Real Talk on Agency Client Relationships Rewind

[00:00:00] LuRae: Welcome to Contrary to Popular Opinion, where we challenge conventional wisdom and dive deep into the issues facing marketers today. In this Rewind episode, we're exploring the complex world of marketing and the tough decisions that CMOs and marketing leaders face daily. From choosing the right agency partner for your business, to navigating agency performance audits, To evaluating the pros and cons of bringing your marketing in house.

[00:00:25] LuRae: In this episode, we're covering it all. Whether you're a seasoned CMO or an aspiring marketing leader, this episode is packed with insights that will give you plenty to think about. So buckle up as we challenge the status quo and explore the tough decisions that can make or break your marketing success.

[00:00:43] LuRae: Let's dive in.

[00:01:11] Todd: The one thing that really stood out with you that I think our team just fell in love with was your willingness and your openness and almost this sensibility of being humble that you were right. Like most agencies would feel like you're the CMO. We just have to bow down to you, but you put yourself at the same level, eye to eye with us.

[00:01:30] Todd: And you put yourself in the game with us as if we were just all in the same org chart. And Kelly and I talk all the time about, we are the principals and we are part of the workforce org chart that you get to work with. That's just unique to our business. Not all agencies can do that. That level of accountability.

[00:01:45] Todd: I don't know if you're a CMO and you were speaking on a panel at a conference to a bunch of other CMOs, what would you tell them about how you think they should behave from a level of accountability and participation with their agencies? In order to get the greatest value out of the agency and not come across as that I'm the CMO and you should bow down to me.

[00:02:05] Liz: Yeah, I mean, honestly, leave your ego at the door. We're all here, as I said, to get the job done. We're hopefully all working towards the same goal. And because of that, help you, help me, help you. The better I do, the better hopefully you will do. The better crafted our media strategies and execution looks like, the more money I may get in a budget, and the more I'm going to send your way.

[00:02:28] Liz: Also, I'm going to hopefully be more grateful, but I think it really is. being honest, being really, really transparent with what's happening and what you're trying to achieve. There's no sense in withholding info. I don't know why anyone would ever do that. I should mention I worked on the agency side for the first part of my career, both in San Francisco and in New York.

[00:02:48] Liz: Um, so I have that agency sort of experience and remember what it was like. Sometimes people would be just total jerks and it's not motivating and it's not fun. And their projects are maybe the last ones I don't want to work on at the end of the day, or I want to give to my team to work on at the end of the day.

[00:03:06] Liz: But the people who are grateful and Thoughtful and again, transparent sharing information. Take your agency on the journey with you. I mean, don't burden them if you can help that, but give them enough info so they can be successful. I think that really comes into play when we merged, when XR merged and we took on another 27 clinics, but again, 23 brands within those clinics.

[00:03:29] Liz: And so how do we add them successfully to the mix in a fourth quarter that is an expensive media quarter that is right around the holidays, that is. in the healthcare world, flu season. And how do we do that successfully with the same amount of budget, basically double the clinics, and now 24 brands. And guess what?

[00:03:50] Liz: We did that and had flat budget, lower impressions, but the best metrics ever. The best CPA, the best CPC, the best engagement rates. And if I think about 23 percent, Of the visits are driven from that I'll bet you it was even higher during that time period based on the effectiveness and we achieve that by working so diligently throughout the summer and doing all the testing during the summer where there was less risk and being able to really like bring that to fruition at the holiday.

[00:04:21] Liz: We didn't know we were going to merge when we started all the testing, but we helped our future selves. We did all that testing and then we were able to benefit from those strategies when it came to the fourth quarter and had kind of a daunting challenge, I think, in front of us. So I congratulate all of us and the team behind us, really, because they worked their tails off and did that.

[00:04:42] Liz: I appreciate that.

[00:04:43] Kelly: In the spirit of the topic that the client agent relationship, you said a couple of things that brought kind of two topics in my mind, and I'll go one by one here. So in terms of being able to align with the people and ask those questions of who am I really going to be working with?

[00:04:56] Kelly: What does my actual team look like? I'd love to get your thoughts because Todd and I talk about this all the time. This idea of big fish and small ponds and small fish and big ponds and what that means. And again, I have two parts to this question. One is going to be fee and cost related. I'll save that for the second one.

[00:05:10] Kelly: But As far as what is your opinion on aligning yourself as a client, your size of budget, your size of needs with the size of agency and the profile of agency to be able to work with the right people versus again, you can go with a big well known brand agency, or you can go with a small boutique agency, or you can go somewhere in between like How do you navigate the matching yourself as a client with the right agency profile?

[00:05:36] Liz: You know, that's a great question because I've had to figure that out when I've rebranded companies, you know, and I'm looking for big branding solutions and campaigns and things like that too, as well as media, because everything is separate these days. I think you do want a little bit of the attention and I'd rather be.

[00:05:52] Liz: One of those clients that doesn't get eaten up or swallowed or ignored. I'd rather be a little bit of a big fish in a little pond so that I'm important to the agency, truth be told. But sometimes when you're a little fish and you have teeny budgets that keep getting challenged, you have to be really thoughtful.

[00:06:13] Liz: And so I would never really just go for a name brand agency. I would always go with the people I'm working with. I'm going to tell you right now, so don't rake me over the coals and negotiations, but anywhere I go now, I will always try to work with you guys again. This was the best working relationship I've had with any media agency in my decades and decades career and decades and decades as a CMO and chief brand officer.

[00:06:35] Liz: So hopefully I will not be too small or too big to work with your team again. Back to the question two, I think you do need to figure out what their, you know, as Todd mentioned in the beginning, what their values are. And I tend to move really quickly, because I like to iterate and pivot when we need to, and really growth is all about moving quickly, so you can see those results.

