[Music] Hey, welcome to our On the Offense

podcast. This is the second in our series of three podcasts where we looked at, you know, we're in the right place,

which was Texas. That's what we talked about the last time. The right time. I'll tell you a little bit about that in

a second. And then the next one will be the right people. When I say the right time, we've hit the ground at the right

time because trends are pointing towards smaller agencies. Uh there's still some

great large agencies, but that market's consolidating a bit and John's going to

go through some of the trends that make it probably a better time to be in a smaller place. We're happy that you're

here to talk to us and based on when this is airing, I hope you all had a great Fourth of July. We're going to do

something a little bit different too with this, a new tradition where we'll give you three takeaways at the end of

this podcast that we hope will be helpful for you. Um, and uh, with that, I'll turn it over to my business

partner, John Clendennic. Thank you. Thank you, Jeff. Uh, and yes,

What is Right Place

the Fourth of July is all about tradition. Um, I hope you had a traditional Fourth. Uh, and you know

what this means, Jeff? This means we're now in the second half of the year, which is

unbelievable to me. Yikes. Yikes. Exactly. Uh last podcast we

focused on the first part, which was right place, meaning in our case, Texas, even more specifically Dallas. We talked

about both Dallas and Texas as a whole last time. And and really why it's such

a great place to do business. Today, we're going to focus on part two, which is right time. So, what what do we mean

by that? What what we mean is that our agency, which is now, as you hear this,

almost a year old to the day, we're going to be about a week out from our one-year anniversary. And and what we

mean by right time is that our agency was launched um at the same time that

some real tailwinds were kicking in um in the agency world. tailwinds for

smaller agencies like ours. the two trends that I want to talk about here

and and this is going to be the focus of a LinkedIn piece that I actually post I believe it's going to be the same week

we post the podcast Jeff is two things one is the clear trend

move away from in-house agencies to outside partners so outsourcing

essentially and then the second trend that we've seen is uh a move away from

larger agencies to smaller ones ones. Now, these are not brand new trends that

they've hit the last month or so. We saw these things coming when we launched the

agency a year ago, but they've really taken hold and accelerated in the years since we launched the agency. So, let's

let's take each of these two individually. So, the first one is the clear trend away from in-house agencies

in favor of outsourcing. So, I mean, what it really, you know, you're a a CMO

or you're a CEO and you and you know, you need to have your marketing department um and or your separate

communications department. You really have a choice. You have all of those people inside the company as essentially

an in-house agency. Um Jeff and I have both led such

in-house agencies in our careers. or do you outsource the work uh to an

outside party? And and and our perspective would be and and this is in

sync with where the market appears to be going right now is why pay all that

money for headcount and by the way benefits as well when you can pay an

agency to do the work. Not only does a company save money when doing this and

that and the research backs that up, it tends to be less expensive to outsource

the work. So, not only do you tend to save money, you also as a company, it's

much easier to maintain the financial flexibility that companies sadly Jeff right

increasingly need when it comes time for budget cuts, right? Think about, okay,

you're right. Yeah, you're the CMO, you're the CCO. Okay, fourth quarter's coming. You need to cut 10%.

So much easier to go to the agency and said, "We're going to cut our program

cost by 10% as opposed to laying 10% of your workforce off, right? You just give

yourself so much more freedom that way." The second part of that trend that in

our view is driving it is all due respect to in-house agency talent.

Right? We're not here to say that in-house agency folks are not talented.

We don't mean it that way at all. But one of the many things that that I know

I've learned since returning to the agency side after literally three decades on the client side, by the way,

why are we called clients first, right? uh because the high majority of Jeffs

and my experience is on the client side not the agency side. So we think like

clients first, right? And that's where we've been for the better part of the last three decades. But since I have

returned to my agency roots, if you will, I have discovered, everyone may not agree with this, the best talent, at

least now tends to be on the agency side. Could be in the form of

freelancers these days, and we're going to talk about that. You just have some seriously talented people on the agency

side. This is what they do. They live it. they breathe it. And we've just been

not surprised but just validated how much talent there is on the agency side.

