Ready Set is a social media ad agency with a client list that includes DoorDash, MeUndies, Mercari, Coinbase, Rocket Money, Twine, and more.
Alex Stiegwardt, Ready Set’s head of casting and talent management, has more than two decades of experience as a producer and casting director in the United States, UK, and Latin America.
His focus is finding talent to create content that “merges the appeal of influencer content with the professionalism and experience of actors and advertising models,” which requires a deep bench of skilled actors, models, and makers to produce high-performing content for clients with aggressive deadlines, tight budgets, and high expectations.
“From the beginning, we understood that having a casting platform where we could find, select, request auditions, and hire the best talent in the market was the solution we needed,” he said.
“Backstage [is] always anticipating the challenges of the market, always listening to what players in the world of talent need, and always developing and testing new features and options so that we can do our job.”
A partnership with Backstage has resulted in Ready Set being able to:
- Cast 350-500 roles each month (5000+ annually)
- Grow their business more than 10x in under two years, going from fewer than 20 employees to over 200
- Deliver clients like DoorDash some of their best-ever performing content
Solving for constant change
Stiegwardt sees change as the new constant in his industry of performance marketing.
Brand marketers like him are adapting to rapid swings in user expectations for diverse perspectives, their current appetite for video, client demands for more authentic and persuasive content, and still-evolving models for agile talent sourcing and content creation caused by the pandemic. “The main thing for us,” he explained, is “understanding that today flexibility and change is the standard of work. … Being willing to change all the time is the new norm.”
Responding to the demands of the market, Ready Set recruits new talent to bring content to the social platforms where users are spending their time—using real people, real experiences, and authentic voices to tell brand stories.
And the agency has quickly become a TikTok and Instagram platform-native company, focusing on producing what they call “un-ads”, videos intentionally designed to offer genuine engagement and connection, not a hard sell.
“Nobody on TikTok wants to see ads,” Stiegwardt explained. “Yet people continue to make them—80% of the creative looks like an ad.”
“We designed a format that integrates the classic advertising experience with the new content creators trend,” Stiegwardt said, resulting in content clients are not only proud of but that continually outperforms. At Ready Set, the goal is to produce platform-native content that will turn a client’s social feeds into a “superweapon” in their brand strategy.
The added pressure of a global pandemic
Like almost every industry, the onset of a global pandemic in 2020 dramatically accelerated a pivot to remote work.
Ready Set took on the challenge to adapt quickly to continue production remotely. Stiegwardt and team understood that continuing to serve clients to their own high standards and keeping up with the need for skilled talent required wasting no time to set up fully remote casting and production processes.
“From the beginning, we understood that having a casting platform where we could find, select, request auditions and hire the best talent in the market was the solution we needed,” Stiegwardt said.
With so much at stake for his agency and his clients, Stiegwardt’s search for a partner with a deep and trusted reputation for being a source of rising talent “led us directly to Backstage as the natural and logical option.”
Exponential business growth
Ready Set found that Backstage was the solution they needed. It offered an online casting application process with a deep pool of skilled creators, remote audition capabilities, talent management tools, and more, enabling them to quickly staff projects for a diverse array of branded client projects.
Today Ready Set hires between 350 and 500 creators per month to produce branded content. Averaging 10 auditions per role, that means his casting team processes between 2,500 and 4,000 auditions each month to hire the talent they need. Finding a platform like Backstage to support and centralize searches, filtering, and hiring at this volume has been essential to their success.
Their reliable casting pipeline of talent to create high-performing content has enabled exponential business growth. In fewer than two years, their agency has grown from about 18 to more than 200 employees.
Supercharging client success
A recent challenging project for Ready Set was providing a solution for a client looking for a new source of fresh social media content. DoorDash needed an external resource that could:
- Understand and champion their brand
- Create mid-funnel content actress multiple channels
- Establish a library of ready-to-go content for multiple quarters
Ready Set met this challenge by having a ready resource of right-fit talent they could tap fast and frequently. Their partnership with DoorDash resulted in a surge in that company’s growth, one of their most successful quarters ever, and a slew of high-performing social media ads created by Ready Set.
Other Ready Set clients say:
- “Ready Set has been a great partner. They combined efficient production with a high bar for quality.” –James Peng, Head of Performance Marketing, Coinbase
- “Digital marketing is changing fast. The winners will be those who move quickly. Ready Set operated at a speed no one else can match.” –Chris Lien, CEO, Marin Software
And Stiegwardt knows Backstage is the partner he wants to help tackle whatever continued change and challenges come his way.
“They are always improving processes, adding features and exploring opportunities. That is why working with this platform always implies being up-to-date,” he said. “The customer service, maintenance, and development teams are always online to answer questions and listen to proposals, implement them, and test them. We consider them part of our team.”
Read on:
- How to Hire the Social Media Content Creators You Need
- Be Your Own Casting Director with Backstage
- Meet the Demand for Diverse, Inclusive Ad Content