Listen Now

Mary Patrick is CEO and Managing Partner at Jasculca Terman (JT) Strategic Communications, a 40-year-old public affairs firm that provides issue education and crisis management and builds support for its clients’ controversial legislative, regulatory, and public policy issues.  Over the past few years, crisis management has been close to 50% of the firm’s business. “Topping the list” over this past year were Covid and social issues, but the agency’s scope is broad: workforce and labor issues, leadership misconduct, immigration, environment, non-Covid healthcare, protest and rally management, and contentious leadership changes . . . anything where there is controversy or two or more sides to a story. Organizations might engage JT at any time – when they want to plan ahead to avert potential problems, when they know something is coming and want to put the key pieces in place to manage it, or . . . when the news chopper is overhead and news media are banging on the door. Mary believes storytelling is the most important tool in JT’s arsenal. She advises organizations to be the first to tell their stories. Even if news is “bad,” being first to talk about it provides the opportunity to better define your narrative, bring forth your mission, present your position, and paint the picture, making it “resonant and memorable.” Story “examples” showing the human-interest side of an issue are most compelling. “People remember how an issue impacts a person or a family, or I guess even the world,” she says. JT comes with a full toolbox and creates for its clients a lot of videos (some even award-winning), infographics, animations, social posts on all platforms, vignettes, testimonials. and talking points. Stories are also communicated directly in person, through Zoom, and in written material.  The firm’s major events division brings people together with turnkey, end-to-end solutions – from booking venues and speakers, planning breakout sessions, and providing all levels of seamless, onsite technical support. Covid and “going virtual” meant the firm had to add an additional technological layer. Does the client need their event to be interactive? How will people raise a hand, ask a question, put things in the chat? What needs to be done to keep “zoomed out” audiences interested and engaged? The most challenging PR question? What can an organization do when things have gone catastrophically bad and the story has gotten really big? Who should the organization contact directly to help people understand its perspective, its point of view, the scope of the issue, and what the organization is doing about it? When is “strategic silence” appropriate?  Handling this kind of crisis is where JT excels. Mary says there are times when mistakes have been made or things have gone bad for an individual or organization, and the entity (or JT on its behalf) has to own the responsibility, apologize, and tell people what will be done to correct the situation. . . if it wants to rebuild trust and credibility. “You can never say that it’ll never happen again,” Mary warns. Mary can be reached on the Jasculca Terman website at JTPR.com. Transcript Follows: ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m your host, Rob Kischuk, and I am joined today by Mary Patrick, who is the CEO and Managing Partner at Jasculca Terman Strategic Communications based in Chicago, Illinois. Welcome to the podcast, Mary. MARY: Thanks, Rob. ROB: It’s good to have you here. Why don’t you start off with a little bit of an introduction of Jasculca Terman and the focus of the firm? Where do you all excel?  MARY: Sure. Jasculca Terman Strategic Communications – and we’ll make it easy for everybody; we typically call ourselves JT – JT was founded by Rick Jasculca and Jim Terman 40 years ago this year. We’re a public affairs firm, which means we focus on issues like legislative, regulatory, public policy, areas where there might be controversy or two sides. We do a lot of educating around issues, and we do a lot of crisis management work. I would say over the last few years, crisis management has been at least 50%, maybe more, of our business. ROB: Wow. MARY: Big picture, to describe us, I would say what our superpower is, what we’re great at, is storytelling. That’s how we look at the world. Storytelling in all its forms and all its situations. You can imagine, for instance, over the last year, if we are doing a lot of crisis management work, we’ve been working on COVID in all its iterations. We’ve had a lot of social justice issues that our clients are managing and trying to communicate around. Those currently top the list, but we have several crisis projects that don’t touch either of those issues – things like workforce and labor issues, maybe misconduct by a leader. We’ve done a lot of work in the immigration space, in the environment, in other aspects of healthcare besides COVID. We’ve helped people handle protests and rallies and controversial leadership changes and a whole lot more. But storytelling is really where we excel, and we look at it, honestly, as defining the narrative on your terms. It’s about bringing your mission, your position to life and really painting a picture, making it resonant and memorable. And we think examples really make a difference, especially the human interest side of an issue or what you’re trying to do. Those are the most compelling. Those are the most connecting. Those are the things people remember: how an issue impacts a person or a family, or I guess even the world. And we tell those stories through a variety of vehicles. We have an in-house creative director and video producer, so we produce a lot of videos – some even award-winning. We use infographics and animations. We do social posts on all different platforms. We create vignettes and testimonials and talking points. We have a major events division, and we see that as a really important companion in terms of our public affairs work bringing people together. And of course, that has pivoted to also doing actually quite a few virtual events in the last year and a half. The other way we tell stories is directly in person or through Zoom, and of course, with the written word. We obviously put a lot of stock in what we write and those kinds of materials. ROB: Dig in a little bit on – during normal times, and maybe coming up, what does an event that you’re involved in, that JT puts on, look like? What’s an example or a big picture, at least, of who it’s for, who comes to it, that kind of thing? MARY: We’re working on a major event right now for a major not-for-profit that focuses on women’s issues. They’ve done this for years in person, and it draws 2,000 people. The issues around missing that level of networking and how we bring that back through a virtual lens – they have a major speaker who I can’t share yet, but they have a major speaker who we will bring in via satellite. There will be breakout rooms so people can have a little bit of that experience of networking with each other. We helped them produce some video vignettes around the women who have received grants through this organization for the amazing work they’re doing in a variety of spaces. We’ll package that all – our team works with a variety of platforms, depending on a client’s needs. Do we need an event to be interactive? Are there places where people will be able to raise a hand, ask a question, put things in the chat? All those aspects are considered as we pull these things together. And what we’ve discovered in the many events that we’ve been doing over the last 16 months during COVID is that interaction is important. Visuals are important. Getting a lot of variety, so you’ve got some live components and then you also have some prerecorded components. Making it as interesting as possible for people who are experiencing Zoom fatigue at best. ROB: Got it. It really is turnkey, end-to-end. In normal times you’re talking about everything from booking a venue, booking speakers, planning for breakout sessions in reality. It sounds like a turnkey, end-to-end, and very complicated situation. And then to also have to turn around and evolve that online while you’re at it. MARY: Exactly. I think it’s all about asking the right questions and really thinking about what it is our client is trying to accomplish with an event and managing all the logistics that go into pulling that together seamlessly, smoothly, and mainly, if we do our job right, then you’re just troubleshooting the live aspects. And putting the technology into the middle of it in the last 16 months, there’s an extra level of holding our breath a little bit. [laughs] But we’ve got some terrific people in-house who have really pivoted very well, and our event business is as strong as it’s ever been, which has been in some respects a surprise to me. ROB: I’m sure when we dig into the crisis side a little bit, that seems like every day could be a fresh and new surprise and an opportunity to jump in. What does the life cycle of a crisis look like for you? MARY: Everyone is different, and people bring you in at different times. We have actually worked with clients who want to plan ahead, which we think is a great idea. That’s even before the beginning of a crisis, when a client is thinking about their potential vulnerabilities and what they want to put in place so that they wouldn’t have to scramble at the last minute. We’ve come in at that time. We’ve come in when someone knows something is coming and they’re anticipating it and they want to plan for the real event and put all the key pieces in place. We’ve been called when the news chopper is overhead or the media is already knocking on the online door, asking the client for comment or pointing out the tough issues. And we’ve also been called when a client had thought or hoped that they could manage it internally, and a couple days into it they realize that they really could use some outside expertise. There are some wonderful, wonderful organizations, corporations, that have terrific communications staff, but a lot of the communications staff doesn’t have crisis experience. So we often work hand in hand with an in-house communications team, helping them manage the crisis with the expertise that we can bring to the table. And it starts with asking all the right questions and thinking about scope and scale and audiences and who we can try to get to, to share your story before things get really big in the media. If things have already gotten big in the media, who do we need to reach out to directly to help make sure people understand your perspective, your point of view, the actual scope of the issue, and especially what you’re doing about it. There are absolutely times when things have gone bad for someone, or mistakes are made, and you have to step up and own them. You have to step up and apologize for them. If you want to build back trust and credibility, you have to tell people what you’re going to do. You can never say that it’ll never happen again. ROB: [laughs] Can we highlight that and tell people that? Because some people want you to guarantee it will never happen again. MARY: Right. We’re very careful about how we talk about that. But we do help a client put as many things in place to hopefully avoid it happening again. ROB: I think in any firm, there’s a potential for conflicts between individual people on the team and the clients. You can imagine a marketing firm where someone’s an ethical vegetarian; they have to market for a hamburger chain. These things happen. But here in your world, where you’re talking about things where, as you say, stuff is out in the media, it seems to an extent unavoidable that your team and you – bringing your whole self to work – will have feelings about a topic that might be in tension with a client. How do you think about that / handle that? Does it impact who gets work on what client? MARY: Generally, I think everyone who works at JT believes in this idea that everyone should have a chance to tell their story. JT is 40 years old; I’ve been there for 36 of those 40 years, and in those 36 years, I’ve only been part of probably two experiences – and it wasn’t even me – where we were working on issues that people either had a strong feeling that they could not represent a client as well, or they’d had a personal experience that made them feel they could not tell the story for the client just based on what the client was dealing with. But that’s two experiences in 36 years. ROB: It resonates with the similar role of – not to say that someone’s charged with a crime, but the defense attorney and the public defender. There is a right to being represented fairly and accurately. You did reference – I think it’s interesting – that you’ve been with the firm 36 out of the 40 years. It’s notable that you are not Jasculca or Terman, but you are the CEO and managing partner. How did you come to be involved? And how did you end up in charge? MARY: When I got out of college – I studied PR and communications at Miami University, and I thought as I was studying it that what I really wanted to do is agency work. I sort of thought that was the only path. Literally maybe a month before I got out of school, I went to some presentation or lecture where someone was talking about not-for-profit PR. It opened my eyes. I started to realize that agencies aren’t the only place to practice; there are people who do PR for hospitals, for universities, for not-for-profits. I decided that what really interested me was the not-for-profit side. So when I moved to Chicago – and this will tell you how very, very old I am – I literally went to the library to look up all the not-for-profits that had headquarters in Chicago. I sent them my letters and I pitched them and called them, and my first job was with the American Red Cross in their Midwest chapter downtown. In my first year of being there as the Public Affairs Blood Services Specialist, the AIDS crisis hit. You can imagine what sort of baptism by fire that was for a 23-year-old fresh out of college, dealing suddenly with the safety and sanctity of the volunteer blood supply as it related to AIDS. I ended up doing lots of interviews and essentially learning, by being in it, how a crisis works. Our job was to keep people continuing to voluntarily donate their blood, because it very, very, very much matters in terms of the health of the world. And people were afraid. AIDS was so linked to needles and so linked to blood. So that was my first taste of this issues management piece, and I really found that I liked it a lot. So when I was thinking about a next step, I looked at agencies that were smaller and that might have some sort of political or cause-related path. I honestly, truly lucked into JT in its – I guess it wouldn’t be infancy. In its toddlership. It was four years old. It was smaller then. I really got the ability to grow and then eventually help shape the agency over the years. And I think what keeps people there – I’m not the only one with such longevity. We have a number of people at our firm that have been there for 20 years or more. And its’ honestly because of two major things. One is the people at JT, who are incredible and brilliant and strategic and passionate and compassionate. I think that’s what really makes the firm. And secondly the variety of issues. As you said, sometimes you don’t know what you’re doing day to day. That’s been 36 years for me. I mean, I think I know some days, but there’s going to be a twist or a turn, or there’s going to be something that comes up, a new issue to manage or a new way that someone has impacted what you’re working on, and you need to address it. That variety, that adrenaline, and the people are what keeps us there. ROB: What did that transition look like from the original partners to – it seems like they’re probably less involved now than they were initially. How did that manifest itself? MARY: Interestingly, that’s not true. Most people assume that, and in fact, when my announcement went out when I became the CEO, we made sure that front and center, people knew that Rick and Jim weren’t going anywhere, not even partially. They remain heavily, integrally involved. I’ve had a lot of people outside of the firm say, “Oh my God, don’t you wish you could get those guys out of there?” And I don’t wish that at all. They’re fantastic and smart and supportive, and have been very, very good to me in terms of letting me lead and stepping back from those issues, but still with a great passion and drive to do the work. It’s been a really wonderful experience for me. I’ve worked at every level of the firm, and as – the partners would probably kill me for saying this, but once they turned 70, they really felt like they needed to take a look at what was next and how the firm should be led going forward. So I’ve been the CEO and managing partner for a little over three years. ROB: That is excellent. Thank you for clarifying. Congratulations. It reminds me, actually, in some ways of an agency I know of in Atlanta called Nebo. These two guys started it together, and they had someone who came up through the business, and they put this awesome woman in charge as their president even though she didn’t start the thing. I think they have benefitted from it, probably much as you have. And not for nothing, I think it has also really helped their entire organization to feel like they have a little bit more balanced leadership and it’s not just two guys running the show. There’s a woman in power all the way up to the top. MARY: I think that’s true, and I think both J and T have always been very supportive of growing people internally. And again, that’s why people stay as long as they have. I can’t honestly think of a time in the recent past where we brought someone in at a high level. Our high level people are homegrown. And even when we’re hiring an AE, it usually comes from our intern pool. When we’re adding to the team, it’s usually folks that have done some work with us. In the past, one of our more recent hires was an intern with us, went off and did something else for a couple years, and came back. We didn’t have a job for her at the time when her internship was completed, but when we did, there she was. It’s that training and that passion and, again, working with a group of people that really support each other and have the clients’ best interest at heart. ROB: Got it. Mary, as you reflect on that journey, your past few years particularly in charge, but certainly all along the way, I’m sure it’s been a journey of growth. What are some things you have learned in leading JT – some lessons you might’ve done differently if you were starting over today? MARY: I’ve given that a little bit of thought. There’s so many things I’ve learned over the years – mainly, again, from my wonderful colleagues at JT, and often from clients and the issues that they entrust to us. Frankly, I say this all the time, but I actually mean it. It’s true and authentic that I’m still learning every day, because the issues we manage and the crises we work on really test our skill, can often surprise you and can certainly stretch those strategic muscles. Obviously, over the years, social media has really changed the practice, often for the better but sometimes not so much. We’re dealing with lots of issues right now that start in social media, and it’s misinformation. In the past, you didn’t have that as much because news was supposed to be vetted. People had a news cycle to confirm or test information. Those are newer and different challenges. The shrinking traditional newsrooms play a big role in how we approach media. The whole “it bleeds, it leads” mentality and “the first to get the scandal out there” has made our jobs different and more difficult. I guess one very key learning which is fundamental – I hope I grasped it from the beginning, but I may not have – is this idea of telling your story first. Even if it’s bad. Your ability to shape and control the narrative is very important. So whenever you can, as much as you can, playing offense rather than defense is important. Another tried and true colloquialism around the office is that trouble fills a vacuum. We’ve learned and we’ve seen with our clients that if they put their head down and pretend something’s not there, then someone else is going to define the story for them, and it’s not going to be, generally, the way you want it to be. So again, getting out there first and defining things. And then a mistake that I feel like I made that I learned a lot from, and I thus far have not made it again – I worked on a project once where I never met the CEO, who was ultimately going to be the main speaker at a press conference that we were pulling together. Then the press conference that we had planned got overrun by protestors. It was a fairly controversial issue that was going to be shared. The mayor of Chicago at the time was going to be part of our press conference, and these protestors really took over at our venue. When that happened, I had no credibility with the leader because honestly, I’d never met her. So in a time of great turmoil and when there was a need for a lot of debate and conversation and decisions, she didn’t trust me because she didn’t know me. I mean, how could she, right? And so I vowed that I would never let that happen again, and it hasn’t. ROB: That’s such a good point, too: the value of relationship with clients, the value of investing, the value of having that connection. You do highlight something that plays very much also into the future of PR and marketing as well. I think it used to be, to an extent – and you know better than I do – most controversies that got any legs had some degree of substance to them. It almost seems like now, there are secret rooms on the internet where people just make up stuff for fun and see what sticks. Do you feel like that’s an actual trend? Is that something you think is growing or shrinking, or is maybe overblown? MARY: Oh, absolutely. I don’t know how to judge these back room making-up-things, but I will say that we have managed a number of issues that started with literally completely false information. Just completely false. And because it struck a chord or because people wanted to believe it or something, or God help you, goes viral, it puts a company or an organization or a person in a very, very difficult place. We’re often balancing issues of you don’t want to give something credibility by having your organization enter into the social media fray, but how far does it go before you have to do something? We actually call it strategic silence. Often, we’re going back and forth with boards of an organization, for instance, who are like, “Oh my gosh, why are we not fixing this? Why are we not correcting this?” But you can actually elevate an issue by engaging. So we have to make sure that people understand, no, we’re not ignoring it. No, it’s not that we don’t see it. We’re actually making a decision to be strategically silent – to a point. A lot of times in those instances, we try to really think about, who are the audiences that matter most to you? Let’s make sure they know the real story. ROB: What a tricky, tricky balance. Mary, when people want to get in touch with you and with JT PR, where should they find you? MARY: Well, you practically almost said it. JTPR.com is our website, and that’s where you can learn more about JT and you can see case studies and clients and videos that we’ve produced and meet the team that makes up Jasculca Terman. ROB: Wonderful. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast, Mary, for sharing your expertise, sharing your journey. You have really been a long hauler in building this firm up, and I congratulate you on everything that you’ve accomplished together. MARY: Thanks so much, Rob. I appreciate it. ROB: All right. Be well. Thanks, Mary. Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

Bill Durrant is President at Exverus Media, a paid-media agency (TV ads, print advertising, sponsorships, and other types of media) that serves culture-creating, growth-stage brands. The agency’s focus is not so much on big-budget, long-term brand building as it is on consulting with clients and recommending “how best to invest” to produce significant, trackable and measurable short- to medium-term results. Bill says, “all media is performance media” and that it can be very challenging to quickly determine the effectiveness of branding efforts and traditional marketing media. To address this, his agency tries to establish a “performance mindset” and “a structure to capture things that aren’t directly trackable.” Bill finds it exciting that today’s solutions for modeling are “significantly less expensive” than those that were available in the past. He says modeling has been “democratized” – that you can build and launch a model in weeks, update it continuously with sales and investment data, and track performance across a variety of marketing channels. Work that used to be done over a period of months by costly data scientists and analysts can be done now by utilizing a combination of artificial intelligence and machine learning. The agency’s name, Exverus, is Latin for “from the truth.” In this interview, Bill explains how the name reflects the agency’s values and the importance of transparency in how the agency conducts business, manages its clients’ finances, and builds, over time, trust-based and truth-based client relationships. In a typical engagement, the agency consults with growing-brand clients and follows a step-by-step process that involves: understanding at a deep level client needs and stakeholder goals curating campaigns rooted in science and best practices  incorporating customized measurement solutions that prove campaign impact even when immediate, vendor-driven measurements aren’t immediately available. The agency’s “roots” are in a consumer-facing infrastructure. Over the past year, B2B clients have increased as brands “tired of being bland” seek to get more involved in being “adjacent to culture, creating culture, or participating in culture” in order to increase their visibility and cultural involvement. Bill can be reached on his agency’s website at: www.exverus.com or on Linkedin at Bill Durrant (with two “R’s.”) To make it easier to find him, add “Exverus.” Transcript Follows: ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m your host, Rob Kischuk, and I am joined today by Bill Durrant, President at Exverus Media based in Los Angeles, California. Welcome to the podcast, Bill. BILL: Hey, how are you? Thanks for having me. ROB: I’m excellent, and it’s good to have you here. Why don’t you start off, Bill, by telling us about Exverus and what the firm’s superpowers are? BILL: Yeah, we do like to think of ourselves as superheroes every now and again. The first question we always get is “What does Exverus mean?”, so I’ll start there. Exverus means “from the truth” in Latin. I think that as a paid media agency, which is our area of expertise, that can extend to things as rational as transparency in how we do our business and how we manage our finances for our clients to really the crux and the core of how the agency has been able to thrive over the past several years, which is trust-based and truth-based relationships with clients, building that over time. As we think about the mission for the agency and what the agency stands for, it’s right there in the name. As I mentioned, we are a paid media agency. We like to think of ourselves as the paid media agency for culture-creating, growth-stage brands. I guess that’s really where our superpower comes in. Our superpower is growing culture-creating brands that don’t necessarily have the eight and nine figure budgets to invest in paid media and need their dollars to work harder. That’s not only what we’ve found we’re best at, but it’s also what we’ve found gives us the most personal fulfillment as an agency team and as a leadership team within the agency. So it’s something that’s really easy to stick to, and that’s something that we’re very proud of as well. ROB: Does that pull a little bit more then towards consumer? Or do you also see some B2B brands you would also dub as culture-creating in their own way? BILL: It’s funny; we’ve been having more interesting conversations with B2B brands probably over the last year. So it does extend to that space, even if it certainly has its heart, and certainly our roots, in more of a consumer-facing type of communications infrastructure. But yes, it’s really interesting to see how B2B brands are now saying, “The idea of being adjacent to culture, creating culture, or participating in culture is to help stand out, to help gain association and equity from existing cultural platforms; why does that necessarily exclude us? Why does everything that we do need to be so bland, so to speak?” It’s been really fun having those conversations. ROB: You mentioned a judiciousness required around the resources. Is it possible maybe for you to dive down into a client or two and share what it looks like to spend those budgets in a way that really has to deliver in a near- to midterm-way, where they can’t just say “We’re investing in brand, we’re investing in brand”? I assume you’re not posting Coke ads for Coca-Cola, right? BILL: We do some work with Coke. We can’t say exactly where or how, but we do some work with some of their brands in Atlanta, your hometown. But yes, you’re right; it’s not about having that long-term branding campaign that’s on a very long leash from organizations that are used to having the discipline and the budgets, frankly, to be able to support that and not stress about what their investment’s immediate return was. That’s a constant conversation that we’re having with our brand partners, and helping them understand how best to invest. As we think about that, there are two axioms that we like to share with our clients. Number one is “all media is performance media.” Whether it’s something that feels like a longer term-ish, traditional branding campaign, there is still a performance that’s being associated with that. There is still a short-term lens that is almost always associated with that. So we want to make sure we’re understanding that to satisfy and appease the stakeholders in their organization who are looking for those short-term or more “prove it to me” type results. As we think about what the science tells us, what an analysis of the world’s most successful and least successful and average-success brands tells us about how to invest dollars, we know there is a huge economic argument to be made from having that kind of brand-led communications. It really comes down to how you measure it. If you have appropriate measurement in place that can measure things that aren’t as immediate as “tell me what the return on ad spend was for my campaign on Amazon,” for instance, then you’re going to be in solid shape. So what we try to do with our clients is really understand what their needs are, what their stakeholders are looking for, and then curate a campaign that is rooted somewhat in science and in what works best at growing brands, but does that in a way that also has measurement incorporated so they can prove the impact of what they’re doing if it’s something where that immediate, vendor-driven measurement isn’t right away available. That’s how we approach that, and it is absolutely central to our conversations with our brand partners. ROB: Does that focus on measurability in any way impact the selection of marketing channels? You mentioned selecting for the measurement and thinking about the measurement of the channel correctly. Is there anything that’s completely out from a measurement perspective? BILL: That’s kind of the knock on a lot of traditional media, that it’s very challenging to measure them in a more immediate way. Really what you’re looking at there is you’re trying to put a structure in place that can capture things that aren’t as directly trackable. That’s where you’re looking at, what kind of marketing mix model is my organization using? If my organization spends $10-20 million plus on media or on other important marketing channels, I may already have a marketing mix model in place. Let’s figure out how we can align with that and ensure the decisions that we’re making are able to be picked up by that measurement. But if you’re not, then you might say “I need something that can help me understand what the impact was of a TV spot or radio spot or an outdoor ad” – all things that we know work but are really hard to pin down exactly how they worked for me exactly last month. That’s where we’re looking at more customized measurement solutions, and that’s stuff we can provide directly to a client, to one of our brand partners. We’re very proud of being able to do that, but it does require some – we’ll call it hoop-jumping. I think that the prize is absolutely worth it, because you’ve now got a more balanced media mix that’s proven to be more effective, 100%, in driving a return for the brand. So jumping through those initial hoops around measurement and setting that up is always worth the investment of time and energy and money. ROB: That’s such a neat area to pull in on. I do think a lot of marketers, when they hear “media mix modeling,” it sounds like a high-class tool. Is there a size of brand or a size of budget where it’s more viable? Or is it really just a limitation on thinking and it can start from just one or two channels? BILL: I grew up in my career to some degree working with Nestlé. Nestlé has a number of billion-dollar brands and significantly more nine-figure annual sales brands. Those brands very often had access to marketing mix models, and it did feel like a high-class tool, especially at that time. What we’ve actually been able to figure out over the last three years is that there are now solutions in place for modeling that are significantly less expensive. They’re essentially utilizing what we hear about when we hear about AI and machine learning. They’re essentially utilizing machine learning in a very efficient and democratized way where you don’t need to have expensive data scientists and data analysts running analyses over the course of months. You can now actually build a model over the course of weeks and then have that model in market and be continuously updating it with sales figures and investment figures across different marketing channels, not just media. The fact that that’s now democratized is a huge win for brands who aren’t spending $10 million plus in their advertising and marketing efforts. We’ve actually had success modeling out the impact of a campaign that was in the low six figures for an extremely well-known national client, a Fortune 5 client that was really looking to drill down for one of their subsidiaries and understand what the impact was of their spend so that they could then scale it out further, but didn’t know where to scale it. To be able to show this channel versus this channel versus the third channel, and this was the relative impact and this is how they all work together – which is another important element – in a way where they spent five figures to have that analysis and had it done in less than eight weeks is a very powerful example of how that works best. ROB: It certainly seems democratizing not only for the brand, but also on even the agency side, because this sort of tooling sounds like the thing that you had to be in a holding company agency at some point, or a very large brand or house of brands, to even consider having access to. BILL: Yeah, that’s exactly right. I grew up in that space, working with Nestlé, working in a large holding company for whom I still have a lot of heart and love, and that was the case. It was also the case back then that you really needed to be in part of one of those infrastructures in order to get strong rates for your brand. That’s shifted now as so much of our media inventory has become biddable. The standards around how we negotiate, how we manage media for clients, have changed. It really is a golden age for the small- to medium-sized brand or marketer, the growing marketer or brand, to get into the marketplace and to be a meaningful player from Day 1 and not feel like you’re being outgunned by these massive organizations. It’s very exciting for us. ROB: Indeed. Let’s pull on that origin story thread for a moment here, Bill. How did you go from that Nestlé, that holding company agency world, and decide to jump off the cliff and start Exverus? BILL: This is always an interesting question to answer because there was no real one point where it all happened, which is usually the case for most agencies. It happened very organically. I had decided to shift from going full-time, working in one space, to freelancing and to working as a consultant, maybe 10 years ago. As I was doing that, within about three or four months of doing that, I got a phone call from one of my favorite people on Earth, a client of mine from Nestlé, who said, “Hey, I’m over at Clif Bar now. We’re really shaping up how we look at media and advertising across our brands. Would you be interested in taking a stab at essentially being a one-person media agency for Clif Bar?” Of course, in my mind I was thinking “there’s no possible way I could do that,” and my mouth was somehow saying, “Yes, I’ll give it a shot.” [laughs] That began a really wonderful relationship with Clif Bar, and that relationship grew as their investments grew and their need to grow new brands and new product formats grew. Between them and Creative Artist Agency (CAA) and their extremely wonderful, award-winning marketing team, which is now known as Observatory, I think they hit a point where the amount of work was too much for one person plus a few helpers on the side to handle. We had a lot of built-in credibility, working with an organization that’s probably over a billion dollars in sales annually in Clif Bar, and CAA, which is the world’s best-known talent agency from a marketing standpoint. Impeccable reputation. So there was a lot of built-in credibility. There was new demand. We just made the decision – I still remember my Head of Operations saying, “We have to go for it,” driving to a soccer match one Wednesday night. And thus Exverus was born. We said “we’re really going to give this a go” about five and a half years ago now. ROB: Wow. Congrats. A lot of companies don’t even make it that far. You’ve got a team around you now, and it feels probably pretty real. I think the timing that a firm starts always confers some advantages and disadvantages. Your firm started around I guess 2012-2014, depending on where you are in that slow-motion window that you referred to; in performance marketing, that’s an interesting time within the evolution of the different channels. How do you think that timing informed how you attacked the market? BILL: It did a few things. At a macroeconomic level, I think unfortunately it created a scarcity mindset because we had just gone through a massive crash in 2008. By the time I really started, there was no very clear boom and very clear recovery happening. That was a more recent thing. So there was a bit of a scarcity mindset, which took a long time to work out of and to shift into more that abundance mindset. I think that can keep you conservative, which is a good thing sometimes, in some years. In some years that holds you back. So from a macro standpoint, that’s how the timing maybe helped and maybe slowed things down over time. As I think, too, about where the industry was, really from Day 1, it reaffirmed that even though it was much more straightforward to start a media agency and to focus on digital channels – there was much more access; it was a much more equitable system with a lot less in the way in terms of gatekeepers like there are with some traditional media – even though it was a little bit more challenging to have those other mediums in place, being media-neutral and being able to offer all media, even if we were still digital-first, was a really smart strategic decision. As the rise of performance media has come in, and now for many organizations performance media has overtaken brand media by multiple times over – knowing that that trend was happening and having a strategy and a perspective of neutrality really helped us a lot. It helped us to build more trust-based relationships with our clients because we weren’t trying to push them into the latest fad or the latest channel or the latest tactic for its own sake. We were always trying to do that based off of what was best for their business, what was best to grow their brand. That helps build trust rather than saying “We’re focused in this particular area which is hot right now.” So I think that can be great to be a particular specialist, even within the specialty of paid media, but I think that our timing really reaffirmed our strategy and our approach to market, and it’s one that’s seen us continue to grow and be successful into and beyond 2021. ROB: For sure. It’s an interesting time. You got to start past the social for the sake of social, social as the source of infinite free growth, but also social as the bucket of infinite budget without accountability. It’s interesting you mentioned the gatekeepers. It’s almost easy to forget the times when if you wanted to manage let’s say your Facebook ads, there were only a handful of companies you could talk to about that. BILL: That’s right. ROB: That’s a whole different world. BILL: And to see how much – at one point I was doing the Facebook ads, 9 or 10 years ago, and it was exhausting keeping up with the changes. Every three months, something minor would change that you used daily, and every six months it seemed like they were completely renovating and revamping the entire process. It was so funny to see that TV couldn’t change fast enough, print certainly couldn’t change fast enough, and here you had social and other channels that were changing so fast that it was almost impossible to keep up with them. It was certainly an interesting time to start things up. ROB: A friend of mine used to work for one of those vendors. They had to keep up with all the changes, and they used to call every Tuesday “new bug Tuesday,” because there would be something new they had to go out and fix. You probably had to deal with the other end of that stick. BILL: That’s right. ROB: Bill, as you reflect on the journey so far with Exverus, what are some lessons you’ve learned along the way that you might do a little bit differently if you were starting clean, from scratch? BILL: Things that I would do differently. I think that we were never slow to meet our clients’ needs, but we were sometimes slow to say, “This is a macro trend and we should have a whole staff around it.” One of the examples is more performance-based media. The reason I say that is because we have plenty of team members, particularly today, who are world-class experts in performance, but a few years ago we kind of missed the boat a little bit because we thought that by satisfying our clients’ immediate needs and performance, we were doing our jobs. What I missed was that this was a strategic exercise. There needed to be a strategic team of people that were focused in the performance space. One of the reasons why was that it wasn’t that they needed to have a particular technical skillset; in many cases we’re talking about the same media channels that can be used for very different purposes, like search, like social, like digital video and digital display. But what we were doing was missing the mindset. Those folks who really excel in performance have a completely different mindset and approach to how they manage media and how they manage client relationships to get to specific results. There’s plenty of reasons for that, which all make sense. But missing that mindset was number one in terms of what we could’ve done better, going back probably 3-5 years ago. The other thing, too, is I think really understanding the business and the business side of being an agency leader. The ups and downs are not communicated to you when you are working at an agency in a way that’s terribly transparent, or frankly often necessary. You’re usually hearing the very big undulations of the waves. “Things are amazing. We won this huge account” or “Things aren’t great and we need to have layoffs.” Those are the types of things you’re hearing. What you don’t realize is that as an agency owner, things are up and down on an hourly basis, some days on a quarter-hourly basis. There is a mindset and there is a psychological helmet that you need to put on to be able to manage that in the context of doing all of the wonderful work that your clients are contracting you to do. I think that is one thing that I certainly didn’t know about, and that’s something that lives alongside what all business owners learn, which is that you’re responsible now for every element of the business. I was ready to do the accounting. That’s easy. [laughs] I went to an accounting school for college. But it was the psychological aspect of being in our business and being comfortable with the way that our business works that, if you’re someone without a very risk-tolerant mindset, might be a bit jarring. ROB: How do you process that over time? I know certainly initially, a lot of your team, you feel like you can’t tell them a lot of the gusts. Sometimes they’ll surprise you and they’ll have a great solution, and sometimes they won’t know what the heck to do and you might just freak them out a little bit. How do you think about processing, learning some of these blind spots, those shifts that we all have to make? BILL: That’s a great question. From my standpoint, we try to be as transparent as possible with our team. Today we actually just had our quarterly state of the union. This time we didn’t go into as much detail as normal, but we try to be transparent. “This is what’s going on. This is where we’re struggling. We’re struggling to fill this particular role. Do you have any solutions? Do you think you might be able to help? Or if nothing else, please know that we’re working on it still, because we know that’s had an impact on some people’s workloads.” We’ll be very forthright with everything that we can. Without being obligated to or sharing specific numbers financially, we will share where we are in terms of reaching our goals and what it means to reach our goals. Is it just profit for the sake of profit? Or does profit open up new doors and new opportunities to all of us for strategic partnerships? That’s a very different conversation, and it’s one that I think our team appreciates hearing. One great piece of advice that I got during COVID was actually from Simon Sinek, Start with Why, very famous guy. Incredibly intelligent. Everyone knows his public persona. He’s a family friend; he’s been good friends with my wife for over a decade. We were chatting about there are certain things that we just don’t know what to do and how to move forward in COVID, and he said, “Put it on your team. Share it with your team. Do that in a thoughtful way and say, ‘I don’t know the answer to this. I’m not going to pretend that I’m the person who has all the answers all the time, and I’d love to hear what your input is and what your feedback or solutions are.’ You’ll be surprised as to what you get back. Your team isn’t necessarily thinking about your business all day long, but they are working in it, and they are people that you hire specifically for their intelligence. So see if that helps.” And it really did. I also think it made for more open dialogue, which in today’s age of transparency is really valued by employees and by myself and the rest of the leadership team. ROB: All such really good points in there. Reminds me of a very recent experience where for a long time, I had been suggesting a certain sort of client engagement model. I tried to communicate why, but I maybe wasn’t really getting my point across. In a totally different conversation, I expressed a particular business goal in terms of margin – and to your point about profit margin, the key of telling people where that goes and what that gets us when you’re growing – you need cash just to be in cash reserves. You need to have good financial cushion on the business. You need to invest in growth. You need all those things. Helping them know why you need profit helps instead of just thinking you should break even and everybody should take all the cash out. But I shared a particular goal in terms of profit margin, and I had somebody super brilliant on my team who said, “Oh, why don’t we engage more in this model?” It was exactly pretty close to what I had suggested before, but without the full picture and the rationale and the transparency, it was just hanging empty. And everybody does things better when they think it’s their idea, and that’s okay. I don’t have any problem with that. So really good point. BILL: From your standpoint, where do you feel the line is in terms of transparency, in terms of how you communicate with team members? ROB: That’s a great question that I’m still learning. I have typically been a tremendously private person on these sorts of things, and over the past year I engaged with a business coach about a year ago who came recommended by people who have billion-dollar companies. That was good enough for me, and I could still afford them. He’s just continued to push me on the value of what I’ll get by sharing more with the team. Where that stands for us right now, to be real specific about it, at an exec team level, we’re talking about – in a services organization, on our services side, we’re talking about revenue per employee. We’re talking about target profit margin. We’re talking about what that actually looks like. And that’s uncomfortable for me. I could regret it. I could learn something from it. But it’s going in the right direction. BILL: That’s great. I think we’ve probably had a very similar experience. I may not dig into some of the KPIs that you do quite as in-depth, but sharing that information can be liberating when it’s done properly, and it can show a lot of faith in the team. For me it was a great learning experience, and it was a great moment of growth starting to share that information. ROB: I’m glad to hear and gain some comfort. The worst story we ever had on here about somebody sharing stuff was someone who had an employee suck out $300,000 in payroll taxes that they were personally liable for, and they had to drive ahead and build the business and dig their way out. But that’s a different lesson to be learned. BILL: Yes, and I don’t necessarily think we should be giving access to the finances to everyone. [laughs] ROB: Totally agree. Bill, when people want to track you down and track down Exverus, where should they go to find you? BILL: Probably the best place for Exverus is our website. It’s www.exverus.com. For me, I can be found on LinkedIn. I’m Bill Durrant with two R’s. No relation to Kevin. I’m pretty easy to track down if you add “Exverus” to the end of that in the search queue. ROB: That’s good. It’s good to know we can’t track down KD through you. We’ll have to find our own way. BILL: Just want to set expectations. ROB: [laughs] Thank you so much, Bill. Congratulations to everything you and Exverus have accomplished so far, and I wish you the best. BILL: Appreciate it. Thanks, Rob. ROB: Take care. Bye. Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

1984. Maybe ’85. Take a 26-year-old art director who loves her work. Put her in a big agency where she is surrounded by middle-aged white guys. Strangle the agency’s creative work with politics and bureaucratic overhead. Ask a simple question, “How long can this last?” Sue Kruskopf’s answer? When both the employer’s and her futures looked bleak, it was time for change.  In 1988, Sue and the copywriter she worked with started KC Truth, with a focus on truth, simplifying the complex, and serving clients by –  getting to that core truth about their businesses,  stripping away all the B.S., and making the message as simple as possible for target audiences. Sue says, “Simplifying things is always a lot more difficult than complicating things.” Her ideal client website is one the communicates what the company does and why they are different from everyone else . . . and does that in the shortest (simplest) way possible, which is both an art and a science. The large companies KC Truth works with have multiple siloed business units. Sue says the way to get to a company’s “truth,” align the organization and build a strong strategy is to get everybody in the same room and listen to what they all say. When all the various departments – marketing, sales, engineering, researchers – see their part in creating the truth, they become invested in the collective work that follows. After that, Sue believes, “Great strategy requires great creative.” Maintaining the creative resources of a world-class agency is critical to KC Truth’s work with such big, complex clients as Cargill, 3M, and some Minneapolis-based global companies. That might be a challenge. However, KC Truth belongs to a strong network of independent agencies, AMIN, which means they “can collectively buy all the tools we need.”  Sue says that building strong relationships, hiring the best people, the smartest people (smarter than you are), and treating people as you would want them to treat you are a big part her agency’s success. She supports treating clients with respect, “not trying to shove ideas down a clients throat,” and “walking hand in hand down the same path together.” Sue can be reached on her agency’s website at https://kctruth.com/. Transcript Below: ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m your host, Rob Kischuk, and I am joined today by Sue Kruskopf, CEO at KC Truth, based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Welcome to the podcast, Sue. SUE: Thank you. Good to be here, Rob. ROB: It’s wonderful to have you on. I’m eager for all that you have to share. Why don’t you start off by telling us about KC Truth and where the firm excels? SUE: Thank you. First of all, we excel in longevity. We’ve been around since 1988, which in advertising years is about a million years I think, pretty much, in this day and age. We’ve always believed at our core, our mission has always been to rid the world of B.S. and get at the core truth that companies stand for. As we all know, in this day and age, truth is more important than ever before. So, I’m glad that we have stuck to our guns and had this in the foundation of our business for over 35 years, since way back in the day. ROB: Truth certainly has a habit of falling in and out of fashion, so the longevity there is certainly admirable. If we can drill down a level, if there is a typical type of client, type of engagement – obviously everyone’s a little bit different, but what does a median client, median scope of work look like for you all? SUE: One of the things our clients tell us is we’ve always been really good at simplifying the complex. I think anybody in our business knows that feeling when a client comes in and you’ve looked at their website 10 times and can’t quite figure out what it is they do exactly, or the word “solutions” is in there too many times or whatever else. We’re really, really good at – Truth is all about getting to that core truth about their business and stripping away all the B.S. and getting it down to the simplest thing we can determine based on the audiences we’re trying to reach. Typically, we have a lot of big, more complex businesses like Cargill, 3M, a couple global companies that are based here in Minneapolis. I’d say that’s our core sweet spot. We’ve had experience that runs the gamut across all kinds of industries, but at this point that’s really where so much of our growth has come. Simplifying things is always a lot more difficult than complicating things, that’s for sure. ROB: Absolutely. It’s interesting that you mention websites, because of course, that wasn’t really a thing when KC Truth started. It strikes me that the website creates a space, whereas in an advertisement of some sort – print or even billboards, etc. – you’re kind of limited in what you can say. The website has more room. It has unlimited room, which may be a curse in some cases. But it almost seems like there is a set of truths that you can put onto a website that may encompass everything you’re trying to communicate elsewhere. How does that track from the early days of the firm? SUE: Obviously, we started back in those early days when there wasn’t any of that. But I come from the creative side of things, and I always felt there was nothing better than a great creative brief that you could really get in and dig into and you understood there was a really strong strategy there. No matter what it was, back in the day we’d always go, if you don’t have great strategy, you don’t have great creative. That’s really been the basis of what we’ve done for all of these years. I would say even on websites, I still want to go to a website of one of our clients and be able to understand what it is that they do and why they’re different from anybody else. I still think that’s what people are looking for in the shortest way possible. There’s an art and a science to that, that’s for sure. ROB: You take a client like 3M or – I don’t know if you work with them at all, but Metron – people may have heard the name, but it’s a very abstract thing. It’s kind of like the myth of the blind men touching the elephant and everyone has a different experience of what that elephant is depending on if you felt the elephant’s trunk or tail or leg. It’s a different thing. How do you think about taking something like 3M and making it tangible and helping those individual places where it really does touch people’s lives make sense rather than just being a house of brands or of chemicals or products? SUE: I think anybody out there in the B2B world knows that in most big companies like Cargill or 3M, there are multiple different business units within each one of these organizations. One of the things that we believe in, and it’s part of our foundation and our process, is that finding the truth involves getting people in a room from all different parts of the company. For example, when we work on a product within 3M, we want to get in not only the marketing and sales people, but the engineers, the researchers, the product people, getting everybody in a room to really understand the totality of the business. What’s interesting is, especially in this day and age when people are so siloed into their specific disciplines, it’s amazing how much alignment comes from getting everybody in a room and hearing what others have to say. That’s something that we do and we believe in. You have to hear all sides of things. That helps us create a strong strategy, because everybody has been heard. So when we come back with a strategy, the engineers have played a part in it, besides the marketing people, and the salespeople had a part in it. Everybody sees themselves in it in some way, and that’s really the magic of what we do with finding the truth. Everyone has been a part of creating that truth, so they all have a share in the collective work when it comes back. They see themselves in it, and I think that’s one of the things that we’ve found really works. You’re not trying to shove ideas down a client’s throat or anything like that; you’re all walking hand in hand down the same path together. ROB: Right. That’s a very meaningful approach and process. If we rewind the clock a little bit, Sue, what led you to start KC Truth in the first place and take that leap? You mentioned coming from a creative background. SUE: Yeah, I was a frustrated art director. I was at a big agency in Minneapolis at 26 years old, and I just didn’t dig the politics. The politics and all that got so much in the way of doing the work, for one thing, and it was really frustrating to me. I felt like there were way too many people involved. I think we used the term once that there were a lot of brilliant minds within this organization surrounded by a lead shield. You couldn’t get any good ideas out of the company. That was one thing. The second thing was I was 26 years old and all I saw around me were – I hate to say it, but middle-aged white guys. I thought, my goodness. There were no women. This was back in 1984-85, and there were no women that were middle-aged. There was one woman and a few account people, but there certainly weren’t any creatives that were older. I thought, “Wow, I don’t know if this business is going to have a very long life. I’d better find a way to ensure a long career,” because I loved what I did. So my copywriter partner and I – we weren’t making any money at the time anyway. I don’t even remember, but it was an amount of money that we thought, “All we need is a few more $5,000 projects and we’re going to be golden.” We literally quit, and we were having a good time doing a bunch of freelance. Brick by brick, things just kept growing. We went out of business a couple times. I’ll proudly say that because I think that you learn more from your failures than your successes. We thought the account people could run the business because they were in charge of numbers and we were just going to do creative. Well, that was a false thing to believe. [laughs] All of a sudden we had no money left for rent or anything else, so I figured, “I’d better figure out the business side of this, too.” It was just lessons learned all along the way, and I think that’s why perseverance and grit are probably at my soul. When you pick yourself up a few times and dust off the ashes, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, right? Next time around. So that’s what happened, and we just kept going back at it. Lucky to be here today, that’s for sure. ROB: It’s quite a dance, that balance not only of personal transformation – which is ongoing – but also, when you look at when you started the business, of repeated reinvention. I mean, there’s just been wave after wave after wave of change in the market that, if you didn’t adjust to it, you were going to be a dinosaur. SUE: Oh, for sure. ROB: Even in TV advertising. I haven’t talked to anybody about this on the podcast – would love to find them – who didn’t survive the jump from broadcast to cable, much less websites, much less social, much less video and the ubiquity of video now. How have you navigated the necessary reinvention to keep the firm relevant? SUE: Yeah, how many times have we heard that TV spots are dead and all that? Went through that probably 10 different times throughout the years. I have always tried to stay ahead of the curve in everything. I’m a very curious person. It’s one of our values at my company. I always believe you’ve got to be ahead of the game – and you’re right, Rob; that’s really what has kept us relevant for so long. Part of that is we belong to a network of independent agencies. There are many networks, I know, like this that agencies belong to. Ours is a really strong one called AMIN. It has helped us because we can collectively buy all the tools we need. Honestly, this is where I really sound like “OK, Boomer,” but back in the day, all we had when John and I started out was markers and sketchpads we stole from the art department at the agency. [laughs] Then we had the first Mac, that little shoebox Mac. That was a huge thing going forward. It was so much art back then, and now it’s art and science. I still think it’s more science sometimes than art. But we’ve had to stay ahead of the science game now, too. We do have all these data and media tools that really, really help us be accountable for our clients’ success. I honestly think if you don’t have that as a creative-driven shop, if you’re not proving results all the time and constantly measuring and optimizing, then you’re not going to be in business, because clients and CMOs more and more are held accountable for that. We have always stayed ahead of the game to make sure that we have the resources of a world-class agency at our fingertips so we can work with big global clients. That’s like 35 years in a nutshell, but it really is the truth. I think that’s one part of it, and I think a lot of it is you really appreciate how important relationships are and building relationships and all that. That’s another huge part of that. And also hiring really good people. I always do what my dad told me, which is “hire people smarter than you.” That’s what I’ve always believed in. That and “treat people as you want to be treated yourself.” I’ve always loved that we have a great culture and really good people. That’s core to being a good agency. ROB: It’s certainly a fear some people have, walking in the door of really any independent business. You might have a bad boss in a big company, but within an independent firm, you could really be exposed to some person’s full crazy. What a privilege it is when you can be a good place to work, even for a part of somebody’s career, for that season for work. SUE: I totally believe in that. I totally believe in finding not the best skillset, but the best mindset. It’s not who they are maybe today, but who I see the potential in the future being from that person. We’ve had a lot of people stick around because we’ve let them evolve into the position that they feel most comfortable in. Somebody that started out as an account person decided she was better doing the agency work, and now she’s Director of Business Operations for us, for example. So, I always think you have to watch where people excel and where they’re finding their passion and their happiness and try to nurture that as much as you can. On the flipside of that, I also think it’s about making sure people don’t get too comfortable. You always want to make sure that people are continually curious and trying to do better and be better. I think that’s another side of the coin, too. ROB: Just to take a snapshot at the moment of where we are right now, if you have a new client, a new total brand messaging package or a new campaign that’s pushing out into the world, where are all the places that you are seeing that push into now? Where are you having to manage and have your team ensure that they’re aligning that message to each place? What does it look like? SUE: It’s crazy the amount of channels that we work in. You name it, from LinkedIn to TikTok. You have to look at every single channel as a place where a message might play, all depending on what’s appropriate for that audience. We’re like 100% digital right now. I don’t even know that we’ve done anything traditional, which is kind of ironic, in a long time. Video is the new TV, there’s no question about it. We don’t have one niche or whatever, one type of thing. I would just say what we’re good at is being a chameleon; we can adapt to whatever channels those are to reach people. A lot of times with the audiences we work with, it’s the long tail. They might be chief technical officers, and how we find them and serve them programmatic media, for example, so we’re following them where they live. There’s all kinds of things like that. Sometimes it’s a channel, sometimes it’s following that person to see where they consume media and following them along their journey. There’s just so many right now. Believe me, our media people can speak way more on this than I can. [laughs] I had a client say she feels like she’s got a firehose pointing at her all the time, trying to figure out what everything is, and I think that’s true. I think clients really need help understanding where they’re going to spend their money and get the most bang for their buck. There’s so many choices out there, and you need somebody that can help you wade through that and find the right audience at the right time, for sure. ROB: I have an unsubstantiated but sneaking suspicion that out-of-home digital billboards are going to be more than they are now. SUE: Interesting. ROB: I don’t know if you’re seeing anything yet. I know some companies now that are doing – you see online people talk about account-based marketing, like Terminus and all that sort of thing, and people looking at buying billboards near the headquarters of the client they’re going after. SUE: Oh yeah, I can totally see it. Especially digital, obviously. That would make a lot of sense. Maybe all the old school will come back in all these new forms, like it sort of seems like it is. Could be, Rob. You predicted it here first. [laughs] ROB: I’m just curious. I may enjoy those sorts of things more than some people. It may just be my own interest there. We’re in Atlanta, and MailChimp is of course based here. MailChimp had this habit – they’re wonderful people, but they’re also tremendously competitive and cutthroat in certain ways. They would paint murals on buildings across from their competitors of nothing more than their little chimp mascot winking. It didn’t say MailChimp. It didn’t say anything. SUE: That’s great. That’s a super smart idea, that’s for sure. It all comes down to the art, right? Art and science. It’s all art, too. That’s a brilliant strategy that they have. ROB: Sue, you mentioned earlier some lessons learned. You’ve certainly survived through probably a number of them. What are some things you have learned along the way of building KC Truth that you might do differently, that you learned from or suggest someone else learns from it? SUE: I can say what I’ve learned from, which is I don’t take no for an answer very well. That’s for sure. That’s probably my number one thing that I do. I’d say what I’ve learned is in the early days, just to learn, I used to call up the head of another agency and tell them I really respected them and ask if they’d go to lunch with me or go have coffee with me. I learned so much from listening to them. I didn’t know what I was doing. I was an art director trying to start an agency. When I think back on those days, I think, oh my gosh, I gained so much from going to talk to people. I wish I would’ve kept that up more throughout my life. Now I learn so much from the people that I work with and all that, but I think getting knowledge from other people that are older than me was always really smart. I do think in our business, there’s ageism that goes on, in my opinion. There aren’t a lot of people that are older in the business as much anymore, and I think they have so much to offer. I would always encourage people to have lunch more often with people with wisdom, because I think you can learn a lot from that. that’s one of the things I’d do differently. Also, I wish I would’ve been a little humbler at the beginning, because I thought I was pretty cool having my own agency at 28. You can only imagine. I just think, God, sometimes I just wasn’t very humble. That kind of bugs me now when I think back on it. Humility I think is key in everything. Believe me, I’ve been slapped down so many times in these years. You’ve always got to be humble. I think I learned early on, but really practiced it later, hire the best you can at every single level in your company, in every single discipline, and make sure that you aren’t being complacent and resting on your laurels ever, ever, ever, because you never can. That is for sure. You can never sit back and go, “I’ve got it made now.” It’s like, nope. The minute you do, something’s going to come along and slap you upside the face. That’s not going to happen. Gosh, I don’t know. Those are some things that come to mind when I’m thinking about it right now. ROB: Sure. How do you calibrate, then? There are times to accelerate the business and there are times to not overheat your ambitions of growth. How do you think about calibrating well when you need to chase versus when you need to sit on it? SUE: I know, right? Because we’re not a huge company, and I never, ever – every agency has been through layoffs; we’ve been through very few. I can think of a handful of people we’ve had to lay off in all these years. Financially, I try to run the company very conservatively. But I’m also making sure that we’ve never, ever been a sweatshop. I said by the time my kids were six and eight, which was a long time ago, I was going to be home after school with my kids. I’ve always believed in having that work-life balance. It’s walking a fine line, like you said, calibrating, making sure people have lives. I believe that’s where you get pure inspiration, from your personal life. You don’t get your inspiration from work. You get your inspiration from when you’re not working and your brain can wander. It’s a very fine dance, honestly, and I wish I had an exact answer for you of how I calibrate. But I have a certain gut feeling about things sometimes. Sometimes I rely on numbers. It’s all a combination of touch-and-feel and trying to figure it out, and listening and taking advice. I’ve got a really good team of people I work with, and I love to discuss things and talk about things. I always rely on other people’s opinions. That makes me smarter. Nothing concrete there, Rob. It’s just a touch-and-feel, and history. You always learn from what you’ve done in the past and failed or done well. It’s a constant balancing act, like you say. It’s balanced by all those different things we just talked about. ROB: I think at the same time, though, you probably have some knowledge. You probably know almost more than you would ever think to give yourself credit for, because you’ve learned humility over time. If you were talking to someone who’s just building, setting up, thinking they’re going to grow an agency – you mentioned you can be on the conservative side, but do you have any rules or recommendations for someone to set up financially? Like cash reserves, practice – I don’t know. Do you have any guideposts you use that you think someone would do really well to listen to if they were earlier in their journey? SUE: Yeah. I’d start out really small. It takes a lot more money to start an agency today. When it was just – I hate to say it – markers and pens, sketchpads, and the first Mac, that’s way cheaper than what you need today. Today, you need more people. The people that are good at analyzing data, media people. You really do need – if you don’t have them within your company, you need to have partnerships with outside resources that can help you. Because clients are going to hold you accountable. It’s not just about it’s a good idea; it’s got to work. Ultimately, it has to work. I think the investment in people is the biggest expense today, more than anything else. So I think you do have to have a strong financial base to be able to have the people that can really hit the ground running. I think that’s it more than anything else. It’s not like it was, where just an art director and a copywriter could come up with some ads and go sell them to somebody. [laughs] That was easy. That was way easier. All the agencies that started back when I did – none of them are around anymore that started at the same time. You’ve got to have the really smart people or the competition is just too fierce. ROB: Sue, it’s a good journey so far. What is next for you and for KC Truth that you’re excited about? What should we be looking for? SUE: Oh, my goodness. As you’ve heard from probably every person you talk to, getting through this past year is like a historical milestone. Now we’re all just going through the headlines about the turnover tsunami. We’ve experienced some of that. Our clients have experienced some of that. That’s a place we’ve never been before, so that’s a whole other deal. But I have to say, we had our first in-house meeting at the Truth Bar downstairs at our place with our clients. I think people were genuinely glad to see each other in person again. It felt so natural and so good. I just think we’ve missed relationships, and I’m looking forward to – that’s the hardest thing for me, feeling like I can’t build on these relationships with the people I’d like to see and hear what’s going on. Now I think we’re in for a whole renewal of how important it is to build relationships in our business. Our clients need to trust us and know what we’re going to do is going to work, so you need to have a good relationship. And that’s where trust comes, out of good relationships. We all need to get back to that basic stuff. Face time not on FaceTime, but face time face-to-face, I think is what’s key. I don’t believe that as an industry, we can live on Zoom calls all the time. It’s just not possible. It’s not sustainable. That’s what I’d say, Rob. That’s where my head is. ROB: Did you have any hesitancy from any of your clients, or were they like caged animals ready to come out and hang? SUE: They had to see if it was okay with their corporate people, to see if they were allowed to. There were a few other hoops, maybe, to get through. But no, not so far. We’ve only had one, but we’re going to be back to work a couple days a week soon. I think people are feeling – they really want to be back, I think. With flexibility and all that sort of thing, it’s going to be good times, I think, again. ROB: It’s certainly new times. We brought in our team from all over the country – we’ve been hiring distributed over the past year. We started off wanting to have a team retreat, and then we realized we still had a lot of our clients local, so we invited our clients out to dinner. Everybody wanted to get out. I don’t think I had anybody who said, “No, because I’m being cautious.” For the most part they either had shots or never wanted one, one or the other, and they were ready to come out and play. Our team was all vaccinated up. SUE: Same. Hands off the handlebars. That’s it, for sure. ROB: Wonderful. Sue, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Thank you so much for sharing your experience. I think we would all aspire to build such an enduring firm that continues to be relevant well after the initial playbook was probably in the trash and burned up. SUE: Oh yes, for sure. You should’ve seen that first portfolio. That was something, way back in the day. [laughs] ROB: You kind of wish you could frame it somewhere in the office now. SUE: It’s frightening, it’s frightening. Well, thank you so much, Rob. I really appreciate that. Let’s just hope we continue to move ahead in that way. ROB: Sounds good. Thank you so much, Sue. SUE: Thank you. Bye. ROB: Bye. Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

