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Creative Series: Culmination: Show Notes & Transcript

Post | Aug 19, 2024

Welcome back to Marketing Smarts! From brand-building and marketing veterans Anne Candido and April Martini (that’s us) comes a podcast committed to cutting through all the confusing marketing BS so you can actually understand how to take action and change your business today. We deep-dive into topics most would gloss-over, infusing real-world examples from our combined 35+ years of corporate and agency experience. We tell it how it is so whether you are just starting out or have been in business awhile, you have the Marketing Smarts to immediately impact your business.

In this episode, we take a look back at some of our favorite takeaways from our Creative Series, focused on the issues facing creative agencies today and how they need to evolve to stay relevant. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and your other favorite podcast spots – follow and leave a 5-star review if you’re exercising your Marketing Smarts!

  • Episode Summary & Player
  • Show Notes
  • Marketing Smarts Summary
  • Transcript

Marketing Smarts: Creative Series: Culmination

In this episode, we take a look back at some of our favorite takeaways from our Creative Series, focused on the issues facing creative agencies today and how they need to evolve to stay relevant. Our 10 special guests covered everything from the importance of relationships in the marketing agency space to developing a brand – not a one-hit-wonder. Hear from John Gleason, Jimmy Smith, Teresa Heath-Wareing, Angie Fischer, Mark Hughes, Kyle Schlegel, Maeve Hagen, Tom Custer, Sam Baier, and Fred Richards. This episode covers everything from branding to agency life. Here’s a small sample of what you will hear in this episode:

  • How do you find your expertise as an agency?
  • What’s the difference between a brand and a one-hit wonder?
  • Where does leadership come from in an organization?
  • How do you make the most of your marketing budget?
  • What’s the role of the target audience?
  • How do level the playing field?
  • Why should you focus on solving the problem first?
  • What’s the role of the marketing agency today?

And as always, if you need help in building your Marketing Smarts, don’t hesitate to reach out to us at: ForthRight-People.com.

Check out the episode, show notes, and transcript below:

Show Notes

What is Marketing Smarts?

From brand-building and marketing veterans Anne Candido and April Martini comes a podcast committed to cutting through all the confusing marketing BS so you can actually understand how to take action and change your business today. They deep-dive into topics most would gloss-over, infusing real-world examples from their combined 35+ years of corporate and agency experience. They tell it how it is so whether you are just starting out or have been in business awhile, you have the Marketing Smarts to immediately impact your business.

How do I exercise my Marketing Smarts?

Thanks for listening to Marketing Smarts. Get in touch here to become a savvier marketer. 

Transcript

Please note: this transcript is not 100% accurate.

Fred Richards 0:00
So there’s no meat in the sandwich and the bread is stale.

Anne Candido 0:03
This is Marketing Smarts, a podcast committed to helping you become a savvier marketing leader No matter your level. In each episode, we’ll dive into a relevant topic or challenge that marketing leaders are currently facing. We’ll also give you practical tools and applications that will help you put what you learn into practice today. Now let’s get to it.

April Martini 0:23
Welcome to Marketing Smarts. I am Anne Candido and I am April Martini, and today we’re bringing back the Marketing Smarts mini-series all around the topic of the issues facing creative agencies today and how they need to evolve to stay relevant. By sharing with you the best of segments from each of our guests as a reminder, this 10 part series brought together folks from both agency and corporate that all had different point of views on this topic and plenty to say about the industry’s current state. Listening to them again, we are struck by the passion each of them has for the industry, their willingness to go there and discuss the challenges facing it, and the desire to capture the energy and power of the industry by working together and holding each other accountable going forward, we are tremendously proud of this series and hope that all of you listening will join us in our quest to get the creative industry back on track. And with that, we turn it over to our producer, Max Branstetter, to introduce himself and each of our guests in this culminating episode of the issues facing creative agencies today and how they need to evolve to stay relevant.

Max Branstetter 1:26
Hello, who is this beautiful voice you’re hearing? I’m Max Branstetter. I am Anne and April’s producer, and I also am the Founder and Podcast Producer of MaxPodcasting. I also host the Wild Business Growth podcast, and I have the honor of guiding you through the incredible creative guests in this Creative Series on Marketing Smarts. Truly, some of the favorite podcast episodes I’ve ever had the pleasure of working on. And before we get into it, I do have to reveal that I’m also from the great state of Ohio, but I would never start a Cleveland-Cincinnati rivalry on this podcast. I would never do that. So without further ado, this first snippet is from John Gleason, founder and president of a better view strategic consulting. And he talks about how an agency needs to figure out who they are, their deep strategic expertise, and why they should view themselves as the prize, not the clients.