[00:06:56] Liz: We don't have the luxury of doing it so slowly anymore. So speed is important for me. When I have clients that can or agencies rather that can move Sort of at the speed that I move, that's important and be responsive and available.

[00:07:11] Kelly: You weren't prompted for that answer, but that's kind of where Todd and I always end up landing a lot is I never really understand why a brand would want to be a small fish in a big pond.

[00:07:18] Kelly: I get the name brand recognition. I gained the cache to that. But at the end of the day, again, you want to matter and you want to be important to the people that are in there, you know, because again, when the time, when push comes yourselves, you want that attention. Which leads me in sort of my last question, which is around a pretty challenging conversation that happens between clients and agencies these days.

[00:07:36] Kelly: And that is fee and compensation and structure. And right from the brand side, you're looking at what's the right profit and loss number for you guys. And on the agency side, we have resource allocation, all that. And this concept that Todd and I are always debating and going through is, and I try and apply this in my own life, which is.

[00:07:52] Kelly: Yes, you can grind down and get your fees down and really push it down. But I always would want to be someone's priority. Like in my perspective, I would always want to be the person that when I have a need or a fire drill happens or something's not going right, everything's dropped because look, this is the bread and butter, right?

[00:08:07] Kelly: This is the go to. And I know there's a balance to that, but I'm curious as to how you think about your role as a CMO to get the best deal. But also get the right service and the level of attention and how you balance those two kind of oftentimes competing components. Because I don't know that when someone is saying I can get a lower fee or I can get a less fee that it's always thought about.

[00:08:28] Kelly: But what comes with that is their sacrifices by getting those extra few percentage points down when, again, when the chips are down and the needs are coming through. And especially when you juxtapose that with size of agency and there's competing one bigger client is spending more money, are they going to get the A team versus the B team?

[00:08:43] Kelly: I'm leading a little bit, but I'm curious what your thoughts are around that.

[00:08:46] Liz: Yeah, I mean, I think you pay for what you get. And my dad would always say, buy quality and you'll never be disappointed. That doesn't mean I'm going to go out and get a really expensive agency. And again, to your point about that cachet with some big name brand shop, nobody sees the label on the inside of your sweater.

[00:09:04] Liz: They just know if it looks good and if it seems high quality and if it fits you well. So nobody needs to know that so and so launched my media campaign in some ways. If it's effective in the market, that's what matters, right? And if it's driving results, that's what matters. So I think that's important just to note.

[00:09:20] Liz: I think in terms of the money, It's always smart as a CMO. You've got to ask, and you know, I asked you if we could get lower and what else we could do to shave costs. But I also had that conversation with a more creatively oriented agency that did a lot of our PR and social media work, which I cut down significantly, really significantly so that I can spend more money in media because that's driving results.

[00:09:43] Liz: I can have that conversation with maybe a vendor who's doing a lot of our collateral or tchotchkes because that's a very different solution. And that has less importance in a lot of ways than the driving the media dollars and being thoughtful and getting the team. You also don't want to make people resentful.

[00:09:59] Liz: You have to think about it like a relationship and dating. Are you going to go to a, you know, your first dinner and you're going Dutch and then negotiate over, well, you had that appetizer, but you had two glasses of wine or whatever. I mean, that's not cool. You either split it down the middle. And call it a day or like, I don't want to date you.

[00:10:17] Liz: So I think of it the same way in a relationship. Let's figure out how we're going to work this out and let's just make sure we're getting the bang for our buck. And you're right. You want to have that group be on call and be available for you. But I think part of it's the money, but part of it's also like, are you treating them fairly?

[00:10:33] Liz: Are you treating them like people? Are you having those conversations with them where you recognize that Lisa looks tan or something, or she had a vacation, she's wearing her hair down or whatever the deal happens to be anyway. Yeah. I think money's important, but negotiate where you need to. And for me, you guys were such a critical business partner.

[00:10:51] Liz: I considered you part of my team. Sometimes like You were the people I talked to more than anyone else on my very small team on a daily basis because I had so much work to do in preparing for a board deck, for instance,

[00:11:03] Kelly: I think you used the right word in there that I think Todd and I always try to get to, which is it's fair, of course, as a client, you don't necessarily want to be someone's cash cow.

[00:11:10] Kelly: That's maybe not right. But you also maybe don't want to be so ground down that every little thing becomes out of scope or a big problem. And I think when you come down to fair, it's You want to be a healthy priority to it, but you also want to make sure that you're getting that value exchange. What you're getting for the money you're spending is worth more than whatever that check is.

[00:11:29] Kelly: You shouldn't feel, Todd and I always joke, no one should be upset about whatever check they're writing us because they should feel like they're getting more than that in return. So yeah, no, I think that word fair is really good, but I think that sometimes gets lost when someone's waiving. You know, a 5 percent media fee or an 8 percent media fee.

[00:11:44] Kelly: It's like, wow, can I really get that? But you also said what we always say, which is you do. Ultimately, you get what you pay for when all things are said and done. It's no different than anything else in life. So

[00:11:53] Liz: I would say that our working relationship and how we did our back and forth and just updates and let's dig.

[00:12:00] Liz: Deeper into this and let's really talk about some testing scenarios and all the resources that you guys pulled in when we needed them. I mean, that was basically just so incredible and so important and I don't know that I could expect that or would have enjoyed that with any other agency. I think we really grew to that relationship, but honestly, the gift with purchase really is the personal relationships that we had and really having that camaraderie and really like our Thursday meetings were my favorite meetings of the week.

[00:12:29] Liz: looking forward to getting on a call. How's everybody doing a few minutes of that? And then let's jump in. But we were making changes and we were driving business and we were like seeing the results. It's like redecorating a room or painting. It's like, you can see the changes is amazing, you know? And then when I would do the quarterly analysis and step back, I'm like, do you guys even know you're looking at it weekly, monthly, but I just stepped back and did a quarterly and I'm like, Congratulations.