Beth Trejo is CEO at Chatterkick, a digital marketing agency that focuses on using social media platforms to connect businesses in a “real way” with their customers and drive to their businesses forward. Beth warns social media is complex. Time is everything on social and companies do not have the luxury of crafting content and sending it through committee approval processes. She cites studies that show that “about 80% of all businesses are not responding to their social media messages” – they only look at Facebook Messenger, skip the other places messages come in, and potentially miss out on big opportunities. Beth believes that many companies cannot effectively manage social media internally. They may not have the time to handle the volume of content needed to build relationships. Coordinating messages across the range of platforms customers may be using adds to the challenge. In addition, businesses often do not realize that these platforms are communication channels and can used for far more than just advertising and promotion.  Beth says, “It’s a lot of time to manage a social account. And if you have seven channels and lots of content going out, that’s a big job.” Chatterkick’s role is to help clients forge strong social media bonds and execute outreach expansion strategies. These “real connections” help companies: build employee and customer loyalty  gain competitive advantages  understand and clarify what return on investment can really mean to them. Beth explains how important it is to get employees of a company to share their employers’ content. Things that can impact employees “sharing” include: Are they proud of how the company portrays itself online as a business? Do they like the company’s website? Do they like the content? (Put out content that makes them proud.) Do they even know the content went out? (Tell them what is going out, when, and where and remind employees to share it if it is something they care about. Make it easy for them to share.) Do they understand the underlying technology? If they share something, who it will go to? How will they do it? What will they say? What should they say? (They may need some training.) Do they feel “authentic” in their brand amplification conversations? (Chatterkick believes that authentic content and real photos are what work on social platforms) Beth believes a strong indicator of employee pride in their company and what it is doing is when they share the company’s social media content, not only with potential clients, but also with their friends and families. She has also found social media platforms to be a cost-effective way to recruit new employees – and “it’s not all just a LinkedIn game.” The biggest thing to think about when recruiting is not compensation, but the value proposition. Potential recruits are more responsive when presented with visual and digital representations of the company’s culture.” Even subtle differences can make jobs “stickier.” Chatterkick had elements of distributed work long before Covid. Beth says remote work takes “constant work,” open dialogue, and a lot of thought about team needs, removing communication barriers, and preventing communication overload. These needs will change, depending on the teams involved, client needs, and community impacts.  Beth can be found on her agency’s website at: chatterkick.com or by email at: beth@chatterkick.com Transcript Follows: ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m your host, Rob Kischuk, and I’m joined today by Beth Trejo, CEO at Chatterkick based in Sioux City, Iowa. Welcome to the podcast. BETH: Thank you so much. Great to have a conversation with you today. ROB: It’s great to have you here. Why don’t you start off by introducing Chatterkick and what areas of excellence the firm focuses on? BETH: Yeah, I’d be happy to. Chatterkick was started 9 years ago. We really saw the need to help connect our business partners with real humans on the other end of logos. We use channels and platforms that are relevant, which happen to be social media, and we believe the power of those connections can help drive business forward. Some of our partners use us to build loyalty on behalf of their employees or their customers; other times, they use our support to help gain competitive advantages or really understand and clarify what return on investment can really mean to them. We are often categorized as a digital marketing agency, which we definitely fit into that category, but really focus on the social media platforms and how they can impact business. ROB: Got it. It might help to dig into a client as an example, because it sounds like you are perhaps more focused on the conversation aspect of social rather than the broadcast side. I might not have that quite right. Can you get us into what this might look like with a client?  BETH: Oftentimes we find that businesses don’t have the time or the expertise to handle social media internally. We started on that premise and still fulfill many of those needs today. A business will come to us and say, “Hey, we need support. We’re just posting every Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s, and that’s the extent of what we’re doing on social.” So, we help them develop a strategy and then execute the strategy to form those bonds from two-way communication as well as with advertising, marketing. We’re seeing a ton of digital recruitment need right now. These platforms are communication channels, and I think sometimes we forget about that as business owners. There’s a lot of pushing of ads and promotion out there, and that oftentimes does work. But there is so much more that can be had on these platforms, and that’s where we see an opportunity for our business partners to get ahead. ROB: That’s a great point to push in on, that substitutionary effect of content and objectives focusing more on maybe recruitment than some traditional messaging. How are clients looking at that? Is that an easier ROI for them to get their heads wrapped around, or is it just different? BETH: I think it sometimes is easier. It really depends. There’s two things we see from return on employee engagement or digital recruitment strategies. The easiest one is “I was spending XYZ a year in the traditional ways to acquire new candidates, and I was able to save money (XYZ percentage) using some of these social tools.” Sometimes it’s just as easy and simple as that. When it comes to employee engagement, it’s very similar to how you would measure your customer engagement on these platforms. The most manual and probably painful tracking way is to literally tag and count, tally up, who is engaging, how much they’re engaging, and digitally what does that presence look like with your team and your colleagues. Then there are other softwares and tools we can use to speed up that tracking process. But ultimately, that’s where we see the businesses have some of the most success, because your employees are already connected to your customers. If they’re sharing your content, even if it is bleeding out to their friends and family, that’s how you know you have really proud employees that care about what you’re doing. They want to spread the word personally just as much as professionally. ROB: That’s an excellent point. It can be such a tricky thing to thread because people really are often proud of the work that they do but can also feel inauthentic to an extent. We just had a team retreat, and one of my team’s suggestions – certainly not mine – was that the team could amplify our social content. But it also feels awkward to ask them to do that. How do you think about helping employees to feel authentic in their brand amplification conversations? BETH: That’s a really good question. You never want to force people to do it. I think there is a fine line. I see a lot of businesses try to give incentives or find ways to gamify that, and I do think the concept of gamifying that is interesting. I’ve seen it work. But if you want to stay authentic, the best way to do it is put content out there that maybe different business units or different teams are really proud of. A lot of the hesitation when it comes to why your employees aren’t sharing your content, from what we’ve found, is technical. Some people are still really scared and they don’t know how to do some of the technical things on these platforms. They don’t know, if they share it, who it will go to. How will they do it? What will they say? What should they say? If you have people that are naturally not digital natives, there may be some learning. That’s the biggest barrier they’re having. The other barrier we see is they just aren’t proud of how you portray yourself online as a business. Ask your employees: Do they like your website? Do they like the content you’re putting on social? If there’s a big gap, chances are they’re not going to share it. Then the other thing is a lot of people miss things in your content. It’s not a matter of they don’t want to; it’s just they didn’t know it went out. There’s eight different platforms they’re following; they’re not thinking about searching you out. So, you need to make it extremely easy for them, even if it’s as simple as sending it out in your update, like, “This is the content that’s going out this week. It’s important to us because of this.” Maybe you hit up your Slack channel and say, “Hey, this post just went out. If this is something you care about, please share it.” Just little reminders make the biggest difference. ROB: That nudge there certainly seems helpful. When we’re talking about recruitment, I’ve seen billboards for restaurant jobs; I’ve seen online ads for executive jobs. Is there a sweet spot for you? Is it more in a B2B context, white collar? Is it consumer and retail and that sort of thing? BETH: I think the beauty of it is we’re doing everything from filling food processing manufacturing jobs to high level white collar leadership positions. Again, if you just think of these platforms as communication channels and not as solutions, different strategies definitely work on a lot of the platforms, honestly. It’s not all just a LinkedIn game when it comes to recruitment. The biggest thing that businesses really need to think about is, what is the value prop you’re putting out there on the job? So many people are still using the “We’re looking for an energetic self-starter.” When you are in a very high demand employment category, you have to offer something different. You have to find that one little thing that makes your company unique as an employer brand and lean into that, because that is what will attract the right type of candidates and the ones that maybe you’re having a hard time finding in other traditional ways of recruitment. ROB: And it’s not going to be as transactional, either, as the “We have $13, $15, $20, $25, $30 an hour jobs,” because what you lead with is what you get. You’re going to get someone who’s chasing a dollar and they’ll take $5 an hour more somewhere else when they can find it. You’re leading with who they can be and become. BETH: Right. If you really have it dialed in – some of the employers we’re working with that are recruiting both production type jobs as well as leadership positions really have a visual and digital representation of who they are from a culture perspective. Those little, subtle differences oftentimes will help make jobs stickier. It makes a big difference when it comes to – you’ll get that passive candidate that’s sitting in front of their TV watching movies. Your job has to be positioned well enough that they will take action. Very different than if they’re searching on Indeed and actively trying to find a job. That’s where social media is extremely powerful. It’s that “Would you go to a job if you didn’t have to work nights and weekends?” One of our best performing ad’s copy units says something along the lines of “If you can’t name one reason you like your job, it’s time for a different job.” It’s funny because we could put every incentive out there. You’d think that’s what would really drive people – sign-on bonuses and all of these very attractive financial rewards – but that one is the one that actually gets the most people to apply. ROB: That’s really, really interesting. Beth, you mentioned that Chatterkick’s been around about 9 years. Take us back a little bit and maybe share, how did the business start? What led you to take this dive? BETH: I did not come from an agency world. I created an agency that I would want to work with. Prior to starting Chatterkick, I was at a regional Chamber of Commerce. I was an account management position where I would go out and visit with businesses and literally ask them, “How can I help you on behalf of the Chamber?” What that led to is a lot of answers that fit into buckets of they needed to communicate with their potential employees or their potential customers. They were kind of stuck at that time – this is 12 years ago, probably – about how to navigate the digital trends, how to understand the power of their website. I saw these conversations and they were happening more and more and more, and people were looking to me for the solutions, and I was saying, “Okay, there’s Facebook. Try it this way,” plug and playing all of the different platforms. I was also in in-person meetings – committee meetings, coffees, lunches – and was watching the purest and oldest school form of social networking, handshakes and connecting with people in real life and forming relationships. I really saw the power of that. I was taking that same model and helping businesses move that to the digital world. That really was the premise on how Chatterkick was born, and why I still believe in that power of a real person on the other end of some of our digital elements and platforms. I think that is a differentiator in many categories today. ROB: And your clients will certainly see that as well when you have that personal touch, that personal handshake – although some of that has been limited a little bit over the past year, limiting even for teams. Have you been able to get together with clients? Has your team been separate? How have you thought about that personal touch when the physical touch has been maybe easy, maybe not easy to find? BETH: We’re a remote team anyways and we’ve had different elements of remote over the last 10 years. But even in the last 5 years, we’ve definitely hired team members in different markets, and our clients are all over the country. So that wasn’t a huge change, but one of the biggest changes that we had to overcome was our content captures. One of the ways that we’re a little bit different than a lot of agencies is we believe that authentic content and real photos, regardless of the type of business you have, are the things that work on social. So, we include that with every engagement, whether they’re in New York City or in the Midwest. That content capture – and this is content specifically designed for social media, so it’s a little bit different than a commercial photo shoot – but we had to reconfigure what those looked like when the pandemic hit. What we ended up doing was we did them virtually. It was almost like a podcast episode, and we would take the audio and use it for content. We would take the quotes and use that for Instagram stories. We would take screenshots of the person and what they were saying and develop that for thought leadership pieces. It ended up working well for a lot of our businesses that couldn’t have people onsite even if they wanted to. It still allowed us to get that real content from the leadership team and from the employees working at the business without having all of the work on them to source up the photos and the pieces of content that work on the platforms. ROB: You’re in this somewhat unique – not completely unique, but relatively so – position where being distributed was nothing new to you. What have you found to be some of the key factors to making distributed work and cadences of gathering, if there are any? BETH: We were just having these conversations internally, too. I think the biggest thing that I’ve learned about remote work is it’s constant work. You need to constantly be thinking, “How can I help my team? How can I remove communication barriers? How can I help prevent communication overload?” Because that is also a real thing that happens with everybody online all the time. So it’s a constant conversation that we have, and I think it’s going to continuously change on what that looks like depending on the team we have, depending on the client’s needs we’re addressing, and the different parts of what our communities look like. Some of them are wide open right now and others are a little bit less. What does that look like for different thresholds and tolerances of gathering right now? An open dialogue and communication is really where we’re starting. We did open our office. We have one primary office that is almost like a co-working flex space that we’re keeping right now to let people come together locally if they would like to. We’re kind of leaving it in their hands. And then our remote team, which is probably 60% of the total workforce right now, are welcome to go to co-working spaces, but many of them are still working directly in their home. ROB: That’s such an interesting dynamic even in and of itself: who chooses to go out and work somewhere and who chooses not to. You see trends emerge, but it’s so much deeper and more complicated than that for everyone’s situation. BETH: It really is. I think just having the mindset of flexibility is really important. I know I like that. Like, “My house is going to be quiet today so I’m going to work from home,” or on the other side of that, “My kids are going to be around and having their friends at the house, so I want to be at the office today.” [laughs] I think that is really nice to be able to offer and have that flexibility on where you work, because your days all look different too. ROB: Absolutely. Beth, you mentioned how this thing started. What did it look like when it started to grow? How did you think about what goals were key to bring on, when it was key to maybe bring on someone else essential on the executive team side, that sort of thing? BETH: I have an interesting story. I started out myself, and I had an administrative partner who was more than just administrative. Almost a key executive that was able to help me ramp up the business. She wasn’t working full time in the business; more of a support system. I am great at speaking and leading teams, but the details are not necessarily my friend, especially as it relates to starting a business. So, she was really able to come in and help align some of those weaknesses and things that slowed me down. Because when you’re starting, you need to get customers. We ended up landing a pretty large customer in the beginning. While I thought I would be cold calling all day long, I was really working directly servicing customers. Then we had an intern come in and hired her full time. That was our first full-time employee. It was one of the scariest things I had to do as a business owner, especially at that time, because it is scary to hire someone. Once we got to a three-person team is really where I felt like we could gain a top of opportunity and momentum. We were all on the same page. We had our defined skillsets. We were able to move quickly and adjust quickly and get a lot accomplished during that timeframe. Actually, when we scaled, we kept that model and, in some regard, reverted back to these three to four people dynamic teams that surround each of the customers. In social, time is everything. You don’t want to spend 4 hours creating one Facebook post and then send it to four copywriters and approval process. Overwork is a thing when it relates to content. We didn’t want to have these two silos like traditional agencies have in some regards of creative on one side and execution/implementation. It was too many account management barriers. So, we created these teams that can work quickly on content and have those conversations on a regular basis. If someone needs to change copy a little bit or an employee is no longer there and they need to take them from the website, that can happen a lot quicker than trying to make it through four different departments and leadership teams. ROB: I think that’s a great takeaway, that pod approach. You’re not having some sort of interchangeable copy team trying to learn brand voices they haven’t seen in 6 months. It makes a ton of sense. As you reflect on the business so far, what are some other lessons that you have learned where you might have course-corrected sooner in the business if you had learned these lessons sooner? BETH: I think one thing that has always been challenging for me – and it still is, and it’s one of those things I continue to work on – is I often avoid conflict. Because of that, I’ve probably avoided tough conversations a little too long, whether that’s with clients or team members. Not addressing things in a fast and immediate fashion has let things dwindle and bubble up in ways that never really was my intention, but I have noticed that can really impact the organization, again, on both the customer and the employee side. That’s one thing I am continuously working on, being able to move into an area of conflict in a quicker manner and address things – still kindly and not trying to be a jerk, but sometimes those tough conversations are the ones you need to have the most. ROB: It’s definitely a balance in there somewhere. We all know the stories of the closely held business where the person in charge is just kind of a maniac. BETH: Right. [laughs] ROB: How do you reflect and find those moments where sometimes it’s time to let something go a little bit, sometimes it’s time to lean into it and address it? BETH: Oh man, if I had the answer to that, that’d be awesome. That is something that is really hard. I think a lot of agency leadership struggles with that because, you’re right, you don’t want to make hasty decisions, either, and you need to have the right information. But sometimes you won’t have all of the pieces of the puzzle to actually make a decision. Sometimes you’ve just got to move on with it. I have looked at some awesome models out there, like “Is it urgent? Is it immediate?” and better prioritizing and planning on that decision-making, but it’s still tough. [laughs] ROB: Sometimes we just need to know that, too, and that helps to know that it’s tough for us, absolutely. Beth, as you reflect on what’s coming up next for Chatterkick and your clients – I feel like we’re a little bit away from the new and exciting channels conversation for the most part. It used to be the channel of the month or the week or the year. There are still new channels, but it feels like it’s less about the flavor of the day. What’s coming up that you’re excited about? BETH: This is probably a unique answer, but I’m actually excited that some of these platforms and the people that are using them – businesses, agencies – are reverting back to “Maybe we should look at something a little bit simpler,” or “Maybe we need to answer all of our reviews in our comments” or “Maybe we do need to take a stand on something that’s important to us as an organization and put it out there into the world, or showcase our people more.” I think that is exciting to me because I’ve seen things become so ad-heavy, so commercialized that we forget who we’re talking to. We always talk about, “Would you click on that?” I mean, how many times do we as businesses put content out there and say, “I wouldn’t click on this. This doesn’t look interesting to me”? There’s an element of that that I think we forget about. I have seen the trends of people – and there’s data that supports it – that businesses are looking for customer experience and forming those intimate relationships with their customers, and that wasn’t always the case, especially in the consumer goods category or the fashion industry. But there are brands that are doing it really well, and they’re seeing market share shifts. That is what really excites me because I really do think we want to know what our lipstick brand is all about. We want to have that information so that we feel like we can narrow our choices when it comes to products or services, both in the B2B and B2C space. ROB: It sounds like it ties back a little bit to that differentiated hiring conversation. We’re in, as you mentioned, various stages of reopening from COVID. We have companies that need employees, we have companies that are trying to reacquire customers, we have new entrants. It seems a little bit like the transactional commodity value prop. Maybe for the moment it’s even being a little bit priced out of the ad mix. Everyone needs the same ad space, the same inventory. BETH: Yeah, I definitely think that. I see, again, businesses taking a step back and saying, “We have 500 priorities today” – small businesses as much as large entities. “How are we going to prioritize what really matters to our customers, what matters to our teams that will be supporting these customers? Is what we are selling or telling a good use of our time, and does it reflect what we’re about?” I have noticed that shift a little bit. I’ve also noticed people ignore that, and they’re struggling when there’s a crisis. They’re struggling when some of their employees post something bad about them. They’re struggling when they get a negative review. If you can’t get ahead of it, you’re going to be in that scenario where you’re constantly playing defense. I just think that’s a hard place to be in the digital space. ROB: Absolutely. When you’re talking about employee reviews, is that more Glassdoor or more Yelp? BETH: You see it across the board. You see it from people posting on their personal Facebook and Twitter accounts to people posting on your employer review sites – Glassdoor, Comparably, Indeed. But then you also see it coming in your comments on your platforms. Maybe it’s on your Instagram post, maybe it’s on your LinkedIn post. The statistics still say that about 80% of all businesses are not responding to their social media messages, and I think a lot of that is because they’re just checking Facebook Messenger. They’re not checking all the other spots that these messages come in. I always tell our partners, Step 1 for ROI is just answer your digital phone. You have to be there, you have to respond. It’s just the way that people want to communicate these days, and if you’re not there, you may lose out on a big opportunity. ROB: That’s an interesting rise that you’re alluding to. The consumer-facing social is what we’ve historically thought about as social, but it almost seems like businesses that are smaller than would usually need a CorpComms department now have a CorpComms function to their social. BETH: Yeah. We see that even with businesses that never thought they would be – their audience isn’t on Facebook, their audience isn’t on Instagram. What they don’t realize is they’re in different mindsets. Go grab your customer’s phone. Is Facebook eating up their battery? Are they on Instagram? Chances are, they are. They’re just maybe not in that same mindset, or maybe they’re looking at it differently. But if you’re not there to check the messages, you can miss big deals or customer service complaints or just contact requests that don’t get followed up with. They’ll come through those channels, oftentimes. ROB: That sounds more than a little bit overwhelming, but I’m guessing that’s why people call you. BETH: [laughs] Right, exactly. That’s the other thing we have really tried to educate people on over the last 9 years. I understand the allure of “This is an intern’s job; let’s go grab an intern. They can do all the things.” But if you’ve ever done all the things, you realize the width of how many platforms and how different the platforms are, and then the depth and how many steps need to happen before one Facebook post or one LinkedIn post goes out. So, I think it’s really important for leaders and executives to understand that this isn’t just a simple thing anymore from a technical perspective. It’s a lot of time to manage a social account. And if you have seven channels and lots of content going out, that’s a big job. ROB: Absolutely, it is. Beth, when people want to get in touch with you and with Chatterkick, where should they go to find you? BETH: They can go to chatterkick.com. It’s spelled just like it sounds. My email is pretty easy to access; it’s all over our website, but it is beth@chatterkick.com. ROB: Sounds great. Beth, thank you so much for coming on the podcast, for sharing the Chatterkick journey, for sharing the fits and starts of reopening and all that means for teams and marketers and businesses as well. It’s been really helpful. BETH: It’s been a pleasure. Thank you so much. ROB: Thank you, Beth. Be well. Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

Brandon Edwards started his career in the issues management / crisis / grassroots / public affairs-focused healthcare division of a multi-industry, multi-practice Santa Barbara agency. In 2009, a toxic rift developed between Brandon’s growing medical services division and the rest of the faltering agency. Brandon and his division associates bought out their piece of the business and formed ReviveHealth. It took almost 6 years to go from being issue based to what it is today – a full-service. integrated, all audiences, all channels firm serving B2C, B2B, and B2P, the business to physician/provider side. Santa Barbara was “an extremely high-cost market” with neither a strong employment nor a strong healthcare base. In 2011 decision was made to move to Nashville, TN, which Brandon refers to as “the Healthcare Capital of the World.” He cites Tennessee’s central time zone, big airport, abundance of talent, and lack of a state income tax as major incentives for the move.  Brandon feels his agency has a “good business moat” – healthcare is an extremely complex business with major regulatory impacts. Even if generalist firms are good at strategy, they won’t be able to deliver in-depth, healthcare-specific strategies or may lack corresponding creative skills. Firms that specialize in “creative” have the potential to propose solutions that could “send you to jail.”  In this interview, Brandon explains how too many medical organizations try to bring customers in through “the side of the funnel,” perhaps by marketing heart surgery to people (who may or may not have a heart attack in the next two weeks). “That’s not how funnels work,” he says. “You need to bring them in through urgent care, primary care, preventative care, diagnostic care – some percentage of people that start in the top of that funnel are going to end up needing other services, whether that’s PT or surgery of some kind, and all of the other attendant care that comes with it.” What makes an agency in this niche market work?  First, Brandon says, “You have to start with the right people that have the right talent and the right knowledge base.” Even then, it can take 12 to 18 months for a new hire’s skills to become a “mature practice.” Strategy has come from a deep understanding of the healthcare business. To be effective, creative work, which comes from outside of healthcare –needs to be interesting and provocative. And process? “Healthcare is not a hobby,” Brandon says. HIPAA restrictions dictate everything the agency does, including information architecture, how information is shared with clients, and marketing campaign design. One early strategy core to the company was the idea of “being built to be sold,” merged, or transferred to employees through an ESOP (Employee Stock Option Plan). The intention was to always keep the firm as if it were “for sale tomorrow,” which informed hiring, compensation, professional development, branding, business development, and marketing decisions. Profits were consistently poured back into company growth. The agency did not expand by adding offices. Instead, it invested in hiring to expand and deepen capabilities, increasing offerings, and buying the tools, technology and data needed for “doing the job” now and in the future. ReviveHealth was recently bought out by IPG, Weber Shandwick, which Brandon says has been and continues to be “a really positive experience.” From the beginning, he built to sell . . . and then, he sold. All it took was sticking to his plan and “little luck”  Transcript Follows:   ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m your host, Rob Kischuk, and I am joined today by Brandon Edwards from ReviveHealth based in Nashville, Tennessee. Welcome to the podcast, Brandon. BRANDON: Thanks for having me. ROB: Why don’t you kick it off by telling us about ReviveHealth and what the agency’s superpowers are? BRANDON: Revive is a healthcare-only agency. We’re healthcare focused. Located here in Nashville, which a lot of people know for country music, but it really is in many ways the healthcare capital of the world. It’s a pretty phenomenal healthcare city. While we founded the firm on the West Coast, we relocated out here to Nashville in early 2011. Our superpower is really helping healthcare brands thrive. It’s helping healthcare brands that want to lead the way. What we mean by that is really bringing to bear the full spectrum of marketing communications in the truest sense of the word “full-service” in a way that is very strategically focused on what we view as an underserved segment of healthcare. Most healthcare firms are dominated by pharma or government or med device; our clients really focus on the provider sector of healthcare. So hospitals, health systems, large physician enterprises as well as health tech and health services. ROB: It’s an interesting place to get into. I think there’s probably some interesting stories around the conviction to move. How do you go about saying, “I’m in California” – it’s like the opposite of the Beverly Hillbillies. You’re like, “Tennessee is the place where we gotta be.” BRANDON: It might be the opposite of the Beverly Hillbillies, but I’ll tell you the people from Tennessee are probably tired of Californians moving here. There’s no state income tax in Tennessee. It’s a huge growth market, and yet everywhere Californians go, so go property values. We drive up home values in a very unflattering way. The story is actually kind of interesting. We started in California. I’m from California, my wife’s from California, we founded the firm in California. We started the firm September 1st, 2009, and we all remember what was happening in 2009. The recession couldn’t have been any worse. If you think about the unique aspects of headquartering a professional services business, particularly one that is highly specialized in healthcare, we were located in an extremely high-cost market without a strong employment base – without a strong healthcare base, actually. All of our talent was going to have to come from somewhere else. In 2009, no one could move to Santa Barbara because they couldn’t afford to buy a home there if they couldn’t sell their home. No one could afford to sell their home. If they were married or had a partner, that person couldn’t find a job in Santa Barbara. So, we really reached the conclusion that for purely strategic purposes, we had to go where the talent pool already existed. We considered a couple markets, but it wasn’t even close. Nashville was far and away the lead for us. It has a big airport, central time zone, really easy to get around, and has an incredibly deep talent base. I didn’t initially know I was going to move my family here. We thought we’d open an office and staff it. My wife actually suggested we move here. I’d been on the road 150, 200 nights a year for our whole lives, and I think the entirety of her pitch was “If we move to Nashville, you’ll get to have a lot more dinners at home and be with the kids more,” and that was it. She’s a rare person that volunteered to leave Santa Barbara. ROB: Yeah, that seems like a direction that a lot of people wouldn’t go, except what you said: to an extent, you were a frontrunner. I imagine this past season, you read about what’s going on with real estate prices, and basically everywhere is functioning as a suburb of the California real estate market. I think you might’ve beat some of your friends to Nashville. BRANDON: Yeah. We were maybe the front edge of the wave in the summer of 2012, and now the wave is in full force. It’s everybody relocating here. It’s California, New York, Chicago, big cities fleeing to a slightly smaller city, but a city where, again, there’s no state income tax. From an affordability standpoint, it’s a very different animal.  ROB: When we think a little bit about your specialty, Brandon, what is it? What are the distinct needs both from a strategy perspective as well as a channels and distribution perspective of this healthcare group specialty market? BRANDON: It’s a very nuanced segment. On the one hand, I think we feel like there’s a good moat around our business from the standpoint that generalist firms can’t really parachute into a highly specialized area like this and deliver the same kind of value and strategic counsel that we can. So our competitive set is a bit more limited. You also tend to attract people who have more specialized careers. In some ways, from a recruitment standpoint, it’s self-selection. My phrase for it is “healthcare is not a hobby.” It’s an extremely complicated business with an intense regulatory overlay, and it also is highly emotional for people. I think maybe finance is the closest area to it in some ways because of all those factors. From our standpoint, the tradeoff that most clients had before Revive was they could pick a firm that could really help them with strategy, but that firm was going to suck at creative. The flipside is you could hire a firm that was really creative and interesting, and some of the work they were going to propose would send you to jail. Being able to bring together this deep understanding of the business so that the strategy is rooted in a deep understanding of the business of healthcare, how the organization is going to make money if you keep its mission alive, coupled with creative that largely comes from outside of healthcare so that we have fresh ideas and really interesting, provocative, and effective creative, was really not a value prop that existed in our industry 12 years ago. ROB: It would seem to me that part of that story of being able to bring in those outside folks, those new perspectives, but not going to jail, also plays into process a little bit. How have you thought about the emergence of process, of getting that regulatory overlay and consistency across the organization? BRANDON: First, I think you have to start with the people part of it. I promise I’ll answer your process question, but if you don’t start with the right people that have the right talent and the right knowledge base, my view at least is there’s no process that’s going to save you from that. When we look at more senior level leaders in the firm in particular – I would say even mid-career and up – we look at people who already have a pretty deep established understanding of healthcare. If you bring in someone who’s never touched healthcare and they’ve been in business for 15 or 20 years, I defy anybody to sit and explain HIPAA to someone in a way that’s going to make any sense to them. There are so many aspects of the industry that normal people just cock their heads and say, “That doesn’t make any sense.” It’s like, you’re absolutely right, and it’s just the way it is. So I think it starts with people. From a process standpoint, you still have to have process and safeguards. We do extensive HIPAA training. HIPAA and the restrictions around use of data dictate everything about our information architecture, how we share information with clients, how you design marketing campaigns that can be effective and still be well within the bounds of those. So you really have to think through the processes in terms of not just what you do in a normal agency to get good work, but to get good work within the guardrails of what’s allowable in the healthcare industry. ROB: That seems like a totally different mindset, and I can see that domain expertise from the experienced voices helping to train and bring up the next wave of talent. One thing I’m curious about – the timing of your focus in the space seems impeccable. The narrative of this past 10-15 years of the consolidation of the healthcare groups, the rise of these regional healthcare-group-sponsored office parks – it’s a real thing. I see it all around me. How did you end up at the right spot on that wave? It could’ve been easy to be too early and easy to be too late. BRANDON: Yeah. I would love to tell you that it was incredible wisdom and vision on my end, and that just wouldn’t be true. [laughs] I wish that’s what it was. There were a group of us that were in another agency. We were essentially the healthcare practice, a place where I was a minority owner, and it was a multi-industry, multi-practice firm but had built up and created this healthcare presence within that firm. But that firm was very focused. It was essentially an issues management / crisis / grassroots / public affairs firm, so the healthcare practice we had built was very focused on those kinds of services and that kind of work for clients because that was the firm’s positioning. And I think it was the right positioning for that firm. We got to 2009 and the rest of the firm outside of healthcare shrunk dramatically. Remember, this is the same time that the ACA was being debated and passed. This was the same time that there was going to be a substantial need for all kinds of expertise in the healthcare space, including marketing communications work. I think unfortunately, when you’re in an agency that may be struggling a little bit – what do they say? Character is revealed by difficult times, not created by it. I think what was unfortunately revealed in that moment was a somewhat toxic culture in the other agency. So, when we looked to buy out the healthcare practice and form Revive, we really viewed it as an opportunity to go from being a healthcare practice in a diversified agency to becoming a healthcare agency, as well as an opportunity to really diversify the offering into truly full-service integrated marketing work. For us, there was this really great established base of clientele to work from and help to fund that expansion, but what started was a journey that took I would say 5-½, almost 6 years to go from being issues-focused to being a truly full-service integrated firm. ROB: From a channel mix perspective, you mentioned a PR and comms legacy; what does the channel mix look like today, and where is it heading within the healthcare space? BRANDON: I think the simplest way to put it would be it’s really all audiences, all channels. We’ve gone from planning for earned to planning for earned and social to planning for every stripe of media and every stripe of channel and bringing in people with integrated planning backgrounds, bringing in people that are deep in digital and social and traditional. We actually plan and buy our own media across all channels. Very unusual for a firm our size. But one of the interesting nuances working with media buying, for example, in this space is that most media buying firms really want to buy large campaigns on a regional or national basis, and hospital media in particular is bought almost exclusively on a local community basis. The joke is if you go to work for a big brand, you’re going to spend $50 million in $5 million chunks; if you go to work for a hospital, you’re going to spend $5 million in $50,000 chunks. It takes a very different structure and thought process to create the media function. And that’s just one thing. You still have to think about all of the creative and all of the different areas. We really think about all audiences, meaning we’re looking at consumers, we’re looking at current and past patients, we’re looking at employers and brokers, we’re looking at physicians and board members and donors, and then the people within those hospital or healthcare organizations that are purchasing from our health services and health tech clients as well. We really have both B2C and B2B as well as B2P, the business to physician side. It’s really a robust channel and audience mix. ROB: It’s a really fascinating mix, and it reminds me, as you talk about the regulatory overhead, I could see somebody 10 years from now – you mentioned Fintech earlier; I think various dimensions of Fintech seem like they’re positioned both for some real growth versus synthetic growth, but also probably a good bit of regulation ahead. I think if somebody has a brain for that sort of thing, they might do well to start navigating the legality. There might be a good practice there. BRANDON: I’m sure you’re in the same boat; I talk to a lot of younger people that are interning or are interviewing with us or whatever it is, and I think there’s this tendency when you’re younger to think about the sexy things, whether it’s gaming or sports or whatever it is. Yet I believe in many ways, the best way to create a career that’s going to maximize your value is to find these industries where you can develop indispensable knowledge. I think healthcare is one. I think finance is another. I think maybe once upon a time, defense department type work was. Maybe higher ed. There are some industries that require an incredible amount of focus, and perhaps the skillsets aren’t as transferrable between working for one set of consumer products or CPG or whatever it is, but boy, it sure is value-creating for you from a career standpoint. ROB: Brandon, to switch gears a little bit, one part of your story I think we would be remiss not to touch on is the experience of being acquired. Many firms have that wish, but I think I heard recently maybe 1 in 400 agencies will actually ever be acquired. How did that process commence? Was that something you engaged in intentionally? Were you just sticking to your knitting and somebody took notice of what you were doing? BRANDON: We have a lot of flaws as an agency, just like any group of people does. But not being strategic and thoughtful isn’t one of them. In our very first strategic plan, September 1st, 2009, when there were four of us, the strategic plan says “Revive is being built to be sold.” There’s a little asterisk next to “sold” that says “It’s not really about sold; it’s about merged or an ESOP to employees or whatever.” But the thinking was, and I think a lesson learned perhaps from previous agency experience, is the worst thing you can have is an agency that you need to sell and can’t. It’s a bit like owning a home. They always tell you when you’re younger, don’t have the most expensive house on the street. You don’t want to own a house you can’t sell. And most people love their home – of any day they own it, the love it the most the day they put it on the market because they’ve done all the things to make it beautiful and have curb appeal. They’ve landscaped it, they’ve painted it, they’ve fixed all the little dings and scratches. I think agencies are a lot like that. We viewed it as we wanted to keep the firm always like it was for sale tomorrow, and that meant how we hired, how we comped people, how we did professional development, how we thought about our brand, how we did business development and marketed ourselves, how we paid ourselves. We took the view that the owners would comp themselves as employees. We would not take money out of the business; we would pour everything back into growth. So it was always about building enterprise value. We didn’t really set a timeline on it. I think maybe in that first plan we said 10 years, and honestly we just sort of made hat up because it seemed like a long time. It turned out not to be. [laughs] But we went into it with that attitude, and it became a filter for every single decision that we made for the business. And I think in a lot of ways it helps to keep you from being selfish. It’s really easy to have a great year and think “I think maybe we should pull a bunch of money out and go buy something cool” or whatever, I don’t know. We didn’t do that. The only money we took out of the business was for taxes, basically, and our individual compensation, which was set and didn’t change much during all those years. We would call the question every year in strategic planning, and every year the answer was “No, we’re good.” Then we get to the end of 2014. We had grown 60% that year. We had added digital content, social, we had purchased another firm, and we got to the end of the year and called the question of strategic planning, and the group unanimously said this would be the right time to look for a partner. “Let’s find someone who has been through this process of integration and can help us do this better and help us grow faster and help us avoid the pitfalls that come with going from being a single discipline firm to a really diversified agency.” ROB: It’s interesting to hear that intentionality from the start. I think there’s probably some threads to pull on there. For instance, I think you mentioned casually ESOP. It would be good to dig into that. When you think about building from the start, a technology startup will think about issuing stock options to their employees to ensure that they get to share in an acquisition. But that’s so often incompatible with a services organization. How did you think about employee comp, sharing in an exit, that sort of thing? BRANDON: Probably not as well as we should’ve. [laughs] I think you’d always be better at this the second or third time than you were the first time. Let me back up for a second: we had a great experience with the sale. We went about the process in a very nontraditional way. We had a great experience with the transaction. We had a great experience with the earnout with our buyer, which is IPG, Weber Shandwick. You hear all these terrible stories from people, and I will tell you that we had none of that. we had a really positive experience and continue to. Our executive leadership team – we had no senior level departures at the end of the earnout. That’s very unusual. Just a good experience. That said, I think we could’ve done a much better job – I could’ve done a much better job – leading up to the sale. We did not spread equity around as much as we probably should’ve. It wasn’t so much that we sat down and decided not to as just it hadn’t been a part of our plan, and by the time we went to sell, it was probably too late to make meaningful changes to the equity structure. We had five shareholders and five phantom equity holders just before the sale, and we then converted the phantom equity holders to real equity right before the sale because that was our buyer’s preference. ROB: What is phantom equity? BRANDON: Think of it as another way of creating an incentive compensation structure that doesn’t represent real ownership, so it doesn’t necessarily give a holder rights to a percentage of the firm’s profit or something like that. The upside is it can be given and taken away just like a bonus would; the downside is it gets taxed in ordinary income instead of capital gains. So it’s a little bit more attractive for the company, a little bit less attractive for the holder. It may be a little bit less attractive, but it’s substantially more attractive than getting nothing. I think ultimately, I wish we had distributed a little bit more ownership to some key people, particularly some people who really killed it in the last 5 years, but once you’ve entered into the transaction, it’s too late to change the equity structure. ROB: And it’s definitely tricky often, and not necessarily in your case – turnover in services can be higher. You also are dealing with the multiples that you sell for, typically. They’re not the same in services as they are in startup land. What I want to pull on a little bit now – you mentioned a couple things. If you’re building the sell, what comes to my mind is you have to be carrying decent margins on your services to be attractive to purchase. But then you mentioned that you and your partners were also not taking money off the table. I think where that probably points the flashlight a little bit is towards the question of: how do you strategically reinvest meaningful margins to build a business? I think that’s where a lot of people typically throw up their hands and just take the money off the table. BRANDON: Yeah, and I don’t think that’s irrational. I say this as a predetermined outcome for us because this is what we wanted for our business, but to be fair, it’s not at all irrational or even maybe a negative to say, “I don’t want to sell the business. What I want is to get it to a point where I don’t have to work so hard and I can make pretty good money and it creates an annuity for me and my family.” Yeah, there’s some dangers of that, but there’s dangers in selling too. So I don’t know that there’s a right or wrong answer to it. I think in terms of reinvestment, we really looked at it in two branches. I’ll tell you up front the one we decided not to do, and that was that we were not going to expand on the basis of offices. We were going to look at reinvestment in people and technology as opposed to places. We’ve never opened an office for a client. We’ve never been in that mode. We’ve always had as few offices as we felt like we could get away with and still attract the right talent. So we looked at it in two ways. Early on, it was really reinvestment in hires that would expand our capabilities – sometimes deepen them, but mostly expand them. The reason I think that’s a reinvestment is very often, when you’re bringing on someone to build out a new capability, there isn’t going to be enough revenue there really to justify that hire for some period of time. Typically for us, it was 12 to 18 months from the day we hired someone to the time that was a mature capability or mature practice. We would look at reinvestment in building out these capabilities, and that meant a creative department, that meant a media department, that meant digital capabilities, social media, content, research, all these different areas over the years. I would say hand in hand with that was reinvestment in the tools, technology, and data that could make those people effective. What does our media department need to do its job? What does our analytics group need to do its job? And what are they going to need in the future? What do we need to do in terms of data-driven marketing, whether that’s Salesforce or other platforms that we use? All of which carry pretty sizable price tags and some of which are more difficult to monetize with clients than others. I think those are the big two. I would say a distant third was the constant reinvestment in brand building and business development for our firm. We have spent about 5% of revenue on an annual basis from the time we had 10 people in new business and corporate marketing, brand building, for Revive to always be punching above our weight, always be growing. As a result, we’re showing 12-year compounded annual growth rates of about 25% a year. ROB: Wow. Sounds like a good company to buy if you’re IPG. That’s good. And you’re still there, which must mean it’s also a good job. BRANDON: I would like to believe that they could’ve bought anything they wanted and chose us. I find that flattering and a statement of confidence from them. But yes, they’ve been great to deal with, and honestly I’ve been glad to be here. It’s nice to be part of a really great company. ROB: That’s great to hear. That’s a good acquisition story. Brandon, when you’re looking ahead a little bit, what’s coming up for ReviveHealth, and maybe more broadly healthcare marketing, that you’re excited about? BRANDON: I think in some ways, in our segment of healthcare marketing, the pace of change is accelerating to where many of the things we’re seeing now in healthcare marketing are the things that you would see more commonly in other industries. Typically, hospital marketing in particular trails other industries by a few years. We’re starting to see that gap close. We’re seeing a great deal more emphasis on data-driven marketing and personalized marketing. We’re seeing a great deal more emphasis on social media and social media engagement – which, given how personal and human healthcare is, is sort of strange that it’s just catching up to other industries now. But I think the biggest shift we’re seeing is a mindset shift from hospital operators who have been accustomed to spending the bulk of their budgets on traditional advertising to build brands to hospital executives who see the power of real 4 Ps marketing that will drive volume and profitable growth to their institutions in a way that I think is almost taken for granted in many other industry sectors. ROB: Right. That’s actually really interesting because many hospitals are massive institutions, but now they’re also living under an umbrella where there was just one location and now there’s four, and there’s an attendant group of facilities around it beyond that. It’s “Who’s the brand?”, but also “Where is my local version?” That’s what it seems like to me as a consumer. BRANDON: Not to be too flippant about it, but I think we all drive around town and you see these billboards with “heart surgery this” and “knee surgery that.” Does anybody really buy on that basis? I mean, it’s not like you drive around and say, “That’s interesting. I hadn’t really thought about it, but my knee does hurt. Maybe I’ll have surgery after all.” It’s sort of silly when you say it like that. To me, this industry just begs for highly targeted, highly personalized, data-driven marketing. If I get you into what we call the top of the funnel – urgent care, primary care, preventative care, diagnostic care – some percentage of people that start in the top of that funnel are going to end up needing other services, whether that’s PT or surgery of some kind, and all of the other attendant care that comes with it. I think most hospitals have tried to enter the funnel from the side, and it’s sort of a joke for us. That’s not how funnels work, right? You pour things in the top and they come out the bottom. We don’t get to come in and say, “I just want to find those people that want to have heart surgery in the next two weeks.” It’s like, no, let’s engage people who are going to need heart surgery in six months, in a year, in two years, in three years. Look at more the lifetime value of the consumer as opposed to the transactional value of the consumer, and recognize that physicians play a huge part in it. Most of us go where our doctors tell us. ROB: Right. It starts with being in the provider network at some point. BRANDON: Absolutely. Who you have contracts with from an insurance standpoint, what your medical staff looks like, how effectively referrals are processed, if you provide easy access for consumers – telephone, digital, as well as other methods. It really is all 4 Ps of marketing. It is not just promotion. I think the industry was pretty dominated by promotion prior to maybe 5 to 7 years ago. ROB: That is tremendously interesting. Thank you, Brandon, for sharing your journey. Congratulations on everything you accomplished leading up to and even after the acquisition. It’s a great part of the story to tell, and it sounds like the national marketing community is better for it. BRANDON: We have a great team, and anybody that does what we’ve done in the last few years and doesn’t acknowledge some meaningful amount of luck is probably not being honest. [laughs] You can work hard all you want, but if you don’t have a little bit of wind at your back, it’s going to be pretty tough. ROB: The humility is definitely welcome. We all need a little bit of that luck, and sometimes you have to survive long enough to be lucky. Coming out of 2009 is nothing to dismiss either. Thank you so much, Brandon. We wish you and your team the best. Thank you for sharing your story. BRANDON: My pleasure. Thanks. ROB: Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

