How a Marketing Agency Uses Todoist to Manage Photographers and Videographers In the Field

Production and marketing agency In-Gear Media is known for the high-quality content its in-house team produces. And surprisingly, In-Gear doesn’t outsource any aspects of its content production. The 13-person team does it all: filming, editing, ideation, sales, admin, client relations, project management, and more.

“We're not outsourcing anywhere, which is especially uncommon now, but it means that we need a really strong project management software because we're not sending things off to AIs all over the world,” Ann Rosson, Project Management Team Lead at In-Gear Media, says.

At the small agency, no one's job description is static – team members move between roles and pick up whatever a client project needs.

"There's a lot of room to get your toes wet in every aspect of marketing and production,” Brittney Schuler, Internal Business Development at In-Gear Media, says. “Todoist helps with that, because it allows us to see everything in the big picture, and anyone can step in, see where a project is at, and leave notes, suggestions, inspiration links, all of that kind of stuff."

Moving field work forward, without chasing

Real estate clients make up a large part of In-Gear Media’s business, which means producing listing photos, virtual tours, videos, and more. With up to 11 shoots a day, "it can get far more complex than you would think,” Ann says.

Typically, In-Gear creates one Todoist task per shoot, broken into subtasks: shoot, recap shoot, edit, proof and deliver, and revise. Each subtask has both a date (In-Gear uses this to indicate when the work can be started) and a deadline (the date by which the work must be completed).

After a photographer or videographer goes out on location for a shoot, they use Todoist’s mobile app to leave notes in the associated task about how it went, including any updates the client may have given while on site. So instead of countless phone calls, messages, and chasing down team members out in the field for updates, those back at HQ can just look at Todoist.

Keeping records in Todoist beats someone trying to remember

Because Todoist allows up to 500 team projects, the In-Gear team doesn’t feel limited by what types of data they can store. So they turned to Todoist when developing a repeatable workflow to track past client work: When a client contract ends, the project sections – each one usually a month or a billing period – get moved into a folder named “Client Archive” in their team workspace. The result is a searchable record going back years, showing who they've worked with and what was done.

"We're able to go back and see the work that we've done, rather than having to just wipe it,” Brittney says. “That allows us to keep track of the clients that we've worked with as well, so, in a sense, we kind of use Todoist as a CRM."

Building a system the whole team runs on

When Ann joined In-Gear Media a few years ago, she was asked almost immediately to evaluate the company's project management setup in Asana. She found that Asana hadn't been used to its fullest, and the company had outgrown it. After some research, she recommended the team switch to Todoist instead.

Ann also likes the quick visibility she can get into the team’s workload, thanks to Todoist’s People tab.

"When I'm managing a couple of people on my team, and I want to check that everything assigned to them is looking good, sometimes because of the volume of our projects, I don't want to go project by project,” Ann says. “I just want to go and check what's assigned to a team member."

Brittney has found that quickly adding tasks to Todoist helps her stay on top of her multifaceted role.

"I have so much going on in my brain on a constant basis, just trying to keep everything in line,” Brittney says. “So I dump everything in Todoist: every single reminder I need, internal notes, internal reminders, every single thought that might pertain to a client, every step and task that needs to be completed, even if it's clearing out my email inbox for the day. It's my world of sticky notes.”

Over the years since switching to Todoist, In-Gear has iterated on their setup to keep more and more of their routine work on track. Even as their setup grew more complex, Todoist stayed simple enough for everyone on the team to use, which is exactly why it became the system everything runs on.

It's been a few years since In-Gear made the switch, and Todoist still manages everything they throw in it: shoots, edits, client history, and all. 

Three tips from In-Gear Media's Todoist setup

1. To store completed client work, consider an archive folder in your team workspace. A finished project doesn't have to disappear. You can file it away by billing period, like In-Gear does, for future reference.

2. For multi-day shoots, make a Todoist task for each day. In-Gear prefers one task per day out in the field, so updates stay organized by day, and everyone knows exactly where to check.

3. Type it instead of clicking it. Use shorthand in a task's title to set dates, duration, and who it's assigned to, straight from the keyboard. "I really like being able to type out dates, times, duration, person, deadline, because I don't need to then click around – I can just use my keyboard,” Brittney says.

In-Gear Media is a real Todoist customer. We compensated them for kindly giving their time. The review and words are their own.