s spending hours getting a report board-ready when what you really want is to act on what the data’s telling you.
None of it’s glamorous. All of it’s essential. And most of it ends up being absorbed by the same people who are also trying to lead the creative, manage the relationship, and get the next pitch out the door.
That’s not failure. That’s capacity hitting its ceiling.
And when that happens, you don’t lose the work—you lose the margin to do your best work.
Enter Avid: The Multiplier
There’s a difference between growing and scaling.
Agencies know how to grow—new clients, new campaigns, new wins. But scaling? That’s trickier. That’s when brilliance starts to get buried under busywork. That’s when the backend slows the front end down.
Every new client shouldn’t feel like an IT project.
It shouldn’t require another round of platform gymnastics just to see what’s working. And it definitely shouldn’t mean your smartest people are stuck formatting exports while the campaign clock ticks down.
That’s where Avid comes in.
It connects the tools your clients already use—CRMs, email platforms, donation processors—and pulls the data together in one place. No reformatting. No renaming columns. No 86-tab spreadsheets that crash halfway through the export.
It surfaces the right insights—automatically. Which segments are ready to give again. Which donors are starting to drift. Which campaign is quietly outperforming expectations and deserves a boost.
It builds audiences in real time, so you don’t have to. You just select, sync, and go—email, ads, social, all connected.
And when your client asks for a board-ready report, Avid can turn live campaign data into a polished slide deck in seconds. Charts, summaries, branded and shareable. You don’t need to design around the data. The data shows up ready to go.
In short: Avid does what my Aunt Marcela would do.
It handles the details. Preps the scene. Anticipates what’s needed before anyone says it out loud.
You’re still running the show. Avid just takes care of everything that shouldn’t be slowing you down.
Why This Matters Now
Agency work has always had tension baked in: the pressure to move fast, think big, and still get the details right.
But today’s clients aren’t asking for less. They’re asking for:
- faster turnarounds,
- sharper personalization,
- deeper insights,
- and scalable execution—on every channel, all at once.
And they’re asking for it all with tighter budgets, tighter timelines, and expectations set by brands with infinite tech stacks and in-house data teams.
The agencies that thrive in this environment won’t just be the most creative.
They’ll be the most operationally intelligent.
The ones who find ways to scale excellence without compromising what makes them special.
That’s where Avid makes the difference.
It’s not just about saving time. It’s about restoring capacity—for the work that actually needs your brain, your eye, your touch.
When the bottlenecks are removed, the bandwidth returns.
And suddenly, your team has the margin to lead—not just keep up.
What Marcela Knew
Marcela never called what she did “strategy.” She wouldn’t have used a word like “optimization.” But she knew what worked. She knew that small things weren’t small if they made everything else possible.
She knew that when people arrived, they should feel like everything was already in motion. That the stove should be hot. The drinks should be ready. The hosts should look like they’d slept.
She understood the difference between effort and orchestration. Everything seemed to fall into place—because she’d already done the invisible work of making it so.
That’s the kind of presence most teams don’t know they’re missing until it’s there. And once it is, they realize how much weight they’d been carrying without it.
Avid was built in that spirit—not to take center stage, but to ensure everything behind the scenes runs exactly as it should.
To keep the lights warm, the tools in sync, and the team focused on the part only they can do.
Because you weren’t hired to run reports. Or wrangle data.
You were hired to move missions. To guide clients. To create something remarkable.
Marcela would’ve understood that.
She probably would’ve shown up twenty minutes early to help you do it.