Bant Breen is Founder and Chairman at Qnary, an agency that focuses on optimizing and growing the executive online presence because, as Bant explains in this interview, “Every executive has an online footprint and that footprint matters,” especially for large organizations. Bant believes it takes more than telling a brand’s story through advertising or brand messaging to effectively market a brand. “People don’t want to talk to companies,” he says. “They want to talk to people.” The reputation of an individual executive and what he or she stands for and says impact people’s perception of that executive’s company/cause/enterprise, the professional and personal opportunities the executive will get, and the opportunities the organization will receive. When executives “tell the story,” that story becomes dimensionally deeper, richer, and more complex. Qnary’s platform allows customers “to hear the voices that make up” a company/brand and to get a more dimensional view. The company connects better with both its clients and employees . . . and the story and the company become more dynamic. The agency relies heavily on technology and has created a formula that:  optimizes executive findability and the specific topic connection an executive would have via their social media channels generates short form (e.g., a LinkedIn post or Tweet) or longform (e.g., a blog or video)  grows and engages executive’s target audience  Bant has deep history in advertising. Over his career, he set up a number of technology-based units for other organizations, from Ansible (an early mobile marketing agency to the IPG Media Lab (an emerging technologies thinktank for Reprise – an early leader in search marketing). In 2010, he was inducted into the American Advertising Hall of Achievement. He launched Qnary when he decided it was time to start his own technology company. Qnary has modules that enable executives to develop and “own” their personal webpages, an important part of “executive presence.” A client’s answers to a long list of questions enable the agency to draft and structure content and to optimize web pages to meet target objectives. The pages are structured around content pillars, a limited number of selected core topics. An example of these pillars might be  the corporate philosophy/ company culture  organizational purpose/brand goals, or  on a more personal basis, the executive’s professional role and vision for the company and its future. Bant is working hard to automate the day-to-day marketing stuff to enable companies to scale more easily and free up individuals to pursue “great solutions and great ideas.” As have many agencies since the start of Covid, Qnary has gone “digital/virtual.” Although the “spine” of his organization is digital, Bant emphasizes the importance of taking “real estate savings” and reinvesting the money to strengthen an organization’s digital culture.  Bant can be reached on Linked in, by email at bant@qnary.com, on his personal website at bantbreen.com or on his agency’s website at qnary.com. Transcript Follows: ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I am your host, Rob Kischuk, and I am joined today by Bant Breen, Founder and Chairman at Qnary, based in New York, New York, with offices in Spain and Australia as well. Welcome to the podcast, Bant.  BANT: It’s great to be here. ROB: It’s great to have you here. I think I want your office configuration just for vacations, so I’m jealous of those office locations. BANT: I have to say that when we opened up a European office, I think strategically we probably should’ve placed it in what used to be part of Europe, which would’ve been London. But I am married to a Spaniard, and if I had thought of putting the European office anywhere else than Spain, I don’t think I would be married. [laughs] ROB: Depending on the relevance of your firm, you can argue that you really want to go to Mobile World Congress or something like that. BANT: Exactly. ROB: There are reasons to be there. Bant, why don’t you start off by telling us about Qnary and what the firm’s superpowers and specializations are? BANT: Sure. Qnary is a company that focuses on optimizing and growing the online presence for executives. We’ve built out a technology that does a couple of different things. It optimizes the findability and the connection that an executive would have with specific topics via their social media channels; it generates thought leadership content for them, whether that be short form content like a LinkedIn post or a tweet or a longform piece of content like a blog or a video. It then grows and engages the audience that will see that content based on the specific topic that the executive wants to be a thought leader in. We started the business and I think when we started it, people didn’t really know that they even had an online footprint. Now it’s very commonplace, and as you can imagine, in a world with COVID, an executive’s online presence seems to matter more than ever. ROB: That makes perfect sense. I see you have your own personal website at bantbreen.com. Is it safe to assume that this has some connection to the firm and your technology? BANT: Yeah, one of the development modules that we have develops personal webpages. One of the things that we’re trying to do is to help executives own their online footprint as much as possible, and one of the ways that you can do that is obviously via a personal webpage. We think it’s important for executives to develop that. ROB: It certainly looks great. I think someone would wonder, knowing that your firm is of a decent size, how do you connect a sizable opportunity to – I think a personal website can sound small, but build the bigger picture here. What’s at stake, and how do you have such a healthy team and technology platform? Is it that executive audience where at a certain size, the executive presence has material value? Have you scaled more laterally across lots of executives? BANT: You can visit our website, qnary.com. That’s our corporate website for sure. But I would actually say that philosophically, what we believe, and what drove the creation of Qnary, is that every executive has an online footprint, and that footprint matters. It matters in terms of the reputation of the individual executive, the reputation of the company or the cause or the enterprise that that individual is associated with, the opportunities that that executive will receive personally and professionally, as well as the opportunities the company that’s associated will receive. The difference really is that I spent a good chunk of my career working in branding and advertising, and I think that for big corporations, I would say that one of the things that has fundamentally changed is that the idea that the brand’s story can just be told through advertising or through brand messaging is completely false. The importance of the executives telling the story, dimensionalizing that story, is of more importance today than ever before. That’s really where Qnary comes in. Qnary comes in as a tool that allows companies to do that effectively and manage the dimensionality and complexity that comes with that. ROB: That certainly makes sense. The companies that I see that seem to do this the best figure out not only how to elevate the CEO, but how to continue elevating the next generations and next layers of leaders. Do you find that corporate clients are interested in that multilayered executive presence? BANT: I think that if you were to go into traditional communications, you would see that a lot of comms directors really hate when any executive talks because they’re worried that the executive’s going to say the wrong thing. [laughs] But over the last I’d say decade, there’s been an aggressive push. You have CEOs for sure speaking more and sharing more. There’s a variety of reasons why that’s important, from literally just connection with employees as well as clients, but also from a technical perspective. But other companies have looked at it from a variety of perspectives. I think the first thing we saw companies do was what got known as employee advocacy. Employee advocacy was basically the comms team drafting a tweet and then asking the bottom two-thirds of the organization to share that out with their friends and family. So it’d be like, “We have a sweeter sun-kissed orange. Tell all your friends and family about that.” At Qnary we really feel that that kind of blatant shilling on behalf of your company will only go so far with your friends and family. It’s a great way to lose friends quickly. [laughs] But certainly what has become clear to me is that the culture and the dynamism of companies today is driven by their teams. You need to hear the voices that make up your company and make up your brand, and if you utilize technology like our platform and allow that dimensionality to happen, you really have a much more dynamic company. You have a way of telling a story that will resonate in a much more potent way. ROB: Got it. One thing that’s a little bit curious to me that you mentioned, I believe, is there’s this element of this platform generating content underneath around these personal brands. How do you think about that intersection between the voice of the individual, and then how do you get content out that matches well with that? BANT: One of the things that happens is that if you work with Qnary, you go through an onboarding process, which is a set of questions – literally quite a long list of questions – the answers of which are utilized to tweeze through how we develop your optimizations for your pages, but also go into allowing us to draft and structure your content. We aim to structure our content around what we call your content pillars. One of the challenges that every person has – certainly I would say senior leaders have this more than anybody – is the talk about fewer topics, not more topics. So what we really want to do is find what your pillars should be, your core topics that you should be focused on as an individual. Then once we’ve done that and once we have the point of view of the individual around that, we set it up in our system and content starts to be developed and created. ROB: So there’s a level where your team at a macro level has a view of the entire network of your clients, what they’re trying to represent, what the dimensions of that are. There’s probably some interaction of content creation, of curation. I would imagine it’s pretty robust. BANT: Yeah. I think it really depends on the client. One of the pillars we could imagine will be very related to let’s say the corporate philosophy or culture of a company or the purpose, the goals that the brand will have. But then the other content pillars that we might develop for an individual focus around themselves as well as maybe their professional role and what their take is on how those areas may evolve. All three really matter. What now seems so obvious to me, but when I started the company probably wasn’t that obvious, is that people really don’t love hearing from companies. They love hearing from people. People like talking to people. I love my Frosted Flakes, but I’m not going to spend an hour on the phone talking to Kellogg’s. But I might want to talk to some of their executives and I might want to understand how they’re thinking about their solutions and developing it going forward. ROB: You mentioned some things weren’t obvious at first. Let’s go back a little bit to the beginning of Qnary. It looks like you had a background with a significant amount of holding company agency experience. You could’ve probably ridden that train your entire career. What led you to take it down to zero and start something new, and what did that look like? BANT: I do have a deep background in advertising. I started my career at WPP and have been at various times part of Publicis and IPG. I really loved my time working in large marketing organizations, and I really, really love the solutions and the creative messaging that I developed. That being said, one of the areas that I found myself focusing more and more on was the relationship between great marketing and creative and technology. In my career, I’ve been very involved with setting up technology-based units, whether it be Ansible, which was one of the early mobile marketing agencies, or the IPG Media Lab, which was a thinktank for all emerging technologies for Reprise, which was one of the leading players in the search marketing space as that was emerging. I had not built out a platform on my own. I actually turned 40 and I had just been inducted into the American Advertising Hall of Achievement, and my dad took me out to dinner and he said, “So, now what?” I said, “What do you mean? I’m going to go back to work on Monday.” He said, “When you get put into something like the Hall of Achievement, you’ve got to go do something else.” [laughs] So I took that as, okay, I’d better action this other thing. If I was going to try to create a technology business, I’d better do it now, before it’s too late. I’ve got to tell you, there’s a reason why these types of businesses are set up by twenty-somethings. It requires a tremendous amount of dedication, and I would say probably naivete, that you lose as you get older. [laughs] ROB: Nothing like you’re 40 years old and having Dad push on you career-wise still, as though the Hall of Fame career wasn’t quite enough. BANT: [laughs] Yeah. It is what it is. I love the services sector. I would say probably one of my passions right now is to find ways to allow a lot of the pedantic stuff that we all had to do to learn the trades of marketing, to automate that and to help companies scale and to allow individuals to spend a bit more time coming up with great solutions and great ideas. ROB: I wonder a little bit, with that services background that you have, as you’re looking at product, how much do you think about allowing services to enable technology, and how do you think about when to resist that temptation and say, “No, the technology has to do the heavy lifting” or “The human factor is okay here”? It’s kind of a bionic product, to an extent. BANT: I would say that the human side matters tremendously. But it really comes in in different points. We definitely have, I’d say, a human-enabled technology. Certainly, individuals will connect with our clients, but what we want to make sure is that they’re supported by an immense amount of technology to deliver a very robust solution. There’s no reason that we want this to be cold, faceless technology. We’re talking to people about themselves and their voice and their thought leadership, and therefore there is a level of human understanding and I would say human illogical thinking that’s required to succeed in this area. ROB: There’s an extent, I think, to which many agency owners, many folks in the services world, have these dreams of building a product. What were some of the keys to success and things you had to maybe learn or re-learn to drive a product forward versus throwing people at the wall? BANT: In a previous period of my life, I’d actually built my own agency and sold it, so I had built services businesses, and certainly I had built services businesses as part of larger organizations as well. The idea of building a product company and product business is different. There are commonalities, but I would say some of the big things that really hit you are the complexity of the development process and the reliability of that team and the reliability of that code. In the early years of Qnary, we certainly made a tremendous amount of mistakes on the tech side in terms of getting the right teams in place, getting a code base that could easily be developed on top of by others. There was a lot of work that had to be done there. And then just working and building a company that operates more on a sprint-based mentality is quite different than the way you operate an agency. I think the other side of it is that when I speak to my agency friends, it’s amazing how many people, the first question they ask is, “How many employees do you have?” Because that, in some kind of bizarre agency mindset, is the idea of success. Whereas any tech person will tell you, if you have a lot of employees, you’re probably not that good of a technology. You see companies like Instagram; I think they had a billion users and they only had 18 employees or something like that, a crazy number like that. ROB: Sounds about right. BANT: It’s the same kind of mentality on the tech side. You really want to make sure you’re building a business that is not person-heavy. ROB: Understood. You’re at this intersection of you’ve got some creative, you’ve got some measurement, you’ve got some technology, and you’re in New York City as your starting point. I feel like there are different industries pulling on each of those pillars of talent that would try to convince those folks that there’s more prestige in what they’re doing. Yet there is this solid core of New York tech companies that I think doesn’t get as much credit just because there’s so much going on. There are so many high points that it’s not this singular technology, as it might be in San Francisco, this singular industry. How do you think about pulling talent in a city with so much going on? BANT: I guess probably a couple of years ago, that would’ve been more of a real question mark that we thought about a lot. But now, especially after the last year, our team is all over the place at this point. Whilst our offices in New York have been open again since last summer, I’d say maybe 10% of the people go in. Many of them have moved back home or are working remotely. We’ve actually essentially ended up restructuring the whole business to be a remote work company. The spine of the business, the culture of the business is now all digital. All of the events, all of the meetings, everything is all based digitally. So I worry less about the New York, the geography, now than I used to. I would say New York is a great place. I know people get fearful about what’s going to happen in New York after COVID or whether people will come back. I’m absolutely sure people will come back because, as I’ve learned with Qnary, people actually like people. People want to be with people. And there’s really no city in the world you can do that with that’s better than New York City. ROB: I’m certainly ready to pay a visit again when I can. With that decision to go distributed, when did you reach that decision within the past year or so? BANT: On March 13th of last year, we went virtual. The offices shut down; everybody headed home or headed wherever they were going to be. As the pandemic continued to develop over those early months, we just basically said, “Look, we’re going to be virtual.” What happened was we internally spent a lot of time on thinking about how that would impact the culture of the business and reinvested a lot of the money that we would’ve spent on things like real estate into culture and building a digital culture. I think if you talk to bean counter-driven companies, they loved COVID in a way because they have used it to rationalize the reduction of real estate costs for their businesses. But what I’ve found is that if you want to make this work, you have to reinvest quite a bit back into culture and building a digital culture. What I mean by that is we have things like a meeting called Bird Food, where instead of catering it in to the offices, we actually now make lunch available to people wherever they are. They receive whatever the “bird food” of the day is going to be for the meeting we have. There’s a water cooler meeting every morning; it’s a 15-minute meeting for anybody in the company that wants to attend and just talk about anything they want to talk about, really. The topics can be anywhere from “What do you think of the new show?” to “What do you think of that shot that was made last night in the final four?” or whatever. Very water cooler talk. Our thought is that as more and more people do return to the office, we’re going to keep the spine of the business digital. We’re going to continue to keep these meetings digital and people that are in the office can just join in digitally. They can be together, but it will be connected digitally. No one wins if they force their employees back to an office. Nobody wins. The company doesn’t win, the people that are forced back have tremendous anxiety, and thirdly, I think we all have to realize that a year has passed. People’s lives move on. You have to be aware of the fact that with that evolution, you have to try to make the business and the culture of the business incorporate with the lives of the individual. Take more of a holistic view of the human. ROB: Do you have any view of a grand gathering of your global Qnaries? Or do you think that it may be that everybody’s never quite in the same place again? You may have already had some gatherings and some habits around that with your global footprint. BANT: We have what we call a “Qnniversary.” It’s kind of the official start date of the business. That operates as like an annual coming together of the business. That’s in November of every year. We’ve talked about expanding that as COVID permits, and probably doing a larger event in the summertime as well, but knowing exactly when that will be really depends on what happens with COVID. ROB: I hope we’ll all be sharing what we learn about this. I think there are a lot of newly distributed companies, including – we certainly are. Bant, when you think about what’s coming up for Qnary and this personal executive marketing, what are you excited about? BANT: I’m very excited about a couple of things. Some of the things that we’ve rolled out, actually, in Q1 include a real heavy push into video for our clients. We’ve built out a way to deliver video solutions for our clients in a cost-effective manner. That’s been the challenge. There’s been tons of people trying to do video, but the costs have been astronomical for individuals and for executives. We rolled that out in the first quarter, which is great. You talked about the personal websites; that whole development module was rolled out in Q1 as well. In Q2, what you’re going to see is a second iteration of the machine learning that sits behind the scenes in our solution. I’m really excited about that. I’ve spent the last 4 years of my life researching the latest, greatest, coolest in the world of AI in terms of marketing, and I’m really excited to apply some of the things that we’ve learned in terms of content creation, measurement, growth and analytics, things like that. ROB: We’ll have to look forward and see what that looks like. I’m looking forward to seeing it. We can see it probably many places, including on your own site. Again, it’s always great to be able to eat your own dog food. BANT: Absolutely. [laughs] ROB: Bant, when our audience wants to connect with you and with Qnary, where should they go to find you? BANT: You can find me in all the places we’ve talked about. Certainly you can also reach out to me on LinkedIn. But you can go to qnary.com. That’s our corporate website. And then obviously, bantbreen.com. But you can also just write me at bant@qnary.com and I’m sure to get back to you. ROB: Very solid. Bant, congratulations on thriving through the pandemic. We will all look forward to helping jumpstart the New York City economy as we get back on planes. BANT: Hallelujah! ROB: And we will look for big things in video and beyond from Qnary and the global team. BANT: Absolutely. Thanks, Rob. ROB: Thanks so much, Bant. Be well. BANT: Cheers. ROB: Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

Will Cady heads the Creative Strategy Team at Reddit, which he describes as a platform of more than 100,000 different, intent-driven, purpose-driven communities representing 100,000 distinct cultures . . . and an “incredible petri dish of niche subcultures that are emerging and influencing or becoming mainstream culture.” He says that “people go to Google to search for information . . . and to Reddit to search for what other people have found.”  Reddit’s Creative Strategy team sits between these “very curious” subculture communities and the brands that want to find their place in these communities. Will says the Creative Strategy Team’s mission of “turning curiosity into understanding” runs both ways . . . 1) brands need to understand the different cultures on a deeper level to know what is coming in the future and 2) Reddit need a deeper understanding of the brands and how they meet cultural needs of the different communities. He explains. “Brands are made up of humans” and, when these humans tell a story, they gain the ability to build powerful connections and customer trust. He says Reddit is a place where brands can be proud, vulnerable, ask forgiveness, explain changes in how they do business, find out what customers want . . . and to bring something to a community that was never before available. He says marketing today is not “going in the direction of building trust” . . . Building trust is already a critical component of today’s marketing. Reddit is best known for the AMA, where people present their “positions” and invite people to “Ask Me Anything.” For brands, an ad looks like any Reddit post, but is delivered to an audience of people who go to pre-selected communities. This “promoted post” can host text, an image, a GIF, or a video.” The upvote and downvote mechanism is optional. Comments can be on or off. Will uses origami as a metaphor for this, where the promoted post is the piece of paper . . . which can be folded into any shape. A brand can engage Will’s team to create promoted posts. However, the platform has been built to be incredibly rich in capabilities, but at the same time, simple, for those who want to go the “do-it-yourself” route.  The opportunity to use promoted posts to research market trends or test user perceptions is huge. Will provides this example: Chipotle had observed the variety of trending diets (paleo, keto), announced that it was developing “Lifestyle Bowls,” asked the groups following these diets what ingredients they wanted, and then launched the bowls, thanking those who had commented for helping to make the product “right” . . . with resounding success.  Will’s personal history touches on music, mysticism, and marketing, all of which, he says, center on knowing, studying, and playing with what moves people. In addition to leading the Creative Strategy Team, he teaches meditation, reads tarot cards, and jams with musical groups . . . a bow to his 15-plus years as a professional musician. He used Reddit as his “secret weapon for learning” and a way to promote his music long before he took his first position with the company. He says the Reddit of the years from 2013 to 2016 “felt a little bit more like a Wikipedia or a Craigslist . . . (a) ubiquitous part of the internet, but it wasn’t a business.” When he started working in sales at Reddit, the company did not have a viable ad product . . . the new and very small sales team had to build it.  Today, Will sees Reddit as a hybrid of tech and media, a bellwether of social trends, and a place for brands to build relationships with their customers. In order to move forward into the future, media, tech, marketing, and businesses in general will need good answers to three questions:  Why are we here?  What are we doing for humanity?  What are we doing for the world?” Interesting questions for all of us. Transcript Follows: ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m your host, Rob Kischuk, and I am joined today by our guest, Will Cady. Will is the Head of Creative Strategy at Reddit, and Will’s based in Los Angeles. Welcome to the podcast, Will. WILL: Thank you. Thank you for having me, Rob. ROB: I think everybody probably listening understands and knows Reddit on some level, so I think it would be interesting to understand your role within that Reddit world. WILL: The creative strategy team at Reddit, our mission is we turn curiosity into understanding. And Reddit, if nothing else, is full of curiosities. As a platform with over 100,000 different communities representing 100,000 distinct cultures, it’s proven to be this incredible petri dish of niche subcultures that are emerging and influencing or becoming mainstream culture. What the creative strategy team does is we sit in between the community and the brands that want to activate and find belonging, find community on this platform, and we really provide understanding going both ways – understanding for those brands to look at all of these different cultures and understand them at a deeper level so that they can find their place, they can understand the future that’s coming, and then also Reddit user behavior, they’re very, very curious. They seek. They don’t scroll. They’re there for a reason. We want to pair that curiosity with a deeper understanding of the brands when they come in to talk about how their products, how their services are really meeting the needs of the cultures of the different communities that people are a part of. ROB: That’s a fascinating place in the ecosystem. I love how you said that people seek. It really resonates with my own experience with Reddit. There’s a lot of sites that you can go to and if you’re not logged in, you don’t feel like you’re missing much. But if you’re not logged in on Reddit, I feel like you’re missing the world. It’s not even like some sites where they feed content to you and you feel like you’re being fed to an algorithm. It really is feeding curiosity. I think it would be interesting for us, Will, also to understand – I think you have a very interesting journey at Reddit yourself. Talk about how you came into this wild world of Reddit and what your own career path has been within the organization. WILL: It’s a long and winding and strange journey. My career, by my expertise, I sit at this strange nexus point between music and mysticism and marketing. Today I’m leading the creative strategy team, also teaching meditation, doing strategy reports, doing tarot readings, all of the above, jam sessions and whatnot. For me, they all actually really come together in a very coherent way, which is not expected, but it’s interesting. You look at music and marketing and mysticism. You look at all of these things, and really what they are at their center is knowing what moves people and studying what moves people and playing with what moves people. I spent about 15 to 20 years as a professional musician, building a meditation practice and all that, and when I moved from Boston to Los Angeles, I started to realize when I stepped into digital media at a music publisher magazine that there was a lot I had to learn about what resonates in culture. What actually catches and reverberates and becomes movements, becomes these really big mainstream cultural ideas. I got really, really fixated on that. I started to really longform my experiments with this. And I would always go to Reddit. Reddit was kind of my secret weapon for learning. It’s how I discovered teachers like Alan Watts. It’s how I promoted my music into different communities that utilized some of these audio lectures from Alan Watts. I saw my music videos go to the front page of Reddit All, all the time, and really drive hundreds of thousands of listens in a moment. As a marketer, I would always think, how can I understand what we’re really trying to achieve here through the lens of the communities that this brand is trying to reach on Reddit? And then if I’m really lucky, how can I find a way to get this content that we’re creating for this brand in front of the Reddit audience? At that time – this is about 2013 to 2016 – it’s surprising how different media was, even really not that long ago. But looking narrowly at Reddit, Reddit felt a little bit more like a Wikipedia or a Craigslist. It was this ubiquitous part of the internet, but it wasn’t a business. It wasn’t something like a Facebook or a Twitter. I saw that Reddit was starting to hire some folks, and I knew. I knew that there was this incredible power on the front page of the internet that a lot of people around me in the media industry didn’t really understand. So it was really a no-brainer for me to take that job, and it was an exploratory role. It was like, let’s see what the Los Angeles market can be and do for Reddit. I started as a salesperson, and I was one of a very, very short list of people representing Reddit in a massive market. We basically said yes to every email and phone call that we got. We took all the meetings. We found that Reddit has a lot to offer everybody. If you want to do an AMA, you want to do some research in terms of market trends or user perceptions – all of these things that are around advertising, Reddit has value to add. We didn’t have, really, a viable ad product in 2016. We had to build it. We’ve built a great platform now, but in that time in between, we really had to tell the story: “Listen, this is the most influential audience on the internet, and your brand’s got to at least be listening to it, if not speaking to it. So let’s keep talking. Let’s figure out a way to build a partnership.” That became the basis of the playbook that is a massive part of the brand partnerships operation and is serviced by the creative strategy team. ROB: It’s interesting; you started down this path. You mentioned the AMAs. When a marketer wants to think about the entry points to marketing on Reddit, obviously there are organic avenues – which you may enter at your own peril. When it comes to you, your team, what sort of entry points are possible on a self-service approach and what kind of entry points are a little bit more structured? WILL: The AMA is a really good metaphor for how to do Reddit in general because it’s a conversation. It’s a dialogue. You’re coming to the platform, and when an AMA is happening, it’s a live experience. It’s an exchange between you and the community, and it’s really based on this idea of being human. There’s this thrill. It’s so funny that it was so massive on Reddit so early because even though it’s text-based, it’s very fresh and relevant to some of the experiences we have right now where if it’s a celebrity – John Boyega or Chris Pratt, Hosier, some of the AMAs I had the privilege to work on – the users in that thread were just so excited that they were on the same URL as somebody that they really admire and respect. You’re working with that kind of excitement to create a moment of remarkable connection that feels really authentic, vulnerable, and human, and is not the kind of thing that you would typically see in a press junket. It was unexpected and it was different and it defied the way that things felt for fans before. Today, we do that with brands. The big truth here is that brands are made up of humans, and when the humans behind the brands show up and they tell a story, it’s a moment to foster a very powerful connection that builds trust. Brands have a place where they can be proud, they can be vulnerable. We’ve had brands come to us and say, “We have a Super Bowl commercial. Let’s talk about it.” That was the first time anybody on Reddit could say “I have a Super Bowl commercial.” That’s a moment where brands are bringing something to the community that the community of people couldn’t bring to themselves beforehand, and it created this excitement. We’ve had brands come to the community for mea culpa. “We’re making a big transformation” or “We’re trying to explain what has transpired over the last couple of months.” It’s an opportunity to meet human to human, to recognize that there are human beings on other side of that keyboard and build trust from there. This is really where marketing is – not even headed, it’s where it’s at right now: thinking about building trust. The AMA has been around for a long time, and it’s elegantly simple. Ask Me Anything. It represents the blueprint of everything that you can do with platforms like Reddit. ROB: And it’s so helpful to have a coach like your team as someone’s heading into that. So the AMA is one of those ad products that’s available; what’s the range of ad products that are available to a brand who’s thinking about marketing on Reddit? WILL: This is interesting. Talking about the team, the creative strategy team is incredibly sophisticated at these things. They’re so sophisticated that they make it easy. That’s the important lesson that I’ve definitely learned on my path. Reddit has such a depth to it that there’s so many exciting things you can do, but it’s really remarkably easy, and you’ve got to start with what makes it easy. That’s the focus of the creative strategy team. We can drive this thing at 150 miles per hour if you want, but let’s start at 20. Crawl, walk, run. Let’s do some interesting engagements here. From an ad standpoint, the atomic unit is called the promoted post. It looks like a Reddit post. It can host text, it can host an image, a GIF, a video. You can have comments off, you can have comments on. It’s got the upvote mechanism, the downvote mechanism if you want to use that and get a great signal. And it looks and operates in the same exact way as any post on Reddit, the only difference being that through the targeting, you can control who does and does not see that media. The way that I look at things from the creative strategy team is through the metaphor of origami. [laughs] The promoted post is a piece of paper, and we make cranes, we make boats, we make all manner of different things out of that simple piece of paper. That’s the AMA. That’s the megathread, which is a vast, longform bit of text that explains all of the product details. Really great for our car buyers and our computer buyers and our tech audience. We do conversation posts where we do something like a writing prompt, where we co-create with our users. We put web comics in there. We put videos in there and GIFs and memes. But it’s all one ad unit. So it’s elegantly simple with the potential to be staggeringly sophisticated. ROB: When someone’s thinking about getting into this atomic unit of a promoted post, is it something they can dabble in self-service? Do they need to engage with your team? There’s certainly advantages for that sometimes, but can someone dip their toe in the water and fire up an ads account and a credit card? Or is it more complicated than that? WILL: They absolutely can. We have a self-serve platform, an ads manager. You can jump right into the promoted post and you can select your targeting. It has great parity with the kinds of ads managers you’re going to see on other platforms. We’ve spent the last 3 to 4 years really investing in building that, and it’s a great way in. ROB: It certainly sounds like it. When someone starts to think about how to do well on this, one thing I think we’ll think about is targeting. How should we think about targeting? What’s the menu of possibilities? Are you looking mostly at targeting people who follow a certain subreddit, people who have commented? What’s a good targeting campaign look like? WILL: That’s a great place to dive into now because the ads manager is going to look like what you experience elsewhere. You’re going to be able to target based on interests, but what those interests are constructed by is slightly different than what you have elsewhere. It’s not a social graph. It’s not based off of people’s identity, their information. It’s based off of the communities that they go to. It’s a community graph rather than a social graph. So if you have the interest category of auto enthusiasts, for example, that’s going to serve your ad to people that are engaging with a constellation of subreddits like “What car should I buy?” or the Toyota subreddit or the WRX subreddit. Everything from the broad interest in cars to the make and the model. And Reddit has something that is also really remarkable here when it comes to this kind of targeting, and its intent. When you look at a community like “What car should I buy?”, when somebody’s engaging in a community like that, they’re not just interested in cars. They have the intent to buy a car. They are in the market. They are looking for that information. We have intent-driven, purpose-driven communities for everything imaginable – for vacuum cleaners and climate change and everything in between. ROB: I’m so glad you mentioned intent because that was certainly in the back of my mind. When you’re talking about users following subreddits, it reminds me so much of the power that has made Google search so powerful for so long. It’s always been that someone was intentional in what they were searching for, and you weren’t just slicing demographics 10 different ways. It’s really piquing my curiosity in a big way. I think something that leads us to that marketers should probably think about: what should marketers not do when they’re entering into the world of marketing on Reddit? WILL: I love that you brought up the similarities with Google there. If Google is where you search for information, Reddit is where you search for what other people have already found. We’ve found that when it comes to the trust that people have in the information on products and news, Reddit was closer to Google than it was to the rest of social media in terms of scoring tremendously high on the trust that people put into that. Because it is a resource that people use for information. It’s hard to find information that you can trust online right now. Reddit is a place that verifies through other people, like “Here’s my actual experience.” So whatever that life moment that you go through – and I myself have gone through so many in the last couple years; I’ve gotten married, I’ve gotten a home, I’ve gotten a juice machine. [laughs] In each of those scenarios, I was using Reddit for my product journey to really figure out, what can I trust when it comes to learning how to go through this passage? For brands, I think they’ve got to really be cognizant of the role they should play in meeting people on that journey. There’s value in simply being there, just knowing that Reddit is on the path to purchase and that there’s an incredible amount of consideration that people are putting into that path when they’re on Reddit. And just show up. Just show up and wave your hand and say, “Hey, happy to be here. This is our product, this is our info.” It’s super simple. You can take your marketing that you’re using in other channels and put it in the right place at the right time, knowing how important this platform and this audience is. And don’t overthink that. Then beyond that, it’s an opportunity to really engage. Once you’ve gotten some signal, place a few different bets, a few different targeting cohorts that you set up with your creative. See what’s resonating. Maybe you might be surprised, actually, at who’s engaging with your ads. Maybe it doesn’t actually match your expectations. That might be a way to step into an intersectional audience that is really an opportunity that you hadn’t considered. Begin to have a dialogue with them. Turn the comments on when you’re ready (you can start with the comments off). Have a prompt and bring the humans behind your brand on board. Say, “This is our R&D team. We’ve noticed that you’re changing the way we think about vacuum cleaners, the way we think about home gardening.” That’s a huge space for transformation right now. Have a conversation. Show up authentically and really be there for them. To provide a story and a case study here, that’s exactly what Chipotle did a couple of years ago. They released the Lifestyle Bowls, which were based off of the cultural observation that all of these diets were emerging, like the paleo diet, Whole30, keto, etc. We have communities for each of those, and they’re robust and very, very active. So Chipotle with their ads, they turned the comments on and said, “We are making lunch items for your diet. What should we put in it?” They stayed in that conversation and they had a back-and-forth. When they came back around, they were able to say, “Lifestyle Bowls are out and you helped us know how to make them right. Here they are.” And the trust they earned was incredible. The call to action was very, very powerful because all of the Redditors who had participated in that said to their coworkers, their friends, their family, “We’re going to lunch at Chipotle because I’ve got to try this bowl that I had a hand in creating.” It created a cultural moment in these niche subcultures that, as the tide rose on all of these different diets, Chipotle’s Lifestyle Bowls rose with them. ROB: It’s interesting that you mention that because Chipotle with those bowls – they actually come across as quite authentic all the way down to the store. I was at Chipotle a month ago and they had cauliflower rice, which I imagine is part of this, right? WILL: That’s where that mission statement of the creative strategy team comes into play. We turn curiosity into understanding. At first it’s like, cauliflower rice? That’s a curiosity. It’s strange. But then when you understand the reasons for that and where it comes from and how it fits into culture, it shows itself to be a tremendous opportunity. So what we want to do is highlight things like that early and often so that our partners have more time to develop their products and their marketing and be agile in the moment when things like that really come to bear. ROB: All the way down to the store, that entire initiative feels very authentic, very – not to say this inappropriately in a food context, but it feels organic. It just feels right. So it’s awesome to see that stemming from the Reddit ecosystem. When you think about the different communities – obviously this has been a big year for Reddit news-wise. You may be tired of talking about it or you may not be, and it’s not as much in the moment right now, but the entire Wall Street Bets, GameStop, crypto rotation – there’s a few news cycles on that alone. What’s interesting about that is it’s not that that movement started this year; it’s that that movement became visible this year. Are there some other communities that you think are maybe waiting for that moment? Are there types of conversation that you think might be driving a news cycle next month? WILL: I’m not tired of it. I’m grateful for it because it revealed a 10-year-old secret to everybody, which is that Reddit communities are staggeringly sophisticated and influential. I’ve been telling that story for a long time, and now I have a story that everybody recognizes and everybody has the full context on. Before, I was telling the story of McDonald’s and Szechuan sauce and the Rick & Morty community, or the March for Science, or some of the fundraiser for Doctors Without Borders, or when Reddit flooded a hospital ward with pizzas for a young cancer patient. All of these really remarkable stories of Reddit doing exactly this for over 10 years, and now there’s one that really has become the shorthand, where everybody saw and understands, I think in a very intuitive way, the power of Reddit. That’s what GameStop and Wall Street Bets really represents. It’s the power of Reddit on the world stage. And we know that it’s going to happen again because this is Reddit doing what Reddit does. It’s very well-spirited. It’s the human spirit, and it’s so important for the voice of communities to be able to influence culture in this way for the decades that are ahead of us. I think that there are quite a few communities right now that we can expect to see some similar kinds of moments from. It’s rarified that you’re going to have something that reaches the kind of stratospheric level of the GameStop moment because it was just this revelatory moment. But I think that what was learned by communities and the broader web and culture is that there are really powerful ways to vote with your dollars that we kind of understood as people beforehand, but now we have tools that we didn’t have beforehand to really have a collective impact together. So I think we’re going to see different versions of people voting with their dollars together in other sectors that are going to be really, really interesting. In a lot of what we saw with that, people were just throwing one dollar or five dollars into the pot or something like that, and there was this sense of collectivism and what we can do together. We’re going to see that I think in a lot of other areas. I also think there are some more subtle shifts that are coming. I’ve been keeping an eye on the sustainability communities on Reddit for some time, and there’s a whole underbelly of people that are raising their own chickens and making sourdough and growing vegetables in their backyard, and it’s emerging into this – I always look for the language. I really like this community called Zero Waste. It represents an idea that I want to live a life that is not producing any waste. It’s an aspirational lifestyle in a totally different direction than what we considered beforehand. This community was having a discussion earlier this week about whether or not brands belong in a community like this, and how they felt about seeing brands move towards product packaging and messaging that at its best is contributing to the cause and at its worst is what you would call greenwashing. There’s an example of some soap company that had paper packaging for the soap, and when you peeled back the paper there was a plastic container on the inside. [laughs] The sentiment that came through in that community was that they really want brands to be a part of this. They’re really, really encouraged to see that brands are stepping into changing the way they manufacture their products, that they’re making pledges to support things like community gardens and all of the different circular systems that are going to save our planet and going to save all of us. They know that brands have influence. They know that brands have resources and power, and that can really shift things the way they like to see them. So I think we’re going to see that influence not be one of those dramatic spike moments that Wall Street Bets was, but I think over the course of the next 10 years, it’s going to be this protracted rising tide that is going to shift the way that we all think. I think that term, “zero waste,” is going to be very obvious to all of us in the future. But it’s very clear to just a niche subculture on Reddit right now. ROB: It’s going to be probably interesting. What strikes me about Wall Street Bets is you have this intersection of democratization. You have this democratized community on Reddit, but then you have the democratization of finance, and you have these apps where you can fire up an app and make an investment. At the intersection you’re talking about with zero waste, there will be some communities who will – you’ll probably be able to buy carbon credits and point them in places you can’t think about right now. Some communities on Reddit will love that and use that, and some will hate it. You’ll have all pieces of that out there. It seems like looking for areas where something tangible is being democratized is maybe a good place to keep an eye on Reddit.  WILL: Yeah. I don’t know if we’ve got the time to really dive into the depth of this one here, but the very nature of the way we exchange value is changing. The digitization of currencies is supporting that, and there are currencies that belong to communities; there are currencies that belong to causes. All of that can facilitate a moment where the two things I described come together. You have a purpose – zero waste, sustainability – and you have the realization of the things that we can do when we vote with our dollars together. Those can come together and create real change in the world, and we’re going to see that over and over and over again. ROB: And Reddit’s been in the middle of that for longer than most with Reddit Gold and all that. It’s interesting how long it’s been hiding in plain sight on Reddit, is what I would say. WILL: Isn’t it? It’s crazy. [laughs] ROB: I think there’s one other interesting thing to pull on. Reddit has this legacy of being – it just feels techy. It may have been unapproachable for some, but now so many digital natives – you’ve been at this forefront of – this is true in a couple of cases – Silicon Valley mindsets meeting the LA media landscape. That cultural alignment, what does that look like over time? How has it evolved in your time there? WILL: Wow. The LA/San Francisco connection is a really, really interesting one. There’s a dynamic between tech and media. When I first started, it was like this denial that media could act like tech and that tech could act like media. Vastly, vastly different things. I would say both industries were kind of looking down their nose at each other. Over the following years, they’ve really seen a tremendous amount of interplay on the level of how the funding works and how the talent is hired and how the products are developed, and of course, the user bases. Is Netflix a media company or a tech company? It’s really at a place right now where we’re understanding that tech and media are very, very much a hybridized thing.  I think over the course of the next few years, that element that is very, very present in marketing around purpose and intent is going to come in. There are so many options when it comes to our media and there are some many options when it comes to our platforms that all of these businesses really need to think about their why and about the intent of their brand and the intent of their users, and build against that. I think there are other centers than San Francisco, New York, and LA that are really ahead when it comes to thinking about why. They’re unexpected because they’re different voices. The voices of sustainability, for example, are not coming from metropolitan cities. They’re coming from places like Hawaii. They’re coming from different mindsets altogether. That’s I think a really, really exciting place as the soul goes back into business. Media and tech, for them to find their place in the future, and for marketing to find its place in the future, they have to have a good answer in terms of “Why are we here? What are we doing for humanity? What are we doing for the world?” ROB: Wow. It’s such a great point to bring it down to. This has been a tremendous privilege. Thank you so much for this grand tour of how to think about Reddit for marketers, what the options are, and how to do so thoughtfully. I think the authenticity of the brand comes through in how you and your team are thinking about these things as well. WILL: Thank you. Thank you for giving me a platform for my voice. I appreciate the time.  ROB: Fantastic. Have a great one. WILL: You too. ROB: Bye. Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

Sandra Fathi is President and Founder at Affect, a public relations, marketing, and social media agency that focuses on B2B technology, healthcare, and professional services. The agency clients range from “startups to large multinational publicly traded companies.” B2B tech includes such things as “cryptocurrency, data, cybersecurity, supply chain and logistics, mobile application development, and cloud computing.” Healthcare includes healthcare IT, devices, MedTech. and services but stops short of highly FDA-regulated areas. Clients’ products tend to be complex but further challenges for the agency include multiple decision-makers and multiple considerations. Sandra says people seek out her agency because they appreciate the agency’s focus on business outcomes and want an agency with “deep technical expertise.” To meet this technical challenge, the agency selects its team members based on three criteria.  The ability to communicate verbally . . . to explain complex ideas to others, to translate expert or technical information so that non-technical layman can understand The ability to write in a compelling fashion, to mirror the voice of the client The passion to excel at customer service and have the self-driven motivation, curiosity, and interest to “dig deep” into its clients’ products and services Sandra graduated early from high school and, after her first year of college at NYU, went to Israel for “a year abroad.” She stayed 11 years, spent 2 years in the Israeli army, and completed her degree before working for technology publishers IDG and Ziff Davis, where she produced the first internet world event in the Middle East. A job with a videoconferencing company brought her back to the US and she spent a number of years in “the agency life.” 9/11 proved pivotal for many people. Six months-of-thinking later, Sandra realized that she loved her work . . . but she didn’t love the company she was working for. On impulse, she quit to start her own agency, one where both she and her employees “would love to work” because it was “just time.” Her former employer became her first client. Her agency grew by word of mouth, the application of her marketing expertise, and “farming out work to friends and colleagues.” Within six months, she added two employees. Today, Affect tries to keep most of the work “in house,” unless it is something they don’t do, like coding or graphic design. Over the past year, even in the face of Covid, and unlike many other businesses, the agency grew. Sandra says the agency had “terrific year from a financial perspective, even though it was such a difficult year from a personal and global perspective.” Sandra says it is important, when faced with challenges, that organizational leaders know how to make tough decisions quickly – to “do the right thing for your team in the long run.” Otherwise, it’s like “death by a thousand cuts.” Affect employees found they could be more efficient working remotely – but are gradually working their way back to the office -- there are just some things that cannot be replicated in a virtual environment.  Sandra credits the advice of “a community of trusted advisors” for helping her avoid and navigate the numerous challenges the agency has faced. She can be reached on her agency’s website at: Affect.com or by email at: sfathi@affect.com.   ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m your host, Rob Kischuk, and I’m joined today by Sandra Fathi, President and Founder at Affect, based in New York, New York. Welcome to the podcast, Sandra. SANDRA: Thank you so much. Glad to be here. ROB: Fantastic to have you here. Why don’t you start off and tell us about the specialization of Affect and where you are most effective?  SANDRA: Thank you. We are a public relations, marketing, and social media agency. Our focus is really B2B tech and healthcare. That can run the gamut. Almost every company, every organization today has a technology piece to it, and it can be everything from any type of tech or electronic gadget that you have. But we tend to go deeper and it tends to be everything from AI, cryptocurrency, data, cybersecurity, supply chain and logistics, mobile application development, cloud computing. We like to get really nerdy, is basically where we like to spend our time. [laughs] Then on the healthcare side, it’s a lot of healthcare IT, healthcare devices, MedTech as well as services. We don’t get involved in things that are very highly FDA regulated like drug development. That’s a little bit of a specialty that we don’t fall into. But we love working with everything from startups to large multinational publicly traded companies. Most of them, why they come to us, there’s two reasons. One, they want that deep technical expertise – somebody who’s really going to get in there, get under the hood, and try to understand the product, the market, the competitors, the value proposition, so we can then go out and evangelize the company and their products and services. You can’t really do that well if you don’t truly understand the products themselves and the pain points for the customers. Most of the products that we represent are pretty complex and have multiple decision-makers and multiple considerations, so we really have to dig in deep. The other thing that we really specialize in is focusing on the outcomes from a business perspective. A lot of firms will talk about, “These are the activities we’re going to do for you. We’re going to do media relations, we’re going to talk to the press, we’re going to help you key messages,” and they might have outputs, like “We’re going to issue four press releases a month” or “We’re going to write 10 articles.” But the outcomes are really where you’re moving the needle for the business. If someone comes to us, one of the first things we want to understand is, what are they trying to achieve from a business perspective? Are they entering a new market? Do they have a sales goal? Do they have a number they have to hit for lead generation? Are they pivoting their positioning? We try to match all of our activities to help drive those outcomes. The holy grail could be revenue, but for some of the clients we’re working with, their sales cycle might be 12 to 18 months depending on the size of purchase, so we might focus on a lot of the milestones that are leading to revenue – again, lead generation, traffic to the website, registration for product demos, registration for events, and of course, eventually contracts and actual dollar amounts. We do spend a lot of time mapping to those business goals to make sure that everything that we do is really making a difference. ROB: There’s a lot of richness in what you just said. You said it so casually that I think we missed 10 levels of detail we could probably dig into. You talk about the sales cycle and you’re talking about different points in the – I don’t know if you talk about the customer journey much, but you’ve implied it without even saying it. Maybe that’s the real magic of it: not even needing to name check it. But you’re talking about all these different points along that stream. One thing that strikes me – you talked about technology being technical, of course, and healthcare, when you talk about some of these different types of products and solutions in that space, is also technical. I wonder a little bit, when you’re building your team, how do you find this magical unicorn of marketers who are going to understand cryptocurrency and get current on nonfungible tokens as that becomes a prominent thing? How do you filter for that talent? SANDRA: We talk about looking for triple threats when we look for team members. [laughs] The first step starts with excellent communication overall. You’re looking for someone who, whether it’s verbal communications, written communications, any form, they are very good at expressing themselves and explaining complex concepts to others. A lot of what we’re doing is really translating, in many ways, from a technical audience to a non-technical audience, or from an expert to a layman. So we want to have great communicators. The second thing we want is great writers. It’s one thing to be able to communicate, but also to write in compelling fashion, whether that’s mirroring the voice of the client or the company or writing marketing copy or a tweet or ghostwriting a book on behalf of a CEO – those are things that we definitely look for. The third thing that we look for is people who are fantastic at client service. Ultimately, we are in the service industry and we are looking to serve our clients, and we have to know that we’ll do everything that it takes to make them happy so they’ll be satisfied with the work. Those are the three core elements. Then layered on top of that, if you will, yes, we do look for people who have B2B tech and healthcare experience, and it’s great if we’re able to find them. Not everyone goes into college and says, “I’m going to major in B2B tech PR.” [laughs] That isn’t typically where their aspirations go. They want to work in the music industry or they want to work in fashion or sports marketing and all these other places that seem a lot shinier and flashier. But for those that do, and especially for those that have what I would call an innate curiosity, people who are lifelong learners, who want to know – I’m not saying they have to do a degree – and I don’t think you can even get one yet – in cryptocurrency. But people who are interested and willing to spend the time, watch the videos, do the research, do the searches, go to events, listen to experts. And that’s more something that people come to the table with. It’s either you have that trait or you don’t. I’m a person that every time I meet a new prospect or client, I’m fascinated by their business and understanding what the founder’s story was, how they came up with this product, how it was developed. Give me the background and what makes you different. I love that. That gets me excited. And I don’t want to be an expert just in one thing, but I want to constantly be learning and developing professionally. That is more of what I look for. How can I find people who have that self-driven motivation, that curiosity, that interest so they’ll be willing – when they have an opportunity to work on an account that’s about artificial intelligence in the healthcare arena, they’re going to dive in, roll up their sleeves, and learn as much as they can so they can be that much more effective at their job. It really is “every day something new.” A few weeks ago, we worked on a pitch for a prospect that was in the clean energy space. Clean energy is a big umbrella. It’s hydro power, it’s solar power, it’s wind power, it’s so many other aspects. So even when you have experience, there’s always something new and something interesting. I think what we don’t look for, if I were to put the opposite, is folks who are comfortable. [laughs] What I mean by that is if you want to keep the status quo and you’re like, “I’ve been there, I’ve done that, and I just want to stick with what I know,” then this isn’t the right place for you. But if it’s someone who is always wanting to learn what’s next, what’s new, and how to pique their interest, then it’s a really good fit. ROB: Right. There are plenty of firms out there. If you just want to do corporate communications press releases, there are plenty of places you can go for that, and it sounds like it’s not with you at Affect. Sandra, when you think about the background of the company, what was the origin story? What led you to jump out there and decide that you were going to do your own thing instead of the potential convenience of someone else paying your paycheck and helping you find the business? SANDRA: I’ve always had an independent streak. That didn’t always make my parents happy as a child. [laughs] You want to have kids who are independent, but it’s not easy to parent them – which I know because I’m getting the payback now from my own children. ROB: Right. [laughs] SANDRA: But if I were to go way, way back, I didn’t have a traditional path, so to speak. I grew up in New York and Long Island. I graduated a little early from high school because I just couldn’t wait to get started with life, and I did my first year of college at NYU. My second year was meant to be a year abroad in Israel, and I actually wound up staying for 11. So I did go to Israel for what was supposed to be a 1-year program and I had an incredible roommate who turned into my best friend, and we’re still very close today. One of the biggest gifts she gave me was convincing me that we needed to drop out of college and join the army. She was right. We both did. I was 2 years in the army in Israel, and when I graduated, although I did come back for a short period of time to the U.S., I wound up deciding to go back to Israel and finish my degree there. My first job once I graduated was a reporter for a division of IDG and Ziff Davis, which, if you’re not familiar with them, are large technology publishers. That kind of started me on the path, if you will, to this interest in tech. It was very early days. I laugh about it now, but one of the first projects I worked on was a book – a printed book – of email addresses for CEOs of tech companies. Now it’s laughable, but at the time it was very cutting edge. [laughs] I worked for that publisher for some time, and it was very interesting because not only did they publish books and magazines, but they also produced events. I produced the first internet world event in the Middle East at the time. It was really when Israel as a country was just starting to develop that startup nation mentality and reputation. I did wind up going in-house and working for a company in the videoconferencing industry. That moved me back to the U.S., and I was there for some time. Then I wound up going to Nokia and later to one of the largest global PR agencies, in their tech division. I loved agency life in terms of the pace and working on multiple clients and getting to talk to the C-suite and really being able to see the ROI of the work that we were doing and how it impacted everything from their ability to make their quarter to their stock price to outcomes for employees or hiring. That was really exciting for me. What was not suitable for me was the bureaucracy, the politics, occasional compromising of principles for process. [laughs] There were a lot of things about that particular experience that taught me what I want to do and what I don’t want to do. When people say, “What have you learned from your managers or great bosses?”, I feel like I’ve had both, and I have learned just as much from those that I would never wish on my worst enemy as I have from those that I absolutely adored and loved. That definitely sparked the desire to continue this path in PR specifically, and also to build my own agency, but it also shaped very much the focus on being an employee-centric, team-centric organization, and one that puts culture ahead of the almighty profit or clients at times as well. ROB: I know people who’ve been very much in that similar sort of organization and possibly that same organization, and 15 years after you left, I hear some pretty similar stories. You probably know some folks that are still in there. You can rest well in that decision. Tell me about the story arc – you started the firm, and what’s the initial trajectory of going from a client to a few clients and you versus the learning process of building a team? SANDRA: What I can say is for me, the final straw in my corporate job was actually 9/11. It was a pretty pivotal moment for me, and for anyone, really, who was impacted by that day or living in the Tri-State Area. Although, thank God, nothing happened to my immediate family, it couldn’t help but be a watershed moment where you reevaluated your life in so many ways. As I mentioned previously, I was clear on “I love what I’m doing; I don’t necessarily love the company I’m doing it for.” [laughs] I needed to reevaluate. It took me a few months to crystallize that I wanted to leave. I had gone on vacation with my husband, and I came back to work on a Monday and I think I called him at noon and was like, “I have to quit today.” He was like, “Please come home and let’s have a discussion.” And I quit the next day. It was somewhat impetuous. I think I had just reached that level of like “I have to jump,” and there was never going to be the best time to do it. It was 6 months after 9/11, so I do remember my boss at the time – he kind of took my hand, like a dad, and was like, “Are you sure you want to do this?” [laughs] I was like, “Yeah.” I became very fortunate in that my former employer became my first client. I was very lucky that I was able to basically turn that into my first client. Then I slowly started getting enough work from word-of-mouth and from using my own marketing skills to promote the company that I was farming out work to friends and to colleagues. I think it didn’t take more than about 4 or 5 months before I hired my first two employees. It was very organic. I wouldn’t say that I had a grand plan when I made the leap. I think in many ways that helped me because the pressure was not to build a grand agency, but to provide for my family and build a career for myself – but the person I was really trying to meet the standards of was my own rather than some sort of third party. I did have a daughter at the time who was only a year and a half old. Not long after, I also had my son. So I had two young kids at home not long after starting the agency, which is always challenging. But if you want something done, as they say, give it to a busy person. Somehow you make it work. Those first few years were definitely – I worked harder than I ever had, but at least I was doing it for myself and not for someone else. That to me was very rewarding, and knowing that I was building something that I believed in and building an environment where not only did I think other people would love to come to work, but I enjoyed, and I would love to come to work and be proud of our team and our agency and the work that we produce. That gives you a little bit of the generation story, if you will, the inception. ROB: That certainly makes sense and adds some color to the conversation. One thing you mentioned is I think an interesting thing to reflect on: all throughout the agency world – you mentioned farming out work, and I think that’s an ongoing dynamic for most firms that we talk to. How do you think about the balance between how much work you farm out versus when you bring a role in-house and that juggle of the full-timers, the contractors, etc.? SANDRA: Today we don’t farm out work. We try to keep everything in-house as much as possible unless it’s a skill we don’t have, a specialty area. Like we don’t code and we don’t do graphic design, but we also don’t have enough projects per se to supply an individual like that with a 40-hour work week’s worth of work. Sometimes it is better to go to a specialist who can swoop in and work on something and provide their expertise and then hand it back to the internal team. But overall, we really only work having full-time team members in-house. There have been years where we have used freelancers on occasion. I think with the difficulty of COVID, the entire year of 2020, we really wanted to keep everyone in the lifeboat, if you will. We wanted to take care of our people and take care of in-house – and, knock on wood, we did not have to take any negative steps. Our team actually grew. We had a terrific year from a financial perspective, even though it was such a difficult year from a personal and global perspective. But we’ve really tried to keep full-time team members to ensure that we’re also consistently delivering the quality of work and the type of work that our clients come to expect from us. ROB: Yeah, that step function of adding team members versus contractors. I think the biggest the team is, the more flexibility you have where you’re not trying to decide whether you’re going to overload somebody by 50% to avoid farming it out. It certainly makes sense. A topic of the moment you touched on there: how are you thinking about reopening of business and the return to in-person versus remote work over the year ahead? SANDRA: It’s interesting because we obviously just passed the 1-year anniversary of when the world shut down, the apocalypse. We were just talking about it as a team the other day. We literally sat as a team together on a Thursday morning in the office and we’re like, “Okay, looks like we’re going to take our laptops and go remote. Make sure you download your files, take any technology you need. We’ll probably be back in two weeks or so.” [laughs] That’s what we naively thought at the time. Everyone went home and turned on their laptops on Friday and we just kept working. We’ve been very, very fortunate that in our business it really has not presented any obstacles in terms of being able to work and be productive from a full-time perspective in a remote environment. We luckily were also set up technologically that everyone had access. We didn’t have any issues in setting anyone up to work. As long as you had your laptop and a good internet connection, you were ready to go. So our clients did not experience any service interruption, so to speak. We did also implement a number of initiatives to try to replicate as best we could the in-office environment, if you will. In the first few months of the pandemic, we had daily 10-minute stand up meetings. Those meetings were often more about checking in on everyone’s physical and mental health and families than they were about the work. I think we all needed that just to stay motivated and positive and focused. When we reduced it – over the summer, we reduced it to only three days a week – I missed my team. I’d wake up on the days we didn’t have them and be like, “Is this the way we start the day? I need to see everyone.” We moved a lot of our social experiences into the online realm. For Pride Month, we had a drag queen do a performance for everyone and we did bingo with her, which was a lot of fun. For the holidays, we did some holiday baking with a professional chef from South Carolina. We’ve done trivia, we’ve done escape the room. Again, all in a virtual environment to try to replicate that feeling of camaraderie and fun. But I think if anything, our clients have actually gained from our remote work. Everyone is no longer commuting; they’re actually probably working in some ways longer hours and more productively because they’re much more flexible in their ability to choose when they’re working and balance their responsibilities at home or just do the things they need to for self-care, whether that’s going to the gym or meditating. I think our team has actually become more productive during this time. In terms of going back to an office environment, we have been opening our office one day a week I think since July. We’ve only had a handful of people come in. It’s all on a voluntary basis. We are definitely planning to go back to an office environment, but it will never be the same. We don’t expect to be a five day a week company. Maybe it’s going to be two days a week in the office, three days a week. We recognize that there are things we cannot replicate in a virtual environment, and especially for junior team members, that ability to learn from your colleagues, the casual conversations, the creation of friendships at work, learning by osmosis by hearing the person sitting next to you pitch a member of the media or being called in spontaneously to a brainstorm – it’s very hard to replicate that effectively in a virtual environment. We feel that we need that, and when it’s safe and folks are vaccinated, we’ll be working towards getting back to that type of setup. But I think if you asked anyone on our team, especially those who knew each other prior to this pandemic and worked together, I think they feel closer now than they did before. In the collective trauma we’ve all been through this year, I think we’ve gotten a lot of comfort and support from our team members, and that’s really made a difference to the unity of the team. ROB: Sure, and it’ll be even better when those relationships can also break bread together. That’s going to be a good, good moment. SANDRA: Absolutely. ROB: Sandra, if you think back on the life of the firm, what are some things you would go back and tell yourself, the first day of the company self? What advice would you give to that person about the journey ahead? SANDRA: I wouldn’t want to scare her. [laughs] There were a lot of things – you don’t know what you don’t know. I think when you are a founder of any company or you’re a risk-taker, you have to be an optimist. You wouldn’t do it if you thought you were going to fail. You wouldn’t jump off that cliff, you wouldn’t quit the job, you wouldn’t take out that loan, you wouldn’t find that partner if you thought it was doomed. So when you’re an entrepreneur or a business owner, you definitely have that optimist bent in your head. I think that sometimes can lead you to think things are rosier than they are, or to not read the signs, so to speak. If there were things that I regretted, it was not making decisions faster, especially when they were hard decisions. Maybe there was an employee that I had a gut feeling about or wasn’t working, and letting that languish for 4 or 6 months and trying to turn things around until I finally was like, “Okay, it really is them, it’s not me.” [laughs] I was usually right, right up front. Or COVID is a great example. The companies, especially agencies, that were hit hard, many of them were hit very hard because they did not make the tough decisions quickly enough. Then it was like death by a thousand cuts. So I think if anything, I would say trust your gut, act quickly, and you do sometimes need to make the very hard decisions in order to do the right thing for your team in the long term. I’ll also say that you need a community of business advisors that you can trust. You need to learn from their lessons. It can be very lonely. As the senior executive, you can’t necessarily share with your team that you’re afraid you won’t make payroll this month or that you’re watching the bank account dwindle and you’re scrambling to get a loan or a line of credit. You have to keep up that brave face, but you need supporters to help you navigate that, and navigate so many different things that come up when you’re owning a business that you don’t expect. It could be labor laws, it could be insurance issues, dealing with a landlord on your office space. I really feel that building that community of trusted advisors and taking their advice is very important. ROB: How have you found that community? SANDRA: I have had a number of vendors over the course of building my business that have really been instrumental in helping me navigate crises, but also avoid crises with their good advice. It could be as simple as a lawyer who’s looking at your contracts or a great accountant who’s watching out for you from a tax perspective. Or it’s another business owner that I meet with and we share stories of the difficulty we’re having with an employee or on the hiring front and hearing their advice. Or tools and technology. I’ll give you a really good example. We were actually a founding member of something called the With Global Alliance, and we founded it in January of 2020. Fantastic timing. It’s an international group of B2B tech agencies around the globe who all offer similar services, and the intention, of course, was to help us offer our clients access to international markets. We started out at one of the most difficult times, and we were five firms covering 10 countries. But during the last year, we’ve grown to – I think we are now 12 firms offering services in 26 countries. But being able to get on calls with agency leaders from all over the globe and find out what’s happening in India, what’s happening in Singapore, what’s happening in China – they’ve gone back to work fully. COVID is over in Asia. Or how is the agency in Australia handling it, or what’s happening in the UK, where they might be a little behind us or the regulatory systems call for different types of actions. It’s been so rewarding to hear from other agency owners what they’re doing, how they’re grappling with the situation, how they’re helping their teams, what ideas they have, what technology they’re using. That’s been really beneficial. More than what we initially thought the original business purpose would be, since there was less international activity for everyone across the globe, but that’s been incredibly rewarding and comforting to have those opportunities and to have those peers to be able to go to and discuss those tough issues and ask those tough questions. ROB: All good stuff, Sandra. When people want to get in touch with you and get in touch with Affect, how should they find you?  SANDRA: The easiest way is to go to Affect.com. Or hit me up at sfathi@affect.com. ROB: That’s fantastic. Sandra, thank you so much for joining us today. I wish you the best as we all have an eye on emerging from our homes and seeing some people. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing. SANDRA: Thank you for having me. It’s been a pleasure. ROB: Be well. Thank you. Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