John Gleason 2:24
I think part of the challenge is agencies often are pitching when they’re either they’re invited or they’ve they’ve navigated their way into a selection process of some sort, and the agencies, most agencies are thinking, I’m pitching this brand or this company. They completely forget about the humans that are sitting on the other side of that table, the people, as you indicated, April, is this the project that’s going to get me fired, or is this the project that could get me promoted? Is it the one that’s going to get me visibility? You know, what are the what are the politics that happen inside the client organization? Try to get to know them, you know, how long have they been on the desk? What are their aspirations? Do they did they see themselves being on that desk for another six months or another three years? So those, those will impact how they see whatever it is you’re proposing to serve them. And when it comes to critiques of the work, either you pushing back on a brief or when you’re presenting concepts and somebody says, I don’t like, I like, I don’t like, what one of the one of the tricks or tips that I offer is, blame someone else. What I mean by that is point to the consumer. Clients are very, very happy to share their subjective opinion. I like this. This is great. The curves here, the shape here, the color here. But like is, is a subjective thing, and you need to move away from like and dislike and move to what did the consumer tell us? Here’s why we created this solution. You heard her in that focus group or in that ethnography, or or 80% of consumers in your survey said they hate this and they love this. And how inspiring is it to move towards something that more people love instead of compromising on something that fewer people hate? And I think that’s where we are with most consumer brand decisions, is fewer people dislike this, fewer people had a negative reaction, and what a horrible reason to be picking something. And so. So if you can point to the consumer or a customer or an industry expert that might have been called in for something, or a senior leader that said, you know, I really want to go try this. You. That way you get away from the subjective debate of who has more power and whose vote counts more, because the client is always going to think their vote counts more than the agency. One of the challenges that most agencies I’ve come across is first, they almost all sound the same, and so spend some time and energy on your brand, your purpose, the things you’re proposing to your clients, do that for yourself, and that’s super hard for agencies, because you’re not a paying client for yourself. You’ve got revenue and income and utilization rates and all the things that the consultants are telling you to do while you’re trying to run a good business and and the biggest client you have is yourself, and you’re not spending any time and energy on that. So so most agencies just phone in an identity and equity, a positioning, a purpose, and they make it up as they go, or the or the founders in the business know what you stand for, but it’s not codified for the rest of the team. And the more specialized, the more expertise you exude, the more experience you have that makes you that expert, the more the client’s going to listen. But if, if you look and sound like everybody else you you’re just going to be an interchangeable cog in their wheel, and they’ll replace you if they don’t like you because they find somebody else that looks and sounds like you be an expert. Blair ends for anybody that’s listening out there is a consultant that helps with positioning and messaging, and he he said this phrase, and I think he may have gotten it from someone else. Is most agencies, when they’re pitching a client, they see the client as the prize. They need to see themself as the prize for the client. And so part of that is, is deep expertise, proven expertise. You get to avoid a lot of those things, and you get to call the shots. Clients will wait for true experts instead of whoever happens to be available to do the stuff I need in the short term. And you know, those are all symptoms and signs that, are you strategic or are you just a homogeneous, interchangeable commodity to them, and they’ll find somebody else who will do it, if

Max Branstetter 7:25
you won’t. Next up is Jimmy Smith, chairman, CEO and Chief Creative Officer of Amusement Park Entertainment, and the author of The Truth graphic novel. He talks about building a brand over a transaction or a one hit wonder.

Jimmy Smith 7:40
I guess what’s not going so well. I think it started in, I know it started during the.com era. A lot of gimmicky things started popping up. Then real gimmicky, you know, new technology. We’ll do this, and we’ll do that, we’ll do this, and they don’t have any soul to those ideas, right? They’re just attaching selling something like a a new toy that they really don’t understand what to do with. They haven’t thought through. I’m talking about the agencies and the clients, and it’s just, it’s just something to get a quick Wow. And then they’re done, right? Everything’s so transactional. Stop making it so transactional that you’re, you know, building on what I said earlier, they’re mining something for a quick hit. They’re making, trying to make a hit record, as opposed to a hit album that stands the test of time, and they say, Well, and, and, you know, a lot of stock pricing, prices and all that kind of stuff, is what they’re in Wall Street, what their minds are on, but Michael Jackson’s Thriller ain’t going anywhere, right?