[00:12:57] Liz: Look at you, you know, it was great.

[00:13:00] Todd: Well, thanks for sharing that, Liz.

[00:13:04] Todd: so if you're a CMO and you believe your agency is tracking everything and you believe the numbers that are being reported to you are amazing as the agency is telling you, how do they really know? Yeah.

[00:13:13] Kelly: So I think the very first flag and the easiest way to see it is does your media reporting match up with your business results.

[00:13:22] Kelly: Do you have media that is saying I'm getting amazing traffic and incredible CPAs and unprecedented numbers? And you're like, my business is flat, or I'm up a couple percentages, or maybe my business is down, like, how is media doing so well, and the business isn't reflecting a commensurate amount of success there.

[00:13:39] Kelly: And that is generally going to be your first indicator that there's a lot of credit taking versus incremental value bringing, right? A lot of media is set up to take credit for what it can, but We used to call this cookie bombing with Facebook ads and large scale things where you're just trying to tag everyone you can so that whatever actions happen, you can say, I was in that journey.

[00:13:58] Kelly: So it's my credit and it looks really good. So I think that's the first indication is, is my business reflecting the level of success my media is reporting or does it feel like there's a disconnect there? And if there's a disconnect, there can be again, egregious errors that you're going to uncover on that, or that could be not really malicious mistakes, but opportunities to improve where you can look at.

[00:14:18] Kelly: Am I overbidding on branded terms and taking credit for what would happen anyway? Am I taking credit for traffic that is going to occur anyway? Is there a way to shift dollars into something that will create more incrementality? Am I too concerned about a low CPA? Whereas if I went for more incrementality at a higher CPA, it would actually be better for my business, right?

[00:14:38] Kelly: So again, it's shifting that mentality towards the business impact and not the best media results on paper, which oftentimes isn't the right business metrics. Thanks.

[00:14:48] Todd: If you were a CMO and you had that suspicion, right? You're like, gosh, the agency's telling me all the media numbers are great. I'm looking at sales or revenue or whatever, and I'm not seeing it.

[00:14:57] Todd: What would be a couple of key questions? A couple of just really salient questions or something you'd ask. If you're the CMO, like, what do you ask? We get asked a lot of questions, but you love being in the CMO seat and sort of grilling the agency. What do you ask them?

[00:15:11] Kelly: Yeah, it's interesting. We'll see if my answer is relevant here, because I've always joked that I would either make the best or the worst CMO, at least in the agency's perspective, because I would be pretty rough on agencies and and what they get away with just because again, knowing how and why things are done, it goes a long way.

[00:15:27] Kelly: So my answer to that is honestly, a bigger relationship answer that I think is maximizing the value out of your agency requires. And that is, Having a genuine and real conversation with your team, the people that are responsible for spending your dollars, knowing them and knowing that they know your business.

[00:15:45] Kelly: And then again, you're not a function on a conveyor belt. You're not a nameless faceless entity that they're checking off hours and time on, but that they understand your business, that they're thinking about your business. And then if you believe that, and you can get into that, you can ask a pretty salient question to them, which is why do you believe the way we're investing these dollars is the best way.

[00:16:06] Kelly: Where do you think our dollars is having an influence in a user's journey, whether that's awareness, discovery, education, conversion, having a true answer to why are we spending the dollars the way that we're spending them? And why do we think that they're better this way than where they could be? And evaluating the answer you get back.

[00:16:24] Kelly: Are you getting a thoughtful, mindful response that is thought about the uniqueness of your business? Are you getting a canned approach of we're capturing this search volume and we're competing in these bids and we're checking these boxes? If you get a very canned cookie cutter response, you are being process driven.

[00:16:42] Kelly: If you get a, here's what we think about your business, and here's where we're trying to make sure we influence the user. And here's What we understand about the journey, you will pretty much be able to pick up. Are you getting someone who knows your business? Are you getting a paint by number service that is just checking those boxes?

[00:16:57] Todd: I'll play devil's advocate. I think most agencies are always going to say they're doing all that, and they're going to try and talk the talk. So again, becomes very difficult for the CMO to really know if, you know, it's a smoke and mirrors act or if there's some other culprit at play of maybe why the business isn't seeing outcomes relevant to or commensurate to, as you said, the media sort of performance being hyped.

[00:17:20] Todd: So I think those are all interesting ways to try and figure it out. I wonder if there are more I get, maybe this is the right word or isn't the right word. Forensic ways of actually knowing, right? Cause any agency is going to say, yeah, we're doing a great job. And this is what we know about your business.

[00:17:37] Todd: You sell this widget or, you know, your software is this for B2B or whatever it is. They're all going to say, they know the business. They're all going to say, the persona is this, the customer journey is this, and we're fulfilling that with the media. But as you and I both know, and. When we get under the hood and audit those things, it generally doesn't speak to that.

[00:17:55] Kelly: That's the question. Who's saying that, right? Are you just talking to the account manager, whose sole job is to do that? Or are you actually talking to your search director, and your social director, and your programmatic director, and your head of analytics? Are the people responsible for your business?

[00:18:07] Kelly: Showing up and made available and educating. Or again, are you being rotated off where it's a different search person every six months or eight months? It's a different program. Like, yeah, maybe you have consistency with your A. M. Or maybe you bring in a senior and they can talk the talk. But are you talking to the people that are actually pulling the levers?

[00:18:24] Kelly: And do they understand your business? And are they the ones that are putting it together? But to your answer in terms of the hard questions asked in the forensic actual Not subjective components. There are telltale signs. I mean, again, you can look at the level of traffic. You can look at how things are firing.