Steve Connelly started Connelly Partners (the defiantly human agency) in 1999 after he, as President of another agency, decided that the next time he got shot in the head, it would be by his own hand. For the first 6 months, his startup operated out of loaned office space in the backroom of another agency, Partners & Simons, Connelly Partners grew to cover all disciplines through acquisitions and organic divisional spinoffs. Today, the agency has a 42,000 square foot office in South Boston, and satellite offices in Dublin, Ireland and Vancouver. The broad, international range of the agency’s B2B and B2C clients range in size from very small to large. The agency even supports low-cost or pro bono services for creative opportunities. The core values of the agency include all things anthropology, with subsets of empathy, studying human behavior, observing people and being able to “figure out what they’re thinking, even if they don’t know that’s what they are thinking.” Steve refers to his team as “master translators of human behavior” . . . with the ability to “read minds.” He thinks the best way to understand how to sell a product to a customer is to understand the challenges of that customer’s life. His priority is not to “get noticed.” He says, “Everyone notices a streaker, but no one wants to shake his hand” and then clarifies the thought by saying, “I’d rather understand a person, have them look at our work and say, “You know what? They get me.” In this interview, Steve talks about people’s responses to market cycles and how, often, when things bottom out, people sit and wait for things to turn around.  He says, for him, that “the bottom” is the point: When you attack, when you invest, when you try to grow new practices, you try to bring new assets into your company, you take a really good look at your company as it sits, identify all your flaws . . . and try to fix them. I think the bottom of the market is when you get aggressive. But to do that . . . you have to have a lot of money saved. That funding is accrued when times are good. In this interview, Steve talks about the post-Covid business environment. As the world “opens up,” he expects to see a surge of “revenge tourism,” with people trying to “catch up” on experiences with their families after so many months in lockdown. He says, “Everyone is pissed off about everything right now” and acknowledges that, in the not-too-distant-future the “rules are going to be applied differently,” people will “choose to live differently, work differently, open . . . businesses differently going forward.”. He concludes, “Maybe we all just need to take a breath.” Steve believes that the next year is going to be a time of discovery. Management during Covid revealed a lot of good things about people as they worked from home, but everyone was operating by the same rules. Once restrictions are lifted, things will change. Steve believes that a unilateral “everyone will work from home” is an unrealistic money grab and notes that the office environment fosters a higher level and quality of spontaneity and organic exchange. He expects to develop a “hybrid” model to keep the best of both. Steve can be reached by email at: sconnelly@connellypartners.com. Transcript Follows: ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m your host, Rob Kischuk, and I’m joined today by Steve Connelly, Founder of Connelly Partners, based in Boston, Massachusetts. Welcome to the podcast, Steve. STEVE: Great to be here, buddy. ROB: It is excellent to have you here. I think you’ve got a great story with your firm, so why don’t you start off by telling us about Connelly Partners and the firm’s superpowers? STEVE: Connelly Partners was founded in 1999. The way most great agencies were founded, I was shot in the head by the previous agency I was president of, and came to a moment of realization that, “Okay, well, I’m not going to get shot in the head again unless it’s . . .” ROB: Self-inflicted. [laughs] STEVE: Yeah, self-inflicted. So, we started the company. I had some amazingly gracious help from people inside the industry where I got space loaned to me. I had opportunities. The thing started organically in the backroom of another agency at the time called Partners & Simons. The nicest guy in the world, one of the smartest as well. Started organically. Moved to the south end in Boston about 6 months later. Now we have 42,000 square feet of space here. We have an operation in Dublin, Ireland. We have an operation new in Vancouver. We’re in all disciplines. We’ve either acquired firms or organically started divisions to make sure that we have all skillsets represented. And as it relates to our superpower, I think everybody probably wishes for powers other than they have. We’re certainly very fast, but I would say our superpower is the ability to read minds, which is creepy, but I do think our focus on empathy, our focus on really observing people, the love of anthropology, the study of human behavior – I think we can look at people and spend enough time and we can figure out what they’re thinking even if they don’t know that’s what they’re thinking. I’d love to say we have super strength. I’d love to say I’m invisible. I’d love to say all these other cool, sexier powers that you see on The Boys or in The Avengers and stuff like that. But I think at the end of the day, because we’re an empathy-based company, reading minds is something we are actually really, really good at. ROB: That’s a good talent. And you can read the minds of the people with the other superpowers, so it works out all right. If we zoom out a little bit, give us a picture of, if there is such a thing, a typical client, a typical engagement, or maybe an example client or engagement that helps us understand how you engage and what it looks like. STEVE: The reality is – and you know this and everyone listening knows this – there’s nothing typical anymore. We have projects, we have AOR, we have big, we have small. We have people that have creative opportunities and we do it for nothing or low bono. We have some really big clients, great clients. We have some really small clients. I’d say the typical engagement, though, is somebody would come to us and they’d say, in so many words, “Help us understand our customers a little bit better and more their lives.” I think so many times people in marketing jump right to trying to understand how your product can be sold, and really the best way to understand that is to understand the person’s life that you’re trying to sell to and their stresses, their ups, their downs. What are the holes they have in their life that you might be able to fill or retrofit your product’s benefit or services to meet a need? I think we would be looked at as master translators of human behavior and where we can identify what we would call defiantly human insights that most clients can take advantage of – things that are true about humans in general that we can help our clients use to maybe better get a conversation going with a prospect. I have a saying I’ve used all the time in this business, which is everyone notices a streaker, but no one wants to shake his hand. Our business is filled with a lot of people that believe our job is to be streaking and to get noticed and for people to see us, and I don’t have time to do juggling llamas or flame-throwing fish. I’d rather understand a person, have them look at our work and say, “You know what? They get me.” ROB: Sure. Are we able to talk about some of the brands that might’ve been mentioned in the booking notes? I think it’s illustrative, potentially. And I do notice the list was largely consumer. Are you largely in the consumer space? Is there some B2B in your game as well? STEVE: Yeah, we have lots of B2B. It’s just those aren’t names people have heard of. Everybody’s heard of Titleist. Certainly, on some level, most people have heard of Gorton’s and the Gorton fisherman. I think those are both great client examples. With Titleist, there’s the fact they’re the number one ball in golf. More players who are not paid to play a ball play Titleist, and I think that says a lot about – and of course, some of the greatest golfers in the world play it. Gorton Seafood, which is traditionally thought of as a fish stick-only company, but they’re actually much more of a seafood company. With deep respect and understanding for people’s love of the sea, we’ve been able to use anthropology; that’s dictated a couple paths for us to connect Gorton’s to the sea rather than lift them out of maybe how they were seen in the past, which is more of a convenience seafood. We work with Williamsburg Tourism, which is actually one of the biggest tourism DMAs in the country, with Williamsburg, Yorktown, and Jamestown. I was just down there a week and a half ago. Good to report to everybody, tourism is coming back. People may be wearing masks, but they’re being active and they’re outside again, and hotel occupancy was at a nice level. There were a lot of people enjoying the outside. So that’s another client. We work for Audi in Ireland. Just finished a piece for them, or we’re just going to production there. We’re going to prepare for the reopening of the country and get people to rally around that, which is a cool assignment. We work for a big insurance company in Ireland as well. We work for Pizzeria Uno, which is a recent client here. Those are all consumer brands. On the B2B side, we work for a company called Quiet Logistics. We have a fair amount of B2B clients, including a couple I can’t mention yet because we’re still finishing up some contract negotiations. But I think one of our biggest wins in the last year is actually a B2B medical category company that has been totally embracing our love of anthropology. One of the things that happens in B2B, Rob, and you know this, is that people begin to try to categorize B2B as a different animal, and it’s not. You’re still marketing to a person; it’s just that person is in a work stage, work life, different stresses, and we try to figure out what’s going on in their life from the “9-to-5.” B2B is still B2P. And we get hired a fair amount for clients in that space to help figure out how to sell to people in the 9-to-5 mentality. ROB: It’s consistent when we hear a little bit about how you think about consumer, because those brands that you mentioned – the Gorton’s world – you think about food, and there’s the lane of the flashy new product, and then there’s the very – I think you mentioned where they came from, kind of this utilitarian mode. But there’s something deeper you’ve gone to with the ocean, and Boston is certainly a good place to do that. When you mentioned that, I want to go eat some seafood in Boston right now. There’s sort of a steadiness to how you come at those consumer brands that seems necessary. You seem to handle consumer more in the way people handle B2B than how people think about consumer. It’s so flashy. STEVE: I think one of the things you have to do if you’re going to be marketing – actually, B2C certainly, but B2B as well – is you can’t be stuck. Everything changes every 6 months. If you’re not self-aware enough to constantly be looking at the way life shifts – I mean, we have a rather robust strategic practice here. I don’t know the number, but our strategist per employee number is I would guess much higher than most other agencies’ numbers. We have two other open to hires, so if anybody wants to passively send me some anthropology resumes, I’d love to look at them. But I think you’ve got to be invested in the world and seeing how things have shifted. We just finished, and we’re in the process of presenting to all clients now, 9 core insights that have changed and evolved or elevated in importance over the last 6 months as you come out of COVID. Now, those are different than they were 6 months ago when we were in COVID. It’s knowing where the mind is going. You think about the imagery of the ocean, the power and the attraction of the sea, how we are all hardwired to yearn for it – I mean, everybody wants to put their toes in the ocean, for whatever crazy reason that may be that’s anthropologically validated. I don’t know why, but everyone wants to put their feet in the ocean. Using that attraction right now, if you think about it, we’ve been locked up inside for so long, the imagery of the ocean, the imagery of the outdoors, the imagery of the air – and also, the need to protect the oceans. The oceans are under incredible assault right now. Our reverence for the ocean and respecting the attraction of the ocean, we can use all that stuff to sell seafood. There’s a goodness to the food that comes from the sea that people inherently believe. I don’t have to convince them. I just have to connect them to that part of themselves that acknowledges it. Everyone likes fish. ROB: Right. Steve, you mentioned starting the firm in 1999, which may have looked like a good idea for about a year or so, and then maybe seemed like kind of a bad idea from the dot-com bust and the echo of that. You’ve been through the 2007-2008 financial crisis, and this COVID thing as well. As you’re looking at coming out, how does this situation rhyme with the past couple of times of duress, and how did you handle it differently coming from that lens? STEVE: There’s a certain consistency that I have had in terms of dealing with any time you reach a market dip, a market bump, when the rollercoaster is at the bottom. Some people handle it and they sit on their hands and they wait for it to pass. They become exceptionally conservative. They become almost passive, and you’re kind of waiting for things to open back up, and you just want to weather the storm. I would be in the opposite category, which is I think that’s the point when you attack, when you invest, when you try to grow new practices, you try to bring new assets into your company you take a really good look at your company as it sits, identify all your flaws – because lord knows we all have tons of them – and try to fix them. I think the bottom of the market is when you get aggressive, but to do that, you have to be really conservative financially. You have to have a lot of money saved. You have to be very careful that when you’re at the top of the rollercoaster, you don’t go out and spend all your money on flashy cars and nice clothes. You’ve got to remember this is a long-term thing. Because we have been very well-managed financially, we’re able to attack at the bottom when other people might not. Now, the difference here in this particular next 6 months is that the rules have been unilaterally applied to everybody. Everybody has had to wear a mask, stay inside, work from home. We’ve all been forced to compete by rules that are consistently applied. That wasn’t the case in the previous blips. Certainly, the dot-com blip – I can go back and talk about what happened then. But the difference now is we all have to ask ourselves: What happens when we’re all not playing by the same rules again in 4 months? When some people are going to work and some people aren’t? When hybrid is becoming the reality and other people are going to want to stay home? When there’s different requirements of people as they pursue revenge tourism, as they try to find different ways to have more experiences with their family because they feel like they have to make up for lost time? The rules are going to be – we’re all competing and stuck in the same “COVID prison” right now. I’ll say one other thing. I had a really good conversation with an employee here a couple of days ago. In an agency meeting, he asked me when I’m going to stop being so angry at COVID. I really didn’t even know I was projecting that anger. I found that to be a really therapeutic, really good slap in the face of reality that I got, because I think we’re all angry about it. But we can do nothing about it. I really took those words to heart. I think in the early parts of this, I thought the role of an agency leader or business leader, head of a household, head of any group, manager, coach, your job is to be positive and to get people to focus on the positivity in the long term. I think I and all of us have been beaten down to the point where we’re angry and negative. [laughs] I found that to be a really good comment. As the rules are going to be applied differently and we choose to live differently, work differently, open our businesses differently going forward, I think positivity is something I’m going to try to amplify and get people to be a little less angry. Everyone is pissed off about everything right now, and maybe we all just need to take a breath. ROB: I think it will be good to have – you mentioned revenge tourism, and I hadn’t heard that phrase. It’s hilarious, but it’s intuitive. I understand what you’re getting at. Maybe that will be a bit cathartic. Everybody has 10 opinions about what to do each day, but some folks seem to be saying they’re going to stay locked down, and maybe that’s the hardest part. How do you get those people out and un-angry? We all need to see some people and do some things, I think. STEVE: Yeah, I don’t know how we’re going to – I think one of the things we have to do is acknowledge that we can only try so hard. Because of the way news is distributed, because of the way people are consuming news and they’re gathering information, they are led down certain paths. For us, I think we’ll go back to basic human instinct, which is the majority of people are going to want to get out. Here’s an example. In Ireland they’re still completely locked down. If I go to Ireland right now, I have to sit in an airport hotel for 2 weeks before I can get out, and then when I get out, everything’s closed. The challenge as it relates to tourism in Ireland is that most people, when they take their holiday, go to Spain or to France or to Europe, other countries, and they explore the way we would explore other states here. They can’t leave. So they are now making holiday plans to travel within Ireland, and if you think about it for context, that would be like me in Massachusetts – I can’t go to Florida, as I would go every year; I have to go someplace within Massachusetts. There’s a little bit of depression that comes from that. But I’m finding people are saying, “I’m going to make the best of it,” and there’s a certain acceptance. In Massachusetts, there are amazing places to go visit and escape, and I can take some revenge on COVID. I think that’s what’s going to happen as different countries stay shut down. Revenge tourism is real, man. Our biggest piece of business when COVID started was Four Seasons in the Americas, and I lost that business in the first 2 weeks, for obvious reasons. But I think hotels are going to start – certainly, it’s happening here in the States again, and some places, some hotel groups, destination groups that continue to spend and engage with customers at the bottom of the rollercoaster are going to see the benefit of it now that things are starting to pick up, where others are going to have to make up ground. From a marketing perspective, that’s a little bit of an insight that’s going to be fun to observe: how fast people can catch up. ROB: It’s going to move. It’s already moving pretty quickly. To your point about investing when things are down, I’m hearing that a lot of the rental car companies disinvested in their fleets and now, come July and August, you’re looking at $100 a day for economy class cars in some places. If folks had kept it up, they’d have a fleet to sell. STEVE: I’ll tell ya, man, I went to Naples this past weekend to golf. I’m in the Hertz Club Gold and I’m also in the National Emerald Club. I booked my car at National in the Emerald Club, landed at the hotel with my golf bag and my clothes, and there were no cars in the road except for one little teeny tiny clown car. I’m not a small human being, but this was my only choice. I was in a state of shock that every single car was gone, or, as you said, they’ve liquidated some of their fleets. I’m driving around Florida in this little teeny tiny thing, trying to figure out where all the cars went. They clearly didn’t invest at the bottom. I get it; I think there are financial realities. But it doesn’t change the fact that I’m driving with my knees up to my chin. ROB: [laughs] Sounds challenging. It’s going to be interesting. I was ready to go to Ireland. I was ready to self-quarantine for 2 weeks when they were still open, I think last summer. It turned out our kids didn’t have passports yet, so we didn’t make that. But I was ready to do that drive around Massachusetts version of Ireland. Just pick a home base in the middle of the country and drive around and see it. STEVE: When you’re ready to do it, give me a call. I followed my son some years back on a rugby tour around Ireland, and it’s a spectacular country. The people are – for people that live in a country that has two seasons, cold and rainy and warm and rainy, man, they’re happy, friendly, nice, accommodating. We had the greatest time ever, and you will too. But I could say the same thing about Massachusetts in terms of people that are driving to The Berkshires, or for me going to New Hampshire within 100 miles. There’s so much that we haven’t seen. I think at the end of the day, revenge tourism is about getting out of the house and reconnecting with some people, and you can do that driving 50 miles as well as flying 500 miles. ROB: Absolutely. I will look for those tips. Steve, with the journey you’ve been on, and really successfully running and growing a firm for over 20 years, I’d be remiss not to ask you about some other lessons you’ve learned along that journey and maybe some decisions you might advise yourself to do differently if you were going back in time. STEVE: I wear a lot of t-shirts. The people here would validate that. One of my t-shirts I wear is, “Often wrong but never in doubt.” I think that’s a key categorization for people that lead firms. You’re going to make mistakes; just make them quick and move on. Once you make a mistake, try to fix it. I see a fair amount of people that are suffering from analysis paralysis. I think that actually is because of data, too. There are so many different hunks of data out there that people can study. By the time you figure out what it is you want to do, it’s too late. I think that’s true with clients and that’s certainly true with agencies. I trust my gut. I trust my eyes. I trust my instinct. I’m a coach by trade, too, and I think there are certain skillsets that come from coaching groups of kids and high school and college kids and getting a group of people to work as a team. Those are transferrable skillsets. The things I wish I could do over again – that’s a trick question because everybody has a thousand of them, but I don’t really think about them. I’ll give you one, but I don’t really think about them because you make a decision, you go with the decision, you do it based on what your gut and data tell you to do, and if you revisit it, you’re going to drive yourself mad. I mean, I have a beautiful wife, I have great kids, I have a great company. Would I have gotten here if I had made other decisions? Who knows? But I’ll tell you one thing. I’m sure no one’s ever gone way back to when they were 12 years old, but when I was 12 going on 13, I was a really, really good baseball pitcher. I’ve told this story before. Stay with me; it’s relevant. I had a choice at that time. I could’ve played on an elite team in my hometown that would’ve developed my skills, honed my skills. I would’ve found out how good I could’ve been. I stupidly at that point – perhaps not – chose not to play on that team. I chose to play on a lower level team because that’s where my friends were. That one decision caused me to lose skills. I was never able to find out how good I was. I spent literally the next 8 years trying to find out how good I could’ve been as a baseball player, and I couldn’t play in high school baseball. I wasn’t good enough. I could’ve if I had made that choice. I did play in college, but it took me 5-6 years of training to catch up, and I was one of those athletes that the older I got, the better I was. I sat on the bench. I got on the team. But by the time I got into my mid-twenties and thirties and forties, and now as I’m 60, I can throw a baseball better than most at any other age, still. I love the game. The lesson is, if somebody presents an opportunity for you to explore and find out how good you can be, even if it’s painful, even if it makes you uncomfortable, even if it pushes you outside your comfort zone, you take that shot and you go find out. Because if you don’t, it’s going to cost you years to find out how good you could be. It took me 8 years to undo one decision I made when I was 13 years old. I’ve never forgotten that. ROB: Yeah, and gladly, you do get to take that with you as you go. I wonder if it ties in a little bit – when I look at the sort of clients that you have and the way you’ve grown and the way you’re still accelerating into acquisitions, I see the sort of firm that probably easily could have been acquired three times over, or you could’ve found somebody else to run it or something else. What keeps that fire burning in you to keep the gas going on the business, to not take a big check from some sort of ownership group that comes along, that sort of thing? STEVE: Well, to be clear, if anyone out there has a big check, please provide them with my email and contact information. No, I’ll go back to when I was 13, man. That meant that I had a chip on my shoulder. I had something to prove. There was a certain anger and a fire in me that I think has gone to the point of where I am now at 60, where I’m like, I’m not done, man. I still want to try to compete at the highest level. I want to find out how good I can be. I think on a different level, I feel a responsibility as a company to defend the human right brain from the marginalization of it that’s being caused by technology and data. I think I feel an obligation to be a defender of all things human at a time when we’re trying to be algorithmically discounted. I think there’s an opportunity for a company out there to have a good human soul, to be a non-arrogant, non-know-it-all marketing partner that is filled with confidence but not arrogance. And I don’t think there are many companies like that. Meanwhile, I sit in a corner of the country where there’s an opening for a firm like ours to provide a resource to a certain segment of clients that are interested in anthropology, that are interested in understanding their customers better, that are not interested in juggling llamas, that are interested in better connections. I always like to say, too, that we as a company are a terrible first date. We’re awful. On your first date – it certainly was true with me – that’s when you’re at your absolute most artificial. You make yourself look as good as you can possibly make. You make sure that you say the right things. You’re very measured. You prepare. The first date is an artificial presentation of who you aspire to be. You get down to second, third, fourth dates, then the real you is revealed. We’re terrible at being artificial at that first thing. If somebody asks me a question, I’m going to give you an answer. I’m not going to bull anybody. I’m not going to try to shovel anything. If they ask me what I think, I’m going to tell them. That second, third, fourth date kind of stuff – when I put on a pair of pants and go to my wife now and say, “Do these pants make me look fat?”, my wife will say, “Sure, they do. So change them.” You have to get to a certain comfort level with a person, with a client, with an agency, where you have that kind of value conversation. I think there’s need for that, and I don’t see enough of it in the world or in our region. So I’m going to keep going till I don’t. ROB: Sure. It’s wonderful to see that burden on both sides to be a place that is worth working for and also one that’s worth working with. There’s certainly not enough of those. I don’t talk to people with regular jobs that often anymore, but I think about the conversations complaining about them. STEVE: We’ll see, too. One of the biggest struggles most agency leaders and most company leaders are going to have is the work from home discussion and the reality of how people like to work. Ours is a business, I believe, that’s an organic exchange, but there’s certain aspects to working from home that people have discovered, in terms of productivity, in terms of balance, that are good. How are you going to rebuild a corporate mentality and structure? I find it absolutely mind-boggling the amount of companies that are going to unilaterally embrace work from home all the time because they said that they have been productive during COVID. And we have been. All of us have been remarkably creative in figuring out ways to manage, but we’ve all been playing by the same rules. Now the rules are going to change, and I think some people are going to do it differently. A lot of people are going to move their companies to be unilaterally work from home, and it’s a money grab. You’re going to be able to cut out a bunch of operational expenses and put them in your pocket under the guise of work from home. And I don’t know the answer, by the way. We’re going to figure it out together here. But some sort of a hybrid model, certainly initially over the next year while we try to figure out how to keep the best of what COVID management has revealed in all human beings as we’ve worked from home – because surely some really good things came out of it – and combine that with the best of working together in an office environment where spontaneity and organic exchange can happen in ways that it can’t when you work from home. That’s going to be fascinating. Like I said, I wish I knew the answer, man. I don’t, but I’m going to go on my rather substantive gut, and we’ll see what happens. We’ll be willing to change and adapt going forward. ROB: That’ll be a great conversation going forward. Steve, when people want to get in touch with you and connect with Connelly Partners, where should they go to find you? STEVE: My email is sconnelly@connellypartners.com. I get a gazillion emails. I read them all; I don’t respond to them all because I’m trying to get through them all. I think the easiest thing to do is just shoot me an email and I’ll get back to you. I’m not a big social media guy, and one of the reasons for that – and I hope you and your audience understand – it’s not that I’m a Luddite; it’s just that I believe in honesty, and honesty is not unilaterally embraced in a lot of places. So I’m going to not expose myself in a position where somebody’s going to misconstrue something. I have been in positions where I have said something innocuous and honest and some people want to take me to task for that. The debate is exhausting, so I choose not to have it. I’m big on LinkedIn. Our company is a big social participant. If you go to our website, to where we are on Instagram, on all social channels, you can get a feel for our culture and our people. You can get a feel for our approach and our philosophy. But if you want to talk to me, send me an email and I’ll call you. ROB: Sounds excellent. Steve, thank you for coming on the podcast. You’ve really got a great deal of wonderful things to share. We could go on for three times this long, but we’ll put that off to another time and wish you and Connelly Partners the absolute best as we all have our revenge tourism. STEVE: Thank you, man. I would just leave this parting thought with everybody: be as positive as you can going forward. Be a little less angry. I was reminded of that 3 days ago. It snuck up on me. I think it sneaks up on all of us. Let’s go back to trying to be a little less angry and a little bit more huggable. ROB: [laughs] Perfect. Love it, Steve. Thank you so much. STEVE: Rock on. Take care, buddy. ROB: Take care. Bye. Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

Steve Denker, most recently Vice President of Marketing and Digital for Turner Classic Movies, chats with Rob at the virtual 2021 South by Southwest. In this interview, he gives his perspective on what he looks for when “working with agencies.”  In the mid-90s, Steve worked for Aramark at Fulton County Stadium/Turner Field, managing relationships with the brands and products that were part of that stadium experience. He observed how fans interacted with Coca-Cola and highlighted opportunities for Coke to increase sales and strengthen the link between the experience and the product. Coca-Cola liked his approach and brought him onboard to develop the experiential look and feel of Coca-Cola in a wide variety of venues.  After a while, Steve understood that Coca-Cola was large enough that it would be a long time before he would have the opportunity to manage people, explore the emerging field of digital marketing, and gain product sales experience.  He took a position with RentPath, leading the marketing and advertising outreach for apartment guide publications at Apartment.com. From 2001 to 2008, Steve worked directly with companies that “touched” the rental process . . . selling digital advertising to utilities, renters’ insurance companies, and movers and helping people find the right place to live. “Moving is an incredibly stressful time,” Steve says. In 2011, Steve joined Relocation.com, doing lead generation and business development out of New York. He connected with an individual who owned the Beach.com domain. Together, they planned to build the world’s largest and most comprehensive database of beach and beach destination information. When heavy competition from Travelocity and Expedia prevented Beach.com from getting the desired level of traffic and sales, Steve decided it was time to move again. He values his involvement in this “failed venture.” “I can’t tell you the lessons learned from that experience I have taken through everything else I’ve done, both personally and professionally.” All that “good stuff” found its place when Steve joined a consulting firm in Atlanta. (Steve’s Beach.com partner still manages the reimagined site.) In 2016, an old buddy from his Coca-Cola days invited him to build a marketing department at Turner Classic Movies. Steve was at TCM for 4-1/2 years. Outsiders may think large organizations have such a wealth of internal resources that they don’t need help from agencies. Far from the truth, Steve says. Agencies are important for their unique talents, expertise, efficiencies, and ability to help “execute the vision.” Steve describes what he looks for in agencies. Once agencies get past the first cut of “Do they have the ability to do what we need them to do?”, he needs to know that they “either already understand our business and who our customers are or have the capacity to understand that in a very short period of time.” He thinks organizational leaders need to have a laser focus on what they are trying to accomplish and understand both functional and emotional business priorities. Steve recently started thefasttimes.net, a weekly culture e-zine for Gen-Xers and wannabes, and reaching out on Instagram and Facebook and Twitter. Transcript Follows: ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m your host, Rob Kischuk, and continuing in our South by Southwest series, I am speaking today with a friend, a friend of the podcast, and not an agency owner but a marketer with a tremendous history that I think we will all benefit greatly from. My guest is Steve Denker. Steve was most recently Vice President of Marketing and Digital for Turner Classic Movies. He’s based in Atlanta like me, but we are still in COVID quarantine, talking online. Welcome to the podcast, Steve. STEVE: Thank you, Rob. Thanks for having me. It’s been great running into you at local marketing and industry events over the past probably 8+ years, and at South by. Hopefully I’ll have a chance to work with Converge and/or Bellwood Labs in the future. ROB: I appreciate that. I think I met you one fine day when you wandered into the Flashpoint Startup Accelerator here in Atlanta in the season of Beach.com. At least, that’s a memorable moment in your career. But you’ve done a great deal of things. Why don’t you start off by running through your journey and path in marketing, to give us an idea of the context you come to us from? STEVE: Sure, thank you. And I do remember that day when we met downtown. I started out – I’ll back the train up a couple of stops. I grew up in Philadelphia and went to school in New York and came down to Atlanta in the mid-90s for a company called Aramark that was responsible for the concessions, the merchandise, and general operations at stadiums and arenas around the country, among some other businesses that they’re in. I started working at Fulton County Stadium and eventually what became the new Turner Field. My position really was more in an operations role, but I was responsible for the relationships with all of the brands and products that were part of that stadium experience. I was working with the Budweisers and Starbucks and Bluebell Ice Cream, Coca-Colas of the world. Any product that was looking to get in front of those fans. It’s interesting how I eventually used that relationship to transition to a role at Coca-Cola because I was watching the fans and seeing what they were doing at every game. I had the opportunity to watch their behaviors and see their traffic paths and their buying habits and so forth. So when Coca-Cola brought a team down once or twice a season to take a look at their assets, I had the opportunity not just to nod my head and say, “Yeah, the umbrellas are faded” or “We need new menu boards,” but really share with them what was going on and how the fans were interacting with Coca-Cola and how it was part of the experience to watch a Braves game. By putting together some plans and sharing with them where I thought they could not only accelerate sales, but also make the brand more part of the experience, I caught the attention of a few folks within that sports and marketing group, at the time called Presence Marketing. Not long after the Olympics, I transitioned over to that group at Coca-Cola and was then part of that experiential look and feel of Coca-Cola at stadiums and arenas, Disney, Universal, and so forth, in a creative capacity. It was a terrific move. The group was run by Steve Koonin, who is just Atlanta royalty and the CEO of the Hawks and State Farm Arena. He really was bringing so many innovations to this group and to the way that Coke was marketed. I was really fortunate to be part of that team and that group. From there, a couple of years later, I had an opportunity to go to a company most recently called RentPath. At the time it was called PriMedia. Also here in Buckhead. What was missing at Coke at that time when I left – I think there were three things I was really looking for that were going to take a while. I was looking to manage people and learn how to do that. I felt that was a good next step for my career. That would’ve taken a while within that multinational structure. Digital was something that, in the early 2000s, was really the forefront of what the next part of marketing was. Coke wasn’t paying as much attention to it as other companies were. Then finally, I was looking for something that would give me real sales experience, not just internally and working with other groups, but actually selling products. Again, I thought that would be something at the early stage of my career that I would learn and use for the rest of my days in terms of working in any capacity. So RentPath offered those and more, and I went over and led the marketing and advertising for the apartment guide publications at Apartment.com. This was early on lead gen and getting folks into and around their apartments, their living situations. It was really interesting, because it was working directly with any company that has to do with that process, whether it’s your utilities and your phone, renter’s insurance, physically moving – anything like that were opportunities for myself and my team to sell advertising to. These were the early days of digital advertising, if you can imagine: banner ads with CPMs of $60-75 and relatively no accountability. Not even serving accountability. Forget about click-through rates; did you actually serve the ads I just paid for? That was even, at the time, a little murky. Companies just wanted to be part of it. As long as they went onto the website and saw their ad, they said, “Keep serving it.” It was really interesting to see the growth of the industry from, again, banner ads and text ads to what it is today – particularly at that time of 2001 through 2008, when it really exploded into the framework of what we see today with data and analytics and accountability. It was exciting to see that grow. I left for a company called Relocation.com, which was lead generation and business development out of New York. I’d spend a week a month in New York and then back to Atlanta again. I connected with someone in New York who owned the Beach.com domain, and we had plans to build the world’s largest database of beach information. Not just every beach in the world, but hotels, vacation rentals, restaurants, activities, local information, local concierge services – really anything that would have to do with a beach destination or vacation, and build out this massive portal. At the time in 2011, this is when people really were using Travelocity and Expedia. There was heavy competition from these other sites. We went ahead and raised some money, built a plan, and it just didn’t take off. It didn’t get to the level in terms of traffic and converting users into revenue and sales that we had hoped for. All shook hands a few years later, back in 2013, and the site is still live right now. My partner at the time is still running it with a couple of different objectives. But I can’t tell you the amount lessons learned from that experience I have taken through everything else I’ve done, both personally and professionally. I look back at that and have no regrets on taking that business risk. I think if we had done a couple of things differently – many things differently – we would’ve had a different outcome. But again, we pivoted. A lot of key learnings from that that I’ve been fortunate enough to share with other folks. That’s what I did after that at a consulting firm here in Atlanta and had some great client relationships with companies like PDS and a company called AGRO Merchants Group, a healthcare company, we did some work with Blackstone. Eventually, one of my earliest relationships from Coca-Cola, a woman named Jennifer Dorian, who is a mentor and a friend and could not be a bigger rock star – she’s now the CEO over at Atlanta Public Broadcasting & Radio. She was on Steve Koonin’s team as well. I worked with her in the Coca-Cola days and had stayed in touch with her really for 20 years. We were having coffee or lunch once or twice a year just to catch up and so forth. She at the time was general manager of Turner Classic Movies and gave me a call and said, “Hey, we’re looking to build a marketing department and expand what we’ve been doing.” This was in late 2016. She said, “Would you like to come over and interview with a bunch of people?” I did that, and a couple of months later I had moved over to Turner and had an amazing four and a half years there. ROB: It’s quite a journey. I think it’s interesting to point out that all the way through Beach.com, and probably a little bit after that as well, you were in early on the customer journey. Moving, to an extent, is kind of the ultimate customer journey. You combined that in the digital space. You mentioned the high CPM, but the customer lifetime value is also quite high if you can get somebody into an apartment for a couple of years. STEVE: Absolutely. That’s a great point. Not only is it part of that initial customer journey – wherever that came from and whatever company claimed to own that verbiage and so forth, it was the beginning of that – but it was also, I think, a very critical time when working with customers. I was working in industries where you really can’t screw it up. In other words, moving is an incredibly stressful time. If someone doesn’t find the right apartment, if you haven’t given them all the information – and again, we were the connector. We weren’t the apartment complex, but we were certainly helping them find that right place. But if they didn’t move into the right place, if they found out it was an hour commute from where they worked and they didn’t realize that, or if they moved into a place in Alpharetta and their friends were all in Buckhead and they didn’t realize it was a 45-minute drive, not 10 – all of these different things, they looked back and they were upset with us and the recommendations we made. And on the moving side, same thing. Again, it’s very stressful. If that moving truck doesn’t show up on time – think about all the things physically connected to moving your stuff. You’re trying to time everything out on a particular moving day. It could be hooking up utilities or having to be out of one place and into another. If something isn’t right and you realize that all of your possessions are now on an 18-foot U-Haul and that is broken down on the side of a road, it’s not good. So I think it’s understanding how important it is to take care of the customer and really understand what it is emotionally they’re going through when they’re finding a place to live, when they’re physically moving. At Beach.com, it was your vacation. Most people have two weeks a year, and that vacation is very important for them to recharge and connect with family or friends. It’s an important part of your life. If somehow I was part of an organization that screwed that up, it was on me, and it was something that I took very seriously. ROB: Definitely a lot at stake there. Steve, one thing I think you can shed particularly interesting light on is maybe your time at TCM. You have a unique perspective for a guest on this podcast. You’re kind of on the other side of the table from the marketing agency, so I think it would be interesting to explore TCM through the lens of what that brand–agency relationship can look like. STEVE: Sure. Absolutely, I’d love to do that. At TCM, we really looked at ourselves as part of the larger Warner Media portfolio. I think every brand looks at themselves as their own business, and we were certainly no different in that we had a very clear set of objectives and goals in terms of growing our brand to the audience, making sure that people not only tuned in and watched, but also couple participate in other ways if they didn’t have TCM on cable. Now there’s HBO Max and ways to watch, but also, there are a lot of other events and other enterprise businesses that TCM was a part of. Running all these events, I think some people from the outside may look at a company like Warner Media, AT&T being the parent, and say, “Oh, there’s got to be so many resources within the company that there wouldn’t be a need to tap into agencies.” That couldn’t be further from the reality. I’ve worked with agencies for a very long time; they bring unique talent to a company like Warner Media and particularly TCM. We would work with agencies for their expertise, for their efficiencies, and for them to help us execute the vision. They were a very important part of what we did. We had a couple of different ways we could structure relationships. Certainly, there were some contractors or freelancers that could come in for some very small projects or very specific projects that maybe had to do with production or one part of a creative execution. But for the most part, working with agencies was something that we did, and we worked with a couple of Atlanta agencies that really knocked it out of the park for us. On the TCM side, early on when I started, we had a product called FilmStruck, which was this amazing streaming service of independent, foreign, and arthouse films. It was the first streaming service that Turner had launched, and eventually it was shut down to make way for HBO Max. But as we launched it, we worked with Nebo here in Atlanta. This team really dove into that customer journey and what the needs were, really end-to-end, of generating subscriptions and long-term value from those users, and ways to distribute and share what we were offering and get it out there. Again, these were not things that internally we had access to. I think a lot of us had pieces of the puzzle in our backgrounds and we had some very good folks internally that had acquisition experience, subscription acquisition experience even. But tying it all together – if you think about every customer touchpoint from copy for the website, both the frontend and the backend, things like thank you emails, things like the weekly newsletters and drip campaigns to get people excited about new content and new programming coming, ways to reengage folks, knowing how much time they’re spending on the service and ways to get them excited about spending more time, sharing with friends, seasonal deals like “Hey, get this for someone for Mother’s or Father’s Day or a holiday subscription” – all of these different occasions to buy and reasons to stay are things that they helped us with in terms of those campaigns. ROB: How did you think about the agency selection process? Did you have a bake-off of some sort? Did you know what direction you were leaning? Because knowing the Turner/Warner Media ecosystem – I know local shops who have built web games for Falling Skies; I know global agencies on the PR side who’ve done analytics work for TBS and TNT. So you could really run the spectrum. How did you approach that selection process? STEVE: Right now – and this wasn’t available for a couple of years while I was there, but has come on – there’s now a database within Warner Media. Folks that work with agencies all around the country or international ones put in – it’s not a scoring process and you look for the 90s or above, but it’s more or less, “Hey, I had an experiential agency work on a large outdoor event with us. They did an amazing job. Here’s the contact information, here’s what they did, here are some pictures.” That exists now. So that’s certainly a tool that I think some folks at Warner Media are using. When we selected Nebo – and more recently 9Rooftops, which has a great office here in Atlanta, that did some great work for us as well – so much of it is word of mouth and being in the Atlanta community, being part of AMA. That’s exactly what I did. I reached out to a good friend of mine, Joe Koufman, at a company called Setup, and said to Joe, “Listen, I’m looking for an agency. This is what we need them to do. This is an outline of the project. What do you recommend?” He came back with three or four really strong recommendations, and that’s where I started. Then from that, we sat down with the agencies – and I’m not a fan of having agencies do work for free. I don’t think that’s right. I don’t think that’s a way to start the relationship. So we didn’t ask any agency to produce work; we really just had conversations with them to share ideas. We said, “Here’s what we’re looking to do. Come with some ideas.” Each of them got a time slot, and we, again, just had a conversation with them. For Turner Classic Movies – and I imagine this is the case with a lot of either networks or other brands – the number one thing that I look for in an agency is that they either already understand our business and who our customers are or have the capacity to understand that in a very short period of time. Certainly the agencies that I spoke with all got it. They came to the table with ideas around that. Now, they don’t know all of our business, and that’s completely to be expected. We didn’t expect anyone to understand some of the internal ways that we connect with our audience. Those are things that as soon as we awarded the business, very early on we sat down and shared that. It may have even been at a late stage pitch that we shared it. But we’re looking for an understanding of what we do and why we do it. If an agency gets that – because every agency we’re talking to already has the technical capabilities. There’s no doubt. There’s a ton of talent. But it’s a matter of, do you understand what we’re trying to do? And then really understanding the logistics of who’s going to be working on this and your process, the best way to establish how we communicate together, how we discuss the deliverables together, and who leads that on each side. ROB: That’s a great client-side perspective. The empathy required, the value of reputation, the value of community engagement. It’s so interesting. I’m in this mode now where people we’re talking about working with – people still want to get together for lunch. In spite of, and maybe especially because we’ve all been in our houses for the most part for the past year, people are like “Let’s catch lunch outdoors.” That’s in bounds for me right now; some people are holed up. But geography, it seems, is still going to matter quite a lot. At least people will say, “I want a company with a local presence.” Nobody really even knows what that means sometimes, but it’s what we want. STEVE: Again, there’s so much talent in Atlanta. I think looking outside of Atlanta in most cases is really not necessary. The talent is here. It is really nice to have face-to-face meetings. We all know they’ll be coming back. Even now, I’ve had several meetings outside at large picnic tables at a park or a restaurant with folks. That’s really how you get to connect with people you’re working with, especially on these types of relationships where it’s really important that everyone understands what the objectives are together. I’m just a believer in face-to-face when it comes to things like that. I know certainly working remote right now has worked for many people, and even if agencies are local, they may have folks on your account that are in other cities. We worked with a company and that was the case; someone happened to be very talented on the digital team that worked out of South Carolina. And that worked out fine as well, but it was still nice to be able to have some reviews together in person. Again, I’m such a believer in Atlanta being this epicenter of culture and talent and tech, and that’s who I want to work with. ROB: That’s something for us all to think about as we start to emerge. Steve, you had some thoughts on some key lessons you’ve learned along your journey as a leader, as a marketer, as an executive. What would you reflect on if you could talk to your younger self about what to think about as you develop? STEVE: [laughs] I don’t know where I’d start. That’s funny. I think looking back, Rob – and it’s such a great thing to do every once in a while, even if you’re not talking about it to other people, but just to reflect on things you’ve learned. I can think of several in particular, and a lot of them are coming out of the Beach.com experience I had, but I think some of these apply throughout my career. Certainly engaging with customers to understand what it is they want, how they want to receive your information, when they want to receive it – you remember the beginning of that whole integrated marketing push? That’s what people said integrated was. I think there’s a through-line to everything we do now. There are so many different ways to receive information, so many platforms. But at the end of the day, if you don’t understand what your customer wants and how they’re going to react to what you’re sharing with them, what that call to action is, then I think there’s always going to be a miss. That’s something I’ve learned that I took with me from those days on throughout the consulting and throughout my time understanding our audience at Turner Classic Movies and HBO Max. Next, I would say having someone that has either domain or IP expertise on your team or advising your team is so critical because again, that’s the type of experience – when I was at Beach, we really would’ve benefited from having someone in the travel and hospitality business being a close advisor to us. I think we all thought because we were customers, we knew what other customers wanted, but we weren’t seeing the big picture. I was just seeing it at the time for myself, married and two young kids, “This is how I vacation so everyone probably vacations like this. This is how we plan,” not knowing that that’s a very small segment of how it’s done. So I think having that advisor or having someone baked into the company that really understands – that domain expertise is critical. I would say probably the most important thing I’ve learned over time is just having a laser focus on what it is you’re working on and really understanding both the functional and the emotional priorities of the business. And that focus isn’t just for entrepreneurs; I think it’s just as important in mid-size and large multinational companies. It’s a challenge when you manage high-achieving and creative people. They always want to bring new ideas and new innovations to the table, and that’s a great thing. That’s what you look for as a leader. But I can’t tell you how many times I said to my manager at Turner, “Look, this is only going to take 5 minutes” when nothing takes 5 minutes. What a lot of people don’t realize, and it took a while for me to learn, is that it doesn’t just take time away from what you’re currently working on; there’s an opportunity cost as well when you try to veer off the course – even to do something that wasn’t necessarily in your plans, but eleventh hour, something popped up and you thought to yourself, “We should add this in.” Sometimes you need to make concessions and figure out a way to make it work, but I would say most of the time, all it’s going to do is create a distraction. It’s easy for that to happen. You could have marketing plans and then something like Clubhouse pops up and you’re like, “We need to be on Clubhouse. We should create a room and get some experts to join us and talk about our product or service.” That might be a great part of the strategy, but if that’s not what you were initially planning to do, then 9 times out of 10, it’s better to continue to focus on what it is you were doing and then work that in as your next objective. I think that focus – I had on a whiteboard in my office at Turner the word “focus” for all 4 years before we got shut down and everyone worked from home. The word “focus” was in my office, and I saw that word every single day. Of everything that was written and erased and written and erased on the whiteboard, that was the one consistent thing. Never erased it. That was my constant reminder that nothing takes 5 minutes and that you’ve got to really keep driving those clear objectives and deliverables and not create unnecessary distractions. ROB: Right. It’s such a good practice to, number one, not do something that’s going to blow up in your face, and number two, not discard the thing you’ve already been very intentional about putting together. Steve, we normally wrap these conversations with a couple of different questions. I think they tie together for you. Number one is typically “Where should people connect with you?”; number two is “What are you excited about that’s coming up marketing-wise?” I think you have those things linked together where we can get a much bigger dive into your mind and connect with you as well. STEVE: Sure. Again, this has been such a fun conversation. I would say in terms of the future and what I see, I don’t think marketers should be thinking about things ever going back to normal. I think how we play and consume media, entertainment, food, healthcare, all of this, this whole sense of community is being redefined in front of our eyes. It’s a generational opportunity that’s going to impact customer behaviors from now on. It’s not a trend; it’s really a seismic shift that’s going to resonate across the culture and economy and all of our personal and professional relationships. It opens up an opportunity to be more creative and more innovative than ever before, and I think there’s going to be some things we’ve done in the past that we’re going to have to decide to let go. Other things we’re going to hold on to. Those are some of the things that excite me right now. I do think as a society, we need to get a little bit higher up right now. I think we need to work on making people feel less isolated and part of a community. I don’t think that’s going to go away when people can start gathering in small groups. The pandemic has exposed a real ripple in people feeling alone, and that’s something that I think marketing can play a big role in: really helping people find their community or communities. Personally, I’ve had a lot of meaningful conversations since I left TCM and Warner Media, exploring high growth in entrepreneurial opportunities, looking to where I can create long-term value at scale and really do good. So that’s what’s on the horizon for me in terms of what I’m looking for. And then on the side, I started something really fun with my wife and some good friends of ours. We started an e-zine called The Fast Times. We always talk about how Generation X, which I’m a part of, sometimes gets the short end of the stick. We weren’t born with a cellphone in our hands, and we certainly didn’t save the world like the Greatest Generation. We just listened to really cool music and watched really fun movies and were latchkeys and came home to an empty house and made the microwave dinners and so forth. So we thought, what could we do to really have some fun with Gen X and the fringe on each side of younger Boomers or older Millennials? So we created this e-zine. We’re sending it out once a week, and then a special edition on Mondays. It’s taking a look at culture and how it intersects with both nostalgia from the ’80s and early ’90s and having this modern lens on things that are happening today. It’s kind of with this smart snark, I would call it. It’s the fun voice of the ’80s, voice of that Gen X. Lots of sections in it like “We Got the Beat” and “Channel Z” and “Parents Just Don’t Understand,” all very brand-driven throughout it. Ultimately, this may be a vehicle for sponsors and advertisers as our subscription base grows. But right now, we’re doing it – I love reading. I read probably at least an hour a day and love writing, and it’s a fun way to stay sharp and create something. Again, we’ll see where it goes. ROB: Congratulations on that launch. Where do we go to find that? STEVE: You can sign up for that at thefasttimes.net. Even the address is nostalgic, the .net. Go ahead and sign up and give it a shot. We also are having a little bit of fun on social platforms, on Instagram and Facebook and Twitter. We hope you like it. ROB: That’s excellent. Steve, thank you for coming on the podcast. Thank you for sharing. I certainly look forward to connecting back in person. I look forward to seeing what else you take on next. It seems like it’ll be a natural continuation of a really good story, so thank you for sharing with us. STEVE: Thanks again, Rob, for having me. As I said, I really believe you’re the epitome of this. Everything that people are reading about in terms of the surge in Atlanta, in the tech space, in the companies interested in coming to Atlanta, you’re the epitome of this. You started Converge bringing in outside investment and then growing it here in Atlanta and being part of the innovative labs and teams here. This is exactly what it’s all about and what everyone is hoping this unwritten story of Atlanta is, and you are a very early author of it. Thanks for having me. ROB: I appreciate that. You’re very kind. There is a lot of good stuff going on here in Atlanta, and we’ll keep on sharing it. Thanks so much for coming on, Steve. STEVE: Thank you. ROB: Take care. Bye. STEVE: Bye. ROB: Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

