We start at the beginning, it’s a very good place to start. We take a look at a journey that brought about the agency, Temple – Wisdom Online. What transpired to transform it into the digital agency it is today?
Durban Technikon was where it all started for Brendan Temple, with a Diploma in Graphic Design and Advertising. This is now called DUT, but was back then the equivalent of Red and Yellow and Vega School of Branding. Finishing in 1997 after 3 year diploma, Brendan discovered his passion for traditional design and advertising. He worked with traditional ad agencies, with a stint at Hunt Lascaris where he found his calling in conceptualising and creating award winning ads.
Stepping into Digital as a Need to Create Relevant Work
However, this all changed in 1999 when Brendan moved to the UK and discovered the internet and building websites. There he was offered was offered the opportunity of a lifetime, working for a Royalty Free picture library called Digital Vision, which then became Getty Images. With absolutely no experience in web design, (he had hardly used emails), this was a whole new very hard change. His first boss said to him “you have 3 months to sink or swim”; and he decided to swim.
21 Years later it was the best move Brendan ever made, taking the conceptual and advertising experience and bringing it into a web and digital transformation. Doing this with the aim of helping clients to grow and stay in business.
In the Beginning
In January 2006, it all began when Brendan Temple defined his vision to help small to medium businesses navigate through a challenging marketing world. Temple Creative, the agency, was started because Brendan identified a serious lack of competent web development companies in business. There were plenty of ‘back street mechanic web companies’ that were offering a web service, but really not doing a quality job. Rather frustratingly, this didn’t stop them from calling themselves web development companies.
Thanks to Gary Smith (of Finserv), who assisted me with getting my business up and running, and answered questions as to why I was doing what I was doing, i.e starting a business that would be hard and massively time consuming. Gary got me to think about it more seriously and also question myself. He then helped me get the core fundamentals of business right, i.e budgets, cashflow etc. Without his and others’ assistance as a guide, I may not have made it in business.
I saw that a company was needed that could be trusted, an award-winning company, that offered people solutions to their online problems.
says Brendan.
There was also a distinct lack of valuable information out there for companies to be able to make the best decisions in marketing themselves online. Temple Creative took on the mandate to fulfil this role as a full design and web agency, that serviced PMB and the Midlands. One of the agencies first tags lines was “Temple Creative is a digital marketing agency that cares about you the client who is challenged by the murky online world“.
Temple Growth
What started as this back in 2006, “Temple Creative is a digital marketing agency that cares about you the client who is challenged by the murky online world. We bring truth and clarity to your world of online marketing. Temple provides knowledge and expertise based on practical experience and keen insight. We are your knowledge partners in a relationship that will bring you wisdom with all your online business and marketing solutions. Temple Creative, separating truth from illusion”, has grown to become something bigger with even more purpose and direction.
In 2019 Temple Creative underwent a Brand Name change as our vision had grown, and became Temple – Wisdom Online. The client base had also grown and it meant that, operating under the Temple brand, we are now ‘Temple Marketing’ as the Inbound Marketing agency, and ‘Temple Dev’ which is the custom web and software development team. This helps us to ensure that our clients get the best treatment, and that we have a full house team to attend to their marketing needs, and their custom web and software development needs.
This helps us to ensure that our clients get the best treatment and that we have a full house team to attend to their marketing needs.
Technique at Work | The How
Temple has always been about marketing your business in the right way. Following the principles of Perry Marshall and Dan Kennedy, we started off to get the right message, to the right market using the right media. It’s about failing fast, and finding what works and what doesn’t in our clients’ market.
We help you with your Unique Selling Proposition and to find the right people to sell to and convert those leads into business. Our job is to get the right leads to your site and convert those leads into business until we hit the sweet spot.
In order to get everything working like a dream, you need the right team. After working with the business coaching company Emyth, we are guided on the right hiring process, to find the right people who could fill the correct positions, based on what the Company needed to achieve, to help our clients. In a Steve Jobs’ interview, he said “your job as an entrepreneur, is to find talent, so you are a talent scout”. Learning from this allowed us to find new members of the team at Temple.
The other aspect that holds our team together and helps us work at optimum, is Systems. The best book we can recommend on this so far is “Work the System” by Sam Carpenter, where he explained how he saved his business using and developing systems. Temple is very focused on systems and have a dedicated Systems documenter, which is essential for key operating systems to be done and maintained. These two factors are how you become a premium brand.
Getting Marketing Results
The goal of marketing is to find the right people to sell to and convert those leads into business. Our job is to get the right leads to your site and convert those leads into business, which is tracked and tweaked until we hit the sweet spot. 80/20 applies to business marketing and our job is to find the 20% of people who bring in 80% of the results.
Metrics give us direction and tell us so much. We measure everything and using the right tools, capture data that can then be turned into action steps to help us know we are focusing on the right 20% of the market that will bring in the 80% of results.
Temple : Back to the Future
It is 15 years down the line, and Temple have moved to the purpose that was written in 2006. To be a truly creative, fun, innovative, proudly South African New Media company with a passion for the internet. The agency is growing to be a world class organization with the primary goals of enjoying what we do with creating website systems, designs and online marketing that gives the user and customer an unbelievable experience every-time.
We want our clients to know that we get huge enjoyment in bringing them campaigns that help them build successfully and grow.
If you are starting out and want to get it right to build a great foundation and brand, if you are a growing Company and you want to continue to be successful, or if you are a Corporate that wants to put a fresh spin on your marketing or or build a world-class app or have a custom web or software solution developed, contact us. We will guide you to making the decisions your business needs to be successful.
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