[00:18:40] Kelly: You can look at volumes and match those up. It's channel by channel. I mean, the way that programmatic and search and social and all these channels are going to come through is going to be a little bit different. So you kind of have to go through that checklist and go through that process. It's a little bit of show your work.

[00:18:53] Kelly: There's a lot of people that are just trusting that it's being done versus actually going through the process to be explained it, to engage in it. Okay. I would say, actually, that's another good sign is, is your agency relationship? Are they simply order taking? Are they coming to you answering questions you don't even know to ask?

[00:19:09] Kelly: Like, are they coming to you saying, hey, we should do this because it's the right thing to do, or we think that this would be a better way, or you asked us to send traffic to this landing page and do this KPI, but we actually think that it should be something along the lines. Do you ever get pushback from your agency?

[00:19:22] Kelly: Do you ever get insight that challenges your expectations, or is it always just Yes, sir. We'll take that. Or yes, ma'am. We'll take that. Like, is it just order taking and pleasing? Or is it actually saying, you know what? Our team thinks that this is a better best practice. This would lead to a better result.

[00:19:35] Kelly: And so we have to go through there and getting a little bit of that friction and challenge at least indicates that there's some engagement and some thought versus just, hey, as long as we keep our heads down, we're going to keep the business.

[00:19:45] Todd: Yeah. Well, that all feeds into a bigger existential question is do agencies provide the value they're being paid or are they being paid too little to provide the value?

[00:19:53] Todd: And do you generally just get what you pay for? If you're on the client side, we all know that clients have to be tight with their budgets. The CMO is always being challenged to cut costs. Where does that get cut from? It gets cut from the agency and the agency is still expected to do amazing work, even though you pay them less.

[00:20:08] Todd: Does that feed into the idea that things run on autopilot, right? We know that on the programmatic side with DSPs now recently, all the, well, even before AI, there was all the algorithmic bid based rules, same thing with Google, same thing with meta. It's not hard for an agency to have a junior media buyer.

[00:20:27] Todd: Check all the campaign boxes that need to be checked and just let it go and then check in on it once a week and make sure that it's hitting the CPA or whatever other KPI that's, you know, designed. So the idea, and we've heard this a lot of times though, my campaigns on autopilot, how do you know, again, if you're a CMO, how would you even begin to know that your campaign is on autopilot?

[00:20:48] Todd: Autopilot because the agency is never going to say that they might say they use bid management software, or they're using whatever the AI is with the platform, but they're not going to say, Oh yeah, it's just on autopilot. We check it once a week, but we know that's actually what happens because we talked to the people that are working in those agencies and they tell us that's actually how they're running the campaigns, but how does the client now?

[00:21:08] Kelly: Yeah, I think that this is an area I have to be careful because I think I, this is where I might get a little bit more controversial or skewed in my own POV or thought process in it. But a little bit to me is. I won't call it common sense, but I will call it more mindfulness and more reading between the lines and more gauging your experience versus just sort of taking what's in there.

[00:21:27] Kelly: Because in my perspective, you've taught me to be careful on my overarching statements. So I will hedge this comment a little bit. Not everyone is a bad actor. Not everyone does it badly, but What I'll say is too much of the industry and too much of the players in the space and the agency space in my experience and perspective, I see them being in the business of winning and retaining clients, not in the business of doing the best work for clients.

[00:21:51] Kelly: And by that I mean, It's far too easy to bring the a game and to bring everything to the table and to really show up to win the client and maybe do what's right in the beginning. And then quickly move into a territory where it's kind of autopilot. It's kind of easy. It's kind of not squeaky wheel, getting the grease kind of thing.

[00:22:08] Kelly: If it's not broken, don't fix it type territory. Cause you're moving on to win the next one. And then when you get wind of maybe I'm going to lose that client, maybe the client is doing it. Speaking of, all right, now we're going to bring all the a game in and sound good again. So it is a really difficult thing, right?

[00:22:20] Kelly: You have to gauge your experience. You can't go off of what you're getting when you're complaining or when you're threatening to leave or when you're being wooed in the first place, right? You have to go through what you're experiencing in the day to day because you have to also be realistic about your business and what you represent to the agency you work with.

[00:22:38] Kelly: I was just at conferences and I was joking earlier about, I won't name any names in this, but there was this conversation around. You know, a bigger agency and how many clients they had. And it was said with this sense of pride and I get it, but it was well over 150, almost 180 clients along those lines and all ranging from big to small.

[00:22:55] Kelly: And I want to say this agency had thousands and thousands of employees. And I just couldn't help thinking in my head when I'm at this conference and a lot of the topics are around, you know, use of data and scale and things. And it just requires these massive engines of clients where, again, if you're Coca Cola and you're Starbucks and you're Unilever and all these things, no problem, all these things make perfect sense.

[00:23:14] Kelly: But when you're this client that's in the single digit millions, maybe approaching double digit millions, but you're definitely not 50, a hundred million. You're not nine figure businesses. To think that you're going to work with an agency that has eight and nine bigger agency clients, and you're, you're representing such a small piece of their pie, I mean, you become this rounding error to them.

[00:23:32] Kelly: And to think that you're getting their upper echelon of talent and skillset and attention, or if you don't think you're going to get dropped in a heartbeat, as soon as their biggest client has a fire drill, and you're going to be that afterthought. It's just wild to me that that process of being realistic about what you represent.

[00:23:48] Kelly: Like, I would always rather be someone's priority and their number one and, and really have an impact on how well their business does, because they're always going to answer my call. They're always going to look at my business. If anything goes wrong, that's going to matter. If I'm this afterthought, it's going to be okay.

[00:24:03] Kelly: We'll get to it when we get to it, or maybe it's in there. And this is where this ABC team subject we come up with all the time is, is, you know, what's big to one person is small to another. And there's, where do you fall in someone's ecosystem and their priority? Yes, there are good, there are good people and there's good talent.