Amy Balliett is Founder and CEO at Killer Visual Strategies, an agency that specializes in visual communications design – creating such “products” as info and motion graphics, data visualizations, virtual reality, and interactive content. An Inc. 5000 company for four years in a row, Killer, now part of Material, has won over 30 excellence in visual communication awards. Clients include such Fortune 1000 companies as Amazon, Boeing, the Discovery Channel, Edwards Lifesciences Corporation, and Microsoft. In this interview, Amy talks about the “spammy” beginnings of infographics, when people slapped up on their websites images that had nothing to do with their brand.  She says, a high-quality infographic visually communicates significant meaning so efficiently and effectively that little text is required. Amy notes that around 10,000 infographics are released daily . . . and 99% fail. The 1% that succeed don’t use much text, use custom (as opposed to stock) illustrations, provide proper data visualization, and clearly show attention to detail and time put into the design. The agency’s services keep evolving to meet changing client needs. The biggest challenge is “to find that one illustration style that won’t go out of style.”  HubSpot reports that “91% of audiences prefer visual content as their primary, secondary, and tertiary form of information delivery.” A visual strategy would consider the first, second, and third pieces of content a prospective client might see going into a funnel. Amy says, “Content is king . . . visual content reigns supreme, and visual strategy is content strategy, just leveled up.” Amy recommends a 90-second “motion graphic” as the most important piece of visual strategy content a company might invest in now. That 90 seconds can be broken down into “dozens of visually designed scenes” that can be used on social media, stacked to create an infographic, or paginated to create an eBook. She notes that visual content has to be matched both to channels and to audiences.  Killer evolved over the years . . . through a pivot that exploded . . . first in a good way . . . and then not. Exhausted from the frenetic pace, the agency had never stopped to consider such core questions as: “What’s the type of client that we want? What’s the type of work we really want to do? What’s the type of person we want to be bringing on to our team? What are the values of this company that are going to drive these decisions?” Amy hired a business coach for herself and the team (probably the best decision she ever made) and an HR consultant to help establish policies. A new focus on building a values-driven culture and hiring and firing employees and clients based on these values changed “who we were, our level of productivity, and the clients we attracted . . . our revenue went up 50% in one year.” The agency’s values are simple: Keep Learning, Inspire Others, Lead by Example, Love What We Do, Embrace Change, and Respect Others. Amy can be found on LinkedIn at: Amy Balliett on Twitter @amyballiett. Her book, Killer Visual Strategies, available on Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/Killer-Visual-Strategies-Amy-Balliett/dp/1119680220), was recently awarded “one of the best marketing and sales books of 2020.” Transcript Follows: ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m your host, Rob Kischuk, and I am joined today by Amy Balliett, Founder and CEO at Killer Visual Strategies based in Seattle, Washington. Welcome to the podcast, Amy. AMY: Thank you so much for having me. ROB: It’s excellent to have you here. You have one of those excellent names for your firm that I think probably tells us what you do, but why don’t you tell us about Killer Visual Strategies and what the firm’s superpower really is?  AMY: Definitely. To tell you that, the best way to say it is our original name. Our original name was Killer Infographics, so even more focused on what we were doing. At the time, we really focused on developing high-quality infographics for marketing needs and things like that. Over the years, our services kept evolving based on the needs of our clients. But ultimately, everything still lives on the foundation of what we view as our superpower, which is visual communication design. A high-quality infographic is something that you don’t have to read; instead, you can look at it and cull important information from it without diving into paragraphs of text. So everything we do centers on that. It’s about graphically representing information to efficiently and effectively create meaning and using as little text as possible. That’s really what our superpower is. ROB: That’s interesting. As little text as possible. What do you recall in your own mind as the emergence of infographics? When did they start catching your eye? When did it become so obsessive for you that it seemed like the business? AMY: It’s so interesting, because infographics have a very rich history. The very first known infographic was the 1600s, although you could say cave paintings on walls were the first infographics. They’ve been around forever, but around 2008 they started to be used more regularly for SEO needs, for link-building and other forms of content marketing. I started to slowly get into them because I was heading up SEO at a company here in Seattle and really wanted to use them for the link-building value. But the company I was at never really wanted to use them. So, when I left to start my own company – which was actually a completely different business model than what Killer is today, and which had a bunch of different websites that I was marketing – I started creating infographics to do link-building for all of those websites. That was June of 2010. At that point, infographics were this big trending thing, and everybody was questioning how long that trend would last. Everybody really thought this was something that was going to be a one-and-done trend, and by 2011 we were going to move to something else for content and content marketing. So I got on it at a time that I thought was the very end of a trend. [laughs] And it turns out it was the very, very beginning. ROB: How has the use of infographics evolved? There was a point in time where it felt like a well-designed and executed infographic targeted at the right audience really extensively lived as a life of its own, but the fad didn’t end as a fad; it just integrated into the visual language of the internet. AMY: That’s exactly right. The thing is, at first infographics were so spammy. People would put out content that had nothing to do with their brand, nothing to do with their website. They just really wanted to put out something controversial that was driven by visuals because today’s audiences crave visual content. They were really trying to use infographics to hook somebody and get backlinks primarily. After that spammy part of the fad started to die down – which happened because Google kept changing their algorithm, and when Google did their Penguin and Panda updates back in 2010 and 2011, all of a sudden the big content farms that were really being fueled by infographics started disappearing from Google. As a result, infographics stopped being as spammy. The market stopped being flooded with these really spammy designs, and instead large brands started to take notice and said, “Oh wow, this is an amazing way to connect with my audience and really get them to understand our brand, our service, our products without having to give them a big long whitepaper.” The trend was moving away from whitepapers and moving more and more towards media as a form of entertainment and education in all forms. ROB: That’s a really fascinating evolution there. If we look at today, is there still that link-building aspect to it? Or is it more broadly about brand at this point, and about speaking to an audience coherently with your brand attached to it? AMY: It’s about speaking to your audience coherently with your brand attached to it. Links definitely come with infographics – not like they used to. In 2010, I put out some awful infographics because I was still learning, and they’d get thousands of backlinks. Anybody would celebrate anything with the word “infographic” attached to it, whereas today, we have far more discerning eyes. If you jump back to 2010 versus today in 2021, the fact is, media within the internet has evolved so much. There’s so much more of a wow factor in everything we see. That also has led to a heightened expectation for what a good infographic is. There’s still about 10,000 released a day, but 99% of them fail. The 1% of them that truly succeed are the ones that don’t use a lot of text, the ones that use entirely custom illustration, proper data visualization, and the ones that clearly show attention to detail and time put into the design. But if they’re slapped together, they’re using stock imagery, or if there are paragraphs of text next to a small illustration, things like that, they’re going to fail. People are still jumping on the bandwagon because they think they’re going to get a bunch of backlinks, but if they don’t actually execute them properly, they’re not going to get backlinks, and they might even hurt their brand on top of it. ROB: It’s good to know the danger there. In the evolution of your firm, you can see this evolution where the infographic is part of a broader visual strategy, probably with a much more expanded vocabulary. What are the elements you see now as the language of visual strategy as you think about it? AMY: It’s so interesting. There’s this really great stat from HubSpot that 91% of audiences prefer visual content as their primary, secondary, and tertiary form of information delivery. When we think about visual strategy today, we think about the top of the funnel and we say to ourselves, what’s the first, second, and third piece of content somebody’s going to see as they’re going into that funnel? Then we start to identify what channels those people are living on to deliver that content, and the channels and the audience define what type of content we choose to put out into the ether for the visual strategy of the brand. Sometimes it might be short form social media images with at most 6 words on them. Sometimes it’ll be a visually rich eBook where each page has at most 200 words. Other times it’s a motion graphic. I always say to anybody who’s thinking about getting into visual strategy for their own brands, the most important piece of content that you can invest in right now is a motion graphic. That’s going to give you so much to work with. It’s usually about 90 seconds. It should never be over 90 seconds. It’s usually about 90 seconds of content that breaks down into dozens of visually designed scenes that you can pull out and use on social media. You can stack the scenes up and create an infographic. You can paginate the scenes and create an eBook. You have so much more than just a motion graphic if you invest in one. You have dozens of other pieces of content you can produce out of it. It’s really about identifying the right content for the right channel for the right audience. I know that’s kind of the answer to all contact marketing, really, but with visual content there’s definitely different types of visual content that work on different channels. You really have to understand that landscape and choose what’s going to connect with that audience the best. ROB: Sure, and there’s a distinction in there. Much like the graduation from infographics to visual strategies, when you’re referring to a motion graphic, what I’m picturing is that explainer video, is what some people would call it. Some people would come to you saying they want an explainer video, but I think what you’re saying is that’s not really what they want. If they just got an explainer video that didn’t consider this trend that comes and goes online but is always true, this atomization of content where you can take something and pull it apart into individual pieces that are bite-size and put them lots of places – just asking for an explainer video doesn’t get you there. AMY: Exactly. Today’s marketers are using 12 to 14 types of visual content just to accomplish singular goals. It can never be one-and-done. You always have to consider all of the different ways you can use that content. You can create derivatives to develop even more campaigns and strategies around it. It is really content marketing. The concept that content is king, which comes from a Bill Gates article in 1999, is still true. Content is king. But visual content reigns supreme, and that’s really what we have to focus on when we think about visual strategy. It’s content strategy, just leveled up. ROB: Right. One thing I think about in this category that maybe isn’t thought of this way when it comes out is Mary Meeker annually puts out this internet trends deck at the turn of the year. Have you run into that before? AMY: Yes, definitely. ROB: It’s hundreds of pages, hundreds of slides in a PowerPoint deck. If you said, “Do you want a 200-slide deck from a venture capitalist?”, I don’t know if you do. But then you look at the pieces of it, and each slide – you know better than I do – seems like it has pretty good value. It seems like it tells a story as a whole, and it seems like it builds a brand for her in whichever firm she’s with. AMY: Exactly. That’s so spot-on. That’s the entire point. If that were 200 pages of paragraphs of content, do you think it would be given the same level of attention it gets today? Not even at all. Not close. ROB: Nobody anticipates that one. AMY: Exactly. ROB: Amy, you alluded a little bit to the journey, your own journey in starting the firm. It looks from your LinkedIn like, as you mentioned, you were working in SEO. You had a job. You had someone else who was responsible for your paycheck. What led you to turn that corner and go into this process of being responsible to kill what you wanted to eat and then to eventually be responsible for an ever-growing – or maybe not ever-growing, but in many cases a payroll of people who depend on you, and it’s a lot of responsibility? What caused that transition? AMY: It’s so odd because it’s hard for me to pinpoint an exact time. I owned my first company when I was 17. I actually owned an ice cream parlor and candy store in a summer vacation resort. It was open only during the summer, so it didn’t compete with school. That was my first foray into entrepreneurship – and I hated it, I’m going to be honest with you. I loved it and I hated it. I was working 80+ hours a week during my summer breaks my junior and senior year of high school. That gave me a sour taste in my mouth. But then about – jeez, I don’t know how long later; maybe it was about 6 years later – I came up with an idea for a social network. This was before Facebook had opened up to non-.edu email addresses. I didn’t even know that Facebook existed yet. I came up with this idea for a social network, but all I had was the idea. I could not execute on the idea because I had zero coding skills. At the time, I was a video editor; my degree is in film, so I was doing video editing and motion picture marketing and really couldn’t bring much to the table for this idea. I had my cousin join in on the idea, and he could bring everything to the table. He’s a full stack developer and the best designer I’ve ever met. So here’s this guy taking on the weight of the world, basically trying to make my idea come to fruition, and all I can do is try to market the idea, try to build a user base. It failed really quickly because you can’t just come to the table with an idea. You have to be able to execute on that idea. We got to a point after 6 months where it became clear that this was just way too much to put on one person. During that 6 months, I started to learn SEO and online marketing, so I decided to pivot my career into SEO and online marketing. In that part of my career, I learned web development as well. It really just came down to I had started to stack up a series of skills – nothing that I was fantastic at; everything I was good enough at. If you’re trying to be too many things at once, it’s like trying to learn 10 instruments at once. You’re never going to master one instrument. But I was good enough at enough skills. I was good enough at graphic design, good enough at animation, good enough at development that I was finally in a place where I felt like I could do all of this on my own. I had tested a few proofs of concept within the last company I worked at, really seeing if I could create new revenue streams for that company. Once I did, I realized, crud, I’m bringing in millions in revenue streams to this company; why can’t I do this for myself? You get to a point where you have the confidence in your career to take that chance, but I also got to the point where I had enough in savings to take that chance. I’m not going to lie, that was incredibly important to me. I think I would not have taken the risk at all if it weren’t for having a nice safety net of cash just in case everything failed.  ROB: Amy, a lot of people have that interesting stack of skills, but they may not recognize it. They may not know how to apply it. To your metaphor, they may still be trying to be the best at a particular instrument when it’s really the intersection of several skills that is where they can be truly unique in their world. How did you come to understand that concept of the stack of skills and see it in yourself?  AMY: It was really just every idea I came up with, I started to realize, “Crud, I need a designer for this, and I need somebody to develop this.” I just started thinking about all the things I needed for somebody to execute on the work. I’m a control freak. I really am. So I started to say, “I need to learn these things myself because I can’t really give away trust too easily and put that work on somebody else’s plate.” For me, that’s really what made me realize I needed that stack of skills: wanting to execute on so many ideas, but not having the capacity to do it myself. I’m really glad that over the years, I learned to release the reins, because every single employee I’ve hired is 20 times better than me at any one of those skills. And that’s really important. You always have to hire somebody who’s much better than you. But the fact that I’ve been able to play every single role in my company and that I have played every role, that I’ve sat in their shoes – it’s so much easier to manage everybody because I know what they’re going through. I know how long it would take me to do a task, so I can judge how long it would take somebody on my team to do that same task. I know what expectations to put in front of them, and I also know when to pull back and let them take the lead and run the show. ROB: Right on. I’ve certainly experienced, at least in my perception – and you never know whether you’re wrong in your perception at the top; it’s always worth questioning. But when I’m hiring people within my stack of skills, I feel like I can get to a decision faster, and I feel like I almost get to be the Pied Piper a little bit. There’s a sense of trust and safety that they may feel where they felt wary. I tend to hire software developers for a lot of what we do, and there’s almost an unspoken bond that moves quickly when you can send the right signals, I think.  AMY: That’s so, so true. That’s exactly how it’s always felt. I remember when we brought on our first developer to the team and I sat down with him and I was talking about a couple of lines of jQuery. He looked at me and said, “Wait, I haven’t had a boss who knows jQuery before.” It was just this weird “aha” moment. ROB: It’s such a good discussion, the skill stacking thing. I think I have often heard of it spoken of on – there’s a podcaster, James Altucher, and I think he talks about it a good bit. But I don’t know – have you had any good sources for these concepts? Because I think it’s underexplored, and maybe there’s a book or something that I’m less familiar with. AMY: I haven’t necessarily dove into any books related to this specific concept, no. It really has more come through networking with the right people, getting to know more people who have faced the same types of challenges, but also, again, surrounding myself with such a curious team, a team that will never rest on their laurels. One of our values at Killer is “keep learning,” and it’s probably the most embraced value in the company because everybody’s just trying to stay on top of trends and stay ahead of trends. I think that’s also a part of it. There’s a bit of a competitive attitude where all of us want to be in the know of what that next big thing is. ROB: It’s such an interesting through line. You mentioned that Google’s obviously changed algorithms, and it feels like they’re a lot closer to trying to provide the result you actually wanted. But there was an era of SEO that was very competitive; it was very much about tactics and how ethical those tactics were. Kind of secret knowledge. But some of that transitions well, probably, into process around visual strategy. There is always something to learn. There is always a new cutting-edge frontline of what’s working and what’s not. You have to keep learning, just like you did in SEO. AMY: Exactly. It’s so true. What’s interesting is with SEO, you’re trying to game Google’s algorithm, for lack of a better phrase. It is really what you try to do in a lot of ways, whereas with visual strategy, you’re trying to consider so many disparate audiences. What’s going to trend for one audience isn’t going to trend for another audience. There’s not one universal algorithm to break. Instead, it’s really identifying all of the different aesthetic directions that could impact Audience A over Audience B over Audience C and so on. ROB: It’s an infinite game, too. You can’t just go for the moment. You could position the whole thing as being there to hack the human brain, but in the context of a brand, you also have to consider how people feel afterwards and in the long run. It’s not a short game. It’s not “look at this graphic,” right? AMY: Exactly. And you also have to consider the timeline of that campaign, because sometimes we’ll have a client where they want a visual language and aesthetic look and feel to uplevel their brand, but something that’s going to last for decades to come. That’s a whole other feat to accomplish, trying to find that one illustration style that won’t go out of style. That’s been an interesting experience. ROB: Absolutely. Amy, as you reflect on building Killer Visual Strategies, what are some things that you’ve learned along the way that you might do a little bit differently if you were starting from scratch? AMY: The biggest thing I’ve learned is about being proactive versus reactive. Killer was a pivot from a completely different business model, and because it was a pivot, we didn’t spend a lot of time thinking proactively about what we wanted the business to be. Instead, we just lived in a reactive state for about 3 years. We basically went from our very first quarter of work being 14 orders to the first month in our second quarter being 40 orders, and it just kept going up and up and up and up. The first 3 years or so, we were just so exhausted by reacting to the demand that we didn’t take the time to say, “What’s the type of client that we want? What’s the type of work we really want to do? What’s the type of person we want to be bringing on to our team? What are the values of this company that are going to drive these decisions?” All of those things that seem corny initially – when you’re an entrepreneur and you want to start a company, the last thing you say is, “What are the values going to be of my company?” It’s rarely something an entrepreneur does first. But had we done that first, I think we would have grown faster and even more intentionally than we did. Our first 5 years felt like a wild, wild west, and we had a culture inflection point at Year 5 where, honestly, almost everything exploded. And almost everything exploded because we were not a values-driven company. We had a great team; we knew we wanted to go out and get a beer with everybody, but we didn’t all approach conflict in the same way. When you have a values-driven company, you have a set of guidelines with which to attack conflict together as a team, but we didn’t have that. Nobody really knew what our values were, even though they spelled out the word “KILLER.” So we had to reset and focus on building a values-driven culture, hiring and firing by our values and hiring and firing clients by our values as well. That drastically changed who we were. It also drastically changed our level of productivity, the types of clients we attracted – I mean, our very first year of really paying attention to that, our revenue went up 50% in one year. So there’s more than just the corny feelings that you get with coming up with your mission, vision, and values. When you actually truly embrace those and live those and lead by those, you’ll see a team that is so much more inspired, so much more willing to take on the hardest challenges with you. You can really grow your company by leaps and bounds when you do that. That’s the biggest lesson I’ve learned. ROB: Was it the explosion that pushed you to this realization of the need, or was there another catalyst in your life? AMY: It was the explosion, it really was. And that explosion was such a slow burn. That powder keg – we knew it was going to explode at some point, but we were still being so reactive that there wasn’t time to pay attention to it. By the time it happened – we actually joke in the company and we call it “emailgate” because it all started from an email. [laughs] But we brought in the right people at that point. I hired a business coach to come in and coach myself, coach my leadership, and coach the team as a whole. I hired a really good HR consultant to come in and do the exact same thing, to really help us build the right policies in that arena. By bringing on the right experts, I was really, really lucky. I was also somebody who kept saying, “Why do I need a coach? I don’t need a coach! This isn’t a sports team!” [laughs] It turned out that having a business coach was probably the best investment I have ever made, and I know my team feels that way too, because they saw me change as a result of having somebody really help me look at problems differently and react to critiques from the team differently. When you’re a business owner and you’re at the very top, it is extremely lonely. And when you’re in a creative firm where everybody is really emotionally driven – because to be creative, you have to bring emotion into your work. When you’re that passionate – that’s what I mean by emotionally driven – you’re going to be passionate about what’s working and what’s not in the company, and you’re going to be very vocal about that. I used to take that as such an affront to me. I would get offended by really positive critiques, people coming to me with good ideas, and maybe I would just look at it as them critiquing me instead of an opportunity to improve in the company. So having a coach really helped me look at that very differently and embrace the amazing feedback of my team. ROB: I think it’s so helpful for you to share that, Amy. The perception people have is – in some cases it’s true that a cheesy coach is cheesy and cheesy values are cheesy. Sometimes I feel like I can sound a little bit needy in the course of a conversation because I will tell people about my coach and my therapist and my entrepreneurial support group. But I think we just need to talk about it. For me, those things are all healthy, but maybe there’s sort of the cult of the CEO, where we feel like we need to have all the answers. AMY: Yes, that’s exactly it. You get imposter syndrome when you don’t necessarily have the right answers. I also have an entrepreneurial support group, and that has been immensely helpful for me. Just talking to other business owners – they don’t have to be in your same industry – and realizing, “Oh, hey, these problems exist across all businesses, not just a creative content agency, or not just a mom and pop shop down the street.” There’s very similar problems that exist across any culture, across any work environment, and when you can get other business owners to tell you what they’ve gone through and game a solution together, it is so much better than just being in your own silo, trying to figure it out yourself. ROB: Such a healthy conversation, Amy. You’ve really shared the journey and shared the experience. When people want to connect with you and when they want to connect with Killer Visual Strategies, where should they look you up? AMY: You can find me on LinkedIn. I’m very active on LinkedIn. Just Amy Balliett on LinkedIn. You can find me on Twitter @amyballiett, although I’m not nearly as active as I should be on Twitter. Then you can also check out my book, which is Killer Visual Strategies, on Amazon. It was just awarded one of the best marketing and sales books of 2020. ROB: Congratulations. I think we all needed a nice visual book along those lines in 2020 – something to think about aspirationally and not just looking into our own basements. AMY: Right? That’s so true. Oh my gosh. Good old 2020. [laughs] ROB: Yeah. Hope is on the way. I’m tremendously hopeful for the year, and I think probably you’re very similarly positioned with your positioning and with what people are about to need to do with you as a partner. AMY: Yeah, definitely. I’m very excited for what 2021 has in store for us. ROB: Excellent. Amy, I wish you the best. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I encourage everyone to look Amy up, look up her book, and I would imagine that Killer Visual Strategies probably has a solid couple of social feeds to pay attention to as well. AMY: Definitely. Thank you so much, Rob. I really appreciate it. ROB: Thank you, Amy. Be well. Bye. AMY: You too. ROB: Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

Lewis Williams is Chief Creative Officer at Burrell Communications, an African-American-focused, female-owned agency that started 50 years ago to address the interests of Black consumers. Historically, African-Americans often have not been portrayed favorably in the media. Burrell focuses on depicting African-Americans in a positive, realistic way. The very first national-scale client? McDonalds. Other big-name organizations the agency has worked with include Toyota, Walmart, Proctor & Gamble, Google, Major League Baseball and Coca-Cola. Majority-owned by Fay Ferguson and McGhee Williams-Osse, Burrell Communications maintains a strong partnership and affiliation with Publicis . . . and shares clients with other Publicis Groupe agencies. The agency maintains its independence, but the association with Publicis provides synergistic backup and resources. Early in his career, Lewis was often the only person of color in an agency. After working five years at Burrell, he left to pursue other opportunities at some large, high-profile agencies. Twenty years later, Fay and McGhee contacted him and offered him his current position as Burrell’s Chief Creative Officer. Like many employees at this agency, Lewis was a “boomerang” -- working for Burrell . . . leaving . . . and then coming back. He credits his success to having great mentors, “following the green lights,” and the chip-on-his-shoulder, I’ll-prove-I-can-do-it attitude that came from being an African-American raised in the South. Lewis has seen a lot of change. In 1971, brands were afraid to feature Black people in their marketing: “other” people might assume that the product was just for Black people. Early MTV required Black artists “to have a white person in the video.” Back then, there were a few who understood that consumers came in “all different shapes, sizes, and colors” and the issue was not about race . . . it was about reaching out to untapped audiences.  The one thing that will never change in marketing, Lewis says, is “telling great stories.” Story length varies, depending on platform – from as little as two words in a tweet, six seconds on Instagram, on up to a story line running though such an epic series as Game of Thrones. Lewis reminds us, “Every platform has a personality and expectations.” In this interview, Lewis explains why advertisers use the abbreviated, frustrating, 15-second version of an engaging 30-second spot . . . it’s not just about media spend . . . it is also because that 15-second, less-complete story, like a film trailer, leaves you “wanting more.” Lewis has a passion for mentoring “young creatives and young people in the business.” The agency is working with The One Club for Creativity, “an international nonprofit organization seeking to inspire, encourage, and develop creative excellence in advertising and design,” and Oriel Davis, Spotify Creative Director, on a project to provide advertising training to young people. The first session was presented six months ago in New York and LA. The most recent session will involve 15 students in Chicago and 15 in Atlanta. Lewis is also serving on the public relations judging panel for the Clio awards. Lewis can be reached on his agency’s website at: burrell.com, on LinkedIn as Lewis Williams, on Twitter, at @willmsl, and as Lewis Williams on LinkedIn. Transcript Follows: ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m your host, Rob Kischuk, and I am joined today by Lewis Williams, Chief Creative Officer at Burrell Communications based in Chicago, Illinois. Welcome to the podcast, Lewis. LEWIS: Hey, Rob. Thank you for having me. ROB: It’s great to have you here. Why don’t you start off by telling us about Burrell and about the agency’s superpower? Where do you all thrive? LEWIS: What’s really great about Burrell Communications, first and foremost, we are celebrating our 50th anniversary of being in business. When you think about being an African-American-focused agency – for any agency, any business, to be alive and well right now for 50 years says a lot about us. We were started in 1971 by our founder, named Thomas Burrell. He saw a need that African-Americans were being left out of the marketing conversation for big brands. So he started an agency to represent the Black consumer. Our philosophy is positive realism; we always want to depict African-Americans in a positive way in media, because so often in media, African-Americans were not portrayed in the best light. ROB: Absolutely understood. If you look at where the firm is today, what sorts of clients are typical for you? What does the typical engagement look like? LEWIS: It’s really great. We have national clients. Started back in 1971. McDonald’s was the very first client of the agency, and I’m proud to say they still are a client today. We’ve had them for 50 years. We have national clients; we have Toyota, we have Walmart, we have a lot of Procter & Gamble business. We really have mainstay clients. We’ve done work for people like Google, Major League Baseball. Coca-Cola is one of our present-day clients that we’ve had. As you can see, we’ve had really big-name brands. ROB: It’s quite an impressive client roster. You yourself have been with the firm, it looks like, around 15 years. How did you end up at the firm and how has that journey with the firm emerged over time? LEWIS: It’s an interesting story. We call ourselves boomerangs. That’s an employee that was at Burrell, went away, and then came back. I’m a Burrell boomerang. I worked at Burrell for 5 years much, much earlier in my career. Had you told me that I would come back to be the Chief Creative Officer, I would’ve thrown my shoe at you. It’s interesting; Tom Burrell himself, the founder, hired me. I worked there for 5 years, I went to other agencies – mainly Leo Burnett, which is a big one in Chicago. I was gone a good 15 years, and I got a call from Fay Ferguson and McGhee Williams-Osse – and I’m proud to say we are female-owned. Not only a Black agency, we’re female-owned. I got a call after I’d been away from the agency for 20 years or so – not to date myself – and they said, “Hey, Lewis, we’re looking for someone to lead the agency.” That was really special to me. You get hired by the founder, and one day you’re sitting in his shoes. Because Tom was a creative himself. He wasn’t an account guy. So I really looked at, wow, I’m going to step into the shoes of this advertising legend. Tom Burrell, again, he’s in the advertising hall of fame. It was just a great honor to have a career that comes full circle and sit in the seat that I’m in today. ROB: That’s certainly a privilege. You’re unique in being a sizable agency of consequence, of lasting beyond the founder, and then also, as I understand it, still remaining I think independent. Is that right? LEWIS: Yes. We do have a relationship with Publicis, but we’re the majority stakeholders. Fay and McGhee are the majority stakeholders. They have a very strong partnership and affiliation with Publicis. So we have strong backup and resources. We do a lot of work with the other Publicis agencies. We share some of the same clients. It’s good synergy at work with Publicis and Burrell. ROB: That’s very interesting. I would imagine that you have probably seen an offer or two cross your desk in your time there to become fully part of someone. I’m sure there’s an intentionality in staying independent, because it would be very easy just to say yes to a check. LEWIS: Yeah, you can see a lot of the big agency brands – I worked at Leo Burnett, and Leo Burnett was a huge, huge independent agency. So was Fallon. This is not pushing anything against the big conglomerates and everything, the holding groups, the holding companies, but you do lose a little personality. You lose a little bit of that individuality and culture. When you think about that, this way we really can represent ourselves and in the community that we represent. Once you get totally acquired by a holding company, it’s just a different game at that time. You’ve got to fit into an overall much bigger picture, and you’ve got the limitations and the decisions. You’re going to have to go through a lot more hoops. Even though those decisions may be beneficial to the entire group, it may not be the best decision for you. I applaud us being able to hold onto our independence. But even now, with a great affiliation with Publicis Groupe, they have been a great partner in helping us attain some of the success we’ve been enjoying. So I think right now it’s having our cake and eating it too. [laughs] ROB: You mentioned having boomeranged almost from a different era of advertising. When I see “Communications” in the title of a firm, a lot of times that also hearkens to an origin in a lens of public relations, but then also through advertising. Now the world is very, very different in terms of the marketing mix. How have you seen the mix of services evolve at Burrell over your first tenure, your second tenure, and so on? LEWIS: I’ll tell you, Rob, you’re right. It is such a different industry. It is an entire different industry. One of the things I love is to mentor young creatives and young people in the business, and that’s what’s kept me excited. This is no longer the industry I started in. It’s an entirely different industry. Like you said, communications comes in so many forms – even to the point where you look at advertising agencies and marketing people – we used to always push things on you. “You’ve got to watch this commercial. I don’t care.” But now, in this digital and social world we’re in, and this on-demand world that we are, and the streaming and all of those things, everyone is a marketer. The influencers now. Creativity is coming from everywhere. It’s just such a unique time to be in this “industry” – and I put quotes around “industry” because what is it now? It’s a little bit of everything. All the lines are blurred, from the content makers, and even when you talked about public relations. You see the work I’m judging for the Clios right now. I’m on the judging panel for public relations. I mean, they’re marketers. No longer are PR companies about, “The CEO said something wrong, so we need to fix it with a letter, with a press conference.” No, that’s gone away. Everyone is touching the consumer in so many unique ways where you can’t tell “what is what” now. ROB: Absolutely. The distinction between ad, print, digital – it certainly mixes together. LEWIS: Yeah. ROB: As the Chief Creative Officer, how has your creative process shifted? People don’t think about it, but 15 years is right on the edge of pre- or barely social media. LEWIS: Yeah. How old is the iPhone now? The iPhone might be 14 years old. It’s so funny, Rob – you know how you keep your old cellphones, because what do you do with them? I have my very first iPhone. It’s this little bitty thing. It looks archaic. I remember seeing the iPhone for the first time, and it’s like, oh my God, wow, we’ve gone to Mars. Now I look at my first iPhone 1 and I chuckle. [laughs] ROB: So how has the creative process shifted with these different devices, with different audiences, with different audiences on different devices? Your audience for the iPhone in 2007 was different from the audience today, which is like everybody. Every age group, every demo is in the iPhone audience now. LEWIS: This is how I approach it, Rob. At the end of the day, one thing that’s going to never, ever change is telling great stories. Telling stories that are relatable. You tell a great story, it will engage people. Now, the thing is the length of those stories. Who would’ve ever thought – and I couldn’t have told you 15 years ago – that I’d be able to create a story from beginning to middle to end in 6 seconds? A lot has to do now with our attention span and how we consume content. I remember Game of Thrones. I don’t know if you were a Game of Thrones guy. ROB: I definitely watched some Game of Thrones. LEWIS: That was a whole thing on social media. You could only engage people for 2 or 3 seconds. But now, you can see what the event of Game of Thrones became. It became appointment television. It became hours on hours of content in the midst of where sometimes you could hold somebody for 2 seconds. That just shows you the power of the storyline. So what I tell my young creatives and all of us: it really is about the story. The story could be a tweet. Popeye’s Chicken exploded with one tweet, and it was two words: “…y’all good?” That was a response in a tweet. So you can go to two words in a tweet, you can go to 6 second videos on Instagram, or you can go to a whole series like Game of Thrones. But at the core of that is: what is your engaging story and how is it connecting to the brand or the message you’re trying to give? At the end of that, throw all that away. There’s so many ways to tell that story, you have to be aware of the medium that you’re telling that story in. Every platform has a personality and expectations. If you’re going to tweet something, you’ve got to put on your tweeting storytelling hat. If I’m going to Instagram it, I’ve got to put on my more visual storytelling hat. If I’m going to Facebook it, I’m thinking about more communities. Television, a lot is still served in the same way, but a lot of this social influence is finding its way into television as well and how you tell those stories. You see it a lot with user-generated content on YouTube. So many brands. You see something went viral on YouTube; you see that clip in a brand commercial during the Super Bowl. All of this stuff is coming together, but at the very core of everything is storytelling and how that storytelling matches the platform. ROB: That “…y’all good?” – it’s such a concise example. It’s like the “Jesus wept” of advertising. LEWIS: [laughs] Yeah. ROB: “What do you mean, Jesus wept? Tell me the story here, man.” [laughs] Did you have any involvement in that Popeye’s campaign, or did you have clients looking at that and how to respond? How did you react when you saw that, or perhaps were involved in it? LEWIS: I want to make it very clear, I was not involved in it. But it’s something which you see and you say, absolute brilliance. ROB: McDonald’s had to start thinking about it. They’re getting to it, right? LEWIS: Yeah, they’re getting to it. What you saw was the personality of a brand on Twitter. Social media has been very difficult for brands to navigate because social media is for us. It’s not for brands. You controlled us with making us look at TV commercials and stuff, but now this is ours. I’m following my people, I’m following my friends, I’m following my influencers, and I’m following the brands I believe in. So when you come into my space, you’ve got to really understand who I am and what I’m about. A lot of brands still go into social media with brand voice, like here’s Mommy and Daddy telling us what we think and always pushing themselves first. What Popeye’s was able to do was create a personality and become a person. How many brands would say “y’all”? It took on the persona of a person, so it gets much more easily embraced. Many brands still struggle with their voice in social media. How do I still be a brand, but at the same time be very relatable to my consumer? That’s a tough line to walk. ROB: It’s absolutely tough. I’m thinking of one of the ads of the moment – and of course, the insurance companies always get deep into this world. I think what people tend to forget is they take a lot of shots on goal. They just happen to have enough budget that they can take a lot of shots with big ads. Maybe other brands need to think more about how they can take more shots at success with smaller ads. But I think the ad of the moment that I think is even cheated by shortening is, of course, the Geico Tag Team TV ad. The 30 second version, there’s an element of storytelling there. And I will tell you – and this may just be me – when I see the 15 second version of the ad, I feel cheated. I don’t know. LEWIS: [laughs] Rob, the reason why you feel cheated is because you love it, and you know there’s more. It’s like, “Wow, I want that experience.” The 30 second spot allowed you to enjoy and engage, and you really were into it. I smile every time I see it. Every time I see it, I smile. I love it. I don’t look away. It’s so engaging. When you only get a taste of that, you know there’s more and you want more. But that’s good, because now I’ve got you still wanting more. It’s like, come off the stage with them wanting more, not saying, “Okay, we’re finished with you.” But also, that 15 seconds has a purpose. It’s just a reminder. You’ve got to fit into the media budget. You’ve got to make the media expand. I’ll hit you with the 30 every once in a while, and then it’s sort of like the preview. It’s the trailer for the movie. You see the trailer for the movie and you go, “Wow, I want to see that movie again.” It just reminds you that the other content is out there, that you can go on YouTube and watch it as many times as you like, if you want to. That’s the purpose of the 15. But that’s a great way of telling you, when you really tell the story on that platform, and it’s 30 seconds in a world where people tell you they only look at it for 2 seconds, it just reenergized Tag Team’s career. People fell in love with nostalgia again and the music and so many things. It’s so clever, the generations. It says so many things in that story. ROB: Lewis, you’ve kind of blown my mind with the 15 second ad insights on that, because you’ve left me thinking about film trailers and how some of them just try to be a bad summary of the story and some of them work harder to get you to want to see the rest of the story. Now I’m thinking about all of the ways that the 15 second cut of that Geico ad is just meant to leave me wanting more. I haven’t thought about it that way, and I’ll watch every 15 second ad through a different lens now. LEWIS: Yeah. It has to do with media spend. 30 seconds costs more than 15 seconds. I’ve got two dollars, I’ve got to stretch it for as much reach as I possibly can. ROB: Got it. I’ve seen at least a good article or two out there about the production of that ad, about the creative process, about giving room for ad lib and free flow, and even the career decisions around it that Tag Team made, of the ads they didn’t do. They didn’t do the “Soup! There it is” advertisement that they could’ve done. It would’ve been very natural coming off of the SNL Justin Timberlake skit (while we’re tagging all over the media map here for a moment). Lewis, when you reflect on your journey, your career so far, and your time in particular with Burrell, what are some lessons you’ve learned that you might consider taking the time machine back and giving yourself some advice on what to do differently? LEWIS: I tell you, man, Rob, I don’t know what to do differently. Some of that is personal or not. One of the unique perspectives I do have on this industry is that I am an African-American creative. That’s been tough, being in this industry. There’s a lot of movement to rectify that, not only with African-Americans, but women and all minorities and people of color in the advertising industry. That’s always been tough to navigate. As far as doing things differently, just on the personal side, I wish I’d had someone to help me navigate a little bit more. One of the challenges of being in these situations is often, especially early in my career, I was the only person of color in the entire agency. But from that, you do learn a lot. You learn how to interact with people that are different from you. You learn how to not lose your culture. I think I navigated that pretty well, because being from the South, I could navigate being the only African-American in the room and not losing who you are. Personally, there’s maybe speaking up quicker. I had this fear of losing my job if I actually said exactly what I meant. That came with experience, that came with confidence, and it came with success. You get that behind you, and then you can speak a little louder because people really want to know what you want to say. But my whole thing I say for anybody is, there’s talent and there’s work ethic. They need each other. They really do need each other, because I’ve run into a lot of talented people without the work ethic, and I’ve worked alongside people with stronger work ethic but who lacked the talent. It really takes both. Both can take you so far, but until they really meld together, that’s when bigger success happens. For me, I had one of those lives that I followed the green lights. I didn’t go against something. If it was a red light, I didn’t try to force it. I just followed the green lights – and I had help. I had people that believed in me. I had mentors. I like to feel like I deserved the mentorship. Somebody looked at this kid and thought, “Wow, if I can help this kid out, I can take credit myself.” [laughs] That sticks with me. And I’ve always had an underdog mentality. First, being Black coming out of the South, being Black working at predominantly white agencies. Even working at Burrell, a Black agency, it still is a resource struggle. But when you’re an underdog, Rob, you get a chip on your shoulder. You just want to prove everybody wrong and make them eat their words. Whatever they were thinking, I want them to eat it. [laughs] ROB: Probably quite a privilege for you now, where you are – you certainly probably don’t know everything, but you know enough to help some other folks that are coming along. One thing I wonder, coming from the other side of the table, if I’m just freelancing a little bit on the history of the agency, I would imagine early on, a lot of folks were engaging you, saying, “Can you help us speak to your audience?” Was that the earlier era? LEWIS: Yeah, and it’s interesting how it’s changed. It’s sort of like here we are, back again. In 1971, a lot of brands were simply afraid of featuring Black people in their marketing efforts. That’s why we give huge kudos to McDonald’s. They were one of the very first people to actually show Black people in national ads. At that time – you’ve got to think about back in the ’70s – people were concerned, “Am I only saying that this is for Black people? I don’t want to piss off other people.” Things like that. You’ve got to think about that. So that’s very different. But fast forward now and what’s going on contextually in the country now, you’re seeing people of color everywhere push for that. That’s been a very interesting thing from then to now. But there was a time that brands were afraid. They just didn’t believe in it. But at the same time, you had people in the ’70s that felt that it should be done, but it wasn’t social pressure. They just understood that, listen, these are consumers. We’re consumers, and we come in all different shapes, sizes, and colors. They didn’t look at it from race. They’re like, “Here’s a consumer that we’re not talking to.” I remember early on this whole stigma around women buying cars, that women were intimidated, and if a woman wanted to buy a car, she should bring a man with her, because “what did women know about cars?” I remember Subaru was one of the first commercials that had this young lady come into a dealership, and this dealer was talking to her like, “Oh honey, you don’t need to know nothing about that engine. Here’s this vanity mirror. It comes with a vanity mirror. That’s all you need to know.” And she walked out and she went to a Subaru dealer, and he treated her entirely different. It showed women are customers too. The same thing with beer commercials. I worked on Budweiser, and I’ll tell you, back in the day, if you were a woman in a beer commercial, you had on a swimsuit or you’re a Bilbo. Now I saw this beer commercial where the woman comes home and takes off her bra to have a beer. You’ve got to understand consumers. It’s really about marketing and making your brand engage with more customers, which takes you to the bottom line. Real quickly, I remember how things changed. MTV – I don’t know if you recall MTV – was very forward-thinking. But if you were a Black artist, you had to have a white person in the video. I laugh about – go to LL Cool J’s “Around the Way Girl” music video, and you have this white girl dancing. First of all, you’re talking about an around the way girl. “Bad attitude and a Fendi bag.” You go, why is a white girl in an around the way girl… [laughs] ROB: I remember that. LEWIS: It’s like, what is she doing there? But MTV said, “Unless you have a white person in your music videos, we will not air you.” It shows you how things have changed. ROB: Right. One thing I think a lot about in this sort of conversation, part of my imagination is – we’ve talked to niche agencies, cultural agencies, but some of these agencies, and I’m sure you all in particular – it’s unqualified. You’re getting the national campaign. What I think about, sitting on the other side of the table – you mentioned on your journey thinking about what you say; how do I think about freeing people up and creating enough room around the table for everyone to bring their whole selves to the ideas, and not cutting off the conversation way too early? Because even letting people go out of bounds I think is how you get to where you’re going to go in bounds. If you’re not even bringing your full self to the table, much less going out of bounds for yourself, you can’t get to the best ideas. LEWIS: Rob, you’re right. I call it stretching the rubber band. You’ve got to stretch that rubber band to know where you are. It’s uncharted territory. You take these elements and you put them together. But you’ve got to know what’s on the other side of the mountain because it does a couple of things. Do you need to go there? Does it reinforce your position that you are in, or tell you where you need to go? And you may not use that information right now because it may not be the right time. But you might use it next week or next year or 6 months from now. It just lets you know. Creatively, you would think that we should always keep that open as creatives. But sometimes as creatives, we become by nature very protective of our own ideas, or we get there and we stop. We get to a certain level. That’s what I love about how the industry has changed. I give myself credit because I’ve been able to adjust. Some of us have just become stuck, and you stay there. It’s like a musician whose music couldn’t evolve or change. But if I’m a musician, I still have my unique sound behind how I’m able to change with the instrumentation or my message with the lyrics or things like that. But unfortunately, as creatives sometimes we get stuck and we just stay there. ROB: We just play the hits, right? LEWIS: Yeah, just play the hits. But to your point, you stretch that rubber band till it almost pops. You know, Rob, sometimes it might just break on you. That’s okay. That’s all right because you know you got everything out of it. It’s interesting, too, this whole pandemic world. It has us doing things that we would not be doing as an industry. All of us, the whole country, are doing things that we could’ve been doing; the technology was there for us to do it, but we just didn’t do it because we didn’t want to explore. This forced us to do things we never thought about that were always there for us to do. ROB: That’s right. We did a 50-day road trip vacation last summer from Atlanta to Utah and back in the middle of a pandemic. It was Zoom and it was phones and it was all that, but it was there for me 5 years before. LEWIS: It was, right. Exactly. Now we’re going to have family reunions and nobody will have to travel. [laughs] We had a little family thing, about 20 of us on the phone together. We’ve never been together, but like you said, the technology was there. It was great to see the kids come in, all over the country, at one time. It was just a Zoom call for an hour. It was great. ROB: Lewis, this has been a distinct privilege. I’m glad to talk to someone with your perspective and experience and, let’s really note, runaway success. When people want to connect with you and with Burrell, where should they go to find you? LEWIS: The agency is simply burrell.com. There’s contact information and you’ll see some of the work we’ve done. Me personally, I’m on LinkedIn, Lewis Williams. On Twitter, I’m @willmsl. LinkedIn, just Lewis Williams, you can get me personally. I like to engage with, like I said, mentorship. Right now we’re working with The One Club, which is in New York, and we have a skill for young people who can’t afford to go to the very expensive advertising schools. We’re starting that in about two weeks. We have about 15 students in Chicago and 15 students in Atlanta. Oriel Davis, CD at Spotify, put this together. 6 months ago they had New York and LA, and now they’ve extended to Chicago and Atlanta. If I can be of any help, I’m always there. ROB: That’s wonderful. I think anyone should definitely avail themselves of that opportunity. You’ve followed a great path for people to learn from. Lewis, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Although we can do all this stuff over Zoom, we’ll also do stuff in person sometime, I think. I’m going to get on an airplane at some point and see some people face to face as well. LEWIS: All right, Rob. Thanks for inviting me. I enjoyed talking with you. Have a good time on the golf course, man. ROB: Thank you. Be well. LEWIS: Be well. ROB: Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