You know, if you're a snack food manufacturing, you may make potato chips and pretzels and whatever. You you don't

The Agency Side

think of running a PR agency or running a marketing group. So, we help you focus

on that. Now, when John talks about getting rid of your internal agency, that doesn't mean getting rid of your

entire marketing staff and PR staff, but you pe put people there who can direct your activities going forward and

utilize this outside PR firm to do the blocking and tackling. That's really what we're saying. And in some cases,

you know, provide guidance on strategy. Well, the other thing is, I mean, let's face it, a lot of time on the client

side, but yet some on agency side. What's one of the best parts about being

in an agency? You're doing a different thing. Maybe not every day, but you

you're not a 100% of the time focused on one product, one company. So you can

bring experience from across the aisle, if you will, from other companies, other

industries, and then you mix all of those people together and and you just tend to get, in my view, fresher ideas,

newer ideas, because the people in that room are just bringing them in from so many different spaces, right? As opposed

to people who have been in the same company and thus the same industry for 10 years might get a little stale.

probably at least easier on paper for that to occur, right? And then I guess that's the third point. It's just fresh

eyes. I mean it which many would argue is the ultimate value of an outside

agency is just fresh eyes, right? Because of all of these things, this is why we see this trend occurring um of

in-house agencies moving to uh if not to Jeff's point, exclusively outsourced,

largely outsourced. So, you might say, okay, give me an example. Well, a brand

new example, this just happened last month. Kurig Dr. Pepper based right here uh north of Dallas has recently

dismantled its in-house agency which had actually branded you don't always hear

about that right but in this case they had branded their in-house agency as Liquid Sunshine which I actually think

is kind of a cool kind of a cool brand but how many people were in this agency?

80 people serving 125 brands throughout the comp company's

portfolio. They completely disbanded it. Meaning that those 80

people are now on the market. Right. Was doc Kurig Dr. Pepper the first to do it? No. Will they be the last to do it? No,

they won't. So, and I don't know. I mean these things Jeff that we talk about

fresh eyes and all that kind of stuff that's always been true of the value of

going outside. I suppose maybe a lot of it is the economy you know you just want

that flexibility right when you say clients first. The other thing is we've been clients we've been clients of big

Client Perspective

agencies and you know one of the thing of things we've seen and we we say this often when

we're talking to pro prospects is that when you first get the first conversation

with agency they bring their top people to the table the head of the technology practice the

head of the travel practice or whatever and they come to the table and they say well we'd like to do this this and this

for you and they turn it into a big production says, you know, we say, "Oh, that's fantastic."

But then when you actually get things in motion, you're dealing with junior staffers who really haven't been around

the block too many times. And that's one thing that you can look at when you're

looking at a smaller agency is that if you have two or three or how many ever really senior people who have a lot of

wisdom and experience, we can bring it to the uh to the table right away. And

there are plenty of other agencies that can do the same thing. But that's one thing that you you need to keep in mind.

And I know John and I have really good BS meters and uh and and we see it right

away. So that's one thing you should always consider when you're evaluating agencies.

From a client perspective, what's the single most annoying thing that an agency will do other than overpromising

and underdelivering? I think it's what you just identified. Boy, we we bought

you guys. We said yes to you because Joe and Carol did an amazing job in the

presentation. And now where are Joe and Carol, right? They're nowhere to be seen.

Nowhere to be seen. And it's really annoying. If you are listening to this

and you've only been on the agency side and you've never been the client, don't do that. It feels like a bait and

switch. I was going to say those same words, John. It is a bait and switch and

right, but in in the meantime, we've already said sorry to all of the other contenders. We've already signed the

contract. We're in. We may have announced it publicly. We're kind of in it with you, but now you're immediately

annoying us, right? The second trend, and and that was a good bridge, Jeff, into this away from the larger agencies

and in favor of the smaller ones. So, for those of you who are students of the

agency business, you've seen the headlines, right? Omnicom IPG merger,

which is still going through antirust and things like that. I believe that will likely lead to a lot of

duplication, meaning people on the street. Um, there have been massive layoffs at Edelman, which for years has

been the the world's largest PR firm. I believe that is no longer true. I don't

know if that's because of the layoffs though. I don't want to imply that, but um I believe they're number two now. But

it's news. It it was big news in the industry. Massive layoff.

And then WPP um their media buying unit uh also had a fairly recently, I think

just in the last couple of weeks, a pretty major layoff. So um what I say in the LinkedIn piece was all of this has

laid bare an inconvenient truth. the big agencies are no longer where it's at.