April Martini 8:58
Yeah,

Jimmy Smith 8:58
let’s see Taylor Swift’s records are so good that she remade them, redid it so she could have her own masters again. And when, when you’re doing something great, it keeps giving over the course of time. It doesn’t just did that done. So one example is I mentioned heaven sent. That’s where the guy jumped out of a plane with no parachute, no swingsuit. We did that in 2016 and I don’t know how many millions of views it has now, but it keeps growing so still delivering for the brand, even though it was a 60 minute show on Fox and internationally, was shown on YouTube as a pay per view event. It’s still giving, so in other words, it’s still selling, even though you you haven’t, you know, I don’t know how many, like, 50, 100 million. I don’t know if you added up all of the views that it has. Is off the charts. It’s the same thing when you do something that stands. Says test the time. Can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen Nike freestyle somebody’s greatest commercial all time would be on Twitter, Instagram, Tiktok, or whatever, greatest. And you got kids actually still, to this day, doing the moves to it. Well, that’s still selling the Nike brand. It’s still an ad, and it’s still selling Nike. It was cool, then it’s cool now, as opposed to something I do not remember, or you guys don’t remember that. So you aren’t making your money work hard enough if you continue to do these one hit tech wonders, and most of them aren’t hits. I shouldn’t even call them a one hit, and most of them, vast majority of them, are not hits.

Max Branstetter 10:41
Next up is Teresa Heath-Wareing, online business owner, international award winning. Speaker, TEDx, speaker, Best Selling Author and the host of your dream business podcast. She talks about leadership from the top down, and how it relates to the culture of an organization. And that

Teresa Heath-Wareing 10:57
has to have come from a conversation right at the top. That has to have come from at what do we want to stand for? What do we want to show up as? How do we want the world to see us? And then that permission is almost given all the way through everything they do, whether it’s how they sell the places that they’re selling, the content they’re creating, like on YouTube or their social media, or the you know, influence of content that they’re using, or the partners that they work with, but that can’t just come from the marketing department or the agency, like it’s got to come from the top, because otherwise it’s never going to quite sit and I think that’s the that, for me, is one of the biggest challenges putting that creativity behind it has to come from the very top, going, this is how we want to show up. And it’s a big thing to ask, because not everyone’s going to want to take a risk in terms of what they deem to be creative or authentic or honest.

Max Branstetter 11:52
Next up is Angie Fischer, COO of Lightborne Communications. She talks about justifying your role, doing more with less in putting that budget to work.

Angie Fischer 12:03
I guess the biggest thing, and way I’m I’m trying to show that value, is again, to just show how what we do can be leveraged in lots of different ways, to just show that it’s not a one off, right? That’s that’s just such a limited way to look at things, and it’s so hard to justify those dollars, and I always put myself in in that marketing person’s shoes, and say, Could I justify this budget to my stakeholders, to my to the higher ups, like, if I don’t know that I could, but, but if I can really show that it has legs, that it that is more than just a one and done kind of tactic or approach, that it really does tie into the strategy, the campaign, the long term goals, then it does make more sense to invest more in creative, in production. I think that’s the only way that we can justify that, that that effort, right? If the company just doesn’t see it, though, I think I’m getting better at kind of cutting losses and saying, okay, you know, I’m not going to chase this if I don’t ultimately think it’s going to work out that we’re not going to be a good match for every single client out there. And I think that’s definitely been a tough learning for me over my career. I’m account manager, client service person by nature. You want to please, you want to find some solution that works, but I think I am to a place where I’m more quick to recognize when those aren’t opportunities and when it’s time to move on to the next one. And there is a lot of work to go around a lot of clients, and there are still those that value good, creative and investing in that and identifying those.

Max Branstetter 13:43
Next up is Mark Hughes, Partner and Chief Strategy Officer of Oodle. He talks about how digital is strategic, the role of the target audience, and how measurement and data, or data, if you prefer to say it that way, doesn’t always tell the full story or any story at all.