Esther Raphael is Marketing Officer at Intersection, an out-of-home media and technology company that uses proprietary technology to electronically paint its client’s stories on busses and city, transit system, airport, and interior and exterior “destination” walls around the country . . . anywhere outside the home where brands can deliver content, information, and wayfinding to consumers as “they journey through cities.” Intersection’s technology supports dynamic program execution and unique campaign flexibility. A Harris Poll survey reported that 69% of urban consumers are noticing “out-of-home” now more than they were pre-pandemic.  Headquartered in NYC, the agency has offices around the country, so the six-year-old agency has always had a bit of “remote” about it.  Esther was on this year’s South by Southwest panel discussing “When ‘Go Away’ Is a Powerful Brand Message.” The agency partners with Foursquare and uses that platform’s aggregated location data to display hourly traffic levels in vicinity grocery stores and pharmacies – optimizing safety by providing consumers with information on the best times to shop to avoid crowds. Intersection also partners with Foursquare on content – showing client ROI and tracking opt-in user experience data.  Intersection is best known for “Link NYC,” a product which provides “localized messaging, transit and community information, and creative partnerships with local nonprofits and institutions. Consumers have come to rely on the wealth of curated advertising and editorial content displayed on Intersection’s screens as a source of information as they travel around the city. Just as on other media platforms, advertising partners with content. “We don’t have any billboards,” Rachel says.  “We are focused on being alongside a person while they’re walking around the city.” Intersection started its first branding campaign, “Go There,” in spring of 2020, which has been “taking off” this spring. Initially, Go There was about “those first places you would visit when they opened in spring of 2020” and thinking about that feeling. The meaning has expanded to include “the places Intersection can take a brand to” . . . but also to “do something you have never done before.”  Esther says that out-of-home creative can be powerful and drive results. It can also drive “social media interaction and engagement” because of its large and unique canvas. She says, if you only deploy a mobile/desktop strategy, “you’re missing people when they’re (outside) feeling joy.” Intersection just launched its first in-house creative agency, Creative Lab, to help small- to medium-sized businesses understand out-of-home marketing campaigns. Esther can be reached on her agency’s website at: https://www.intersection.com/ Transcript Follows: ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m your host, Rob Kischuk, and we are diving into our annual South by Southwest series. Of course, South by was virtual this year, so we are virtual. We can’t wait to be back next year at the lounge at the Four Seasons, recording with some awesome guests live. But today I am joined virtually by Esther Raphael. She’s Marketing Officer at Intersection, based in New York, New York. Welcome to the podcast, Esther. ESTHER: Thank you, Rob. I too cannot wait to meet you live and be there live next year. ROB: We’ll buy you a coffee or a beverage of your choice at the lounge. It’ll be fantastic. With our South by Southwest series, on an average episode, we’re talking to marketing agency owners, founders, etc., but we find really interesting opportunities within the South by Southwest speaker ecosystem. Esther, why don’t you start off by telling us about Intersection and where you sit in the marketing ecosystem?  ESTHER: Love that. Intersection is an out-of-home media and technology company, and we have advertising products in cities, transit systems, airports, and key destinations all over the country so that brands can speak directly to consumers as they go about their journey through cities. We know from recent research that people are more engaged now than ever with out-of-home. Think about the past year and everything that we’ve all experienced. Being able to leave your home sometimes was that moment of fresh air, that moment of relaxation, that walk around the block, running an errand. 69% of consumers that live in urban areas are saying that they’re noticing out-of-home now more than pre-pandemic, and that’s according to a Harris Poll survey. We are right in that sweet spot, right in the place where brands can speak to consumers in a way that they feel engaged and happy. ROB: Very interesting. It seems to me, my perception, that out-of-home continues to digitize. I’m in Atlanta and we have more and more digital billboards going up. Is there even something in perhaps the technology that’s going into out-of-home, even in terms of brightness in the product that’s being put out there, that’s increasing the visibility/noticeability of it? ESTHER: For sure. On one side we have proprietary technology that gives our partners – the transit authorities, the cities – the ability to deliver information and content and wayfinding and all these services to their consumers. Then on the advertising side, one of the things we’re most known for is our technology, allowing brands to do dynamic executions and unique campaign flexibility. It’s something we’re pretty proud of and focused on. ROB: It’s kind of happening before our eyes, but it’s really fascinating to get an expert like you in place to really illuminate. It happens slowly but quickly at the same time. If we tap in a little bit to your South by Southwest panel, the topic was “When ‘Go Away’ Is a Powerful Brand Message.” Take us into the details of that session and what you were sharing with the community in that talk. ESTHER: One of the products that we’re most known for at Intersection is Link NYC here in New York. If you ever come to visit, we could take you on a market ride. We have an editorial team who is dedicated to curating content on the screens – thinking about the consumer experience as they journey through that city, not only from the advertising perspective, but from the editorial side. Our content suite includes localized messaging, transit and community information, and creative partnerships with local nonprofits and institutions. Because of this, consumers look to our screens for important and helpful information. As COVID entered the story, we had to quickly pivot some of our content and our storytelling to better serve the community as they were dealing with this new world. We all were. One of the ways that we did this was through our partnership with Foursquare. If you think back to one of the greatest everyday stressors we’ve all experienced over the past year, it’s getting groceries and supplies. When do you go? How do I avoid the lines? Is it going to be safe? That’s really what we wanted to solve for. Using Foursquare’s aggregated location data, we were able to display the average hourly traffic levels for nearby grocery stores and drugstores on thousands of Intersection streets. This was designed to give consumers a heads up on the best time to shop to avoid the crowds. The title of our South by panel was so catchy, and I think what’s really important to point out about this partnership is that it’s not about deterring visits. We weren’t telling people, “Don’t go grocery shopping.” It was more about optimizing, how do we help people do it safely? ROB: Right. It’s sort of in theme with – I’m getting a sense as you talk about the Intersection product line – and I can certainly picture an experience, and I can’t wait to be back up in the city and I can picture those Link NYC displays. A lot of out-of-home advertising – historically, billboards, now digital also – you don’t really get an impression of it being helpful. So I wonder a little bit, how do you keep that conviction of being helpful throughout? It seems like it’s a real core of your product and something a great deal of thought goes into instead of just maximizing inventory and then throwing in some wayfinding. ESTHER: That’s right. When we really were evaluating our product line, and right when Link came out, one of the things that we spent a lot of time thinking about was media in general. When you think about other media platforms, like TV, magazines, which is what my background is in, podcasts, even – you come for the content, and advertising is a partner in that. They’re along the journey. The exception to that was out-of-home, and that’s what we really wanted to change. We wanted to be the first, and we were the first, to do it in the out-of-home space – creating content not only for Link, but for our entire network across the country so that consumers and people walking around the city would look to the screen for information that was interesting to them. During COVID, of course we worked very closely with the city and with all different government agencies to put up really important, relevant, timely information – campaigns like the Foursquare partnership. But year round, we do things like events in your neighborhood, local offerings, things that are helpful, interesting, something you’d be excited to see or would be helpful to your life while you’re walking around the city. ROB: The company has been around for a little bit now, right? ESTHER: Yes. ROB: How long has it been around? ESTHER: 6 years, about. ROB: It’s interesting, that inflection point of digital displays. As you talk about that sort of editorial approach, I’m picturing even let’s say 15 to 20 years ago, you started to see these little tiny displays pop into elevators. The philosophy seemed a little bit similar. It was a little bit of what’s helpful to you and a little bit of news or editorial content, but the screens were tiny. Now the screens are – I think Times Square, at least for a while, had room for people to spend however much money on a digital display for the attention. But it seems like the economics of these displays must be shifting radically at this point. ESTHER: We at Intersection are very thoughtful about our screens. We don’t have any billboards. We are focused on being alongside a person while they’re walking around the city. Street, maybe exterior of buses, inside transit or airport systems, or inside destinations. We have a network at Hudson Yards, New York inside the shopping complex and outside. We really want to be a part of your experience, not necessarily something you just pass by in your vehicle. So that’s also a very big part of our strategy at Intersection. ROB: That’s fascinating. Again, you’re making me long to be back up in New York and back up to Hudson Yards. All in good time, and possibly quite soon. I think one part of this conversation that may be surprising to a lot of people is your mention of Foursquare. Foursquare, formerly one of the breakout darling hits of a South by Southwest once upon a time, and still kind of useful at South by, since fractured into the Yelp-like Foursquare app and swarmed still for those who can’t keep themselves from checking in, which is admittedly kind of me. But I think a lot of people might turn up their nose to the idea of Foursquare as something that is a thing from the past. What’s their data quality looking like, and how are they pulling that off when they’ve left the zeitgeist? They’re not the “it” thing anymore, but there have been some very interesting campaigns and studies around Foursquare that I think surprise people when they look at it. ESTHER: We’ll have to save that for our next podcast when we bring on the Foursquare team. [laughs] They can speak more to you about their data. But we partner with them on a lot of different things. This is one of our partnerships on our content side. We also partner with them on the other side of the business, which is showing our clients’ ROI. Foursquare has a ton of data capabilities. Based on their opt-in users who share their geographic location and allow them to collect research and survey information, we’re able to tell our clients who run with Intersection a little bit about that user experience when they see their ads and the interactions and actions they take after seeing it. Foursquare has a whole data side of their business which I’m not an expert in, but we are lucky to have them as a partner. ROB: Excellent to hear. It’s definitely become such a key revenue stream for them, if you get in and do a little bit of homework. One transition we’re clearly getting into a little bit is reopening. I think marketers everywhere are having to think a great deal about what reopening looks like, what things to promote, what things to hold off on. How are you – probably obviously with data, but how are you navigating this next stage where we’re not quite wide open, or not at all, or maybe somewhere in between, and how new messages enter the conversation? ESTHER: I love this question because I’ve been thinking a lot about this. I’m one of those people who’s so social that this year’s really taken a toll on me, especially in the beginning when we thought about sitting in our home offices – which for me, it is my bedroom. [laughs] I sit in here all day. You lack that interaction with your colleagues who once brought you this tremendous amount of energy, or your friends who make you smile in a different kind of way that you really miss. One of the things we started at Intersection in spring of 2020, but it’s coming back full force this spring, is a campaign called Go There. It was our first ever, really, branding campaign at Intersection. Go There to us has so many meanings. It was thinking about those first places you would visit when they opened in spring of 2020. Go back to that feeling. I know where it was, and I will be vain and share it: it was to the hair salon. [laughs] As I am sure so many other women would admit to. I remember sitting in that chair thinking, wow, these moments that we have taken so for granted are so special all of a sudden. So Go There really plays off of the hope of the places we’ll return to, but then it also has this business side of the places Intersection can take a brand to, really go there to the cities with us, but also go there with your creative. Do something you have never done before. Really dare to challenge yourself and to speak to people in a different way. That’s something I am working on for a huge launch in June, which I am really passionate about. Yes, we’re all going to turn to data, but I think we’re also going to turn to what’s inside of our hearts and makes us happy when things open, and that’s the part I think there’s so much to be said and done around. ROB: You raise a meaningful point with your home office in your bedroom, as I imagine is quite common. I’ve stayed in Airbnbs and different places, and the ones in the five boroughs tend to be a little bit tighter, shall we say, space-wise. So I can picture things. How has Intersection overall navigated probably having a deep concentration of your team in the city where their home office is a bedroom? And then you probably have some folks who’ve been commuting in from an outer suburb that are on cloud nine. How are you handling geography as things come back? Have some people distributed out to the winds? Is it going to be completely back in place in the office? ESTHER: We’re figuring that all out right now. One of the things that’s so wonderful about Intersection is that it is and always has been people first, really thinking about what’s best for the employees and for the team that makes us Intersection. They’ve done the best to keep us happy from home, give us the resources, the tools. I told you before we logged on this call, IT helps you the second you raise your hand that you need help. People just seem to want to roll up their sleeves and make sure you are extra comfortable, extra productive. The truth of the matter is, though, Intersection has so many offices around the country. We were always slightly remote. So while I am physically based in the New York office, my team was in West Coast, central region, all over the East Coast. We were always on video. This isn’t that much of a change. I think the thing that’s new for us is that people don’t get to go to the office. Sitting in your home, that’s the part where you have to personally reflect on change and think about how to be more productive, especially when there’s little children running outside your door. But I think as a business, we figured this out long before we had to be home because of our offices geographically being located all over the map. We will come back; we’re planning a return, and hopefully it is very soon. ROB: We are hopefully planning a team gathering in June or July, but it’s all subject to what people feel comfortable with to a certain extent. It’s interesting how you mentioned the distribution of the company. It really reminds me, too, of some of those old TV and radio stations, the local media conglomerates with the local offices. It seems like there’s probably an extent to which you’ve been taking the lunch of the local TV and radio station. Has that been a significant factor? Were you missing that in-person salesperson in Topeka, Kansas – I don’t know if that’s even a place you’re at, but it might be – talking to the local car dealership? ESTHER: That is exactly why we’re in all of those markets. We have offices in almost every market that we represent, and we have people on the ground going to those local car dealerships, local businesses. I think it makes Intersection feel like a small business within each city that ladders up into the unit that we are. I think it’s one of the beautiful pieces about having a regionalized business like that. ROB: I wonder a little bit, as we get past the initial reopening, it seems like there is this – we all talk about the things we’re going to do next, where we’re going to go. There’s going to be a pent-up demand for, I think, advertisement as well. How are you thinking about inventory, and how should marketers be thinking about your sort of inventory as we move into what could be a little bit of a super-heated time for competing for eyeballs? ESTHER: This is something that I also addressed at our South by Southwest panel, so great segue. People have been living their life outdoors in a different kind of way – working out outside, restaurants outside, dining outside, curbside pickup, walking, biking, more than ever before. Because of that, people are feeling an extreme level of screen fatigue. They’re on their computers all day, they’re looking at their phone, they’re working. When they finally go outside, they’re ready to leave that screen behind. We talked a lot about how if you were deploying only a mobile and desktop strategy, you’re missing people when they’re feeling joy. When I get my screen report on Saturday or Sunday night, I feel such a pit in my stomach. The phone knows how long I’ve been texting people, the phone knows how long I’ve been on social media. It’s not a good feeling. [laughs] Whereas on the other side, when you go outside, you feel that breath of fresh air, and that’s where out-of-home sits. I think advertisers have noticed that over the past year, and we’ve seen a huge shift in some business categories coming to the out-of-home space. I think we’re going to continue to see that. The out-of-home space was actually having a huge uptick in business in 2019. I imagine this little blip in all businesses in the world over 2020 and the first half of 2021 will have a quick departure and we’ll continue to see people outside, advertising outside, being a part of that journey, that experience, that breath of fresh air. Here’s to the second half. ROB: Indeed. When people think of the future of out-of-home, I think one version they probably think of, if they think about it for a little too long, is the sort of Minority Report, screens everywhere, scanning your eyes and spamming and whatnot. That’s probably not where we’re going, and even that vision of things is probably 10 or 15 years old now. When you think about the next 5 years of out-of-home, what do you expect we’re going to see? ESTHER: I think you’ll see more content, more and more out-of-home publishers using those screens to talk to people, to talk to them in a helpful way. I think you’ll continue to see technology improve in a way that will just blow our minds. If you think of where we were 10 years ago and where we are today, you can only imagine where we’ll be 5 years from now. I think those would be my top two answers. ROB: Got it. One company I encountered was heavily digitizing advertising in places like NASCAR tracks. What’s going on in the sports venue side of out-of-home? Is that something you intersect with at all? ESTHER: We have such a big network outside of sports arenas, specifically in Chicago, in Philadelphia. It’s a huge part of how we speak to our clients in those markets. If you think about fans of sports in Philadelphia and Chicago, that is a world I cannot even begin to understand. [laughs] But we do a lot of work with our partners to make sure they’re there on opening day of the Cubs. So yes, sports is way on the top of the list as it returns where you’re going to want to see more people talking to that audience. That’s a special group of enthusiasts who people want to talk to and reach. ROB: Link NYC from a transit perspective is one of those crown jewels where there’s a sufficient critical mass of people, there’s a critical mass of network. I imagine, because you’re in these different local markets, some of the things that you see in New York start to move downstream – in other words, smaller and smaller transit networks and places become valuable to do this sort of thing. Where are the places you think we’re going to start seeing digital out-of-home content that we’re not seeing? Maybe it is in a smaller town, maybe in a smaller place. ESTHER: Austin, we just won the Austin market. It’s such a hot market. I think you’ll continue to see tremendous growth in the digital out-of-home space and even the static out-of-home space in Austin. We also have moved into LA, which of course is so well-known for their billboards and driving down Sunset and seeing every single celebrity pay homage to themselves on the screen. [laughs] But we have all of the transit system there, which we will also be investing quite a bit of time into thinking about what those screens look like and the type of information that is given to them. I would say LA and Austin are way at the top of certainly our list at Intersection. ROB: Got it. With Austin, is that primarily the transit system, or are there other adjacencies there? ESTHER: Right now it’s the transit system. ROB: How do you think about, then, scaling down editorial a little bit? Or is it not necessary anymore? Is Austin still big enough you can have a pretty meaty content organization around it? ESTHER: We haven’t started Austin yet. Austin right now is predominantly static for us. We’re looking into how we bring content to all of our markets. We have Link in New York, Philadelphia, and Newark; they have a large content suite. Then all of our other digital markets – LA, Minneapolis, the list goes on – we do quite a bit of content. It’s not the same level that we do in New York where we focus on events and Heritage Month and things that are so unique and special to all things New York City. But we’re spending quite a bit of time now thinking about how we do the same, how we mimic what works so well in New York and Philadelphia and Newark and bring that to other cities so that consumers begin to understand that out-of-home is a different kind of media, and that you should think about it, you should look at the screens in the same way you do other media formats. ROB: Esther, you certainly put a lot of time into preparing for a conversation like the one you had at South by Southwest. What have I not touched on yet that we should be talking about? ESTHER: One of the things we really should cover is creative in out-of-home. I think there’s this renaissance right now where you’re seeing people do things in the out-of-home space that are so breathtaking, powerful, but also effective, also drive results, but drive social media engagement, drive interaction and engagement because of the canvas that out-of-home gives you. Because of that, we’ve just launched our first in-house creative agency. It’s called Creative Lab. Even advertisers, specifically on the regional level – or beyond; we’ll help anyone – but we talked a lot about how smaller businesses on the SMB side of the business in each of our markets want help thinking through what a campaign in out-of-home looks like. How do you do something so impactful, just a wow moment, but also that will drive results for your business? We have a team of designers around the country who are ready to go. ROB: With that creative agency aspect, it seems like it naturally flows into the conversation around measurement. Obviously, measurement has been a little bit different over the past year, but do you have anything before then or even leading into post-COVID to think about measuring results outside of just, obviously, impressions and people in the area? ESTHER: Yes, absolutely. We have spent a lot of time pre-COVID, but also during, making sure that our clients know the level of return on their investment that they’ll receive. We have a complete measurement team dedicated to attribution, thinking about brand awareness. If you want to measure actual store visits, if you want to measure digital event measurement – did somebody actually download my app? Did somebody actually make a purchase? Pre-COVID, there were so many stats about consumers’ behavior and the power of out-of-home driving, for example, in-store traffic. If you look at the Nielsen out-of-home study that came out at the end of 2019, you saw this wonderful story of 39% of people noticing their out-of-home ads, 20% of them immediately visiting a business after seeing that ad, but 74% of those visitors making a purchase as a result of that ad. There is definitely this power to out-of-home to take action. It’s one of the beautiful things of media. ROB: It makes sense and it’s believable, and I know I find myself noticing so many more of what’s around me. I know you’re not in the billboard land and I’m not on Atlanta transit lately, but definitely seeing a lot of that good information. Esther, thank you for sharing your insights from your talk at South by Southwest. I’m really eager – I think we all are – to meet back in person and do Austin right next year and see some of those campaigns going up there as well. ESTHER: Sure. Can’t wait. Barbeque next year. ROB: Oh yeah. I had a reservation for some barbeque. I have 5 pounds of the best stuff that they owe me on credit. Literally. They wouldn’t give me a refund. They just said, “Hey, come back and tell us we owe you. Bring the email.” ESTHER: All of our South by Southwest media posts said “bring your own barbeque,” so you’re onto something. I’ll have to follow up with a brisket tonight. [laughs] ROB: Love it. I’m inspired as well. Thank you so much, Esther. Be well. ESTHER: Thank you. You too. Bye. ROB: Bye. Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

John Vuong started his Toronto-based agency, Local SEO Search, in 2013 with the goal of helping small- to medium-sized businesses in North America, UK, and Australia improve digital presence in their local communities.   John had ten years in advertising and sales for print media directories with their online performance-based networks and then worked for 5 years at Yellow Pages. Through this experience, he honed his understanding of how to dig out a business’s gaps, opportunities and challenges, its potential customers, where those customers were located, what those customers wanted . . . and what businesses themselves were looking for in an agency. John explains that product characteristics, physical proximity, convenience, and/or services are only the beginning of the variables to consider in “positioning” a company. Whatever it is that a company’s customers want needs to be prominent on its website. John says, “Make it easy for people to realize what you offer.” John believes “Google My Business” is “the biggest asset piece for the local space” – it is what sets local apart from traditional organic traffic. This link between Google search and maps is critical. Small business owners need to understand how people “shop, navigate, and search for information.” Websites at the local level need to be simple for Google to easily crawl and index user-relevant information.  Typical clients for this agency are professional service businesses (dentists, lawyers, physio/chiro, massage, and anything medical spa-ish), trades (e.g.; plumbers or roofers) and B2B businesses (e.g.; manufacturing, distribution, and e-com) – businesses that more competitive in nature, have higher revenue expectations, and have a higher lifetime customer value. John says the process of building a business takes time and work – that there are no shortcuts for things that are worthwhile. Local SEO Search has specialists that develop SEO strategy, build links, create content, and manage social media. The agency employs web developers and graphic designers. But even with that variety of services, the agency’s focus is totally and simply on the attributes and signals Google uses to rank websites. John’ strength is sales. Yellow Pages taught him a lot about business. He met business owners where the businesses had been in existence, not just for years, but for lifetimes. How? “They took care of their customers. They relied on word-of-mouth, referral business. They understood how to run a really good business – service, pricing, competitors, unique selling proposition, understanding all their products and services. Inside out, they knew how to run it.” John sees the internet as the “new Yellow Pages.” When he started his agency, John had to learn how to deliver, how to hire and manage people, how to provide customer service. “There’s so much more to running a business than just sales,” he admits. John values honesty and hard work and admits that he “went door-knocking at the beginning to get clients, and it worked.” Today, he says, he’s “just looking for good people to connect with. Good, honest, real businesses that not just need and acknowledge that they need help, but they’re good people” who “have business experience and knowledge and insights on what real business ownership means.” Those are the people he feels he can best help. John can be reached on his agency’s website at: www.localseosearch.ca.  Transcript Follows: ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m your host, Rob Kischuk, and I am joined today by John Vuong, owner of Local SEO Search based in Toronto, Canada. Welcome to the podcast, John. JOHN: Thanks a lot for having me, Rob. I’m excited to be on your show today. ROB: Super exciting to have you here. Why don’t you start off and tell us about Local SEO Search? I think we might know what your superpower is, but why don’t you tell us about it?  JOHN: Yeah, definitely. I started this agency 8 years ago, back in 2013. My sole purpose is really to help the small to medium size businesses service their local community and really help them for their digital presence, so make them appear more visibly on search, in particular Google. ROB: Interesting. We’ve talked to some different SEO firms, but a lot of times they’re more on that “trying to rank for a keyword,” that B2B software client. How does that work differently with local? How do the tactics and mindsets differ when you’re trying to be the pizza place somebody finds when they look locally? JOHN: There’s a lot of different nuances. In my background – and maybe I’ll take a step back before I even start with starting the agency. I actually worked 10 years prior in advertising/sales, and I dabbled in traditional advertising/sales and print media directories, some online affiliate performance-based networks, and then I resided and worked for 5 years at Yellow Pages. For me, I really learned a lot about local businesses, understood what gaps, opportunities, and challenges they had, and what they wanted to look for or to in an agency, or someone that they wanted to build their trust and relationship with. When I started this company, it was all about understanding them, asking the right questions, and understanding what they really, really cared about in terms of staying connected and harvesting a good relationship long term. For me, that’s all I needed to get into this agency world without knowing how to run an agency. Working at Yellow Pages is not your traditional digital agency. It was more traditional channel print media, telephone book. But I learned a lot from a big company, how to run a real company. In terms of local, the big thing for me was understanding who their customers were, understanding their challenges/problems, and ultimately the customers that were consuming their product or service. Fast forward to now Google and how local sets themselves apart from the traditional organic traffic, Google My Business is the biggest asset piece for the local space. How you understand and claim and verify and rank for a lot of terms to be on that prominent proximity or relevant map is so critical for a lot of these small business owners because that’s how people shop, navigate, search for information. For you as a business owner, I feel you have to understand what your customers are looking for. The keyword gap analysis, great, but positioning so that you actually know exactly that pizza shop, what people are looking for, seeking out – is it the weekly specials? Is it the different toppings? The convenience factor, proximity, free pick-up, Uber, whatever? There’s so many different variables. Understand that. Make it prominent on your website, and then make sure that Google recognizes that it’s inside your schema markup, your sitemap. Make it easy for people to realize what you offer that’s accessible and simple for your customers. ROB: Dig in a little bit just for a moment on schema markup. That’s something I think some of the amateur SEOs like me out in the world might know less about. JOHN: Schema markup is just the way you sort your information on your website so that Google can index things. It’s another way to add attributes within your website. The key about everything you do in terms of not just digital, but in your business, is to make it as efficient as possible for your customers. The more simplistic it is, easy it is – just like your sitemap on your website, making it so simple that Google can go in there and crawl it without trying to navigate five layers deep on the content piece that’s relevant for the user. If you mark it up so it’s simple, so that Google doesn’t have a problem indexing your site, it allows you to then make it a clean transfer of information/content to the actual users and make it easy for Google to then crawl and index your site. ROB: Thank you for digging into that. It’s an interesting through-line going back to your work with Yellow Pages. You’ve been helping businesses be found by people for longer than you’ve had a business. That’s pretty fascinating. I wonder what a typical customer looks like for you. I might’ve pulled you down a path with that pizza restaurant example, but who are we talking about for your customers, usually? Are we talking about doctors or lawyers, home professionals, retail businesses? What’s the meat and potatoes of who wants to be found locally and wants some help with that? JOHN: Our typical persona/avatar type of client is the professional service-based type of business, whether it be dentists, lawyers, physio/chiro, massage, anything medical spa-ish, as well as trades, which are the plumbers, roofers, etc. And of course, the B2B kind of businesses – manufacturing, distribution, e-com, etc. The reason for that is typically it’s more competitive in nature, and in a local marketplace – I live in Toronto, Canada, and it’s one of the larger metropolitan areas in all of Canada. There’s more competition in dentists than there are barbershops. Therefore, if you are in business for a higher ticket service type sale of your client – and the lifetime value of a dentist is 7 years – so the value of acquiring a customer, you want the good type of avatar, a good ideal lead nurture of a client. Understanding that whole process, understanding who you want to cultivate, understanding how you want to portray your brand or yourself as a business cultivates the best lead source if you do SEO properly with the right company, yourself, or freelancer contractor. It doesn’t matter. If you do it properly, you should have an inbound lead flow of quality clients begging for you, for your service. Those are typically my type of clients because of the price point, the value that they’re looking for, and how difficult it is to get new customers in any other form of media channels, from social to paid ads to traditional, tradeshows, print media, radio, television. There are so many different media sources, but I feel SEO still cultivates the best lead source of your ideal type client. ROB: That makes sense. You started walking down a path I was interested to get into. Obviously, SEO is the name you hang on the front door of the business, but you mentioned other marketing channels. Have you engaged more deeply into paid and content and some other things? Or have you kept it pretty tight around SEO? JOHN: My agency focuses on SEO only, but there’s pillars within SEO. We take care of the strategy; we have specialists. We also have link builders. We have content creators. We have web developers, graphic designers, social media management. But that is all attributes and signals of what Google is looking for to rank a website. Anything that is required to rank a website, that’s what we touch. Anything outside that, which is usually paid – like if you’re doing paid ads on social or Google Ads or behavioral networks, performance networks, email, that’s different. We only focus on being a full-service SEO agency that’s more of a boutique agency. ROB: You must’ve had clients, though, ask you to manage their paid budget. How have you looked at that temptation, potentially, and said no to it? JOHN: We have that daily, actually. A lot of clients know they need SEO, and I tell them there’s a ton of agencies that offer full-service from paid ads to SEO to content, and they break it up, and that’s fine, a la carte. I just want to be really good at one thing and do it right and be known for it. There’s different strategies, different agencies out there. I just feel there’s a big enough marketplace for being the best at one thing. If you’re known for doing it really well, that’s what people know you by, and that’s enough business to be had. I could dabble into digital, like paid ads, and hire someone in-house and take it over, but I’m not a true believer in that. [laughs] I have to believe in it at a very high level to really be a big, strong proponent of selling it. ROB: Right. Super-duper interesting to keep that sort of focus. You mentioned your journey, you mentioned coming through that Yellow Pages background. It almost seems like there might’ve been a journey for you within that previous role before starting the company where you started to see something shift. What was your journey from “Hey, I’m working at Yellow Pages, I’m working with these businesses” to “I’m going to go start my own business”? Because it’s a big difference between having someone who pays your bills and figuring out how to pay your own bills. JOHN: The journey definitely is something that I feel is a mindset journey for a lot of people. When I was at Yellow Pages, I was there for 5 years. I learned a ton about sales. I had the privilege to meet with thousands of business owners, and I was being mentored by them on what it takes to a business owner. And that’s something that was invaluable at that time, for me to then pick their brain on what really mattered in not just business ownership, but in life. These people were so grateful to be ultra-curious about how they ran their business, what really made them happy, and what ultimately they wanted to do for their community, for their family, to have a good lifestyle. That’s what resonated with me, along with, of course, selling ad space in a more dated format like the print directory, which allowed me to know that there was a gap in opportunity in the marketplace. People wanted to go with someone they trusted, or a company, but they didn’t know how to do it and what was involved. So I wanted to be that transition piece. As you know, paid ads in the Yellow Pages was a diminishing return on investment. People were spending more than ever, getting fewer people transacting. The return on investment was lower, and people like myself were spending more time on Google to do search results. I knew there was an opportunity digitally. I didn’t know anything about SEO at that time. I just knew there was a gap in the marketplace to add an idea, and I knew there were people willing to pay for someone or something to help them. That’s all I really needed to get my foot in the door. But it was all timing as well. I did extremely well at Yellow Pages and ads, so I was doing well in sales. My wife gave me the go-ahead, because she had a stable job opportunity. For me, it was more, look, I can go get another job, maybe work at Google, work at another ad agency or whatever – or I can try something. Basically, she said, “Go for it.” The first couple years it was a struggle to learn how to run a business. [laughs] More so than the SEO thing at all. My strength was sales, so I was out there selling from Day 1. The first two months, I already had 10 clients. So, the sales aspect wasn’t the challenge; it was more about now I had to figure out how to deliver and hire people and manage, customer service. I realized there’s so much more to running a business than just sales. ROB: For sure, that is an interesting part of the journey. I wonder a little bit – I don’t know if Yellow Pages ever tried this, but I know a lot of the TV and radio stations and the conglomerates around them that used to sell to local businesses tried to make this transition. They’ve been selling TV ads, radio ads, billboards to these local businesses for forever. A lot of them tried to make the jump into selling digital advertising and selling SEO, but it just doesn’t seem like that transition worked for them. What is it that made it hard for those organizations to turn the corner where they already had the client relationship and build up that new line of business? JOHN: I think the biggest barrier for them was they were so comfortable with the margins they had. With a big company like Yellow Pages, they were so comfortable with a directory that they billed monthly for ads where they printed an ad, and the cost was less than one-quarter of a month. I knew the cost and the margin of retaining a customer and getting them to buy ads in their asset, which was the printed book. Now you go digital and the margins are a lot less; to get into that and then not know what expectations and profitability is, it’s going to be bad on their shareholders because ultimately it’s all about big business. For me, that’s where this was a huge gap. I’m realizing, now that I’ve been doing this for 8 years, why do these business owners gravitate towards smaller boutique companies? Because the big guys will try to cut corners for cost – not deliver on the actual results. They’re trying to do as little as possible and earn as much money as possible. ROB: And they’re not used to doing the execution at all. You put something in a book and you’re done versus managing a relationship, actually having to do execution, having to apologize. I’m sure something goes wrong sometimes in the Yellow Pages, but not the same way – I know of an ecommerce site that stood up their ecommerce site and WordPress had a setting that said “Don’t Index Me.” That was kind of a problem for their SEO on a site migration. It doesn’t usually happen that way in print. JOHN: Exactly. Again, digital is so multi-touchpoint and so many people need to be involved. With traditional media, like newspaper, flyer, tradeshow, radio, television, they already own their asset piece. It’s a sunk cost. So, for them, it’s all about ad spend and people. When you look at what is required for digital to perform, you invest a ton of money. For these companies that were so reluctant to spend and invest, and so comfortable with that profit margin, very difficult to get that mindset. Especially when they’re older in terms of the older generation. They’re okay with the status quo. They don’t really forward-think like what we see today. As digital agencies, we have to look ahead. We have to stay ahead of the curve. ROB: You mentioned those first couple of years where you were learning a lot about running a business. You mentioned that you had some customers pretty early. Was there a point where it felt like you had turned a corner and you said, “Okay, we’re not just trying this, we’re doing this” and hit escape velocity where you’d built up a team now where you saw that ahead of you? JOHN: My goal to do this was either commit, do it properly, or not do it at all. For me, my intention was spend less time in the business eventually and learn as much as I can, early days. Because I did have a family but I didn’t have children yet, I had time. I didn’t have a lot of money because I bootstrapped everything. It was like, I’ve got to figure this out. I’ve got to make this happen. I’ve got to make this work. I didn’t really have a digital background. No technical skills, no SEO skills. I had to learn it. I had to figure it out. My background was always just sales, but then I had to learn how to manage and operations and bookkeeping and all that other stuff that I needed to run a business. But that’s the challenge of business ownership and entrepreneurship. You should always try to grow. You should always try to learn. And there are going to be tons of mistakes along the way. You have to acknowledge it, move ahead, and get better every single day, every hour. Challenge yourself. Figure out, what are the gaps? Where are the opportunities? Talk to people and get out there and learn. There’s so much to it, and we only have a 30-minute podcast, so I don’t even know where to start because there’s so much I’ve learned over the last 8 years. ROB: It’s such a big journey. I think you came into SEO at a pretty interesting time. SEO has an early baggage of being a gimmick business rather than a discipline business, or at least some people were very much in the gimmick business for a while. Were there any gimmicks or tactical short-term wins that you had to look at early on and either steer away from or get bit by once or twice to learn – I feel like what I would say is the best way to be found is to be worth finding, but it took us a while to get there in the SEO industry. JOHN: Yeah. There’s so many hacks, fast ways. This is life in general, I feel. I was very fortunate working at Yellow Pages, where I met these business owners that were generationally in business – not just 5, 10, 20 years, but think about different lifetimes – 50, 100, 150 years. How did they survive without the internet? Internet’s only been around for 15-20 years, right? Google has only really taken off in 10-15 years. It’s transitioned and transformed the way we shop and our behaviors. Imagine these businesses. What did they do so well to keep them sustained? They took care of their customers. They relied on word-of-mouth, referral business. They understood how to run a really good business – service, pricing, competitors, unique selling proposition, understanding all their products and services. Inside out, they knew how to run it. If you take that foundation and you put it now digitally, people don’t put that much effort in the foundation of a business online. They’re looking for shortcuts. And in life, typically there’s no shortcuts. Just like any profession – not just in business and entrepreneurship, but profession as in if you’re a dentist or a lawyer or a doctor or a plumber, is there a shortcut to become one of them? Probably not. You probably have to go to school. You probably have to apprentice. You probably have to work as an associate. You’ve got to put your years in, training in, learning in. By the time you put in your 10, 15, 20 years, then maybe you have enough savings to start your own business. But now, with internet and with a lot of social media and videos and podcasts and everything, people find that it’s easier for knowledge and information to be transferred. You can access information at your fingertips. There’s so much information and intel at your disposal. However, there’s not a lot of experience at your disposal. A lot of people think there’s easier ways, faster ways to earn a living, and they get bitten by these videos or ways to do it. Just like a sports athlete, I’m all about mindset. I’m all about habits. If you look at one of the top basketball players – Michael Jordan, LeBron James – or Tiger Woods – how many years of training did they have to harvest? How many hours, how many years of dedication from help, practice, failures, to actually become that? People forget that in terms of business, and that’s why in the first couple years of business ownership, a lot of people fail. They watch a video, they read a book, they listen to a podcast, and they purchase something on Wix or Squarespace or Shopify and build a site thinking, “Now I have a business.” But they don’t have business experience and knowledge and insights on what real business ownership means. That’s the gap that I’m saying. In terms of what I’ve seen over the years, I’m more a mature business now because I’ve learned from the type of clients I want to work with versus the type of clients that are not even real business owners yet because they’re not profitable or they don’t know how to run a business. I don’t want to train someone how to run a business to be working with them, if that makes sense. People that are starting off or have an idea aren’t my clients. ROB: Right. Those clients tend to go away. It’s a great point about the athletes and about the experience. I think I heard you mention before “I didn’t have kids yet,” which makes me suspect you may have them now?  JOHN: Yeah. ROB: So I think because you have experience, you don’t have the time you used to have. Tiger Woods isn’t as young as he used to be, and at one point he had to retool his entire swing to stay competitive, and there are still things he changes in his game now. Because he’s not as young as he used to be, now he has to heal two broken legs, I think. That’s what I think I saw, I don’t know. But he’s going to figure out and adapt, and experience is going to be the thing that gives him what maybe having raw energy and pure physical prowess gave him early on. We still have to work all those muscles. But it’s a great point, a great analogy. JOHN: Yeah, ultimately it’s mindset, right? What you feel will be what you want to do for a very long time. A lot of business owners are in it for the wrong reasons. They’re chasing money or chasing fame and glory or trying to be the best, but they don’t put in the work to become it. Business ownership is the same way. SEO is the same way. Digital ad agencies are the same way. I’m not selling a fake promise. I’m being authentic in terms of the journey. I want people to realize how long it takes, what’s involved, and let them make an informed decision. The more you’re up front with any transaction or interaction you have with your customers, the more likelihood they’re going to stay with you for the long term. ROB: You’re still doing it. You have more people, you have in some ways more opportunities, but also more problems. So, what is it at this point that makes it worth it to you? JOHN: I’m really just looking for good people to connect with. Good, honest, real businesses that not just need and acknowledge that they need help, but they’re good people. The challenge with digital agencies – and again, I’m not your traditional agency coming from the ad world. I come from Yellow Pages, and that’s all I built my business around. Long-term trust in clients that have a problem, fixing the problem and answering it. It’s not rocket science, but it’s very simple. People overcomplicate things with funnels and landing pages and different ways to try to cultivate new clients. I’m the type of guy that just went door-knocking at the beginning to get clients, and it worked. These things that really foundationally set these business owners apart when they first started still apply. People are always looking for shortcuts; there’s no shortcuts. ROB: And it turns into – generically, not speaking specifically to the business – saying you’re in the business of helping good people achieve what they want in their business in a way that you’re skilled and enjoy. Isn’t that what I think most people want from their work? JOHN: Not only will I give it all my best effort and my team will do what we possibly can for all clients, I’m trying to cultivate good, ideal customers that you want coming to you and positioning yourself as a thought leader. So, for me, I think a lot of business owners need to realize why they’re in business, who they want to go after as their ideal type of client, and then focus heavily on that versus trying to take anything they can. Yes, maybe when they’re first starting, you’re doing that because it’s like survival mode. But then you realize as you mature in your business what you really want to be known as. Who do you want to cultivate as an ideal customer? Just have fun. A lot of people forget about why they started the business in the first place. ROB: That’s great advice, John. You’ve shared a lot of good lessons along your journey. Is there anything else you can think of – a key moment, a key decision you want a do-over on if you could? Obviously, we can only move forward, but if you could change something on the journey? JOHN: For me, I wouldn’t, actually. Even though I made a ton of mistakes – I mean, I still make mistakes every day. I’m learning. I’m constantly eager and I’m hungry to want to be better. I don’t have to be the best, and that’s okay too. I’m always trying to get better. I know there’s gaps in the agency. I know there’s gaps in client expectations, and we can do more. I’m all about generating more value for my customers, taking care of my clients, taking care of my staff, and being a better human and living a better life of joy and happiness. If I’m enjoying that entire journey and process, that’s what being a business owner should be about. ROB: That’s fantastic, John. When people want to find you and Local SEO Search, where should they go to find you? JOHN: They can check out my website. It’s www.localseosearch.ca. We’re located in Toronto, Canada, but we service clients all across North America, UK, and Australia. For us, it’s all about helping good people and informing them with decisions and letting them decide. I equip people with insight and knowledge, and they make their own decisions of who they want to work with and what they want to do. But just be informed. I think that’s the biggest thing about SEO. Know what you want and go out there and be realistic, because there’s experts or a lot of information out there; you just don’t know who to trust and what that really means. ROB: When one goes to Google and types in “local SEO search,” I can affirm that you’re proving your craft. You are the number one organic result for “local SEO search.” Not only that, there’s like four or five ads above you, which means people really want that spot. It seems like there’s some evidence here that you can do your job, John. JOHN: Thank you, Rob. ROB: It’s pretty cool. And you’re above people like BrightLocal and folks who would really like that slot. That’s pretty impressive. JOHN: Yeah, Whitespark, BrightLocal. All of them have their own business. I feel just stay the course. It’s a long game. Have fun, enjoy it. ROB: Sounds good, and we shall. John, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. It’s been great to hear your own journey and wisdom from it. JOHN: Thank you, Rob. ROB: Bye. Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

John Limotte, Founder and CEO of Mustache Agency, started his career as a film producer making indie and arthouse films. When that business became more difficult (impacted by, among other things, the rise of the internet), John looked for a way to use his skills doing something that looked more like a real business. He saw potential in the field of marketing for “more cinematic . . . epic . . . more longform storytelling.” So, he started a very small video production agency and took jobs one by one to see where things would go. Ten years later, Mustache is a creative content agency with client services spread across three lines: integrated campaigns, video production and post-production, and social. The core of the agency’s work is content and digital content, with a focus on storytelling and creating epic, engaging video content . . . doing high-quality, cost-effective work. Even from the early days, the agency produced hundreds of videos a month. The client “playlist” includes such “big names” as Facebook, Google, Netflix, Amazon, a lot of tech disruptors, Instacart, Grammarly, and YouTube. When Mustache works with Facebook and Instagram, the agency gets the “inside scoop” on their best practices, new products, what’s working on the platform, and how to tailor content for the platform. John says the agency is learning from the platforms “how to hack them,” but then admits that the only real hack is creating “really good, sticky content.” Working on those platforms has increased the agency’s effectiveness and provided the opportunity to work with the digital disruptor brands that heavily advertise on those platforms.  John says the key to his agency’s success is “hiring good people who are passionate, have expertise, and know what they’re doing; keeping the focus on high level storytelling; and demanding that whatever content goes out still moves the needle.” He says, “There is no hack. There is no foolproof system.”  You need to think about who your audience is, you need to think about who you are, and you have to think about what you want them to do and the best way to get them there, and you need to do that . . . through content and storytelling. You still need a hook. You still need to make people laugh. You still need to tell a story, have a journey. Even as the formats and the aspect ratios change, those things remain the same.  Mustache has never focused on a single vertical. John sees a lot of upside for his business across a wide variety of verticals. Why? John says industries today are evolving in the direction of increased video content . . . especially since COVID. He sees another upcycle and no end in the demand for and consumption of content.  John is best reached on his agency’s website at: mustacheagency.com. ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m your host, Rob Kischuk, and I’m joined today by John Limotte, Founder and CEO of Mustache Agency based in Brooklyn, New York. Welcome to the podcast, John. JOHN: Thank you, Rob. Nice to be here. ROB: It’s excellent to have you here. Would rather be up in New York, but we can talk about that. Why don’t you start off by telling us about Mustache and where the firm excels? JOHN: Sure. Mustache is a creative content agency based in Brooklyn. We essentially offer three lines of services: integrated campaigns, video production and post-production, and social. Our clients are pretty evenly spread across those buckets. But at the core of everything we do is content, video content. We came up as a video production company focused on storytelling and creating epic, engaging video content. Eight or ten years later, depending on when you count the start date, our focus remains the same and it continues to be what we do best. ROB: It seems like you’ve really had the privilege to work with some clients that others would dream of. How do you make that jump from starting with – I don’t know if it’s you and a camera or what it looks like, but how do you start punching so heavyweight to work with some of these big names? You can run off whoever you’re comfortable talking about. JOHN: Our first client was a plaintiff’s law firm in the Bronx, and we were doing some pretty tactical digital marketing and $1,000 videos for him. We dubbed him “the King of the Bronx” and did a lot of man on the street videos of him because he was a true man of the people. From there, it’s evolved greatly. These days we’re working with everyone from Facebook, Google . . . Netflix is a big client of ours, Amazon, a lot of tech disruptors, Instacart, Grammarly . . . we do a lot of work with YouTube. How we got there is a great question. I wouldn’t say that it was any sort of thought-out path. Some of it is just, I think, good fortune. But from the beginning we were focused on content and digital content, storytelling, video storytelling, and just doing that really, really well and cost effectively in a model that was outside the traditional agency model back in say 2012. With that focus, a lot of these companies just found us. We did some viral video campaigns, some YouTube campaign. We were doing some episodic web content that got some attention. In a lot of cases, being in the content business led to the work proliferating because we were creating, even from the early days, hundreds of videos a month. From there, word got out and eventually we found ourselves working with some of these bigger companies. I should say those are not retainer clients; we would be at an entirely different scale. These are all giant organizations that work with tons of companies in different niches and different capacities. So, it’s the biggest companies in the world, but sometimes they’re just small little campaigns that they hire us for, and we’ve been really fortunate that they do. One thing I’ll add about that, too, is that for us it’s created a kind of virtuous cycle. When we’re working with Facebook and Instagram and we’re talking about best practices, new products, what’s working on the platform, and how to tailor content for the platform, we’re learning from the platforms themselves how to hack them, really – although the truth is, there’s not a lot of hacks except creating really good sticky content. But there are a lot of things you can do that we learn from them, and those make us more effective. I think that led to more work with the digital disruptor brands that are doing most of their advertising on those platforms. ROB: It’s interesting because Instagram really has the visibility to look at every video that’s made, just about, and decide who they want to work with. It’s a pretty high compliment. One thing I want to pull on a little bit is that you mentioned even early on having hundreds of videos in flight at a time. That sounds overwhelming to me. I wonder how you’re able to keep track of all of that. I know a bunch of people who have started video agencies, and not many of them that I know have crested that 10-20 person range. So, I wonder if there’s some key in how you manage that scale and beyond that has helped you make it over the hump. JOHN: I will say that scaling great creative at good pricing is the bane of our existence. It’s a challenge that you never win, in a way. It’s never over. There’s always the quest to do more and to do it better and to do it more cost effectively. I’ve never had that feeling of like “Oh, we cracked it. We’re good.” It’s just something that you have to continually be working at. We have a lot of smart people who spend a lot of time thinking on this problem and what kind of systems, what kind of processes. But again, one of my themes is that there’s no hack. There’s no foolproof system. There’s not some proprietary technology that we’ve developed. At the end, at the core of it is hiring good people who are passionate and have expertise and know what they’re doing, keeping the focus on high level storytelling, and demanding that whatever content goes out still moves the needle. People often ask me why we never focus on a particular vertical because we’ve always moved across verticals. I think for us, the question is easy because our focus has always been content, storytelling – just focused on that. We’ve built up a lot of expertise around that capability. At the same time, as I said, we’re always working on the best workflow, the best system, the best structure. We’ve done a couple of reorgs over time as we gain new insight. We’ve also benefited from the fact that it’s been organic. It’s not like we started Day 1 making 100 videos per client per activation. I think much like the industry itself, it started with a TV 30 and then a couple of cutdowns, and the business has grown from there in terms of iteration and scale. We’ve had the good fortune of growing – from there it was 10 deliverables and then it was 100. Every client is different. Every circumstance is different. It’s not like you need 100 videos or you need 10. But generally speaking, the numbers have gone up, and they’ve gone up steadily so that we’ve been able to adapt and adjust as the volume and the needs increase.  ROB: I think I have an idea, but for all of us, including me, what is a cutdown? JOHN: Basically just taking a 30-second spot or a 60-second spot, whatever the longer form of the content might be, and cutting it into smaller pieces – 15s, 6s, and so on. ROB: Got it. I think we’ve all seen that and now we know what to call it. It seems like one key may also be your involvement on the social side. With that as a line of service, it seems like that would give you insights into not just the overall raw performance of the content, but more specifically, you can get into the metrics and look at the performance of the content with the audience it was intended for as well as uncovering unexpected audiences. It seems like that would feed back into strategy. Are the platforms giving you the metrics you need to draw that sort of insight? JOHN: The clients are mostly pretty proprietary in terms of the platforms themselves, but you’re able to track in social and digital performance yourself and see how things are working. When we’re working with brand clients, often they’ll share with us the data and the results, so we’re also able to see from that. So yeah, it’s been a tremendous feedback loop. In some ways we came into this with a very non-data, very intuitive approach, like “What is an insight that feels resonant? Let’s tell a story about that in a way that to us feels compelling and impactful.” You never lose that eye towards the content, but then once you start working in social and you start getting more digital execution and getting that information about what’s working and what isn’t and you start being able to test different things and different hypotheses about content, then you’re approaching it from both sides. You’re using both your intuitive instincts around content and storytelling and you’re able to look at the data. I think that’s a pretty powerful one-two punch. ROB: For sure. John, if we rewind a little bit, go back in time even before that plaintiff attorney client, what was it that led you to take this jump and start the firm in the first place? Where did Mustache come from? JOHN: It was born somewhat of desperation, to be honest. I was a film producer back in another life and I was making indie films and arthouse films, the type of things that would go to Sundance and South by Southwest and hopefully find a distributor for it. I loved the business, but it was changing and becoming more difficult. Actually, with the rise of the web, that began to threaten that business in some respects, or at least in the form that I knew it. So, I started thinking about where else I could apply my skills. Is there something that more resembles an actual business? Film has this magical fantasy element to it where you’re inspired by a story and you make it and hope that the world loves it. I was certainly drawn to the fact that there is a business that rewards creative and content and needs good stories. Especially at the time, in 2010, it felt like there was a real opportunity for more cinematic and epic storytelling, more longform storytelling. There was some minor identification of an opportunity and a shift. I think it was that combination of me looking for something new, seeing that there might be a place where this thinking might resonate, and then just starting in a very small and taking it job by job way and seeing where it went. ROB: It seems like very good timing. All of these video platforms emerged, and coming from a different perspective, you kind of got to take on being a video agency digital-first, where people probably had more TV experience. It’s really interesting timing there, especially as all these video platforms have come around. I think we all know the key video platforms that we talked about and how Twitter has become, to an extent, a video platform, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, etc., and then TikTok is in that conversation as well. Is there anything emerging that maybe is not quite in the mainstream conversation that we need to think about? JOHN: I’ll say this. As I think about where the business is going, I feel somewhat stunned by the level of change that I think is upon us and the level of acceleration in technology and platform adaption and adoption. Every industry is moving towards, and evolving very quickly, especially since COVID, in a way that supports and needs more video content. If you think about obviously e-comm and omnichannel thinking around e-comm, if you think about the medical business, healthcare, it’s becoming online and more digital. Work from home, IoT, driverless cars are going to need content inside them. I don’t have my eye on anything new so much as trends that we’ve been tracking for a while just exploding, an inflection point on those trends, and the need for content. I think a lot of people think content’s had a great run. People have been saying content is king for 15 years now, it’s a cliché. But the truth is, I feel like we’re ready for another upcycle in the demand for and consumption of content. I just see no end there. So that’s our focus. Does that answer the question? It’s not exactly something new, but it’s what I’m thinking about. ROB: I think so. One thing that strikes me as you get into it is the absolute explosion of different formats and lengths. When you talked about the cutdowns earlier, it used to be a 30-second ad was normal and you knew the aspect ratio. But now you have square, portrait, landscape. Do you want 5, 10, 30 seconds? Are you injecting this ad in the middle of somebody playing a game? Where is this thing going? It seems like that continues to shift. You don’t have to worry about Quibi, but you might have had to on ads that had to be able to be rotated to different aspect ratios. JOHN: We had to. Quibi was a big client of ours. [laughs] So yeah, we were very much up in their business and we did social for them. We’ve been thinking about these things for a while, and I think you’re right; it’s sometimes overwhelming to think about the proliferation of formats and lengths. Two things I’ll say about that. One is that the core of what we do remains unchanged. You need to think about who your audience is, you need to think about who you are, and you have to think about what you want them to do and the best way to get them there, and you need to do that, at least for us, through content and storytelling. You still need a hook. You still need to make people laugh. You still need to tell a story, have a journey. Even as the formats and the aspect ratios change, those things remain the same. At a certain point you realize that it’s helpful in some ways because you’re like, okay, it hasn’t changed that much. We’re still doing essentially the same thing; we just need to make sure we have the expertise we need across these platforms, whether it’s Twitter or Amazon, so that we know how they speak on those platforms. It also brings me to one other thing I like to talk about. A lot of times you’ll hear people say with the amount of content becoming so overwhelming, people’s attention spans have shrunk and people don’t have time or interest in anything longer form. What you used to have to tell in 60 seconds and then 30 and then 15 and then 6, now you have to tell in 3 or the blink of an eye. I don’t think that’s true. I think there is an element of having to use the right format and length, the right platform, but you just need to think harder about how to make your content break through, about a hook, about something to get people’s attention. Sometimes and in some ways the answer might be longer form content. I certainly reject the notion of a race to the briefest, shortest form content possible. ROB: Certainly understood on that. I’ve heard some conversations on how quickly you have to hook someone. Maybe they’ll stick around, but do you have to set the hook sooner to earn the rest of their attention? JOHN: Well, that’s true. It’s true because people’s thumbs are moving. Attention spans have changed. I do think that notion is very true. You do have to hook them because otherwise you’ll lose them. ROB: I appreciate that I think you’re holding strong to the value of, as you mentioned, storytelling, of creativity. It reminds me a little bit of these rules in the world of standup comedy. I think you’re supposed to make them laugh every 6 seconds, and if you don’t, then they’ll not like you, and if you do, then they probably will like you. But then you have Dave Chapelle. Dave Chapelle gets to be himself, and he’s not going to make you laugh every 6 seconds, but he has his own style that is nonetheless extremely popular. JOHN: I think that’s a great point. The rules may be true and relevant, but the real artists break free of them and are able to operate outside them. Some things can be true and not true at the same time, and I think it’s true whether it’s the comedy rules or the rules of advertising. ROB: Indeed. John, looking at your background, looking at how you built up on the film side, I think that’s interesting. This is not your first rodeo, starting a business. JOHN: That’s right. ROB: You did that, you started over with Mustache; if you’re looking back at what you’ve done, what have you learned that you might do differently if you were starting clean? JOHN: It’s a really interesting question. I often think about myself say 10 years ago, and I often come to the conclusion, “What a dumbass you were 10 years ago. You really didn’t know anything. If I had just had all the knowledge and experience then that I have now, I could’ve done so much more.” I think that’s true now, but at the same time, all the experiences, all the choices, they were all made in a way that I’m happy with the way they played out. So, there’s no one thing that stands out. I will say, though, one thing does stand out and that’s diversity and inclusion. I think we’ve all come to understand the importance of that, and it’s something that’s been on my radar from the beginning of Mustache, but I didn’t give it the attention that I should have in the early days. What I would say is it was very existential. You’re young and you’re hungry and you’re small and you’re desperate for any work. If someone wants to work with you, you’re like, “Yeah, that’s great. Let’s go.” So you’re less discerning. I had less time to think about it and really plan and do the work. I feel like maybe that is one thing that if I could go back and talk to myself 10 years earlier, I would’ve given myself that one bit of advice. I’ve found once we’ve done that, as we’ve done that over the years and gotten better at it over the course of the last 10 years, how beneficial it’s been for the work and for the clients and for the culture. So that’s something. ROB: What did the steps look like to start to turn that corner? I think we all understand the tyranny of the urgent, the “I have to solve this problem now. I need to hire this creative by next week or next month” or whatever it is. What did you put in place to get more intentional there and maybe recruit some people you might’ve otherwise overlooked? JOHN: That’s really interesting because it never ends, especially in our business, which tends to be really fast and furious. A good chunk of our business is project-based. So, in some ways it’s the realization that the perfect moment never comes. People talk about wanting to have kids but they’re too busy, and they keep telling themselves they’re too busy. People will say to them, “It’ll never be the right time if that’s how you think about it.” That’s how I think about this. There’s never a moment where I’m like, “Okay, I’ve checked off everything on my list. I’ve got it completely under control. Now I can sit back and do it right.” It just doesn’t happen. You have to prioritize things and move things around. You have to do the things that you have to do, that feel like imperatives. I think for me, that was the shift. It was like, we’re never not facing a client rush/crisis/huge opportunity that I have to focus on because we need to get it. What I had to do was figure out within that context how to move forward anyway with the things that matter. I think once that switch flipped and we were like, we’re going to start building that into every choice and everything we do, then we started getting the results that that kind of work suggests. ROB: When you’re on that topic, it makes me think back – we had an agency we talked to on this podcast at South by Southwest a couple of years ago. They’re a neighbor of yours, but that doesn’t mean you’ve heard of them just because you’re in New York. The Soze Agency. Are you familiar with them? JOHN: Yeah, yeah. Isn’t it a freelance style, like a loose affiliation or collection of creators or something like that? ROB: I believe they call it a co-op. When I first heard it, it rang as a very Brooklyn thing to say that you were a collective and whatever else. JOHN: I love the Keyser Söze reference. ROB: They’re super, super intentional in this area, and I really have appreciated following them since they were on the podcast. But they have an equity model that is interesting. I think they’re going to opensource – I don’t know if they will or not. I don’t mean to speak for them. Everyone vests in ownership, but then they don’t take it with them when they leave, so it goes back into the pool and everybody gets to share. JOHN: Yeah, it’s very interesting. I’ve thought about that over the years and struggled with how to pair that with the imperatives of running a small business in an epically fast-changing landscape. But I think it’s really interesting, and I’ve certainly spent time thinking about if it could work, how it could work, what the problems are. In some ways, Mustache was a dictatorship in the sense that if I saw an opportunity or wanted to make a change, I just did it, and there’s nothing faster than one person deciding to do something. And that speed was critical at times. But on the other hand, there’s things that might’ve been lost, good choices and good opportunities that might have been missed because we didn’t have a more collective style. So, it’s a real head-scratcher in some ways. I see the upside; I get stuck on some of the downside. But I think there’s something there and I think there’s a future there. I just don’t think I’ve figured out how to crack it exactly. ROB: Someone’s going to have to pay some lawyers some money to figure it out, and that’s a trick too. I think what’s interesting is I have been previously very much in tech startup land, and there’s a model there that’s predicated around growth and around increasing valuations and giving equity. It just doesn’t apply in a services firm. You can’t hire somebody and give them 1% and then have them walk out the door a few years later. Then your cap table is just a mess. You can’t keep giving people this promise of the unlimited upside. When a company goes from a $10 million valuation to a $100 million valuation, they can get away with giving away smaller and smaller chunks in a way that would seem silly in a services firm. JOHN: It’s interesting you say that, Rob, because as you were saying, it also occurred to me that the valuations matter. If you have a billion dollar pie, it’s a lot easier to split up. The other thing has to do with margins. We’re in content/creative. It tends to be a very low margin, tight business. If you’re not in the tech valuations, you at least need to have a business model that’s geared towards really high margins, really fat profits, because that gives you a little more leeway to do things. And maybe that’s self-serving in some way, like if you implement the model, you’ll move towards a space that is more profitable. But I think you need one or the other. Those valuations or you need to be in a business that’s not razor-thin margins, I think, to make it work. ROB: It’s good to have the conversation. I hear from some people who say a services firm, you want 20-30% margins. I don’t know how that holds up, but I think what you’re saying about setting the sights high – it just gives you more freedom to execute. I think that’s what you’re hinting it. We went all virtual, and if your margins are good, when you have people coming from six different cities, you can talk about flying somewhere and meeting up. JOHN: That’s right. ROB: If you don’t have good margins, then you say “We’re all going to hide in our caves and never meet each other.” JOHN: [laughs] That’s right. So true. My reality. ROB: [laughs] John, when people want to get in touch with you and with Mustache Agency, how should they connect with you? JOHN: Our website is the best place to start, mustacheagency.com. There’s plenty of different ways you can contact us from there. ROB: And people should go to that website. It’s very visually stimulating. I think it puts your work in a very good light. JOHN: Thank you. ROB: I’m glad the work has gone into the front door there as well. Sometimes it’s hard to spend the energy on yourself. JOHN: So true. ROB: Thank you so much for coming on the podcast, John. I think it’s been helpful to learn from your journey and helpful to think about the areas of business, the lines of business you’ve chosen and how they synthesize together and where all this video, and particularly advertising, is going in the digital land. I really appreciate it. JOHN: Yeah, thanks for having me. It was a lot of fun. ROB: All right. Be well, John. Bye.  Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