[00:24:19] Kelly: There's good processes. There's also bad and someone ends up with the bad and it's generally a structural problem of where you fall in someone's spectrum of where you end up. But a lot of people don't want to think of themselves as kind of getting pushed to the backside of things. They just kind of want to buy what's being sold to them.

[00:24:38] Kelly: when you're hiring someone, if you are going to go and hire an experienced senior level director, you're not expecting that person to come in with a six month onboarding time before they can really help your company out and train and do all those things, right? You expect that person to be bringing value in the first week because they've done this, they've been there, they understand it, you're hiring that and paying what you're paying to that person because they're going to know what they're doing.

[00:25:05] Kelly: Right. Bring in a junior person, someone out of college, a couple of years in, you're probably going to give them some leeway. They're going to need to learn the ropes. They're going to need to shadow some people. They're going to need to immerse themselves before they can slowly build value into it. It's very similar to an agency, right?

[00:25:20] Kelly: If you know what you're doing, if you're very good at it and you're not selling a rinse and repeat process, but you're actually selling talent and experience and quality, You should be able to understand that again. This is going to sound a little bit, you know, conceited or whatever, but within reason you can give me almost any client in the world and a little bit of information about them, their website, their background, who their audience is, some competitors and things like that.

[00:25:49] Kelly: And I can probably get you almost 90 percent into who, who you should be selling to, how you should be entering the market, what a media plan looks like to control that audience. Now, can you fill that out? Can you massage it? Can you improve it over time? Can you collect data that takes you in different directions?

[00:26:05] Kelly: Absolutely. But the vast majority of the most important, how should I spend my money and who do I need to be trying to use dollars to influence and market to, to get the results that I want? Yep. Anyone that really understands what they're doing is good at what they're doing, should be able to do the vast majority of that work, the bulk of it without AI or some magical thing telling you, this is the audience, like.

[00:26:28] Kelly: I can tell you who you're, who your typical clients are and anyone who knows how to buy media can understand their engagement rates and where they're at. So I think the answer is the reason that agencies want that is because a, it, it shows up better, it's fancier. It, you can give a document that says, look at all these stats and this data and this information.

[00:26:49] Kelly: And you get this book and you're like, this is what you're paying me for. There's something tangible here. There's something that you can see. There's 30 pages of research and you can't deny that that took a lot of time. And that's why you're cutting the check that you're cutting. And that's why you're paying me a big setup fee and doing all of these things and extracting dollars versus, yeah, I'm buying your media and I'm going at it.

[00:27:08] Kelly: But it's weird because doing the right thing and going straight at it and getting in there. Almost, it's easy to feel like you're paying this fee and it's like, well, all right, did you really do all that much for me? Did you, but I'm not seeing all this work. I'm not seeing all this shows up. It just, it's this weird disconnect between true value and perceptual value.

[00:27:30] Kelly: That actually exists. And for me, I would rather pay for someone that kind of has the confidence, knows what to do, gets in market is smart about things, and it's kind of working as they go a little bit more than like, Hey, give me a month to put in all this work to give you a bunch of research. That's going to tell you 90 percent of what you pretty much know about your business.

[00:27:51] Todd: Yeah, I, well, there you go. I mean, I don't disagree with that. I mean, maybe with age comes. Wisdom. Isn't that the saying, um, you've just lived long enough to see things. I mean, yeah, I think it's easier for somebody who's been in business for 30 years. think about that stuff than maybe a junior person. And maybe you don't, but obviously there's a lot of big agencies and research firms out there that would, you know, want to strangle us for talking about it that way and, you know, diminishing their value.

[00:28:18] Todd: And many of those agencies are friends of ours that, that run those kinds of agencies. And so there, there is value to it in some way, shape, or form. I think on the media side, specifically for us, maybe it's not As upfront valuable. I think it's easier for us to look at some basic stuff and sort of understand how and how to be clear.

[00:28:36] Todd: I

[00:28:36] Kelly: just not to interrupt you, but I there's value. There's value in enhancing invalidating in growing that I don't say there's no value in it. I'm definitely like we look at research things, but it's after we've engaged. It's after we've taken advantage of the known and we're starting to work more on the margins or to solve problems that have arisen and we need to get answers to.

[00:29:02] Kelly: It's not valuable to do the core of the work and the thing that you're primarily getting engaged to do, but it can be valuable certainly to take the next step or to evolve into the next phase or to do the next thing. I just have a problem saying that. I can't buy media until I do all these things. It's a cop out and it's not right.

[00:29:22] Kelly: Like you shouldn't be getting hired to do that. If you can't do the bulk of what needs to do pretty much out of the gate again, you can leverage it and take advantage and expand what you're doing on those things. But none of that should be informing the court like you shouldn't understand what the core is out of the gate.

[00:29:39] Kelly: So I don't want it to make it sound like I don't think there's any value to it.

[00:29:42] Todd: So now there's a bunch of media agencies out there that hate you for saying that.

[00:29:46] Kelly: I mean, look, it is what it

[00:29:49] Todd: is. Yeah, I mean, look, it's just our perspective on things, right? And that's why our show is called Contrary to Popular Opinion, because our opinion is not always that popular.

[00:29:58] Todd: All right, so I want to spin this in a different direction. So again, the CMO is talking about the power Of the creative idea and the big idea from the creative agencies. And that's really what the CMO is craving as being the most important thing to sort of augment their in house team and why, why the purpose would be to hire a creative agency.

[00:30:19] Todd: The article goes on to talk about media, which is what we do as a tactical thing. And the one thing that we have struggled with, not a big struggle, but I think maybe all agencies in our, in our position struggle is. I view creative as this one big idea, it's a moment in time where the creative director comes up with this beautiful idea about what the TV spot is supposed to be in the campaign and that's the creative execution and that's a one time thing, right?