Mark Hughes 13:59
Yes, digital is incredibly strategic, and it starts with understanding all the same things that we would all all as marketers want to understand about your audience, set in some way, shape or form. Then you layer in, where are those individuals speaking online and interacting online? And then you learn what’s the best way to measure this? So you have a measurement strategy and an analytic strategy. Those two things are different, and often organizations look at those things together. That goes back to that whole green arrow, red arrow thing I was talking about in digital I’ll tell my team all the time in the world, arise when they listen to this. If it moves, you can measure it, but it doesn’t mean it’s important. Yeah, it doesn’t mean it’s valuable or meaningful if you have, if you want to tell a story, I can tell you a green arrow story all day. But it doesn’t mean it’s the right story, right? It doesn’t mean it’s actually going to move the move the needle on your business. There are so many other factors to take into consideration that you would in any other brand strategy, right? So. Seasonality, competitive landscape, buying dynamics and digital one of the things that a lot of I think agencies and clients don’t really understand is that you’re not competing against your competitors as much as you think you are. You’re competing against anyone who wants to target that person in that group. I say that as a story to say like there’s a lot that you can measure, but it doesn’t mean it’s meaningful, and tells the right data story to how your campaigns are performing.

Max Branstetter 15:27
Next up is Kyle Schlegel, Vice President of Americas Marketing & DTC at Weber. He talks about establishing roles and rules of engagement internally and externally, as in an agency, as well as leveling the playing field.

Kyle Schlegel 15:41
One of the the principles that we try to use are those big overarching platforms, ideas, the things that are going to be multi year in their in their life, we tend to go outside for that, that those, a lot of the folks that we work with in that space just have a different level of horsepower, a different experience set. You know, they work with a lot of different brands and a lot of different industries as well. So they have a lot more kind of, I would say, breadth to draw from, to be able to come to that idea and to come to the infrastructure that needs to support that idea. The things that we do internally are, how do we take that idea and then apply that to kind of the day to day, month to month nature of our business. One of the things that’s really, really important with a hybrid model is you check the egos at the door, right? You’re everybody’s there to achieve the same thing. They understand that. They understand that maybe the internal team has a better understanding of the category, of the vernacular used in the category, whereas the external team can draw upon other experiences that maybe the internal team doesn’t have. And so I think we have a healthy respect for the value that each party brings to the table in that relationship. And we come back to that a lot. We talk quite a bit about what problem we’re trying to solve. It’s pretty easy to get out of whack. If one team’s trying to solve one problem and the other one’s trying to solve a different one, it’s really easy to create tension in that environment. So we talk about both of those things quite a bit of respect and empathy, but as well as alignment on the problem to be solved. And then we try to keep a really open mind about feedback, right the if we think about the internal team and myself providing feedback on what the work that the agency’s doing, or vice versa, we have to be open minded and come back to that understanding that we have of maybe I know something about the category, but you know something about I don’t know this touch point or this mode of communication, or this new kind of broader consumer challenge. If we keep coming back to those things over and over again, it’s it’s really important. One of the things that a mentor taught me years ago, and I’ve like directly stolen it, and I use it all the time. If you ever to talk to somebody who has worked in an organization that I’ve been in or been a part of, they’ve heard me say, when you meet resistance, teach, and so that’s really good. You know, over and over again, I think we’re given opportunities every day to teach somebody something. Very often, when you hit that moment of tension, that moment of disagreement, it’s because one party knows something that the other doesn’t. And if you can use that as a teaching moment, just pause for a second and take a breath and not teach down, right? That’s not the that’s not the mode, right? Of, hey, the reason I believe this, or the reason I came at it from this angle, was because of X or Y, or we did this a year ago and we learned this, and that’s what informed why we’re approaching it this way. Or the Business Challenge is actually a little more nuanced than that. Let me tell you a little bit more about what’s happening with the business right now, and why I asked the question this way, or why I provided this feedback. It goes from subjective to objective a little bit more easily. Next

Max Branstetter 18:51
up is Maeve Hagen, Managing Partner at Taylor. She talks about focusing on solving the problem first and then figuring out who does the work.

Maeve Hagen 18:59
Yeah, we are a communications agency, but it doesn’t mean that we just sit here and wait for a creative agency and quotes to come to us with an idea it is beholden to us as a as an organization, especially one that sits at a pretty big table, when we think about the clients that we work for across Diageo, PNG, Capital One, we like to take up a lot of space At that in that seat and at that table. And to do that, we have to have integrated professionals who understand the various ways in which, you know, consumers like to, you know, consume their media, whether it’s through the earned channels, the paid channels, or what have you. So while our scope might be specific in terms of how it’s externally going out there, we have to be knowledgeable and informed, sort of, in all aspects of the marketing mix to ensure that, you know, we are able to keep pace with the rest of those individuals and partners that might be sitting around the table with us. So to. Your to your point, and is really about, you know, communicators are always going to be important. We always have to, you know, to get our point across to clients or internally, to colleagues or to the general public or, you know, other stakeholders or tastemakers. We have to, we’re always going to have to communicate so the the style or the teachings, if you will, of you know how to communicate with one another, how to communicate with the public, are always going to be relevant. And I think it actually an agency like ours, a communications agency, I think actually fits in a power position in that way, because it is inherently what we have to do and who we have to be, or the space that we take up, it’s important for that to be at the core. Yeah, I just, I don’t think it’s ever going to go, I don’t think it’s ever going to, you know, be downplayed in terms of importance, so long as those in that seat are are taking up enough space, are bringing their best selves, are bringing that innovative thinking and approach to things.