And that may sound a little rude maybe, but I believe it's true. I believe it's

true. And I think it's true for too many large agency employees, and I'm talking about career large agency employees who

despite their hard work each and every day, think about it, they're ultimately no more than corporate pawns. Omnicom,

IPG, WPP. These are very large,

oftentimes publicly traded holding companies. And so it should be no

surprise that people are just corporate pawns, right? Despite, I'm sure, the

best efforts of all of these holding companies to protect jobs as much as they can, in the end, especially if

you're publicly traded, it's about the stock price. It's about did you make the quarter blah blah blah. Smaller agencies

don't have that problem because they're almost all privately held, right? Doesn't mean things are easy. Anyway, I

think the point is you just see a lot of churn among larger agencies right now. I

also think that too many large agency leaders are unduly affected by this. I'm

talking about people who work who work their way up, right? I mean, they may have started right out of college, Jeff,

right? They worked their way up. It's hard work. Agency life is hard. I

remember my last day. It's Yeah, it's hard. I remember my last

day I I think I've told you this story before, Jeff. My last day as a reporter

and all of my fellow reporters and editors took me out to lunch and I was

moving to a PR firm. I was going to the dark side as as many reporters like to

say, right? And the lunch turned into a roast. And essentially the theme of the roast

was John's going to the easy side of the street. He's going to have it easy. He

gets to take reporters to lunch. He gets to do all the fun, cool, easy stuff.

While those of us inkstained wretches are still here, you know, uh, at 7

o'clock at night trying to write the story with the editor yelling at them and we have it hard, you're going to have it easy, right?

A decent part of me believed them, right? I didn't think I was going to

easy street, but part of me was thinking, I think this is going to be at least a little easier. I was wrong. I

was dead wrong. I had never worked as hard as I did when I was at that at the

two PR firms I worked at. Why is that? You're caught in the middle. You're fundamentally caught in the middle. You

got the client over here. They want this. You got the journalists over here. They want the the clients want X. The

journalists want Y. Right? It's like a referee.

If you got to figure out how it's almost impossible to make either team happy, right? Um, I think that

isn't there a saying that if both teams hate the refs at the end of the game, the ref probably did a good job. Ref.

That's right. I'm talking about people who worked really hard for a long time. Well, but but guess what's happened in

this churn that we're talking about? A lot of really highlevel people have lost

their jobs. So, it's not just that the 25 year olds, low person on the totem

pole, have been out of luck with the short straw. It's been senior people too. So it in my view

and we know a lot of them. We know a lot of them. We could give you names if you wanted to of really super qualified

people. Super qualified people who have who've been left holding the back. That's just

happening a lot lately at larger agencies. And then as Jeff mentioned,

we've talked to enough clients and prospects to know that the dynamic Jeff

that you brought up, what did I call them? Joe and Carol, senior people, great presentation. We

want Joe and Carol. Where did Joe and Carol go? Um it's um and that and that's

um that's by the way also often unfair for the younger people who are now in

charge of the relationship because they're doing their best. They just don't have the experience, right? All of

these things we believe from our own experience, but this is also stuff we've

seen in the market from reading a lot to keep up on what's going on. All of these

things are combining individually and collectively to create a situation where

if you are at a smaller agency, this is probably the right time to be in a

smaller agency. I agree with that, John. You know, one thing you have to always consider, and this is something I've seen dealing with

large agencies and actually working for one at one point, is that when it comes

down to that table where you're sitting there with the agency and, you know,

their top leaders and everything else, I think it comes down to, especially if they're held by a publicly held company,

um, is it sales or expertise? And we tend to

The Challenge of a Smaller Agency

side with expertise. Sometimes when you're dealing with a big agency that's publicly traded, sales are the are the

top priority. Now, expertise is always a part of the puzzle, but we'd always rather and you know, a small agency, I

think it's probably a good bet, they're putting expertise ahead of sales. I don't disagree. You know, the key with

a smaller agency is we could go on and on about this, right? But the challenge

for a smaller agency is you have to have enough people with experience, right? I

mean, hey, smaller agencies in many ways have always been better. You probably al always got more attention from the

higherups. Well, from a client perspective, you better hope that those higherups have

experience, too. If you've got a couple of 25 year olds who've decided, I don't even want to deal with larger agency

life. I'm we're going to start our own agency now, right? Based on what? You

don't have any experience, right? And so, yeah. So, this is it's it's not like

all is perfect and easy for smaller agencies either. Said another way, I I suppose not only on our behalf, but on

behalf of all smaller agencies, in our view, welcome to the era of the smaller

agency. Um, I don't think that's ever been more true than it is now. What do you think about that, Jeff?