[00:30:43] Todd: That has a shelf life, it's a creative concept, a creative idea that has a shelf life. It gets created, it gets put in market, and then eventually it has an end state to it. Media, on the other hand, what we run Is sort of immune to that. And we run whatever the creative is. And so we could have a media relationship with a client that could span.

[00:31:05] Todd: And as most of our clients do many, many years. So if the CMO is sort of thinking about the creative agency as. Wow. They bring me this one big, cool, creative concept every six months or whatever, and that becomes our campaign. And that's the big, fresh idea. One of the things that we've seen is that, how do you do that with media?

[00:31:27] Todd: How do you constantly innovate, evolve, keep fresh and exciting? media when it's not incumbent upon this cool, creative, new idea that's for the campaign. It's just a distribution. It's a conveyor belt. It's a distribution outlet. It could be, it can become very stale and monotonous, especially if you're running media for a client.

[00:31:53] Todd: Year after year, after year, after year. So for media agency, folks that might listen to this, how do you, Kelly? Want to, I want to keep a client excited about media. Can you do it? Do they listen? Can they afford it? How does that work best in your mind?

[00:32:11] Kelly: Yeah, it's interesting. So I'm going to try and go off in a few different areas on this topic.

[00:32:15] Kelly: I'll try and organize this and keep it in because there's a lot to cover here. Starting with kind of the big creative idea and how that plays with the media execution, because even that in and of itself is a really interesting concept to think about. Because in my mind, there's two main ways that a campaign or a creative concept come together.

[00:32:35] Kelly: Now, of course, there's a lot of other ways, but I'm going to distill it down into a simpler version here. There is You could have the big creative idea that you really want to put out in the world. And that represents a bit of a risk, right? Because you're saying this is how I want to talk about my brand or product or service or whatever it is.

[00:32:53] Kelly: And I'm going to deliver it under the hopes that it lands and that it hits and that everyone takes from it what I want them to. Now we've seen there's Endless numbers of campaigns where I'm sure someone thought it was a great idea and it just fell completely flat and didn't do what they wanted, right?

[00:33:09] Kelly: So again, it's risky because now what you're using media is you're saying, I have a thing that I want to put in the world and I want it to accomplish something. And media's job is to then take that and then match that up and get high visibility exposure and maximize its yield and track its outcomes and all of that.

[00:33:26] Kelly: And again, I liken that to a big swing and a big risk because that can fail just as easily as it can take off because you're trying to force something that you want to happen because you think it's a cool creative idea. The other way is what I would consider is often talked about more as the performance marketing direction, which is we have an engine to deliver messaging.

[00:33:48] Kelly: We've talked about this, the, I have an engine to get three to five seconds of someone's attention. I can identify this as someone who should or would benefit from what I have to offer. I just simply need to connect with them and either make them aware or answer a question for them or provide them the conversion path.

[00:34:06] Kelly: And now you're saying, okay, if I'm going to invest these dollars to get those three to five seconds of attention in an ad, what should I say? What value should I convey? What question can I answer? How can I stand out? How can I generate attention? Okay, cool. And so that's kind of. You know, more of a bottom up right where you're saying, I'm going to generate this attention.

[00:34:26] Kelly: I need to maximize the yield of that attention versus I have something I want people to see and I'm going to force people to see it and hope it hits. These are very, very different things that I think is in there. So all of that goes around into you. The big ideas for, for media. So again, media serves a role.

[00:34:44] Kelly: It is creating a communication channel with the audience that you want to reach. And it's delivering a message. Now you can get creative in that, but the problem that you run into, and this is another size of client issue that I'm going to talk about, because this doesn't apply to Red Bull and Starbucks and Coca Cola to have all the money in the world to try everything in the world.

[00:35:02] Kelly: And they've exhausted things and they just need to go to the next thing and spend money. This exists for the client that. Doesn't have the biggest budget in the world and has to be very prioritized on where they spend their next dollar. And the problem that you run into is a lot of times where you should really spend your next dollar is oftentimes not the most exciting, coolest, shiniest new thing.

[00:35:25] Kelly: It is, I'm still only 40 percent of my maximum Facebook ad yield, or I'm only 20 percent of my share of voice in Google search ads, or I haven't even tried to do everything I can do in programmatic yet. And so oftentimes it's like, Hey, I have some more money or I want the next idea. And you come across with this boring, like, okay, well, we should put more money into your search campaign.

[00:35:47] Kelly: Well, that's not very exciting, but it's also the smartest thing to do with your next dollars. Maybe once you've gotten past the 50 or 60 percent share voice mark, you should go do the shiny, fancy, new awareness driven ad that helps you out. But honestly, all this is coming back into is understanding your objectives in your media.

[00:36:07] Kelly: The sacrifices you're willing to make for the shiny new objects where you're participating and competing and where your next best dollar is, even if you're not being brought the best, coolest, most fun idea, as long as someone is looking at. Here's why you should do the boring thing before the exciting thing.

[00:36:28] Kelly: Here's where you stand in the mix and when that would make sense to do that next thing. Here's the capability so that you're aware of it. Even if I don't recommend doing it yet, knowing that it's being looked at, knowing that it's being evaluated, even if it's not time, that's important, but it is hard to make sure that you're feeling like you're getting the latest and greatest because you're seeing that shiny sales object.

[00:36:51] Kelly: I can't tell you how many times we've talked to clients and they're like, Well, should we be doing this thing? And I'm like, I mean, yeah, that's a cool thing. You could do it, but you are well, much more important things away of funding before you ever get to that being the next thing that you should do.

[00:37:07] Kelly: But it sounds so cool and it gets you all excited and it's really hard to manage that. So I think as long as you genuinely get the sense that your partner continues to critically evaluate the business, genuinely analyze what the right thing to do is. I wouldn't knee jerk react to I'm not getting the big shiny new idea as much as I would say I'm not getting any ideas.