Max Branstetter 21:04
Next up is Tom Custer, Vice President of Business Development at Reztark Design Studio. He talks about the changing retail environment, the impact of private label and in market testing for real time, faster change.

Tom Custer 21:18
Well, I think like April, what you said from a retail perspective, what I’ve seen is, you know, retailers need to move fast. The thing that I’ve seen change is they’re more willing to get out and test different things. So like in retail design, it used to be the Store of the Future, like, let’s reinvent and redesign the entire experience. But when you’re a large retailer like Target or Walmart or Kroger, now they break it down into a category, let’s reinvent beauty, and let’s redesign that experience for beauty. And that can affect private brands the actual retail design of the space, the way product is merchandise to the shopper, and they’re very focused on maybe key areas that they want to grow their business, and then they look for agency partners to assist with that particular area of growth, versus the entire store. Now, I’m sure the entire store is also being thought, you know, and there are still store the future initiatives, but I think that’s where the different type of agencies might play. You know, other agencies might assist with a category reinvention versus the Store of the Future. And so that’s where I think the changes evolve, where retailers want to test and learn and evolve, versus making the whole new store a perfect experience, if you will. Yeah, I think the process is changing, rather than like testing concepts. They want to test the concept live, like real time. So rather than do concept testing as we know it traditionally, both for package design and retail concept testing. You know, I’ve seen a lot of retailers have lab stores. So I was in Dallas last week, and I went to set two, 711, stores. They have what’s called a lab store and an evolution store, both in Dallas and completely different markets, south of Dallas, north of Dallas. So that’s where they would test, you know, certain things, digital signage, you know, what’s the impact of digital signage in the window versus the print? You know, promotional signage we’ve been doing for decades, or Laredo taco company, you know, which is 711 and it’s a connected to the store, but it serves as a QSR restaurant, just like you know, another QSR brand would, and they’ll test things there. It’s more test and learn. Test and learn, like almost what is it? Fail forward, fast or something, put it out there to learn and evolve. Don’t make it perfect before we get to market with it. But instead of maybe how concept testing was done in the past through focus groups, whether it’s qualitative or quantitative, now it’s like, let’s just get it into market and test it that way. I mean, that’s one process change, because you can get to market faster, and then you can start to refine, redevelop, evolve. Now, put it in five stores, put it in 10 stores, roll it out to 50, and then, if successful, the fleet. Right? So it’s more like real time testing.

Max Branstetter 25:03
Next up is Sam Baier, Senior Director of Brand at Elevate. She talks about the role of the agency today, knowing how to solve the problem and attention with how much do you push the client?

Sam Baier 25:14
I think it’s gotten harder to push brands and teams out of their out of their comfort zone. I think the demand for ROI, the low risk, you know, the low threshold for risk that they’re willing to take, I think that that’s gotten harder, but I still firmly believe that that’s really where the magic happens. When everyone gives a little bit, you know, you try something that’s a little bit different than what you’ve always done. Right? If you’re trying to solve a problem, you can’t keep doing things the old way. Clearly, it’s probably created the problem or exacerbated the problem. So how are you going to solve it? By doing something different? And so I think continuing to push our clients, continuing to push the teams and properties to innovate and in their offerings and what they’re willing, what they’re willing to, you know, to do for brands in this new environment, that’s where an agency is supposed to come in and be that strategic advisor on both sides of the house. But I think it’s been increasingly difficult, from the demand for ROI and the demand and the limited budgets, and also on the agency side, like you want to keep the clients, you want to keep them happy, right? And so knowing how much you can push and which brands and which relationships you have that can really push out of that comfort zone to create that so I think I will, I firmly believe that that is still the way to make partnerships really effective, but I think it’s definitely gotten harder.