The Sweet Spot

No, I agree. I I agree. I think we're in the sweet spot and it's a good time to be in that sweet spot. That doesn't mean

we're going to win every pursuit we go on. But it gives you options. And I think that if you have the option of

going with smaller firm, if you think that's going to be right for you, this is the right time. And if you're working

in a smaller firm or founded a smaller firm, we think it's a good time of

opportunity. Yeah. If you have founded a smaller firm, good for you. We hope you have the requisite experience that clients

deserve and need. And again, you know, none of this means the smaller agencies don't have challenges, right? Number

one, yes, you better make sure you have enough senior level experience. Number two, you have to prove that you can

actually do the work, right? A larger agency has that track record. They have

more case studies, right? There's more there historically over time. A smaller

agency has that burden that you have to prove to the client or the prospective client that you can actually do the

work. You also have to prove that you have arms and legs, right? So, right

people, which as Jeff has said is going to be part three of this three-part podcast series we're doing in in a

couple of weeks after this and in Jeff's next LinkedIn piece at the beginning of

August, if you end up going there like we talked about, that's going to be

focused on this third leg of right people. And and just to give you a very quick teaser, we have advertised

ourselves as being basically this agency, but we have built up a pretty

large, very talented network of people. I would argue that any small agency

needs to have something like that, their own version of that to show that you have arms and legs to serve a client

that needs arms and legs, right? geographically, functionally, whatever.

Right? And then, you know, another challenge that I can identify for smaller agencies is, you know, you you

better you better avoid the trap of being the cobbler's children, right? By ensuring that your messaging is spoton,

right? Easy for us to say to our clients, well, what's our own messaging? Right? And if you're a smaller agency,

especially if you're a startup, what is your messaging? Is it strategic? Is it

unique? Is it compelling? Is it going to get people to pay attention to you as a

smaller firm? And if you think about it, okay, welcome to the era of the smaller agencies. That means more of us, right?

It means a more crowded space. Let's say there's a a basket of clients and

prospects who um decide for whatever reason, yeah, it's time for a smaller agency. Well,

there's more of us than ever now, so you better stand out, right? Um through your

messaging, through the way you present yourself, through your website, etc., etc. So, the point is that it's not like

there aren't challenges for smaller agencies. when you're looking at a firm and I'm not saying us, I mean it could

Challenges for smaller agencies

be any firm, you know, measure that level of talent, measure that level of experience, but look at all the

different facets as well. Um, and one thing I learned when I when I got

promoted to vice president of global communications way back at EDS was that

I didn't know everything. You know, I I had a big team around me and I still had

this impression that I was king of the world. You know, I knew everything. I could rewrite anything. And it took me

about a day on the job to think, okay, no, I don't. And I've got these experts.

Let's utilize them. And that's another thing, you know, if you've got a decentsized team around you and people

who kind of fill in your gaps, really powerful. So whether you go with someone

like a clients first where you have two of us but we've got all these different people we work with almost on a daily

basis um or another agency. You know you want to make sure that you've got enough

people there with expertise and can fill in any gaps. Well said. That probably made you a very

good person to work for by the way if you realized pretty quickly and admitted to yourself that I don't have all the

answers. I do need to utilize everybody's expertise. Right? A lot of the people in our network

have experience as an agency person and a client person. Right? Obviously Jeff

and I value the client side perspective. That's one of the main reasons frankly

why we call ourselves clients first because we think like clients first. We can say to a CMO, we've been you. We can

say to a CCO, we've been you. We get it right. If you have client side experience, Jeeoff, you mentioned it

earlier, we've managed agencies. The the BS meter is strong for us, right? But on

the other side of the coin, if you've been on the agency side, you've learned a lot of stuff there, too. You have a

service mentality for one thing. Um, you're a you're you're able, like we've

talked about, to take in experience from other industries and other companies.

You're used to learning on the job almost and doing something different

every day. There's value on both sides of the fence, right? So, as Jeff mentioned up front, this is a a a new

part of On the Offense where we're going to offer you three takeaways at the end of our discussion on each podcast. And

these are we think you can do to put yourself on the offense, if you will,

which again is the theme of these podcasts. That's what we're always about. Hopefully that comes through

clearly that we're all about being on the front foot in any way you can be. Right? So, three takeaways. Number one,

if you want better service from your agency, and that could be an ad agency,

a PR firm, could be anything. If you want better service from your agency,

give a smaller one a chance. Right? There are a lot of people out there who just are just not willing to do that,

right? What's the old saying? You never get you never get fired by hiring IBM,

right? It's I I'm sure it there's a measure of comfort in saying I hired X or Y, right?