[00:37:32] Kelly: I'm not getting any POVs. I'm not getting a perspective as to why I shouldn't do that. Why should do this? You want someone that is thinking about it and pushing you, but you don't want someone who's just giving you something fancy just to look good. If it's not in the best interest of your business, it still needs to be tied to an objective and a risk.

[00:37:50] Kelly: Evaluation protocol and understanding. Is this the right thing to do? How does this fall on my list of priorities?

[00:37:57] Todd: Wait, kelly? You're boring Yeah, I mean all you want to do is the boring stuff, but it

[00:38:02] Kelly: But yeah, I get it. I mean that is true and that's I mean to be fair actually i'm going to defend myself a little bit That's not true.

[00:38:08] Kelly: I absolutely love coming up with the creative idea I love I would love to do a super bowl ad or a fancy podcast or all these types of things. It's just It's just You got to have the right client and you have to believe that it is going to move the needle in the right way. And then again, that it is the next best place to spend a dollar.

[00:38:26] Kelly: I would love by all means that there's someone at a brand who's spending 50 or a hundred million dollars that wants our expertise on there. I would absolutely love to be these huge, wonderful, amazing ideas. But in the arena that we play in, we'd have to drive performance and be mindful that those dollars work.

[00:38:43] Kelly: I can't, you know, Red Bull, I can say, yeah, we sponsored a space athlete jumping out of space. And it fell a little flat. It didn't get in there. No big deal. We do that for one of our clients. It's like, well, that's half the budget gone and we're screwed for this next year.

[00:38:56] Todd: Yeah, no, you know, I'm only joking.

[00:38:58] Todd: It is true. It puts us in this weird place, at least in the mid market places that, yeah, we get criticized if we don't bring fresh new ideas to the table all the time. But all those fresh new ideas, like you said, are generally either unaffordable or too risky to take money away from the ROI producing tactics that are in market.

[00:39:16] Todd: That it just, it doesn't make sense. It could cost the CMO their job.

[00:39:20] Kelly: Sometimes there's other blockers too. There's just, you need access to data that they don't have. You need creative resources that they don't have. You need a platform that doesn't exist. Like there are actual blockers that again, someone pitching you the shiny sales idea, they don't need to worry about all of that.

[00:39:36] Kelly: They just need the bait that gets your attention, that gets you on the phone to listen, and then that causes you to question us. Why didn't you bring me that idea? Well, now I have to answer, well, it's because there's four reasons you literally can't do this. I didn't want to waste your time with it.

[00:39:51] Kelly: So one of the things that you mentioned there that I think is really interesting again, is the pressure that the C suite's under and, and the expectations around it. We've, we've danced around this in a couple of ways. So I think that brings the next question is I'd like to get your perspective on what are your expectations on what media can achieve?

[00:40:08] Kelly: Because this is a conversation that Todd and I have had a lot where. Media at the end of the day, it's, it's a communication portal, right? It's being able to connect a message with a consumer in order to convey some something, and that something has to be either a rockstar brand, or you've had the benefit of dealing with celebrity type brands and that can get attention.

[00:40:28] Kelly: But at the end of the day, it's, it's pretty rare, at least in my opinion, that an ad or media is going to get someone from, I've never heard of this time, willing to buy it purely because of the ad, right? You still have to have either a good product or a good price point or a creative message or a reason to believe.

[00:40:43] Kelly: So how do you balance that? What you expect media to achieve versus. What falls on the brand's responsibility to make sure that they're conducting the right research and building the right products and, and delivering that what's needed for the media to actually have a chance to work.

[00:40:59] Yeah, it's a hundred percent, every, the whole company's responsibility ultimately, and I think that is being communicated a lot internally, at least the places I've been, it was always.

[00:41:10] That mindset. So everyone is on deck, but I think also like the head of growth role is really evolving. It's like gone are the days where you're just in charge of meta Google affiliate, et cetera. Like you have to be thinking bigger because you can't, you. We saw what happened with iOS 14. 5. Like you cannot be at the behest of a platform anymore.

[00:41:30] You have to be steps ahead, even with campaigns that could likely take longer to develop and have results, but be proactive, do it now. So that three months down the line, you're not panicking about results. You have something ready to go. I'll give you a case in point. Something that I was really paying attention to is viral viral campaigns.

[00:41:48] You've seen the impact of virality. I mean, you know, the, You, like, if you have, like, a 2x return on meta or 3x return, uh, you have a viral moment and you have 5 to 10x. Even if it's going to last lower, a less amount of time, that's significantly higher, right? And viral moments, it's like, it's not easy to, like, manufacture something like that, but Are you paying attention to the trends?

[00:42:14] You know, are you paying, doing influencer? Like TikTok affiliates has really, really changed the game. And now it's like pushing the influencer industry and stuff to also go on commission based payouts and stuff, which they weren't ready to before. You know, I think it's really, really important to pay attention of things outside of the platforms too now, because it's not just, you can't just do it.

[00:42:35] I don't think you can just do your jobs with just these platforms. You have to do more.

[00:42:40] Todd: So I will expand a little bit on that. We have talked about and talked about a little bit in the beginning of this. Is there some bifurcation between brand and other advertising, right? Does, does brand still have, does it still have a place on it and to in itself?

[00:42:57] Todd: Can you have somebody that's really focused on, we need to, it's part of what Kelly just said. We need to build a brand. We've had, for example, startups come to us who have A great product. Yeah. Or maybe they're, I'll pick, for example, an e bike company. Mm hmm. Great, cool product. They want to immediately start advertising on Meta and Google.