Ashley Logan is the Founder and CEO at Yakkety Yak, a full-service purpose-driven content marketing agency that provides blog writing, social media marketing, video production, and website design and development for brands and organizations that want to make the world a better place.  Ashley says that the agency’s “sweet spot” is content creation and storytelling. She believes alignment with the greater good and “giving back” are two things that are necessary for changing the world. “You have to be purpose-driven,” Ashley says. “You have to stand for something.” A writer from age 5, Ashley graduated with an undergraduate degree in creative writing and landed a job selling for a private label candy manufacturer. She was  “a creative person trapped in a corporate world.” As she traveled around “slinging candy,” Ashley saw that widely different companies used the same words talk about themselves in the “digital space.” She decided she wanted a “bigger ticket” career and moved to commercial real estate.  To appease her creative drive, Ashley volunteered and created content for nonprofit organizations. Social media platforms were just starting to rise. She wondered, “How could you turn those social media engines into a marketing machine?” In 2012, Ashley finally understood that she needed to combine all of her “passions for business, storytelling, content, and nonprofit work.” She went back to school to pursue a master’s degree in Journalism in a program renowned for teaching people how to write for target audiences.  Ashley officially launched Yakkety Yak in 2014 and took clients as they came . . . until she realized she could no longer tell stories and work hard for jerks. The agency now maintains a focus on content and storytelling for a far more restricted clientele:  Organizations that “do good” (nonprofits),  Have, as a component of their organization, the intention of “giving back” (perhaps a part of the company raises funds to donate to non-profits), or  Are amenable to adding a “do good” component to their organization (Yakkety Yak works with these organizations that do not yet have a purpose-driven mindset to help them define and build that “piece” into their company culture).  Ashley thinks it is important for its clients to inform people of their “contributions to the greater good” by “putting it out there in your story, putting it on your website, weaving it into your social media, holding your teams accountable, and shouting it from the rooftops.” She thinks high quality video will become an increasingly more powerful marketing vehicle. Ashley is working with a designer to “revamp” Yakkety Yak’s office space with improved ventilation and flexible seating and intends to “open the doors” after Memorial Day. Ashley sees “the new office” as a safe place where “people can come and work if they want to escape” and gradually get people back together with flexible hours and a combination of in-person and remote work. She misses the “vibration” that comes from having a “team all together” but also notes that COVID has done wonders for work-life balance. Ashley is best reached on the agency’s website at yakketyyak.com, where visitors can find links to all of the agency’s social channels. Transcript Follows: ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m your host, Rob Kischuk, and I’m excited to be joined today by Ashley Logan. Ashley is the Founder and CEO at Yakkety Yak based in Chicago, Illinois. Welcome to the show, Ashley. ASHLEY: Thank you so much. I appreciate you having me here. ROB: Absolutely. Why don’t you start off by telling us about Yakkety Yak and what makes the firm unique? ASHLEY: Yakkety Yak is a full-service content marketing agency based in Chicago. We do everything from blog writing, social media marketing, video production, website design and development – basically any mechanism to help our clients tell their stories, we work with them. I guess what makes us unique is that we focus on working with brands and businesses that care about doing good. We’re a totally purpose-driven agency working with brands and businesses that want to make the world a little bit better. ROB: What does that look like when we actually get down to a client? What does a client look like who has this purpose-driven focus? Are there maybe some examples you can share of how they’re getting out in the world? ASHLEY: Absolutely. That can be nonprofit organizations, of course. They fall into that category. We work with many patient-facing organizations like the American Migraine Foundation, the American Brain Foundation, and other brands in that category. But purpose-driven doesn’t have to be nonprofit; it can be an organization whose culture focuses on giving back. They have volunteer events where they donate proceeds to a nonprofit organization. Ultimately, that alignment with a greater good is our sweet spot because one, it helps with storytelling, but also, in this day and age, giving back is such an important part of changing the world, making it a little better. ROB: Finding that sort of specialization and alignment can sometimes be a journey. How did you come to focus on that as a specialty? ASHLEY: That’s such a great question. When I founded the agency back in 2014, we didn’t have the luxury of selecting the types of clients that we worked with. I’m sure you’ve heard this a lot with your guests. We worked with some people that we probably didn’t want to work with. Ultimately it came down to that if we’re going to tell stories and work hard, we don’t want to work with jerks. [laughs] So we didn’t. We stopped working with jerks, and that’s it in a nutshell. Is that terrible? ROB: No. I mean, who wants to work with jerks? I don’t know anybody who says they do. I haven’t heard that strategy yet. I’d be fascinated if we have somebody listening who has a strategy built around working with jerks and charging a premium for it. I’m here for that conversation. ASHLEY: [laughs] I love it. So that’s really what it came down to. We also help businesses who don’t have a purpose-driven mindset to build that into their company culture. Maybe they came to us and wanted to think about “How do we put our story out there in a way that has more employee retention, that we can attract more visibility from our clients?” We always say you’ve got to be purpose-driven. You’ve got to stand for something. So, we’ve also helped coach our clients into getting into this space, too. ROB: What does that transformation look like? Maybe an example of where a company was starting. The purpose is usually there, much like your own firm; you just have to find your way to it. ASHLEY: That’s exactly it. Just setting the intention, putting it out there in your story, putting it on your website, weaving it into your social media, and holding your teams accountable too, and just shouting it from the rooftops. That’s especially applicable to clients of ours that aren’t necessarily nonprofits but are doing something to give back – make sure that their employees know about the work they’re doing at an executive level and then down to a grassroots level. A little bit less in COVID time but coordinating fundraising events or teambuilding events around giving back. ROB: It sounds like it would almost pull you towards being involved in – if an organization didn’t have core values, you might not even be working on marketing. You might be working almost on their internals before they get to the externals. Do you end up getting pulled in that deep? ASHLEY: Sometimes, yes, we do. But I think that primarily our sweet spot is in the content creation and the storytelling. That’s where we really like to be. Certainly, we will help clients define their brand strategy, and that includes core values and messaging. But we definitely like to focus on the story element. ROB: Understood. You talked about not having as much of a focus when you started, but let’s even go a little bit further behind that. What led you to have the sort of audacity to create your own job and create some other jobs along the way? How did you get into that lane? ASHLEY: I love that word. I love the word “audacious.” Let’s see, I’ve been a writer for my whole life, ever since I was in kindergarten, I think. I won a Young Authors contest for a short story I wrote called “Crystal Met the Ogre.” I still have it. Kind of funny. But I’ve been a writer my whole life, and I loved to tell people stories, but I also had a knack for business and trying to create processes and connect people. After I finished my undergrad at University of Tennessee – I was a creative writing major; I worked at the school paper – I ended up in a sales position. I wasn’t expecting that I was going to be in sales, but also that I was going to like it so much. I started off working for a candy manufacturer based in Chicago. It was a great experience. I was 22, had half the country as my territory, was flying all over, slinging candy. But I wanted a little bit more of a high-volume sale, and I moved into commercial real estate. Through that experience, I was a creative person trapped in a corporate world and interacting with people at the C level. What I found was that all of these brands and businesses didn’t know how to talk about themselves. They were all innovative. Every single one of them called themselves “innovative.” All of them called themselves “streamlined.” I realized it was a problem that in this digital space, people didn’t have the words to differentiate themselves from one another. You could close your eyes and hear across multiple industries and see people using the same exact words to describe themselves, with no differentiation. So that was an observation. In the meantime, I was volunteering for nonprofit organizations in Chicago and helping them with content creation. This was that sweet spot when social media was just starting to go from being that you needed a .edu email address to that anyone could sign up for Facebook at this time. How do you turn those social media engines into a marketing machine? I cut my teeth on that through nonprofit work and ultimately decided that I was onto something and needed to combine all of my passions for business, storytelling, content, and nonprofit work. So I left my career in commercial real estate and went back to school to earn a master’s in journalism from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. They have a great program for writing for a target audience. I simultaneously founded Yakkety Yak, and the rest is sort of history. ROB: That’s a great upscaling moment on the writing there. I like that. I wonder a little bit – I’m just going to pull on a thread here that’s a little random, but we’ll see where it goes – if you don’t mind me asking, what was the candy? Who were you selling to, and what made it desirable for them to buy this candy? ASHLEY: [laughs] It was a private label contract manufacturing. That’s what we pitched. I worked with Cost Plus World Market and Harry & David, and we were doing premium toffees. We would produce it for them under their own private label brand. Coming from Chicago, we’d make the candy and then it would be in like a Harry & David package, for example. They also did those really beautiful Christmas candies, ribbon candies. That was it. No chocolates and no gummies, but pretty much everything else. It was cool. There was a factory. The CEO of the company gave me my first job out of school, tolerated me, trained me in sales. He actually passed away a couple of years ago, and he just made such a positive impact in my life, giving me this opportunity. It was pretty cool getting to walk through the candy factory and make friends with the factory workers and be part of creating something from end to end. ROB: That’s very cool. Those are typically, in my reckoning, pretty high end, nice candies. It’s a creative process. It’s not what it sounds like at first when you say sales. I think we all sometimes miss doing tangible work, something you can put your hands on and something you can see sitting on a shelf. ASHLEY: Yeah, it was cool. And it was fun. It was my first experience in business. We would go to these candy conferences, and I was the youngest by far. I was the only female, interacting at Happy Hour with the good ol’ boys who’d been in the business for 40 years. It was fun. It taught me a lot about how to defend myself. It taught me a lot about how to keep composure as a woman in business and overcome challenges. That experience grew me really well for commercial real estate, which was a little bit more of a cutthroat type of industry. ROB: Right. You went from a boys’ club to a mean boys’ club. ASHLEY: [laughs] I did. ROB: Even trickier. Maybe a little bit gentler in a more creative space. But I think what’s interesting is the through line is, as we all know as an agency owner, you are selling, but it sounds like a common thing across your sales experience is you’re really helping people get what they want – which is much easier than trying to convince them they need something they’re not aware of. ASHLEY: I think so, yeah. ROB: Very interesting. Ashley, as you reflect on – you said 2014 was the starting of Yakkety Yak? ASHLEY: I have two dates. 2012 is when I founded the agency and I went back to school, and I had a few very small clients at the time. But 2014 is when I hired my first employee and Yakkety Yak became my full-time job. So I use that as my real date. ROB: Got it. Over the course of that 7+ year time, what are some things you’ve learned that you might do differently if you were starting from scratch? ASHLEY: That’s a great question. My journey has been really interesting. I built the agency from scratch. I had no outside investors. I’m pretty risk positive; I’m comfortable in a space of jumping and leaping to the next level. It doesn’t make me nervous. I don’t spend a lot of time dwelling on mistakes made because I do believe that every experience leads you to the next, and you’ve got to build upon it and take with you the tidbits that help make you stronger. For example, looking at my career trajectory, the candy business, while I knew it wasn’t my life’s passion, that sales experience helped take me to the next level. Any adversity that I faced in commercial real estate, I took that with me to become a founder and CEO and be gutsy as hell. But one thing that stands out for what I would do differently is I think in the area of hiring. I have worn every hat in the agency, and I wish that I’d had more help sooner because that would’ve helped me scale faster. I haven’t mentioned this part yet, but I’ve got three really little kids – and a COVID baby. It would’ve been great – when my second son was born, it was 2018; I was 38 weeks pregnant, and I had an employee resign, which meant that I was not going to get any maternity leave. I had my baby on a Tuesday and I was back to work on Monday. If I had built a deeper bench, then I would’ve been able to have a little bit more balance early on. ROB: What do you think it was that prevented you from building up that team? ASHLEY: I think when you’re an agency starting out and you’re competing in a market like Chicago – we have some major players here. I’m going up against, from a benefits standpoint, a salary standpoint, and a credibility standpoint, some powerhouses. It took a little bit of time to earn some credibility and name recognition. People, I will say, do remember the name Yakkety Yak, so I am proud of that. Recruiting top talent takes time and building up a team and building that referral network where people say “Hey, that’s a place where I really want to be and where I want to work.” ROB: Got it. What were your first couple of hires when you went from a team of one to a team of more? ASHLEY: Oh gosh, one of my first hires was – and he’s still one of my favorite employees; he moved back to California and is doing some really great things right now – a graphic designer. I had the way with the words, and I was bringing in the business but also doing a lot of the content creation, and Curtis was doing the graphic design elements. And then support from a writing standpoint, so I eventually started to be able to outsource that and build a team. I shouldn’t say outsource; I mean delegate. That’s the word I mean. And finally, 2018 was a breakthrough year for me where I finally was able to build – we had more than 15 people. Now we’re a team of 20. It’s great to have such amazing talent at the agency now. I wish that I had done that sooner. But when you’re bootstrapping your own business, it’s kind of part of the deal, I think. ROB: Congratulations on that growth. You mentioned a COVID baby, so I’m sort of expecting, by your story, that maybe you did get some maternity leave this time around? ASHLEY: [laughs] I didn’t. Well, lesson learned from the second child, but we were in crisis – not crisis, but I didn’t think that it would be good for me to have no visibility to my team when we’re all suddenly working remotely and in the middle of a global pandemic. So, I made sure to still be around for internal purposes, but I did remove myself from some client-facing work for a period of time. I had my baby Memorial Day weekend, and by Labor Day my clients were seeing me on the regular again. ROB: Got it. I can definitely see a case for visibility to a team in a time where everybody’s in uncharted territory. ASHLEY: Sure. ROB: Where are you and your team in terms of office? Did you have an office, do you have an office? Are you going to have an office? Are you keeping the same geographic footprint moving forward? How are you thinking about physical space in the context of Yakkety Yak? ASHLEY: That’s such a great question and something that’s so relevant right now. We have this awesome office in a loft building right near the train station, Union Station in Chicago, and it’s great. I love the space. It’s got that brick and timber feel, lots of natural light, open area. But we jammed a lot of people into that space. I’m currently working with a designer, Lauren Ashley Allan. She’s a really awesome up-and-coming designer. We’re revamping and rethinking our space so that it is comfortable for people when we return to work. Flexible seating options is what we’re focusing on, in addition to little booths so that people who are a little more conscious or want more privacy can work in a confined space that has ventilation. The goal is that we’re not going to mandate that the team come back to work, but we are going to open our doors after Memorial Day, and I’ll be there and give people a place that they can come and work if they want to escape and gradually start getting people back together. I think what I’ve been noticing is I miss the vibration, like the good vibes that come from having a team all together. So, we’re putting some thought and intention into how we’re designing the space, and we’ll move forward from there with some flexible hours, combination of remote work and in-person. ROB: Right, but you’re probably not going to have folks moving to Portugal and being fully remote, that you could think of? ASHLEY: I don’t think so. [laughs] ROB: [laughs] It sounds like you’re being very intentional about your space, which is compelling, and it sounds like even within the office environment, you’re really differentiating that work environment. Knowing Chicago, knowing where you are, you have a benefit of accessibility and transit and that urban lifestyle for those who choose it. And obviously, in Chicago, you can get into the city from very, very far out on a train if you want. And then not knowing the specific block you’re on or whatever, during normal times, there’s probably a good vibe, good places to grab lunch together, grab Happy Hour together. It’s not just some nameless office park. ASHLEY: Right, exactly. That camaraderie is just important. I really felt for people – especially those who are in there, mid to late twenties, single, living by themselves, and stuck at home during COVID. That’s a lot for people. I think that we’ve got a lot of healing to do as a country when it comes to finally starting to emerge back into everyday life. I want to be there and I want to create a safe space for my team to come in and get work done and feel welcome and safe and so we can continue doing the excellent work that we’ve been doing and build off of that energy. ROB: That sounds excellent. How’s your team thinking about that? I know everybody’s all over the spectrum, at least from people I know. Some people would be in a closet together tomorrow and some people are waiting until they get a shot or even longer. What’s the range of what you’re seeing? ASHLEY: A range, you’re exactly right. I’m giving people space to make the decisions on their own for now. We continue to check in on it. I’ve said that in 2021, at this point, we’re probably not going to do a mandate to go back to work. But we will open the doors and encourage people to come in if they want to. The beauty of the transition that’s taken place from a remote workforce standpoint is that now we see that we can work remotely, that if you’ve got to coach your kid’s softball team in the afternoon, you can work from home, and that’s going to be fine. We’re going to be able to connect, and no one’s going to miss anything. I think this has done wonders for the work-life balance, and I hope at least at Yakkety Yak, that’s a trend we’re going to really continue to let permeate our office culture. ROB: I love the intentionality of it. I’m a little bit jealous. I’m a little bit more of a “ready, fire, aim” sort of person. Over the course of the past year, the last four people we’ve hired have all been remote, and we’re going to figure it out later. I’m hoping that late fall/early winter, we’ll get together and visit one of our team who lives down in Chile. It’s completely different. Walking away from the office and loading the furniture into our basement kind of made it real, you know? ASHLEY: How did that feel for you? ROB: I am very comfortable with the change. The thing I don’t like in my basement is there’s no people there. There’s fresh air and light. It’s a little rustic, shall we say. I do miss the getting together, but if part of it means that instead of being in the office and doing little things, we get to do something more pronounced like spending a week in Chile and getting some different gatherings, I’m interested in it. It’s a change of pace for sure. Ashley, when you think about the future of Yakkety Yak, the future of marketing and how you’re working with businesses that give back, what are you excited about in the future that’s coming up? ASHLEY: I couldn’t be more excited about video. We are doing some really, really, really incredible work when it comes to especially the patient space, telling people’s stories about how they’ve been impacted by various health conditions, diseases, disorders. I love using video as a mechanism for storytelling, regardless of the target audience. There are so many cool things now with TikTok and how to use visual elements to show a progression, and people are doing that every day in their homes as amateurs, and how that’s going to translate to professional level videos I think is something that is so cool and something you’re going to see exploding in marketing space over the next 18 months. ROB: One thing I wonder about, if you have an opinion on it, is when I think about audio and the way it’s going, I see a lot more attention going into the sound on versus sound off experience and accommodating people who might be muted. What direction do you see that going? Are we going towards where every video’s going to adapt, or are we going to where we’re assuming that so many people have some sort of Bluetooth headset in that they’re going to have audio on? How is that trending? ASHLEY: That’s a really great question. I’m going to answer it in two parts. One, I think that the pandemic has shown everyone the importance of quality A/V, like when you can’t hear someone on Zoom or there’s a delay in a recording when you’re watching things virtually. I think that high quality video and audio is something that’s more of a priority than it’s ever been. With that said, I think it depends on the platform. We wouldn’t necessarily, for a virtual fundraiser or virtual event, have all of the text scrolling at the bottom of the experience, but when it comes to ads and what’s happening when people are scrolling through Instagram, I think it’s absolutely vital to have the words there because people are scrolling through Instagram in their beds at night when they’re not necessarily wearing headphones and they don’t want to wake up their partner, or they have babies that they’re feeding and don’t want to scare the babies. That’s my personal experience, but I think it applies across a multitude of scenarios. And people are multitasking, too. They might have one window open or be on a conference call or a Zoom call and scrolling through Instagram. You can’t have that dependence on the audio in those scenarios.  So, when it comes to social media, the text is vital. When it comes to other experiences where you’re holding people’s attention for a little bit longer, then I think you’re okay without it.  ROB: Very, very interesting. Thank you for illuminating the topic. Ashley, when people want to find and connect with you and with Yakkety Yak, where should they go to find you? ASHLEY: Our website is the best spot to find us because you’ve got links there to all of our social media channels. You can find us at yakketyyak.com. The spelling isn’t necessarily intuitive. ROB: How did you choose the spelling of Yakkety Yak? ASHLEY: [laughs] I don’t know. I think it was probably the domain that was available at the time. But it was important that we were Y-A-K and not Y-A-C-K, so we went from there. ROB: Perfect. Ashley, thank you so much for joining the podcast and sharing your experience. I definitely wish you the best as you get that revamped office up and humming and get everybody back working together in person. ASHLEY: Thanks, Rob. I really appreciate your time today. This was fun. ROB: Thank you so much, Ashley. Bye. Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

Carl Fremont is CEO at Quigley-Simpson, a direct marketing/direct to consumer marketing agency with its roots in longform television infomercials. The agency has pivoted numerous times from informercials to shorter form direct response TV to full-service media with a focus on digital marketing. With an almost 40-year career in direct marketing, Carl joined Quigley-Simpson. Six months later, Covid sent the company virtual.  In this interview, Carl reflects on the history of direct marketing. Twenty years ago, the required tasks included setting up call centers, and providing fulfillment, pricing, and promotion strategies for a variety of products. In today’s digital world, the agency helps clients determine how to sell their products in different digital marketplaces and the mix of creative and messaging content that will be most effective. Carl explains that over the 18 years this agency has been around, it is well grounded in “in driving sales and building relationships with our clients’ customers.” While the pandemic has increased many clients’ focus on direct sales and short-term revenues because they are trying to “catch up,” Carl says that a business will eventually fail if it doesn’t also invest in building its brand image and association.  What is the right investment balance for building brand awareness, association, consideration, guiding the purchase journey, driving revenue, and developing customer relationships? Carl says brand marketing is an end-to-end process. A careful analysis of data is the only way to determine the right investment balance to optimize the consumer journey and build a brand for the future. It takes a lot more investment and effort (and even bravery) to invest in a brand’s image than to go straight for sales.   The balance of long-view brand building and quick sales requires a corresponding strategic balance of creative and messaging content and presentation. Every brand is unique . . . and the balance may change over time.  Carl believes that brands need to be flexible – to have the ability and willingness to adapt and adopt new ways of working and thinking – if they are to survive and thrive. “Every year is a new opportunity and a new way to accelerate growth,” Chad says. Today’s brand-building is not just about touting a product’s features and benefits. Winning the business is now “deeper” than “What will this product do for me?” Customers are asking such questions as, “What is the purposeful meaning behind the brand?” “What does the brand mean from a social side?” How is it giving back?” “What does the brand stand for?”  Chad can be reached on his agency’s website at Quigleysimpson.com or through LinkedIn at Carl Fremont. Transcript Follows: ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m your host, Rob Kischuk, and I am joined today by Carl Fremont, CEO at Quigley-Simpson with offices in both Los Angeles, California and New York, New York. Welcome to the podcast, Carl. CARL: Thank you, Rob. I’m thrilled to be joining you. ROB: It’s excellent to have you here. Why don’t you start off by telling us about Quigley-Simpson and where the firm specializes? CARL: Sure, that would be great. Quigley-Simpson was founded 18 years ago by two entrepreneurs, and the co-founders, Renee Hill Young and Gerald Bagg, are still involved with the company. Its roots are similar to mine. It’s in direct marketing. Today we say direct to consumer. I don’t know when direct marketing got out of fashion and turned to direct to consumer, but we were really one of the first direct marketing/direct to consumer agencies. Our heritage, believe it or not, is in infomercials, in longform television. We pivoted. We pivoted many, many times and continue to do so, from longform infomercials to shorter form direct response TV to full-service media, in particular focused on digital marketing. So, our roots are very much grounded in driving sales and building relationships with our clients’ customers. But we’ve evolved as the industry evolved because we needed to. Today, we’ve taken that heritage from direct to consumer, direct marketing, and applied it in a digital world. Twenty years ago, that meant arranging for call centers. That meant product fulfillment, price, promotion of different products. We’re still doing the same thing, but in a digital world. What that means today, to correlate, it’s how you sell your products on different digital marketplaces, like on Amazon or Walmart or Kroger, and using a plethora of different channels to market, including the creative and the messaging. The one thing that distinguishes us is that we’re not only focused on the revenue creation, but on the brand as well, which is why we say our value proposition and what we stand for is both brand and demand: building the brand’s image and awareness as well as driving performance, driving revenue. It’s the balance of those two, between building the brand’s awareness, building the consideration, all the way through the purchase journey through to driving revenue and customer relationship marketing. So, it’s really an end-to-end way that you look at brand marketing today. ROB: It’s really fascinating. Much as you’re saying that direct marketing made its transition into direct to consumer, I think at some point B2B marketing stole the show from consumer marketing when it comes to the customer or buyer journey. It seems like consumer products have been the original home of the buyer’s journey. How do you think about that journey when you’re really talking about – you’re probably involved in making sure product ranks well, lists well, looks great on Amazon, but you have to start with that awareness. How do you think about connecting the dots where you’re going to make somebody aware of something that eventually they’re going to see on Amazon and buy? What are the approaches? CARL: That’s a great question. Today, as we know, especially with COVID and the pandemic and what’s happened the last year, it’s hastened the way in which we’re marketing brands today. There’s even a greater focus on the short-term revenue to make up for where we were. Many brands right away focus on that marketplace, on creating the direct sales without thinking about how they build the brand. At some point, Rob, you will hit a proverbial wall. You will reach a point of diminishing return on sales if you haven’t built the brand and the brand association. So, the question, and what we help our clients determine, is what’s the right balance for building that brand’s awareness, association, consideration, and the demand side? As we all know, it takes a lot more investment and effort to build and sustain a brand’s image and awareness than it is in a direct sales capacity. In the short-term world which we are faced with today about driving revenue, it takes brands greater investment and bravery, actually, to build that brand’s image. What we do is help through data and analytics to determine what that right balance is between investing and building that brand’s image or awareness to driving demand. How do you do that? It’s both in the investment in media as well as the creative, the messaging and creating the right balance. There’s no magic formula. Not one brand is like any other brand. Each one has its own unique situation for determining that right balance between the brand and the demand side. But using a number of data sources – looking at sales, looking at the marketplace, competitive insights and intelligence, consumer insights – all of that, bringing that all together, plus in many cases some primary research that’s done, helps us with determining that right balance, the correct investment level between the brand and demand side. And as we know, Rob, nothing today is static. Everything is very dynamic. We may determine up front the balance between investing in the brand and the demand side, but that balance may change over time. It means also that because you have a message and efforts that are focused on sales and driving sales, it doesn’t mean that the brand’s image should not be well represented in that as well. So, it’s not only looking at an investment; it’s incorporating a brand’s messaging and image even when you’re doing more direct sales. ROB: Perhaps we can get a little bit more practical here, Carl. I recognize that every brand’s a little bit different. Is there a brand you have worked with that you can speak about that might be an interesting example of this combination of the market research, establishing the brand, and not overharvesting the low-hanging fruit, but really building towards a good robust, long-term pipeline of demand? CARL: Sure. I’ll talk about it from a category side because I don’t want to talk about a specific client per se. But from a category side, there’s a category I’ve been personally involved with for decades, which is in the consumer credit card industry. As we know, it’s a highly, highly competitive marketplace. There are a plethora of cards and choices and opportunities. Building the brand’s image and building the association that “that piece of plastic is right for me” is really critical in building that audience base – but not only getting the share of mind, but then the share of wallet. That’s a very highly competitive category. In many cases, the brand features and benefits are very similar. All you really have to stand out and build that long-term value proposition is your image. It’s what you stand for. It’s how you relate to a consumer. And that’s where there’s a lot of research and insight that goes in. How do I connect someone to the right card, the right consumer experience that is right for them? If you go at it in the credit card by just the offer, you’re not going to get that share of wallet. You may not win over their long-term hearts. You’re just going to acquire them, but they’re not going to have the longer-term value to you. It’s creating that association that that card not only has the right features and benefits, but I associate to its image, I associate to the values that are behind it. And I think today, brands need to go beyond just their features and benefits of building a brand’s image. Today that also includes building purposeful meaning behind the brand and thinking about what the brand means from a social side. How is it giving back? It’s not just about creating that image and awareness and association. It’s purposeful marketing. What does the brand stand for, for me? I think today with so many different social issues that we’re encountering, especially in the past year, having a brand stand for something is very important for consumers. ROB: That’s a really interesting conversation there. I’m in Atlanta; some folks here – I think an investor, and I think also Killer Mike – were involved in standing up Greenwood Bank. When you think about financial products, there aren’t really very many products that can differentiate themselves by saying they’re going to serve an underserved community and actually show it and mean it. Something I want to pull on that’s interesting – maybe this trend is real, maybe it’s not – it seems to me that the marketing world is moving in your favor, is what I would say. It seems like we’re moving more and more away from considered purchases and more into habits. That’s kind of what you’re alluding to with the credit card. But our phones have switched more from a considered purchase to a habit of what phone I’m going to acquire with regularity. Or I even think in a completely different market about the cloud computing market. Amazon Web Services and Google, they’re advertising, but they’re really advertising for a share of your habit, a percent of where you’re going to spend your money on your IT infrastructure. Have you seen more and more things shifting? Even with television, televisions are more of a habit than a considered purchase, I would say, now. CARL: Oh yeah. You mean the actual television set? ROB: Yeah, it’s $200 and now $1500. CARL: I just bought one in a big box place – I’m not going to say which one – that was shockingly $100 for a 24-inch television. Who would ever think you can buy that? All of these consumer electronics – and we just had CES, so it’s a good time to talk about it – they’re utilities. They’re part of our connected lives. Just as you talked about the phone, we know for years now that the phone is part of our connected life. It’s not obviously just about making and receiving calls. It is connected to our life and how we shop, of course how we communicate, importantly how we receive news and information, how we socialize with our friends and colleagues. It has become a utility. The television is the same way. Now that we can stream, it’s certainly a big entertainment, but with streaming opportunities, we can narrowcast, and that’s what’s happening. It’s mimicking in some ways cable, but it’s all on demand where we’re narrowcasting even further information that is important to us. So, there’s a blending of all of these utilities, too, all these devices. Over time – we’ve been talking about the Internet of Things for many years now, but it very much so will become part of our everyday lives. Now, the question is, getting back to marketing, how do brands participate in it? What is the brand role? Is brand’s role this traditional just pushing messages out on all these devices? Does it contribute any value in any of the content that gets streamed? How do brands enter into this in a way that doesn’t seem obtrusive, but seems complementary to what we’re doing – the habits, as you said, that we have? As consumer electronics, consumer behavior and the way we’re engaging with content has vastly changed. It’s been doing that for years; it’s just been accelerated because of the pandemic. With the way we shop also, that behavior has been changing for years but now is being accelerated. All of this is coming together. The devices, the way we connect, whether that’s through brick and mortar or through digital, through the way we receive entertainment and news and information to the way we shop – all of that is merging together. It’s all coming together, and in some ways, Rob, it is a little “back to the future” for us. When we started doing infomercials, they were entertaining and you were able to shop through them. So, there’s a little bit of lessons learned from the past as well. But all of this is coming together and merging together. What brands are now faced with more than ever is, what’s their role in all this? How do they play within all of this? Because the models have been turned upside down. ROB: It’s really blinding, and it’s interesting – YouTube is the new infomercial in a lot of cases, which is such an interesting shift. I want to pull on something else that you mentioned. You mentioned the firm itself is 18 years old. How long have you been with the firm? Were you the first transition away from being founder-led? Or what did that look like for you? CARL: That’s a great question. I joined a year and a half ago, and I had no idea, like everybody else, what was ahead. After 6 months of being in LA and mostly focused in our Los Angeles office, everything turned upside down. I literally believed, Rob, that we would be back together in 2-3 weeks. None of us had experienced in our lifetime a pandemic, so there was no rulebook. I really thought we’d all be back. We were, like everybody else, improvising as we went. We had no rules. We didn’t see it coming, so we didn’t plan for it. It just sort of evolved and happened for us. So, I joined a year and a half ago, and certainly the last almost year now, being it was March that we had our work-from-home policy that went into effect and have been following pretty much ever since – never really thought that. But for me, Quigley-Simpson was a big comfort zone because my roots and heritage or where I’ve spent a vast majority of my almost-40 year career (September I mark my 40th year) has been in direct marketing and direct to consumer marketing. Very much so it’s my comfort zone. It’s where I’ve always been. I came on, thankfully, by our two co-founders to help evolve the company further. Again, the company was evolving and had many pivots long before I came, but now we have to make another big pivot. We have to continue our heritage of being nimble and flexible and adopting to the times as we always have been. And as we just talked about, the acceleration of how consumers are engaging with and watching television and other entertainment sources, how they are connecting their lives through multiple devices, their shopping behavior all have been accelerated. It has caused us to reflect on the future and look at what lessons we’ve had in the past and how we apply them moving forward. We’re at a vantage point versus other agencies that we’ve always practiced this direct-to-consumer mindset with a heavy focus on brand and brand building. So, for us, this next pivot isn’t that remarkable because we’ve always done it. Now the question is, again, how do we take our clients along with us on that ride? Because everyone is looking at how that acceleration, that often-used and overused word of “transformation,” how do we now accelerate it even faster to catch up with consumer behavior – your behavior, my behavior, everyone’s behavior? ROB: It’s quite a transition. People often say society to some extent has a reverence for the founders of different things, whether it’s your Edelmans or your Steve Jobs or anything like that. But beneath that, within any company, quite often the culture of both the team as well as the client relationships, there’s a magnetism. They’re working there because they like and respect the people in charge. What do you think are some keys to making an effective transition there so that clients are not jarred and the team is not jarred by such a consequential change of leadership? CARL: I’m nodding my head. You can’t see it because we’re on a podcast. [laughs] I’m nodding in agreement with what you said. We’re all in this together. We’re all on the same path forward. For me and for us at Quigley-Simpson, it’s about really partnering. It’s not you against them; we’re all in this together. We all are heading in the same path on that transformation acceleration. Really doing it together and being one team and having that trust with each other that we’re going to go through it together and have a concerted roadmap is important. Now, what that entails, as I said before, is a commitment to each other and a commitment to trust and a commitment to open up on all sides – on the agency side, on the client side – information and data that’s going to allow us together to assess the market, assess customers – which is where you always begin: with the customer. We’re putting consumers in the center and building a roadmap for it. That roadmap and acceleration of the roadmap really depends on many factors. It depends on where you are, where any marketer is in that journey. What have you done before to bring together your whole database of your consumers? Is it all together? Is it in disparate databases? What have you done to put measures in place to protect your consumer privacy? What have you done to assess through all that data who your audiences are? And what have you tested and learned along the way? What roadmaps have you put in place along the way? That’s what a lot of this is. It’s putting together that roadmap, doing it together, and accelerating at the pace that is most comfortable for the marketer in terms of where they are. There is no one size fits all in terms of building a roadmap and accelerating. A lot of it – you used the word “culture” – depends on the culture of the organization. It depends on how fast they want to move. Today, everything’s moving so fast and so accelerated that you really need to get together and have that roadmap established. But I believe that it first comes with a true, true partnership with everyone aligned on what the objectives are, what’s going to be measured, how it’s going to be measured, and it’s always on. We’re in a world of always on. We have been, but it is constantly dynamic testing and learning and then optimizing from there. Now more than ever, we have to be testing many different factors of the consumer experience along the consumer journey. ROB: Carl, if you look over your LinkedIn, you’ve been on quite a journey in some agencies of different magnitudes and size. What are some key lessons you yourself have learned along the way that you might revisit if you were starting over? CARL: That’s a great question and a good thought. For almost four decades I’ve been in this. Adaptability is always key. You have to be adaptable to the times. That also requires a great amount of curiosity. You’ve got to be looking always at every year as a new year. The brands and marketers I’ve worked with and had the most success with never look at one year as the same. Every year is a new opportunity and a new way to accelerate growth. There’s never a repeat. It’s always, what are we doing now? What’s new? It’s a constant evolution. You’re never done. You’re always evolving. I remember saying to people who I’ve mentored and who’ve worked for me in the past, “This is the best time we’ve ever been in marketing and advertising.” Honestly, I’ve been saying that for 40 years because every year, it’s constantly evolving. So adoptability and adaptability to the times that we’re in and being curious about what is next, being curious around data and technology and what that enables, is really how you progress forward. If you are not someone who is adaptable and adopting new ways of working and thinking and don’t have a curious mind, then you’re not going to succeed and this business is probably not for you. You need to be able to constantly be changing and reinventing every year. And frankly, Rob, that’s the exciting part of what we do. ROB: There are a lot of things on a lot of people’s minds right now in January 2021, and I think there are some people who are holding on and hoping they can just get back to normal. I think that’s never really true. Maybe it’s just emphasized a little bit, or maybe it’s – I think this is probably a little crazier than it’s usually been. I’ll just concede that. But if it’s changing a little more slowly, you still can’t hang on. I think the folks who have tried to hang on and come out of this past year and go back to what they were doing – I don’t think that’s going to go well. CARL: No, exactly. Now that I’ve just said things keep changing, there are some things that do stay the same, and that is great brands that tell great stories. That was definitely an art. We’ve been practicing at Quigley-Simpson, since early days of longform advertising, great storytelling for brands, and that art is on the present and will continue. It is being adapted into new forms based on technology and access to data. But the notion of building great brands through great storytelling will be going on in infinite times. We always need to be focused on that and take that great storytelling and adapt it to new formats, new ways of consumer engagement, new technology, and making sure that we are always connecting it to the consumer experience based on information and data that we know about someone. ROB: It’s such a great point. I’m glad you’re here to elevate the appreciation of the infomercial as an art – and I mean that, and I mean that in this way. People talk now about StoryBrand, they talk about that being rooted in the Joseph Campbell Hero’s Journey, that Star Wars story structure. But it seems to me that that’s kind of the story of infomercial as well: how do you make the person who will buy this product the hero? CARL: Exactly. ROB: And the product is the guide. The product is the tool. That is their lightsaber. CARL: If you think about it, in this short amount of time from where we’ve been, in that period for the informercials, you were both telling that brand’s story and getting somebody to respond and to connect. Now, if we can take that same notion today about building a great brand through storytelling, through a value proposition, a unique selling proposition, and marry it to what matters to consumers, what’s purposeful, and connect it to sales, to driving an action – that’s what it’s about. Adapting those principles that will always be to new forms of technology, new forms of media. ROB: That’s very wise, and I appreciate it. I’m glad you’re here to bring the perspective. Carl, when people want to connect with you and with Quigley-Simpson, where should they go to find you? CARL: Quigleysimpson.com is the best place, or through my LinkedIn, Carl Fremont, is probably the best place. I’m passionate about building brands, so the opportunity to talk to anybody about brand and demand – I can do that all day long. ROB: That’s wonderful. Glad you have kept an openness while you also stay curious. Thank you so much for putting that out there. Carl, it’s a pleasure to talk to you and learn from you. Thank you for coming on the podcast. CARL: It’s been fabulous. Really appreciate it. Have a great day. ROB: You too. Be well. Thanks. Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