The CEO will have heard of them and you probably won't get a ton of push

back, right? assuming you made the hire for you're making the recommendation for good reasons, but you're not going to

get push back on the brand as opposed to who, right? Give a smaller agency a

chance if you've had frustrations um and are looking for something better.

Number two, if you do insist on a larger agency for whatever reason, negotiate a

minimum number of hours from the senior talent.

If you were to do that, Joe and Carol, we really like Joe and Carol, right?

Oh, they're my best buddies. What's that? They're my best buddies. They're my best buddies. We love Joe and

Carol. Okay. Well, guess what? Joe and Carol and team, we want you guys. We we think

you're the winner of the bake off. We uh and and before we negotiate the contract

with you, we would like to make sure that Joe and Carol are still going to be involved at a minimum of x hours a week,

whatever it is. If they have a problem with that,

run far and run fast because that is a clear

indication that you're going to have a problematic relationship on your hands. Right? Um I'm not saying use it as a

test, but it isn't a bad test if you think about it. Right? Now, if you're asking

for something that's going to be difficult for Joe and Carol's agency to live up to given all of the other things

that they have to do, I mean, they're going to have to figure it out internally, right?

That's, you know, that's why you have a team. So, yeah, see how far you can push

on that if Joe and Carol are that important to you. And then the third takeaway in terms of getting you on the

offense in this agency world, if you need a freelancer, we haven't talked a

lot about freelancing, but you think back to all that churn we've talked about with the big agencies.

If you believe LinkedIn and and we do, um, there is more senior level talent on

the market now than just about ever before. There are tons of people out

there who are really good and really talented regardless of whether they came from a large agency but many have who

are now freelancing and frankly that's one of the reasons Jeff right we've been able to build up this network right find

them on LinkedIn if you if if you just say you know we just need a freelancer we just need somebody to come in and do

a project go out and find them on LinkedIn now that might sound like we're sending you out to the edge of the

Pacific ocean with a fishing pole saying find a fish, right? I mean, good luck with that. But there's never been more

senior talent on the market and many advertise themselves as being available

on LinkedIn. I'm talking about openly ad that's one of the interesting things that's happened in recent years with

social Jeff that if you're open to work, people just say it now. If you just got

laid off by Edelman, people will do posts saying, "Hey world, I just got laid off." And it's really not a big

deal that people are doing that. They they get tons of encouragement from their peers. And it's kind of nice to

see that, right? But if somebody is willing to do that, has the guts to put

themselves out there like that, I mean, they're they're probably pretty good at

what they do. uh they're not going to be afraid to get on the phone with a reporter. Yeah, I was show story. These are these

are people who don't have a lot of fear and it's just much more common and

normal now for people to say that stuff. Well, what that does to you if again you're looking for a freelancer, it just

makes it easier for you to find them. So, go. So, use LinkedIn to your advantage. It's all out there laid out

for you uh like never before. You know, I'd say um happy 4th to all. Happy

kickoff of the second half of the year. Yes, it is. But you know the good news to that, Jeff? Now that it's July, you

can almost start to hear the drum beat of college football.

Oh, that's true. That is true. Right. You can just start you can start to hear the drums out

there a little bit. Uh NFL training camps open this month. Um it's it's uh

it's coming. It's coming. Um so yeah, happy fourth. Stay cool. Um keep your

eyes on us as we um as we go to the next level in some of the ways we present

ourselves. We're really looking forward to that. Give smaller agencies a chance.

There's a lot of talent in these agencies. We're just one example. Hey, thanks for taking the time to join

Outro

us. We know there's a lot of things you're busy with that you could be doing and taking this little amount of time to

listen to us spout off. That's really appreciated. Um, second thing, if you're

on um social media or whatever else, join us, like us, whatever you need to do to show that we're having an impact

or that you see us as being credible. We are on all the different social networks. I mean, we've got a presence

across the board. I'll just tell you, you know, I really hope you had a great Fourth of July, had a good time with

your families, and you know, and we're revving up for college football season. Hey everyone, love you. We'll talk to

you soon. See y'all later.

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