[00:43:19] Todd: And our first question is, why would anyone want to buy your e bike? over the 20 other e bike brands that are already out there who have put a bunch of money into building a brand. I have a brand reputation. They have brand awareness, brand affinity. They have all these brand sort of values that they can lean in on.

[00:43:41] Todd: And then we get a company that goes, yeah, but we've got a really cool bike and our bike is better than theirs. So we just need to run ads and people will buy our bike. And our argument back to them is it's so much so now that when startup brands. approach us, we're kind of the negative naysayers about what's reality because most of them don't come in and go, we've got a bunch of money to build a brand.

[00:44:06] Todd: And then once we do that, we want to start performance. Have you seen sort of how brand and performance and growth work together? Do you see brand having to come Well before and get some sort of a strong foothold before growth can be Realistically expected in performance. What what's your take between those two topics?

[00:44:27] No, I think they can operate simultaneously But I do think it's important to have a brand because otherwise, I mean what differentiates you than an amazon copycat You know, people will just go to Amazon copycat, uh, if it's just the product that you're selling. But I think we can operate simultaneously from the brand side.

[00:44:44] I think what really helps too is like, yes, uh, good packaging and all of these things do help for sure. It's just makes things more memorable and things like that. We don't think about these things because. But like, it matters and then I think also from a PR and partnership standpoint, that helps really establish coolness and like different types of emotions, you know, because like North Face did a collaboration with Supreme, it's instantly elevated.

[00:45:12] Like Crocs has done a really, really solid job with collaborations all through the pandemic. Like they've done stuff with Justin Bieber, they've just done stuff with Bad Bunny, they've done stuff with even KFC, like they've just taken these like taste makers and just super relevant like pop culture references over the time and like done these collaborations and that instantly became their advertising and made them cool, you know, so I do think that brand from that side is Partnerships PR is like super important and then that obviously provides a halo effect to advertising like on the direct response side to another great example is Dr.

[00:45:50] Squatch. I've been following them for so long. We've just done such a phenomenal job on the licensing side, like even when I was 14. hit, you know, they have the Star Wars collection going and that naturally elevated, I'm sure elevated click through rates and things like that, because everyone knows about Star Wars and is a fan.

[00:46:10] So yeah, I, I think it's the partnership side, the influencer side, so important these days to do that as well in tandem with that.

[00:46:19] Todd: Yeah, I couldn't, I couldn't agree more. And I actually have contributed to the revenue earnings of Dr. Squatch because I decided to go try their product as a result of their advertising.

[00:46:31] Todd: Cause I'm like, it's, it's everywhere, but it's thoughtful. It's creative. And ultimately they do a good job of communicating their value prop, which is their product is healthier. It is better. For you and and so I finally I'm a consumer because of that. So advertising works It's a good thing that it does because that's what keeps the internet free.

[00:46:54] Todd: Anyway, I just I love their products So thanks for bringing them up. Okay, so jewy there's Always the big question of agency or in house and that's, you know, every magazine at age has been writing about this. It's been a challenge for marketers. I know you've had the fortune of sort of seeing both sides of that coin.

[00:47:12] Todd: What is your, what is your perspective on that? Do brands, how do they pull it in house? Is it worth it? Can they get the experience and the talent? Can they keep it? Do agencies have more depth of experience because they work on so many other different things? And then is that a benefit? Do you have a preference?

[00:47:30] Yeah. So in my experience, it's different at different phases of the business. So if you're just starting out and have less capital. Founder usually does most of it and then brings on from freelancers. If you're funded, you get an agency from day one, typically, because they're able to provide multiple resources, all the learnings from different clients and industries, like you said, and they're able to do the heavy lifting to get used to set up and figure out product market fit, which is usually what you're doing until you hit like at least.

[00:47:59] Half a million in media spend a month. Once you reach about 20 million in media spend annually agency fees, that's when I see agency fees become really steep and substantial, especially if you're paying percent spend and that's when, you know, people start realizing, Oh, there's some room to gain some savings and optics to take by taking this in house.

[00:48:20] So at this point, they figured out product market fit and they've scaled. So they're just like, okay, this agency, so, you know, we sort of, you know, figured out like the formula now and now we're taking it to the next level so let's save the money let's take it in house and then sort of have that the team integrated with us.

[00:48:38] At a mid size level my preference is always in house teams given they're integrated into the org there's less coordination there's cost savings and you can move quickly on things unless there's a specialization so you know like The in house team may not be experts in Amazon. Amazon is a completely different beast.

[00:48:57] TV advertising, the best rates come from agencies because they can buy economies at scale. So if there's a specialization, then yes, continue to have an agency. For larger businesses though, I think they favor agencies like the Fortune 1000s, Fortune 500s, also because their businesses span across geos. So it's a lot more coordination.

[00:49:19] Agencies also tend to have global teams and things like that. So it's just easier, I think, because there's so much coordination involved. to have an agency that can support all the initiatives. It can be a single agency or multiple. Like it could be a separate media agency globally or a creative agency globally.

[00:49:39] But I, Typically always see the bigger businesses have agencies.

[00:49:43] Todd: So there's like this middle ground where you're too small to, you got, you're so small, you got to do it yourself. And then you kind of grow a little bit. You're like, now I can afford an agency. And then you get to a point where you're like, Hey, we know what we're doing.

[00:49:54] Todd: We could save some money. And then you get too big and you're like, we can't do it all. So now we need an agency again. So you, you see that middle ground there.

[00:50:02] Yeah, but I think that the agencies really are going to succeed now on if you really nail in and to get specialized in something too, because nobody can be the best at everything.

[00:50:15] There's just too many things now. So if you are like the best at Amazon, people are going to come to you for Amazon because they likely don't have the experience to do that as good as you. So I do think that agencies should, yes, offer as many services, but also become an expert in at least one thing.

[00:50:35] Todd: Fair enough. Great opinion.