Chad Crowe is CEO at Techwood Digital, an employee-owned agency that provides B2B, e-comm, and lead generation services for around 100 clients in a variety of U.S. industries. Founded on SEO, Techwood has over the years added paid search, branding, and some design elements and development – in a gradual transition to becoming a full-service agency. Chad had been doing SEO and paid search in a job he loved when he met Jack Ogilvie, owner of Techwood. Jack wanted to add paid search capabilities to his organization’s offerings. How did he win Chad away from his dream job? With the opportunity for ownership at Techwood.   In the first month, Chad started changing Techwood by defining four components for the onboarding process: core values, mission, process, and value chain (how does the agency continually add value to the client?). The agency’s core values, to which any new clients or new employees have to agree to accept and focus on include: Have a “How can I help?” attitude. “How can I help the situation be better?”  “How can I be more engrained?” This attitude promotes growth. Embrace curiosity, knowledge, and improvement.  Provide second mile service. Do a “little bit more, a little bit surprising, a little bit extra” to strengthen the relationship. (Hijacked from Chick-fil-A, Chad says, this is NOT scope creep.)  Be open and honest – with self, coworkers and clients. Have lighthearted fun (which requires trust) but also have heartfelt sincerity.  Be respectful. Chad applies this to his worldview when he says respect is “something the whole world needs right now – this level of respect for everybody that doesn’t question so much as it seeks to help.” The right clients and the right employees are people who have a “core values fit” with the agency. Chad admits that, in the past, he optimistically hired a few “almost fits” that, over time, did not work out. Today, he says he is “more intentional about slowing down” until he is convinced that the new hire is 100 % before he ever makes an offer.  A few years after Chad joined Techwood, the agency was doing very well and had great growth and a few “amazing” employees. Jack and Chad decided it was time to consider transitioning the agency to an employee ownership model. But how to do that without incurring big tax penalties?   In this interview, Chad explains how the agency set up an ESOP, or Employee Stock Option Plan, to put agency ownership in the hands of its employees. About two years ago, the agency became 100% employee owned. The cost of conversion was high, but Chad claims the benefits have been even greater. He says there are “a lot of very unique and interesting things that go on when you transition to an employee stock option plan” – among them being the opportunity to create “an evergreen company . . . where everybody can work forever under those core values.” Chad can be found on his agency’s website at techwood.digital or by email at chad.crowe@techwood.digital. Transcript Follows: ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m your host, Rob Kischuk, and I’m joined today by someone from my same hometown here in Atlanta, Georgia – Chad Crowe, CEO at Techwood Digital. Welcome to the podcast, Chad. CHAD: Thank you. It’s so kind of you to extend an invite. ROB: Good to have you here. You’re building something special. Why don’t you start off by telling us about Techwood Digital and what you do and where you specialize?  CHAD: We are a digital agency. We really cut our teeth on SEO as a product line. Everything we do has a core there. Then after several years in the SEO arena, we expanded to include a paid offering, so we do paid search really well as well. Our philosophy and what we’ve been trying to do is add services as time goes on. But of course, you don’t want to blindly do that, so it’s been a slow add over the years. Last year we added branding and some design elements and development to our stack. We’re slowly becoming more and more of a full-service agency out of Atlanta, and we service a lot of clients all over the U.S. We’ve got several in the New York area, Michigan area, and out in California. We don’t really specialize in an industry. We’ve got probably 100 clients that span lots of different industries. We do B2B, we do e-comm, we do B2C lead gen, and we take our learnings and try to focus and become really good at the things we’re focusing on. ROB: It’s an interesting mix. Is there any common thread between customers? Or how do you end up attracting such a diverse portfolio of clients, both in terms of business as well as geography? CHAD: It’s going to sound kind of lame, to be completely honest. As we were talking about before the podcast, we are an employee-owned agency, so really the common thread between all of our employees and all of our clients is everybody has agreed to accept and focus on our core values of having a “How can I help?” attitude and being open and honest and second mile service and all of those things. Really, the common thread that we’re looking for through all of that is people whose values align with us and we feel like we can really successfully win. I’m sure all agencies have an onboarding process, a sales process. Our sales process is definitely extremely hands-on. Like I said, we’re really trying to focus and find people who are going to be a cores value fit that we can really, really help. I guess as lame as it sounds, that’s kind of it. We’re looking for people who hold the values that we hold true as well, and I feel like if we’re aligned there and we’ve done our basic research to make sure that we can help you and that there’s opportunity there, we’ll have a great partnership. And that’s been what we’ve been focused on. We’ve brought in people over the years, and they just continue to flourish. As they transition to other jobs, they bring us along and we keep the previous client. So, we’ve really been more of a referral-based growing agency for years. That’s the common thread. It’s just really focusing on who we want to be and who we want to work with. ROB: That is such a fascinating dynamic that you mention, that employee churn in the marketing industry – if you stick in it long enough, there’s a virtuous cycle. There’s the dynamic in marketing between agency and brand and vendor that seems to ebb and flow, and vendors can also be clients while you’re at it. It’s fascinating that longevity can sometimes correlate pretty well. CHAD: Absolutely. I’m also referring to clients. Their senior marketing person, who’s a person we interact, that person leaves and goes to another company because they’ve gotten great results and want to continue up the ladder. They bring us into a new company as well. We’ve definitely had it from the employee side. Our employee turnover is actually really low, so we see it more on the client side. ROB: Right. I mean even more sometimes one of your clients may get tired of brand for a while and they go work for another agency, but then they pop their head back out, and maybe they actually like you, Techwood, more than they like the shop they were in for a while. But you make a great point that the best client is probably someone you helped earn a promotion by switching jobs, or you helped them success well enough that they go somewhere else and they want to bring you along and take them to the next level there as well. CHAD: Absolutely. ROB: With Techwood Digital, tell me about the origin story. What made you decide to start this company and transition you from whatever you were doing before? CHAD: It’s kind of a long and fortuitous story. I’ll try to abbreviate it. I met a guy named Jack Ogilvie in college. We met through weird circumstances in that my roommate was Jack’s best friend in high school. Jack was going to Georgia Tech downtown; I was going to Reinhardt University all the way up in Waleska, Georgia. There’s nothing to do in Waleska, Georgia, so my roommate and I would come visit Jack in Atlanta. That’s how I met Jack. It was probably 7 years after graduation – I was working for a large company in Cumming, Georgia, owning their paid presence and their SEO and working there – when I went to a tradeshow in New York and I ran into Jack. We were talking about “Hey, what are you doing? What am I doing?” Jack actually started Techwood shortly after college, so he owned Techwood at that time. He built the company on SEO and was looking to try to focus and own and be really good at the paid space and was trying to solve that. That was the piece that I brought to the table. You’re in the Atlanta area; I don’t know if you’ve heard of AutomationDirect, but they’ve won the Atlanta Business Chronicles’ “Best Medium Size Company to Work for in Atlanta” for nearly 6 years in a row. Just a really, really good company. As we were talking, I said, “Hey, here are my specialties. Here’s what I’m doing.” He’s like, “I’ve got this agency. I really want you to come work for me and figure out the paid side.” Like I said, AutomationDirect is such a great company. I had zero interest in switching jobs. So, we left that conference, just reconnecting and talking. Several months later, it was like, “Hey, I really think this is a great way to go.” He made me an offer to transition into ownership at Techwood, so that’s how I joined. Techwood grew from an SEO agency to a paid agency. Several years into that, things were going really well and we had several very amazing, outstanding employees. We had these core values and this mission statement we were really holding to. The result has been great growth. Looking back, we said that we wanted to be considerate of everyone. We wanted to help everyone. We wanted to have these values that we hold dear. We were looking for the next level of that. As we looked at that, Jack and I decided that it was time to transition the company into more of an employee ownership model. At that time, we were looking through lots of different mechanisms to do that, and we stumbled across a mechanism called the ESOP, or employee stock option plan. Probably about two years ago, we transitioned the company into 100% employee owned through an employee stock option plan. Again, it’s just put more teeth to our core values. Every time I feel like we’ve taken a step to say, “How can we be more engrained there?”, the result has always been growth. We’re continuing to grow today. ROB: We often get questions and curiosity on this podcast about ways to facilitate ownership. There’s a perception, I think, that it’s a very expensive process. Talk about how you thought about shouldering the cost. Did you find it expensive, or did you find it to be manageable through some tools you found along the way? CHAD: For us, we found it very manageable. But again, it’s based on what you’re trying to do. We weren’t trying to completely go away from Techwood. I had complete interest in continuing to work at Techwood and continuing to work for the long haul. We’re working to build what we’re going to call an evergreen company, a company that we want to focus on being a place where everybody can work forever under those core values that we want. So that was our intention. With that, the bill to actually convert it was pretty large, but I think the benefit has definitely outweighed the expense. There’s a lot of very unique and interesting things that go on when you transition to an employee stock option plan. For instance, the company is making income, and the company doesn’t have to pay income tax on that. There’s a lot of cash left at the bottom line. When you go through the process of an ESOP, you can set out how the employees are going to purchase the company from you as an owner as well, so it’s not like I just took ownership of Techwood and said, “Okay, now we’re all owners.” The employees are definitely earning it or have earned it. On the day we transitioned, we made sure there were some people within the company that would gain stock in the first year just because we knew they’d earned it already. The employee stock option plan, is it expensive? It’s a big bill to look at, yes. But when compared to the benefits, I think it completely outweighs it. Publix has a percentage of their company that’s in a stock option plan. The owner of Publix, when somebody asks, “Hey, do you ever regret selling that to the employees? How much money would you have earned if you hadn’t done that?”, his response to that question is always, “Probably zero,” because the mechanism has been so powerful. That’s the reason why he feels the company has grown. His response to “Would you do it again?” and “What would you have had if you hadn’t done it?” is always, “Probably nothing. Would I do it again? Absolutely.” ROB: Ballpark, is that a four-figure bill, a five-figure bill, a six-figure bill? CHAD: It’s going to depend on all the pieces you need to put in and also the size of your agency and where you’re going. But yeah, you could see a six-figure bill. ROB: That’s a commitment. But I think employees appreciate that sort of commitment. I think I heard you allude to, along with that stock structure, you also have some sort of distribution structure, right? When there’s profits, you’re aligned and also distributing those to the team. Is that part of the case? CHAD: You work through an ESOP over the course of years, and you set that out when you’re setting it up. Once the company is completely purchased from you as the owner and into the trust, the company can pay out dividends on those trusts to people who have stock. We can pay those into the form of an investment account. An ESOP is technically a form of retirement account, so it is a tax-free way to get stock as well and pay taxes when they sell the stock. That’s always been something kind of weird. It’s like, hey, we found the employees who we want to make partners here. If we wanted to just give them stock, it always came with a big tax bill for them, so the ESOP solved that problem as well, which has been pretty interesting. ROB: Right, it’s a very interesting solution to the problem. I think it’ll be interesting for folks to get out there and look at that option in the market. You have mentioned core values a couple of times. It’s clear to me that core values are important to you. At what point in the business did you establish those values? CHAD: When I came in, it was kind of a hole. Within the first month, that was my top goal. It’s just interesting; Jack and I are definitely two sides of the same coin in that he has amazing business acumen. He is probably more of the financial brains, I would say. He understands a lot more and all of that. I’ve got definitely more of a people capital. Seeing that as a whole based off of what I’m good at and where I can fit in – that’s the goal of that. It just has made it easier for us to scale. I saw it as, how can people make decisions quicker and feel like they’re making the best decisions? How can people operate without having to go through the eye of a needle, which would be me or somebody else? How can they feel like they have a full sandbox to participate and work in? Core values is one element of our sandbox. We’ve got four different things that are part of our onboarding process, and everything that we do really outlines what that sandbox for us to play in is. Core values is one, our mission is one, our process is one, and the other is our value chain. How are we continually adding value to the client? We’ve got a graphical presentation of how we ensure that when a client entrusts us with a dollar, we give them enough value to warrant that trust. Those are the four things that I set up. Like I said, it’s been a hole that I saw and I said, hey, we can really scale if we would ensure we have the right people within our organization and tell them what they can do and how they can do it by saying, “Hey, don’t go beyond this line and you’re good.” ROB: Really, really interesting. Can you run back those core values for us, just so we can digest them? CHAD: They’re all begged and borrowed from other people, so I don’t want anybody to think that I’ve got some ridiculous insight that nobody else has. It’s pretty straightforward, and I think most people would be like, “Yeah, this is it.” But we tried to be more intentional than that. Having a “How can I help?” attitude is one of our first and foremost ones. We go into depth and really try to define them. I’m a communications major and specialist, so I am dedicated to ensuring that the team has a unified definition of what that means. It’s interesting when you start thinking of the English language and you think of words like “love” that don’t really have a solid definition. The definition of it is whatever the shared meaning of it is. So, I really focused on not just saying “Hey, here’s our core value,” but “Here’s how we’re going to develop a shared meaning around it.” So, a “How can I help?” attitude. We define that as in opportunities as well as in arguments or disagreements or different things like that, do we approach the problem saying “Hey, how can I help the situation be better?” That’s what we’re looking for. We’re not looking for people who are going to approach this to say, “You could do this better,” but people who are going to have that level of ownership to it and come to say, “Hey, I’m here to help and I want to make it better” and have that servant heart. So that’s first and foremost. Second is embrace curiosity, knowledge, and improvement. We tie those all together when we talk about it because I think curiosity killed the cat and knowledge is fleeting unless it’s geared towards improvement. We want people to be curious. We want people to ask questions. We want people to seek knowledge, but we want them to do it with that goal of improving our processes, improving the service we deliver, improving their lives personally. So, we structured it in that way to make sure that we’re not just chasing questions, we’re not just trying to learn more, but we’re doing it with a very intentional intent. Next is second mile service and one that, being in the Atlanta area, I know you’re probably aware of. Totally jacked from Chick-fil-A. The idea is that everybody loves to go to Chick-fil-A because of all the special things on top of it. Second mile service is what can we do that’s going to be a little bit more, a little bit surprising, a little bit extra to strengthen that relationship or surprise somebody? We don’t define second mile service; we try to use language and talk about how this is not scope creep. This is putting extra onto what we’re doing. It’s taking a deliverable just a little bit further so a client doesn’t have to implement it themselves, or so that we answer all the questions we can think of before they ask them. That’s second mile service to us. Next is open and honest communication. Do you want me to keep going, or is that good? ROB: It’s good. I do like the stealing of second mile service. What’s fascinating with that one in particular is, as I understand it, when they first implemented that program, there was even strong skepticism at the corporate level. I actually interned in the IT department of Chick-fil-A when I was in college, and that was before they got in the second mile service business. But it took time and it took pressure within their organization to even sell that through, so it’s certainly aspirational. It’s something I think we take for granted now, but if you think about Chick-fil-A 20 years ago, it wasn’t as remarkable as it is now. And they see it in their results. They make three times more money per location than anybody else in quick service food. It’s amazing. CHAD: Yeah, it’s ridiculous. My roommate in college, who I mentioned, now owns a Chick-fil-A franchise. During college he worked with Kevin Williams, who is one of the very few triple franchisees for Chick-fil-A. Very, very few people actually get to own three Chick-fil-As. I actually worked for Kevin in college a little bit, and it’s interesting; you go in on your first day, you sit down in the back of the employee section – or at least, it was then – and you listen to basically a sermon from Dan Cathy on what second mile service is and the parallel in the Bible where it comes from. It was eye-opening for me in really having that servant heart and servant eyes to look for those opportunities. That was something that was important to me when I was in the position to instill a cultural element within my company. Next is open and honest communication. We talk about open and honest communication in different ways. Like I said, because I really want to define that for people, we talk about how openness is a precursor to honesty. You have to be open for feedback. You have to be open for conversations so that people can trust you with that honesty. There is a level of openness that has to happen for honesty to happen. Again, approaching things with “How can I help you? How can I help the situation? How can I help us be honest and straightforward?” And that heart starts with openness, and I’m going to make sure you know that I’m open for feedback, that I’m open for this. Part of that is going to be that when you give me feedback, I’m not going to jump to the “I’m offended, you suck” mentality. I’m going to jump to the “Awesome, you really care about me and you want me to get better” mentality. So, flip that a little bit, so then we can be open and honest. We talk about honesty at different levels. There’s obviously honesty with yourself. How are you being honest with yourself when you talk about your workload? Are you really being honest with yourself? Are you putting in the hours and staying focused that you need to? Do you know that you’re slipping a little bit? Or maybe in the COVID world, you get to work from home and so you leave the TV on in the background, so things may take a little bit longer. I’m okay if that’s what you want to do, but I want you to be honest if that’s what’s happening; your workload is not too much, it’s just that it’s taking you a little bit longer than it used to. If that’s what you need for your balance, that’s okay as long as we’re getting done what we promise we’re going to get done. And then there’s honesty with your coworkers and honesty with clients. It just expands and goes on. We always want to be honest with results. We want to be honest with what’s happening with people’s accounts. We don’t want to sit on anything. If I have an account manager, an analyst sitting on something saying, “Hey, if so-and-so finds out this, we could get fired,” I’ll tell them, “Well, if you don’t tell them, you could get fired.” That’s how serious we are with open and honest. There should not be anything at the end of the day that you’re worried about because you went and put it out there. I think if you don’t, you’re screwing yourself over. You’re screwing your work-life balance or your family over. You’re jeopardizing a lot of things. So at Techwood, we want to really focus on being open and honest. ROB: Excellent. CHAD: Next is actually one of my favorite ones. It’s lighthearted fun but heartfelt sincerity. We want to be fun. We want to be goofy. We love each other. Having fun leads to trust, and trust is just so essential to business. If you’re not having fun with the people you’re with, I guarantee you, you’re not trusting them. In order to have fun, there has to be a level of letting your guard down. So we want to be lighthearted and have fun, but we also want to make sure we draw the line. Where we draw the line is we don’t want anybody to ever feel like we’re not being heartfelt, that we’re jeopardizing sincerity for a coworker or for a client. So yes, we want to have fun, but we’re heartfelt in that we never want to push that to a point where our clients or our team don’t feel that we have their best interest in mind or we don’t really want the best for them. Then our last one is respectful and considerate. It’s probably one of the most straightforward ones, but we definitely want to be respectful of each other and considerate. We tie those together because there’s a level of respect that comes from being considerate that we want to achieve. Again, a proactive thing. We want to be extra considerate as a form of respect, if that makes sense. We want to think through things. We want to be intentional with things. We want to be the first to jump on solving world problems if we can. If there’s something I can do at Techwood to help with some of the social unrest, I want us to intentionally look at doing it right now. We’ve had those conversations in Techwood and we’ve laid out different things we want to do to be extra considerate and respectful. Again, that comes to that “How can I help?” attitude. We want to approach issues not saying “Hey, you’re wrong in this area and you need to change.” It’s like, “I hear you, I feel you. How can we help? How can we change to make it so that you don’t feel that way or so that isn’t the case?” As we talk about, I think that’s something the whole world needs right now – this level of respect for everybody that doesn’t question so much as it seeks to help. ROB: Right. It seems like I can barely see someone trying to say something positive without getting an immediate “gotcha” follow-up. There’s a lot more we can do together. I really appreciate the intentionality and the ease with which you work through those core values. It’s a question I try not to even ask unless I know the person is very confident and comfortable, because there’s nothing more awkward than talking about your core values and you say, “What are your core values?” and they’re like, “Um…” [laughs] That’s a tough spot that I don’t want to put anybody in. Chad, when you look at the journey so far, it sounds like a lot of things have gone well. I’m sure some things have not gone well from time to time. Maybe not too much lost sleep, but maybe some. What are some things you have learned along this path so far of building Techwood Digital that you might do differently if you were starting afresh? CHAD: Obviously start with core values and all of that from Day 1. Maybe not, but if Jack had started that way from Day 1, I think things probably would’ve grown smoother and he might not have ever hired me. So maybe it’s good that he didn’t start that way. [laughs] But looking back, I think that’s such a staple. And then if I’m being more personal in my own reflections, there have been times when I hired people with speculation that an area of one of our core values might not be a good fit for them. I was like, “All right, they fit everywhere else. We’ll push forward.” As time has gone on, I’ve been more intentional about slowing down. If I’m not convinced they’re a 100% fit, then I’m not going to say “Let’s move forward.” I’m going to think, what questions can I ask and what can I do to ensure 100% before we ever make an offer? From there, the people who have gotten their way into the organization and are not a proven fit, find a way to part ways sooner rather than later. Like I said, at every turn, when we’ve held true to who we want to be and who we are, we’ve always won. So I guess if I could change or go back and do anything different, it would be to be all-in and fight for those faster and harder every day. ROB: That’s really insightful. It’s one of those difficult experiences where it’s easy to talk yourself into a hire, and it almost seems to me like the moment you start talking yourself into it, you should just move on. CHAD: Absolutely. In agency life, too, we’re selling our people capacity. You’re always going to hit that stairstep approach, and there’s going to be times that are way more stressful than other times. You’re going to get behind – which has been one of the biggest things about being employee-owned. Having that extra capital to make sure we’re not ever behind on a hiring has been essential and will be really essential to growth this year. ROB: Practically speaking, how do you know when it’s time to hire? CHAD: We’ve got balance and load measurements. We’ve always said “Hey, once we hit this percentage of revenue increase or this amount of revenue increase for this business line, that’s another head.” That’s the way we’ve always thought about it, and we’ve always been way too late on predicting when we got there. So, this year we’ve intentionally lowered what those numbers are, not to say that that’s where we want to be, but to trick ourselves into looking before we need it. [laughs] ROB: [laughs] You’ll be a little bit happier with that, I think, and a little bit less stressed from time to time. Chad, when people want to connect with you and connect with Techwood Digital, where should they go to find you? CHAD: They can check out our website at techwood.digital. Or feel free to email me, honestly. I’m always happy to have conversations and to make this world a better place. I really want to be an example of a “How can I help?” attitude. Honestly, anybody can email me directly at chad.crowe@techwood.digital. ROB: Brilliant. Chad, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I can’t wait to connect in person sometime around Atlanta because we have that opportunity. But I can’t wait to connect with a lot of people at some point because it’s been a year, man. But it’s all good. Thanks for coming on. CHAD: Thank you so much for having me. ROB: Be well. Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

Melanie Querry owns Beyond Spots and Dots, a full-service advertising agency that frames its work around analysis, keeps client budgets on target, and utilizes proven marketing success in one industry to help businesses in other industries grow. Spots and Dots has been on the Inc. 5000 list five times.   In this interview Melanie discusses how her agency helps clients understand the customer journey and how prioritizing and implementing tactics will do exactly what a client wants . . . and meet budget constraints. Melanie claims that, for a roughly equivalent impression count, digital marketing can cost one-third of what traditional marketing costs. Still, all the layers have to work together. “You have to have synergy within your marketing budget,” she says. Tactic selection and prioritization are critical, customized to meet a client’s needs, and are based on a mix of Beyond Spots and Dots’ experience, knowledge, and research.   As an example, Melanie talks about geofencing, creating a technological fence to target programmed advertising to a specific audience. Another tactic she presents is secondary search retargeting, which uses proprietary software/connections to capture someone searching for information on a third-party website and then follows that individual with ads on the internet. Melanie informs us that “there are three satellites above us collecting every bit of data that we are doing on our cellphone, our laptops, our TVs, our computers, our desktops.” Legally, large companies (Oracle, BlueKai) can disperse that collected information. Beyond Spots and Dots is one of only a few companies allowed to utilize the information . . . which they can pass on to their clients so that their clients can target these potential customers.   Melanie wanted to be in advertising from an early age. After she earned her advertising degree, she took a job selling advertising at KDKA-TV in Pittsburgh, then another with a cable station to learn “the cable side.” Melanie says these organizations “didn’t know about their clients, didn’t know about their customers,” and only focused on rating points and the number of “spots” they got. She left the cable station almost on a whim (just because it was “time”), started her agency as a media buying firm that would be “Beyond the Spots and Dots” focus of her previous employers, and took on a Pittsburgh mega car dealer as a client “for the cash flow.”  Melanie convinced the dealer to fund a digital campaign at a time when even car manufacturers were not “doing digital.” The car dealer’s business grew so significantly that it eventually hired ten people for an internal digital department. Melanie jokes that. while the dealership provided sorely needed cash flow in those early years, she was not able to “use them for profits.” Today, Beyond Spots and Dots provides advertising, public relations, marketing, branding, and digital services. Once things are “back to normal,” Melanie looks forward to reopening the agency’s physical locations in Pittsburgh and Columbus, OH – she prefers working with clients face-to-face “120% over what we’re doing currently.” Interestingly, even with clients “everywhere,” the agency does not charge clients for its travel expenses – Melanie considers travel as a way to reinvest in her company.  Melanie can be reached on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook and on her agency’s website at Beyondspotsanddots.com.  Transcript Follows: ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m your host, Rob Kischuk, and I’m excited to be joined today by Melanie Querry, owner of Beyond Spots and Dots based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Welcome to the podcast, Melanie. MELANIE: Thank you. Thank you for having me. I certainly appreciate it. ROB: It’s a pleasure to have you here. Tell us about Beyond Spots and Dots. Where does your firm excel?  MELANIE: We really excel in helping businesses grow. We understand what it takes to grow. We’ve been on the Inc. 5000 list five times, which we’re very proud of, and hope to continue to be there again in the future. We are able to take our experiences and really utilize the marketing efforts and successes that we have had with various industries and apply those to other industries. Our real growth has been in the digital world. We started as a media buying firm, so I kind of laugh and say that we do media buying with our eyes closed. However, the digital media buying is new and evolving, and we’ve been doing it for 15 years that we’ve been in business – which is great. Not many agencies can say that. So, we really excel at implementing those tactics for businesses, but helping businesses understand where their budgeting should be. I think what makes us different is that we really stay in line with budgets for clients and on behalf of clients and rein them in when they get out of line with budgets or things that they want to implement. Something that makes us very different is while we have super killer creative and award-winning creative, we really take an analytical approach to everything we do, including creative. That’s pretty different from most agencies. Most agencies want to just be creative shops or digital firms, and we really do take a full-service approach. ROB: Got it. Congratulations on the 15 years, on the Inc. 5000 list. Those are all things – it doesn’t pay the bills, but it is a recognition of that ongoing growth that you also seek for your clients. You mentioned being able to transfer tactics and strategies from some industries that we might think of perhaps to some industries we might not think of having such successful digital and media tactics. Is that the case? Are there some unexpected industries you’ve found yourself in the middle of? MELANIE: Yes. We really don’t want to put all of our eggs in one basket. We started in 2006, and in 2008 had the economy fall out beneath us. Nothing like COVID, but certainly at the time, and through those years, we learned a lot and a great deal. What we did learn is not to put all of our eggs in one basket. We pride ourselves on working in various industries. Business is business, and while industries do have niche audiences or niche ways of advertising or marketing, there are still businesses that are being run through operations that really follow through all types of business. We have been able to successfully help businesses grow in various industries, but some of the industries that have been unique that we didn’t seek out, if you will, have been property management, for example. That was one where we didn’t seek it out. They sought us out. But we were able to be very successful with one property management company, and it filtered through to many others because of the tactics we implemented at a low cost and we were able to help them grow. ROB: In that case, were they seeking more properties to manage? Were they seeking tenants, renters? Not to focus in too deeply, but as a means of exploring what you do. MELANIE: Sure. Their goal is to seek out renters. They have several properties around the country, and near one of our offices – we have an office in Columbus and also Baltimore. In the Columbus market, they wanted to sell out a particular building, which was very specific, and they did it so quickly when they started working with us that they actually shut their advertising off early, but then diverted their dollars to a completely different market. That was really interesting and fun. It’s fun for us. ROB: And probably meaningful for them. Behind the scenes, not always, but a lot of times in the real estate world, having something fully leased or above a certain percentage is a meaningful financial milestone. It lets you collateralize or sell the property. It’s a big deal beyond just filling the space. But then on the “who you’re targeting side,” finding a place, whether it’s an office or a residence, is a customer journey. What does that journey look like, and how do you tackle people along that journey? MELANIE: That’s a great question. You’re speaking my language, Rob. [laughs] We do take that customer journey fully into consideration when we are making a recommendation for any type of creative assets or messaging and also the placement of the ads themselves, and whether it’s a recommendation to do PR versus traditional marketing or advertising versus some kind of new media. In targeting, it’s really fun to look at the customer journey because you have these five steps, if you will, from the point of time when someone is not even familiar with your service or product all the way to the point of no return where they have to make a decision and their decision is either “let’s do it / buy it,” whatever it is you’re asking them to do, or “let’s not.” That customer journey has steps throughout in between those two aspects or behaviors, and there are advertising tactics that make sense for certain parts of that journey. In the very beginning, when you’re trying to just make someone aware of your product, your book, your property that you have available or whatever it might be that you’re selling, there are tactics that work better for that part of the customer journey versus the middle of the journey where they’re now aware, they might be talking to their friends about you, they’re doing their research, which is part of that journey – and then they’re trying to figure out what makes sense for them and what’s best for them, and whether or not they’re going to buy. We utilize that customer journey for everything that we do, and we’re always presenting that to businesses to understand the different parts of the journey. A lot of people will come to us and say, “We just want an awareness campaign,” and I ask them, “Why?” That is valid and relevant, and sometimes an awareness campaign is all they want or all they think they can afford, so we help them to understand that journey so that they understand the different tactics within. ROB: Right. It would seem deeper in the funnel, there’s some tactics you can’t afford to not do. I can imagine – and I’m just making things up here, because I don’t run, let’s say, an apartment complex – but if someone comes and they book a tour, they’re so deep into that funnel, two things seem true to me. Number one, it seems like a lot of businesses – and I’ll broaden this beyond real estate – would find it hard to operationalize the information of who has booked a tour in a timely manner. But it also seems like one of the best ways you could possibly spend your money is, let’s say, remarketing to an email list of people who have visited you in the past X months. How do they operationalize that successfully? Or am I way off, number one? Number two, if I’m in the neighborhood, how do you help people meet some of those time-sensitive communications that would need to happen to execute on that sort of thing? MELANIE: We try to implement new media because of the technology behind it. Depending on a business’s budget, our job is to help them understand those tactics that they can implement to do exactly what you’re asking within the budget. Based on our experience and based on our knowledge and based on research, we will help that business to prioritize those tactics. For example, a tactic might be geofencing, which is one of the new ways of advertising through programmatic advertising. We can literally draw a fence, if you will – it’s technology for sure, but you are drawing a fence around something. We’ve drawn fences on roads before, trying to reach people driving into a college when a competitive college wants to reach those potential students. We have drawn fences around convention centers, trying to target tradeshows for particular audiences. So, the geofencing is really cool. That’s one tactic that we can utilize to grab people now. With COVID, obviously things have changed with geofencing because people aren’t out and about and aren’t going to these big events or aren’t going to big tradeshows. That will start again, but there are other tactics. There’s another tactic that we can utilize called secondary search retargeting, and that’s one of the newest and latest and greatest, and a lot of fun to work with. We had a company that was very niche; they were implementing services to small to medium size businesses for Mac users specifically, but for companies frankly like ours, where we have mostly PC-based computers, and we have a few Macs because we have designers, and they need their Macs. This company would target businesses that were utilizing both PC and Mac, and they were specialists in the Mac realm. When you buy a Mac at the Apple Store, you can go online to search for companies like this to help us network the Macs with the PCs. A lot of companies are getting into this because people do like their Macs and they’re very loyal to their Macs. This particular company was able to utilize secondary search retargeting by targeting third party searches. This is outside of the Google world and outside of just your search bar in Google. We’ve also been able to utilize on the spot, like you’re asking, secondary search retargeting for students. College students are searching online for lots of things, for different programs, for different schools. they’re searching in all of these third parties out there, and we’re able to actually tap into those searches. It’s really wild. ROB: What does that mean? Explore the tactic with me a little bit. Does that mean you’re on something like US News, World Report, looking at college rankings, and you’re searching for something and somehow that’s able to feed back into search targeting? Where does this information come from? MELANIE: That’s right. To give another example, probably an easier one to visualize is real estate. We have worked in the real estate realm and been very successful with that industry as well. A secondary search tactic that’s really cool allows us to target – let’s say you’re buying a home and I’m a real estate company, and I want your business because you’re buying a home and I’ve got homes to sell. But you are really hard to catch unless I can catch you through geotargeting by visiting other open houses. Right now, during COVID, we know that’s not happening so much around the country. There are open houses, but they’re few and far between. So. a different technology you can use is this secondary search retargeting. You might be searching on Realtor.com, and if you’re searching for a home value or the home sale price, then I can capture you doing that search on that third party website. And when I capture you doing that through my technology, I can physically follow you with ads through the internet, which is the retargeting part. The way that that’s done, to answer your question, is there are three satellites above us collecting every bit of data that we are doing on our cellphone, our laptops, our TVs, our computers, our desktops. All of our actions are being collected through this data, and huge companies such as BlueKai and Oracle now legally are allowed to spit that information back out. Companies like ours – and there are only a few companies like ours around the country that are allowed to utilize this information – we’re able to use that data of that behavior from someone like you and give it to our real estate company and target those people. It is wild. It’s pretty cool. ROB: That’s remarkable. There’s great power and there’s great responsibility. I feel like I need to go close my blinds or something. MELANIE: Yes. [laughs] ROB: It’s really just what I type into the computer that’s probably the problem here. Take me back a little bit, Melanie. Tell us about where Beyond Spots and Dots came into existence. What led you to start running your own business that was not by any means guaranteed to be a multi-time Inc. 5000 company and so on? MELANIE: As a young child, I always wanted to have an advertising agency. And I don’t know that I even knew what an advertising agency was at the time or what an agency really did, but I followed that. I probably at the time thought of more of the creative side, which is what most people think of when you think of an advertising agency. I really followed that through school. I got a degree in advertising. Back then, there were only three colleges across the country that actually offered a degree in advertising doing creative and media buying. Not many colleges and universities offered that then, but they do now, which is great. Once I graduated, of course, at that time I learned that TV was the most complicated of all media, and when doing media buying, TV was the most complex. So, I really wanted to learn about the inner workings of TV. I graduated from college, I moved to Pittsburgh – being a Penn Stater, I got to know Pittsburgh when I was very young – and started at KDKA-TV, which was the first TV station ever. That was really powerful to me. I worked like a dog as an entry level person. At the time, they also didn’t allow entry level employees, so I really had to show them what I was made of to be able to even keep my job. I barely made a salary at the time. I think I made more in college waiting tables than I did at my first job at KDKA-TV. [laughs] I was going to power through it. After KDKA, I went to the cable side because I wanted to know and understand both sides of TV, broadcast and cable. One day I decided, okay, there’s never a real good time, so it’s as good as any. I put in my four weeks’ notice and I just quit. I resigned cold turkey. I didn’t take clients. I didn’t do anything like that. I just stopped one day and resigned, and the next day I said, okay, I’ve got to figure out how to start a business. I started making phone calls to the state on how to register a business, and “What the heck is my name going to be?” When I worked in these big mammoth companies, Comcast and CBS Network, I worked with big agencies, global agencies, and they didn’t know anything about their clients. They just didn’t know about their customers. All the media buyers cared about were rating points and “How many spots am I getting?” The name actually came pretty easy to me. Beyond Spots and Dots became the name because I wanted to go beyond that. I wanted to go beyond the number of spots someone’s getting and the rating points they’re getting. And the name stuck. The first day of the business, I went out to celebrate and I met who would become my husband, which was awesome. ROB: Wow. Good day. MELANIE: Yeah. He was a finance major and he helped me with the books, and as I got revenue in, I needed someone to help me with that side of it, the business side. He ended up coming on board, we got married, and now we’re a full-service firm. At the time, he was already developing websites and doing Google ads. So, Day 1, we picked up website development and Google advertising, which was really great. ROB: What did those first few customers look like? Who did you start working with initially? MELANIE: I made phone calls, of course, Day 1, and said, “I now have an advertising agency. I would love an opportunity to work with you and to handle your advertising.” I was willing to do what it took to get business as far as services that I wasn’t familiar with. I was willing to learn new services. One was a mega car dealer in Pittsburgh. I had talked to them about some Google advertising, and at the time, manufacturers weren’t doing that. So, I implemented a digital campaign for them 15 years ago. In order to get their business, which was big, I needed the cash flow. They needed someone that knew digital, and it was a win-win – except that from a cash flow standpoint, I was able to use them as cash flow; I just wasn’t able to use them for profits. [laughs] I felt that it was a necessary evil. I loved working with the general manager there, and I knew that I could help their business grow, and we did. We were able to take their business to a digital standpoint that, at the time, neither manufacturers nor car dealers were able to do. They were able to hire 10 internal people as a digital department, which was unheard of at the time. This was during the time right before the fallout in 2008, so yeah, pretty cool and definitely a good story and something that I look back on, for sure. ROB: Right. What did the budget of a car dealership like that look like at the time for traditional media? Has their overall ad budget changed much, or has it just shifted a percentage to digital? MELANIE: Certainly, the traditional media spend was big. It was bigger. That’s the beauty about digital; you don’t actually have to spend as much in digital. You just don’t, and you can reach – the impression count is similar by spending a third of the amount. Traditional media is more expensive on a cost per spot basis or a cost per impression basis. Our job is to help the client understand all of that and what that means and how they should be spending their money. So there always was a bigger spend for them specifically in traditional, and at the time, of course, the digital was just really hitting. I mean, 14-15 years ago, digital wasn’t that big. You didn’t have to have it. You dabbled in it and you knew it was coming and you knew it was out there. So, we helped them to utilize some of this new media at the time. ROB: What was someone like that spending on traditional per month? Was it $10,000, $50,000, $100,000? What’s the ballpark? Or am I even low? I don’t know. MELANIE: This particular dealer had multiple manufacturers, multiple brands, and each manufacturer would offer them incentives, and they had budgets that they had to spend by manufacturer. So, it would vary. In general, a dealer like that could spend anywhere from $10,000 to $100,000 a month. It truly varies. It varies throughout the year, it varies by the incentives the dealer is receiving, and it varies by the number of cars they have on the lot. There’re so many variables when it comes to spending for something like that. ROB: It’s helpful even just to know a general direction. I’ve certainly seen an increased appetite for digital, and I’ve seen even new real estate developments looking for very sophisticated website buildouts and that sort of thing. It starts to make sense when you put it in the context of the traditional ad budgets. If they’ve started to turn the corner on digital, you can start to understand that increased degree of investment in some of the places – a website used to be an afterthought. You might not even have one for a development, and now it seems to be a hub of activity. MELANIE: Sure. A website is a walking salesperson. I don’t care what you’re selling or what you’re offering, any industry should have a decent website because that’s where people go. And even social media. We find, in our experience – and I’m kind of floored by it, but it is what it is – people will go to social media. They’ll go to a business Facebook page before they ever even get to the website. Which is also very interesting in my mind. To your point, the layering of dollars so that you can layer your tactics – your marketing tactics, your advertising tactics – the layering is what’s really critical. When you have a budget – and we’ve worked with very small budgets and have put people on TV before, even with a smaller budget. It’s all about the layering and where you’re going to run and what the messaging is, and it all works together. It really has to be cohesive. I feel like the word “synergy” is so cliché, but it’s true. You have to have synergy within your own marketing budget. ROB: Really interesting threads to pull on there, Melanie. When you look back at the history of Beyond Spots and Dots, what are some things you have learned along the way that you might do differently if you were starting anew? MELANIE: I wish I would’ve started sooner. [laughs] I had this in the back of my mind. I’m very fortunate to have started when I did. Today’s my birthday, actually. ROB: Happy birthday. MELANIE: I’m turning 45, and I’m blessed to have what I have and to have been able to work this hard thus far. I have a child now. We have a little kiddo. But prior to that, working your tail off – I wish I started sooner. I wish I’d started earlier because having the energy and not having a family at that time and being able to work the 80 hours I used to work before kids – it’s hard to do that. As you get older, it’s tiring. So, I would recommend just doing it. You only live once. I think that’s one thing. For the future, growth. Growth is important. We plan to get back where we were. We were on a roll. We have good planning. We’ve got the tools internally to be able to expand and scale at this point. So, we do plan to open other offices. We have an office in Baltimore and Columbus right now, and Pittsburgh, obviously; that’s our headquarters. But we do want to keep growing. We want to continue to help mentor others and also continue to grow and help businesses grow. ROB: How do you think about that office planting strategy? Is it rooted in some of your clientele having a local base and being able to be in person with someone? Do you spin up a small lease, or are you in WeWork land? How do you think about the planting strategy? MELANIE: Part of it is a real estate strategy with respect to investing, and that’s a whole other conversation. As we diversify our own portfolio, if you will, personally speaking – and from a business standpoint – real estate is important to us. Long term, I don’t plan to purchase real estate all over for office buildings. I do have to tell you, you kind of hit the nail on the head with respect to having an office and then working with a local client. We’ve lost business, presentations we’ve made, because businesses want an agency that’s right in their backyard. When COVID hit, I thought to myself, does this change the way businesses believe they can do business? For example, we own our building currently in Pittsburgh, and we have an empty building right now because we have our whole staff working from home. We will keep them working from home as long as we feel that we need to, to keep everybody safe. Hopefully, that ends soon, but the reality of it is, we are doing business and conducting business all over the world from home. There are a lot of securities that go behind that, and we’re dealing with a lot of data and customers’ data and customers’ information. The security has changed, of course. But does it change the way businesses think in the fact that we could do business – I don’t have to be right in Columbus to do business for you or to handle your native or your advertising. It’s an interesting open question that I ask myself as well. ROB: I understand that. I think there will always be a certain scope and scale of client that you’re going to want to go see in person. When everything’s normal, there’s just a certain size of client that you’re going to win more or not lose if you’re giving them some attention in person. MELANIE: Agreed. ROB: I’m a firm believer in that. I agree, it’s a whole other topic that I think we’ll probably pass exploring on this podcast. Most people don’t want to talk a lot about profits, but profits are important. I come originally from a software background and now also have some services work that we do, but within a services firm, there’s only so much reinvestment back into the business that makes sense. It’s not like a software company where you’re infinitely scaling and pulling additional capital. So, figuring out what to do with profitability is its own interesting topic, I think. MELANIE: Yeah. And to answer that, for us at least, I agree with you fully. We prefer to be in person. That is why we opened offices in Baltimore and Columbus specifically, because they are nearby; it’s quick and easy for us to travel there. I do have family in Baltimore, so selfishly, I’m thrilled to have an office there. [laughs] It’s an excuse, anyway. Doing business in person is way better, I believe. I prefer it 120% over what we’re doing currently. And we do reinvest our profits into travel. We don’t charge our clients for travel. Our hourly fee has been the same for 15 years. We know what it takes timewise to do business. Now that we’ve been in business 15 years, we’re more efficient at what we do, so it doesn’t take us as long to do things. So, I don’t feel that I have to gouge clients. It’s just not necessary. Those profits we do roll back into travel, and we travel to our clients as much as we humanly possibly can. I think the same goes for getting work done in person. There’s something to be said for our staff to be able to walk upstairs and go talk to the designer real quick or go downstairs and pull our copywriter in and say, “Hey, what do you think about this tagline?” There’s some camaraderie there, and that’s missing during all of this COVID. But that’s reality, and we divert, and we will – I’m positive; it’s a new year, and we will get back to where we were. We definitely will. I think the world will as well. But as a business owner right now, you just have to go with the flow and figure out your plan and keep at it and stay positive as much as you can and be able to stay on top of it. ROB: That’s excellent. I really do like that thought of travel as a means of reinvesting in the business. I think that’s a solid way to think about that, investing in relationships there. Melanie, when people want to find you and when they want to find Beyond Spots and Dots, where should they go to connect with you? MELANIE: Sure. I’m a believer of connecting. I certainly have a LinkedIn page, and I appreciate when people do connect. I love to mentor, so I love when young people reach out. I probably volunteer a little too much for mentoring, but I’ll take it. I’ll do it all day long if it helps someone young who’s trying to get into the business and break through. As long as they’re a hard worker, they’re going to be successful. Beyondspotsanddots.com is our website. You can also google us and find us. Lots of places. We have a Twitter account, Facebook page, and all the good things. ROB: Excellent. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast, Melanie. It’s been excellent connecting with you and learning for you, so thank you for coming on and sharing. MELANIE: Thank you so much. I certainly appreciate it. ROB: Be well. Bye. Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

Brian Phillips is Co-founder and CEO of The Basement, an integrated (technology + creativity + measurement) B2C and B2B marketing agency with its roots in production. Brian dabbled in art and worked in architecture before he took the artistic principles of rendering positive and negative space to marketing. He explains, “The positive space, the consumer journey, is one we can see and everything works.” He believes marketers can get a lot of understanding out of identifying and analyzing negative space – the things that don’t work – and that these, too, can help define the client journey. He believes “Negative space helps define and form the positive space.” His interests today remain diverse. For the past year, he has avidly read scientific books, pursuing ideas related to how genetics might impact buying and selling. The agency manages all media and destinations (the social channels and websites where consumers engage), extracting and analyzing as much data as possible and using multivariate testing. As an example, the agency may “cross-reference data out of Amazon” with data from its analytics platform on the ecommerce side.” The Basement markets its clients through an often complex, multi-touch, multi-channel approach. Larger companies may have as many as 150 datapoints across their consumer journey from “high level impressions down to ecommerce platform conversions.”  Brian has found that insights gained by analyzing data about consumers in the lower funnel can provide information on how the consumer got there and what the consumer will do next. The agency measures its success through outcomes, which, Brain explains, ensures accountability. Brian says his agency’s focus has always been on growth, but growth “has to be calculated.” When asked about his agency’s culture, he says simply, “Stay fascinated,” and then expands on the thought, adding, “Stay curious, stay ambitious, stay competitive, stay genuine, and stay fascinated.” Brian can be reached on his agency’s website at: thebsmnt.com. Transcript Follows: ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I am your host, Rob Kischuk, and I am joined today by Brian Phillips, Co-founder and CEO of The Basement based in Indianapolis, Indiana. Welcome to the podcast. BRIAN: Thank you. Thanks for having me. ROB: Excellent to have you here, Brian. Why don’t you start off by telling us about The Basement and where the firm excels? BRIAN: The Basement is an integrated agency, and there’s probably some backstory there of how we got to be an integrated agency with roots in a production company. It’s sad but true, but one of our greatest strengths is being able to deliver on what we say we can do. I’ve sat at many tables with brands that are unsatisfied with whoever their partners are, and sometimes it’s as simple as just being able to deliver. I think as a production company, at the beginning that was what we prided ourselves on, and over time we’ve evolved to include that same delivery mentality against the consumer journey and a fully integrated offering of technology and creativity and measurements with the consumer journey in mind. We’ve had a lot of success with brands. We’re not afraid to talk about outcomes. Actually, we prefer talking about outcomes, and we prefer the accountability that comes with that. We’ve been very fortunate to align with some great brands, and they acknowledge and accept our approach. It’s turned out to be very impactful for both their business and mine. ROB: Are those brands typically more consumer-facing, or is there some B2B in there as well? BRIAN: Mostly consumer-facing, but we do have some B2B. Certainly there are major differences there. But we really approach our work systematically and through a proprietary framework that we’ve developed. Technologies roll in, audiences roll into it, but at the end of the day we’re still performing the same services against that framework for B2B and B2C. ROB: Interesting. Tell me a little bit more about that framework. I think you have some brands that are of a pretty big size, and their go-to-market with customers is probably very multi-touch in a way that would often be hard to measure and hard to be accountable for, but that very much seems to be what you’ve leaned into. BRIAN: Yeah, there’s no question. It seems like the majority of our clients are that way with the multi-touch and the omnichannel approach. I think it’s important when we start talking with a brand that we’re all aligned on accountability, and where we’re going to hold ourselves accountable and where the brands are going to be accountable. Throughout that initial phase where we’re working on strategy, we have to come to consensus on how we’re going to measure success. Measuring that success along the consumer journey is something that we work together on and then we measure against. So that becomes, in my opinion, a lot easier to have dialogue and to have fruitful conversations and collaborations if you’re aligning at the beginning. And that approach has been the core of what we do and how we build our integrated offerings. ROB: What sorts of things are you measuring for brands? BRIAN: Oh, man. [laughs] One of our larger brands that we work with that is a consumer brand, we’re measuring 150 datapoints across their consumer journey, and that’s everything from high level impressions down to conversions through their ecommerce platform and everything in between. At that point we’re managing all media, all what we call destinations – places where consumers engage, whether that be social channels, whether that be their enterprise websites. We’re going to build that infrastructure inside of that journey so that we can extract as much data as possible. Then we want to analyze it. We want to understand if there’s any insights we can gain in the lower funnel that can impact how the consumer’s getting there and what the consumer’s doing next. And we’ve got case studies where we’ve seen and applied insights that were upper funnel, that were on the advertising layer, where we were able to test what type of product mix through display ads – we would run multivariate testing and we noticed that these certain product mixes with color combinations and words were effective. That then translates all the way down to the way we communicate on our website and what products we show on the website, how we’re driving conversions through the performance funnel online. That cross-analysis is very important to us. We use and leverage a lot of technology, don’t get me wrong; technology is extremely important to our business. But at the end of the day, we want to make sure that our core teams that work with the brand are analyzing that data, and we’re looking for those insights and we’re trying to figure things out on behalf of the brand. Machine learning is helpful. Obviously, it’s a trend and it’s going to be here. It already has changed the business and it’s going to continue to change the business. But at the end of the day, I think you still need to have humans involved in that analysis, and that’s something that we do very diligently with our clients. ROB: It’s fascinating because a lot of marketers think about knowing how to track marketing when they can track the individual user all the way around the internet, when they can get a hard link through to conversion, that sort of thing. Certainly, you will have that in cases on the ecommerce side. But it almost sounds like on the broader consumer/general market side – maybe they bought something on Home Depot’s website or Costco’s website or Amazon or someplace where you can’t sink into the data – it sounds like maybe you’re still pulling on the stages of the customer journey at a macro level to see what’s pushing down the funnel. Is that how you’re thinking about it? You know what the stages are, you know what people are doing; even if you can’t link each person, you can still see the echoes of what you’ve done up-funnel. BRIAN: Exactly. That’s exactly right. Amazon’s a great example where we can get data out of Amazon and we can get data out of our analytics platform on the ecommerce, and we have to cross-reference those. We have to understand why this happened versus something else happened. My background is kind of an interesting background, but it certainly comes from the creative side. I often talk to my team and in general about the importance of the consumer journey and looking at it very similar to figure drawing. The way that I learned figure drawing is you have positive and negative space, and the positive space, the consumer journey, is one we can see and everything works. But with figure drawing, you need to leverage and use the negative space as templates to help you define and form your positive space. I relate that to marketing and the consumer journey in a way that says sometimes things don’t work, but understanding why they don’t work and having the measurements in place to understand and help define – that helps us define what’s going to work and what didn’t work. So we really want to look at the positive and the negative space. I think there’s an idea or a wish for marketers and agencies to say, “We just want to find all the positive and that’s it. That’s what we want to base everything on.” We try to look more holistic than that, because we think we can get a lot of definition and a lot of insights out of the things that don’t work. ROB: It’s fascinating to hear such a – there’s sort of a disciplined line of thinking around the creativity that probably frees you up to be creative in other ways. It’s interesting how it echoes right into marketing. It almost sounds like we’re talking about planetary physics or something while we’re at it. BRIAN: Now you’re really going to get me going. [laughs] ROB: Oh, how so? BRIAN: I study science. I don’t read many business books; I never did. I mean, I’ve read marketing and business books, but I’ve found that the focus on our business and the focus on science, everything from natural order to epigenetics, is something that I’ve been really focused on over the past year and a half and applying that level of thinking. To your point, you mentioned the word discipline, and I think that’s certainly a strength of the agency and it’s something that my business partner and I have always strived for. If I were to analyze my career, I think a systematic, more scientific approach to creative is something that I’ve always done. The parallels of science and creativity are just so fascinating to me. ROB: I think you can’t just drop epigenetics into the conversation without actually helping those of us who think we know what that is, but maybe we don’t. [laughs] Can you give a definition of what that is and maybe how it ties into, if it does tie into, your work and marketing? BRIAN: Any of the scientists in your audience may say, “He’s completely off,” so I’ll use the caveat that this is how I’ve interpreted it. The genes that we have as humans are what I would consider more binary. They do simple on and off. They can’t define the entire character of a person. They may define the way you look, they may define other parts of your genetic makeup, but epigenetics is a newer science that is the study of the chemicals that are how the genes are expressed. What’s so fascinating to me and what really got me interested in the concept is that these chemicals, these imprints of chemicals can become part of your genetic makeup that you can pass down to your children. There may be a certain way that you move or the way that you stand that wouldn’t necessarily be part of a gene. A gene doesn’t have that in it, but epigenetics have put that imprint on you because of the way that things have happened through your environment. That is what I find so fascinating about it – that study of behavior and getting all the way down to that science to say these behaviors can actually be explored through genes. Tying that to marketing – I think this is way, way future-focused, but when that data becomes more readily available and people start mapping it, which they are now, how does that bring the science of genetics into the targeting of how people are buying and selling products? That is the stuff that I find fascinating and I read about. ROB: Is this something in the neighborhood of a gene drive or something like that? Is that what we’re talking about here? Or am I completely out of the neighborhood? BRIAN: What did you call that? ROB: A gene drive, where they can take certain things and introduce them – like they can introduce sterilization into the mosquito population not by shooting a mosquito into a crisper or anything like that. It’s called a gene drive. Basically, they can introduce this trait into the population in this external way. BRIAN: I’m not spending a lot of my time and energy on what they’re going to do with that innovation. [laughs] I do think that the future of medicine is going to be more tailored based on the structural variations within people’s genes. So I do think that’s going to change medicine as a potential outcome. But right now, my fascination and interest has just been the data and what happens when that source, that mapping has been done, what you do with it. It’s like Tesla having all the data of people driving their cars. ROB: I see. So, you’re able to measure things you’ve never been able to measure before to get insight you’ve never been able to draw before, just by how deep you’re able to look into the picture. BRIAN: Right. That’s what we keep doing as society. We keep finding new ways to extract data, and that is a parallel to the way we look at our framework and the way that we work with our clients. How can we extract meaningful data from the journey? It’s just going to get smarter and more robust, and the systems are going to be in place and the first party data is going to be there. It’s an interesting time, for sure. ROB: You’ve alluded a couple of times to your own background and your own origin story. What is the origin story of The Basement? What made you decide to start the firm, and what have been some key inflection points along the way? BRIAN: How far do you want me to go back? I think there’s some relevance to the first brush of creativity. For the record, I’m about 6’6” and I come from an athletic family, and I was a basketball player. There was a point in my life where I thought I was going to go play basketball. Certainly not professionally, but in college. And I was always an artist. When I was in high school – this was in the early to mid-’90s – I met a graffiti artist from Chicago. That culture didn’t really exist in Indianapolis in a meaningful way. That culture really didn’t exist in the common culture of society. Hip-hop culture was in its infancy, really, at that time. I became fascinated by that art form. I think one of the key powers or superpowers, if you will – and for the record, I think superpowers change over time. At that time in my life, one of the things that defined me was defiance, and I think that carried through my career, from graffiti art to wanting to be an animator when I saw the movie Toy Story. That became my goal. My dream was to be a character animator. That’s what my career set off into: how can I make animated films or shorts or whatever? I didn’t really have a definition. I ended up in architecture, and I spent a number of years in architecture. It was at this period when the internet was becoming relevant. It was getting introduced to businesses. This was pre-broadband. Everyone was on dial-up. We were just at that point in society where the internet and how people engaged online was being defined. Then I became really interested in creating these very rich, high-end experiences that eventually became online, for lack of a better term, engagements. That’s how my career started. I was doing that in architecture, and at one point my business partner and I met, and I was frustrated with my career and the ceiling that I saw for myself and the work I wanted to do. I wanted to work at Pixar. I left. I just quit my job. I convinced my business partner to start a business. He was certainly more of a marketing business mind than me at the time. I was very much an artist and a producer. The combination of the two of us has worked out really well. And we left. He left McDonald’s Corporation, where he was a very successful regional marketing director, and I was this young, probably cocky kid who was doing 3D animation and interactive 3D online and virtual worlds, and we took off. We ended up becoming one of the first digital agencies in Indiana, and from there we started The Basement because we saw a void with traditional agencies that didn’t have an understanding of digital. We saw that as an opportunity and a void in the market and serviced agencies for the first 5 or 6 years of our business as a high-end interactive studio, doing animated TV spots, doing Flash games. We made a number of video games, we made a number of TV spots, we did a number of very high-end, rich websites for consumer brands and national product launches, until we saw an opportunity. We were really good at building the destinations and the engagement points with consumers, and we would always ask the agencies and the people we were working with, “How are we getting people here? What’s the narrative? What’s that consumer narrative and how do we extend it?” That’s where we started to take on more direct clients. We had clients that were at agencies that went to the brand side and wanted to hire us directly. It really started to snowball, and then we built a media business, and now we have a full national internal media business and analytics business, and obviously creative is still there, still a studio. We still produce a lot of work in-house. There’s a ton of content that gets produced along with consumer journey. Being able to build that content against a very robust media strategy that’s looking at data, looking for data, that’s the kind of integration that we’ve built. In a very, very short, run-on sentence, that’s how we got to where we are. ROB: Brian, you mentioned something that I think is very common, which is that a creative firm starts up to work on a particular practice area that other agencies aren’t focused on, and you’ll either take a referral or you’ll get white-labeled under them on the engagement – and then there’s this jumping off point that has to come around to grow more. That’s that graduation from taking other people’s subprojects and leftovers and engaging the clients directly. How did you change the mindset and make that jump in the business? Because a lot of people get stuck there. BRIAN: I really give a lot of that credit to my business partner. We also have one of our vice presidents who took the client services part of the business. We all worked really hard together, and my business partner’s background in the agency was account service. He knew that business. He knew it very well. He’s very disciplined, and he understands how to build systems, and again, echoing the points that we made, we think systematically. So we built systems that will hold ourselves accountable, and we made sure that we were honest with each other and collaborated. We’re transparent. I think that transparency was a very important key for us with our clients throughout. If we can do something, we’ll tell you we can do it. If we can’t do it at that time, we’re going to be honest with you and we’ll tell you when we can do it. That formula worked really well for us. I’ve always been an advocate for hiring people that are better than you, and that is what we did. At that time we had to build a culture, and we built a culture around growth not only for our clients, but for ourselves and for the individuals that are within the company. We fostered the culture, and that culture helped organically make us better. That is I think equal weight in the success of that adoption and being able to change and being able to recognize how something needs to improve. That’s, again, been a big part of who we are. We have a tagline, which really is the definition of our culture, and that’s “Stay fascinated.” Our culture is defined by stay curious, stay ambitious, stay competitive, stay genuine, and stay fascinated. That idea of staying fascinated is see something bigger than yourself, see something that we can become collectively. When you see something and you strive for something and you strive for growth, things need to change and things get better. That’s how we define our culture, and that’s how we were able to improve. Because I’ll tell you right now, our account service business was not great when we started. It was good. We’ve made it great. ROB: It sounds like by being honest with yourself and with your clients – both of which takes discipline, which we said before – you were able to avoid getting yourself in the deep end in some areas and say no to the things that were too big while also growing into bigger and bigger capabilities along the way. BRIAN: Yeah. We expanded our services along the way. Again, very, very proud today. We’ve had tremendous growth over the life of the agency, and we still plan to grow. We are going to continue to grow. Thinking of it from a biological standpoint, organisms grow to the point where they peak and they start to decay. We feel that we’re not even close to decaying. Growth has always been a part of our strategy, but it has to be calculated. We’ve said no to things that we knew we weren’t going to be able to deliver against, and that I think is very important and has defined us by saying no to things versus saying yes to everything. That was a really good business lesson that we’ve learned along the way. And preservation of culture, because you can say yes to things and short term you can grow revenue, you can make more money – but at the peril of what? That was something we’ve always been very protective of: the culture, the people, the dynamics within the team. Because as we recruit and we want to hire the most talented people, then you have to protect them and you have to make sure that they are in a position to do what they’re great at. The point I made about superpowers evolving – as I got further in my career and further into the growth of business, that became part of my role and what I strive to be good at. ROB: It’s quite a journey, Brian. Thank you for sharing. I feel like there’s a lot more we could pull on; I want to be respectful of everybody’s time. Brian, when people want to get in touch with you and with The Basement, how should they connect with you? BRIAN: Certainly the website for The Basement, and that is thebsmnt.com. That’s the easiest way to get a hold of us. We love challenges, and we love brands that want to swing above their weight class. We’re actively looking for new partnerships. I really appreciate you taking a moment to have me on and talk about this business that we’ve built out of Indianapolis, which is not typically known for advertising. ROB: If people don’t know, there’s a lot there. ExactTarget didn’t get as long in the sun as people might’ve wanted it to, but that was a big deal out of Indy, right? BRIAN: Oh my goodness, yes. ExactTarget has been a fantastic story, and Salesforce is there. Yeah, things are changing. There’s no doubt. Things have definitely changed and momentum is with our city right now. ROB: Got that Atlanta to Indy connection with Pardot and Salesforce and all that. We appreciated ExactTarget as well. It was good for our ecosystem. BRIAN: Good. ROB: Thanks so much, Brian. Good to have you on. Be well. BRIAN: Likewise. Thank you again. ROB: Bye. Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.