Just After Midnight: The big agency groups' secret partner that delivers 24/7 support
Just After Midnight - an after hours tech company that promises to fix errors such as a site going offline, faulty tech or hardware issues once an agency goes to sleep - has secured a number of high-profile partnerships with major agency groups, including WPP.
Just After Midnight
It is often overlooked that the world keeps spinning when we clock off from work. For a company with a brand to protect, having support after hours is critical. Enter Just After Midnight, the recently launched tech company that promises to deliver on the after hours support a client needs, that an agency can’t (or won’t) deliver on its own.
When an agency wins a client, its main focus is on delivering projects, where digital agencies make their money. After hours support, while critical, is often bundled in as an afterthought. Setting up and maintaining a round-the-clock operation with support consultants, software developers and infrastructure is expensive for an agency and could force them to charge higher prices to clients. Meanwhile, the support and maintenance side of looking after a client is left as unexploited revenue.
It’s this gap between the expectations of a client and what agencies actually do that Sam Booth, founder and chief executive of Just After Midnight, sees as an opportunity to service a niche. The idea behind the company is to help an agency become a managed service provider without having to set up a 24/7 support team within the company.
"Clients want to be supported 24/7 as it is reputation and profit on the line. This is only getting more exaggerated as people sell across borders and the expectation of a live site 24/7 grows," Booth said.
The company has offices in London and Singapore; the 8-hour time difference proving a useful tool in having people on the clock. The nature of Just After Midnight’s work means most clients it works with cannot be disclosed, but Booth did share that considerable work is being done with agency groups including WPP, which operates some of the biggest agencies globally.
In most cases Just After Midnight acts as a ‘hidden partner’ within an agency, directly integrated as a single point of contact, meaning a client maintains one touch point instead of switching to a different contact after hours. The work is ‘white-labelled’, so all support and maintenance is done in the name of the agency, acting as a “seamless extension” of the team, Booth said.