Max Branstetter 26:45
And finally, this last snippet is from Fred Richards, Founder of The Hive Principle. He talks about the agency landscape and why it’s broken, maybe not ever coming back to the way it was. The last

Fred Richards 26:56
place you want Fred Richards is in finance. It’s just not a good idea, right? I know my lane, and I’ll stay in my lane, but having grown up through the larger agencies that are owned by the WPP, who behave in a certain way, you are taught business first. It happens to be designed, but you’re taught business first, and you’re also taught very early on, the demands that run a client, of how they get product to market, the kinds of conversations that they’re going to be having with their suppliers, their retailers, purchasing strategies, etc, the smaller agencies, the more they they’re not aware of a lot of those things. They believe that design can save the day. It has a role, of course, but it’s not the be all and end all of the conversation. And I think that’s part of the Miss as well. The other thing is, and John did mention it, so maybe we should just caveat everything that John Gleason said, let’s go and watch that podcast. Listen to that podcast. In all seriousness, from my experience, having worked for smaller, independent agencies as well, you hear the CEO, for example, talking to a marketing director about how they need to, you know, do this kind of strategy or this kind of business model, and you’re kind of looking at the guy across the table, thinking, you can barely balance your own checkbook, dude, we’re almost bankrupt. And you’re telling a billion dollar brand what they should be doing. Are you kidding me? And I saw that so many times working for the smaller independents, and that, I think, creates a vacuum. And it goes back to that trust and the credibility thing again, the days of the big budgets and agencies praying fingers crossed that those big budgets and those days will come back. It’s a pipe dream. We all know it’s gone, and the model that the bigger holding companies have created for themselves, that’s why they’re struggling right now, and that’s why they keep folding in on each other. You know that they’re not going out acquiring new agencies anymore. They’re cannibalizing themselves. They’re literally eating themselves. I won’t name any of them, but you can do your own homework, and you’ll see someone, I think, is now one of the holding agencies that used to be five, and now it’s one. Well, if you had a client that bought one of those five, you know, did the whole procurement process, etc, and now they’re being told, Well, no, it’s over here. Well, wouldn’t you ask a question, what’s the benefit for me as a client? Maybe one of the first questions, they don’t think that way. And the same is true of the of the junior or smaller design agencies trying to talk about in a manner that they just can’t do. But I actually think that’s a bigger problem in North America. I don’t think it’s true necessarily in Europe, although it might be. Is the vacuum of opportunity, of strength and depth, if you will, of agencies in North America. When I first came here in 95 to Chicago, there were 30 or 40 CPG focused design agencies in Chicago. It was amazing, absolutely incredible. They’re all gone, all of them, and that’s within half of the lifespan of a career. They’ve gone right. There’s no There’s no real. So not like Cincinnati. There’s no design agency system here in Chicago anymore, advertising, but not designed, but within that, if you look at the mechanism of acquiring from the not from the big force or WPP, IPG, Omn publicists, is they, they’ve bought out the top. And with that, there’s no meat in the sandwich anymore, and I think that’s really, really bad for clients as it is, as much for the industry, because you need the big boys at the top to give you scale. You need the big independence with multiple offices. You need the regional folks as well. You need the medium sized, you need the small and then the boutiques. You need that ranking. Now what you’re seeing is it’s just the big boys who’ve created a problem for themselves of how they’ve built their financial model. And you’ve got the small folks along the bottom that are trying to get to those bigger projects at the top, but don’t have the scale to get there. And if you look at the likes of lager, you know, I’ll just use them as an example, because they don’t exist anymore as one. I mean, think about Cincinnati and Chicago, the size of those offices back in the day, they were massive, yeah, absolutely ginormous. And it’s gone, yeah? And I think that’s tragic, because, you know, having worked at April, you’re not you, and I can joke about this one. You know, working at Interbrand, for example, Interbrand kind of had a chip on its shoulder when it came to CPG, right? Yeah, you know, LPK and land, or especially in Cincinnati, they’re the beautiful children. Where the, you know, where the ugly duckling kind of a thing. I kind of like that, actually. And I liked it time, right? Okay, fine. Roll up as please. We’re going to show you, you know what we’re, what we’re really capable of. But yeah, at the time, you were constantly measuring yourself against the competition, yeah. And at the same time, you’d look at a piece of work from land or and you’d go, ooh, that’s actually really good, you know, wow, you know. And phone calls would happen. I’d I know Mary Zala really well. She’s phenomenal. Jerry Katherine at LPK is another one where I go, You know what? That’s great, right? All of that has gone now. It’s so competitive and divided. It’s it’s just not good and it’s not good for clients either, I think so. There’s no meat in the sandwich, and the bread is stale.

April Martini 32:12
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