The CMO Show roundtable on client-agency relationships

In partnership with the Content Marketing Institute and CCO Magazine, Editor at CCO Magazine Jonathan Crossfield hosts a lively discussion between The CMO Show’s Mark Jones, Keynote Speaker & Author Andrew Davis, and CMO at Sport Australia Louise Eyres, to discuss client-agency relationship dynamics.

Whether you’re a brand or agency-side marketer, establishing strong relationships of mutual trust and respect between both camps can be a tricky task.

Chief Storyteller & CEO at brand storytelling agency Filtered Media, Mark Jones, and former Chief Strategy Officer at US digital marketing and advertising agency Tippingpoint Labs, Keynote Speaker and Author, Andrew Davis, understand this challenge well from the agency perspective.

From discovering the business outcomes a client wants to achieve, to navigating the pitch process, Mark and Andrew agree a key challenge is striking an effective balance between drawing out the right answers from clients and calling the shots.

"I think one of the big mistakes we made as an agency, is we didn't make enough assumptions. We should always just assume: if they're inviting us to pitch or we have an opportunity to pitch, whatever we do must deliver on that problem,” says Andrew.

Mark notes it’s important to not wear too many hats and instead provide a clear set of expert offerings. You can even partner up with other agencies who can lend complementary capabilities.

“It's really powerful in meetings to say for example, ‘If you want a website, I can recommend some really great partners. The reason I'm not going to do those things for you is we're not experts and you're not going to get the best value. But what we are good at is…’ etc. So I think it's a point of maturity in the agency world to grow through that and to realise, ‘We can't be all things for people’,” says Mark.

For clients who engage multiple agencies, the challenge is how to keep them working together in harmony.

“I think the key is to make sure it's a village that doesn't become a metropolis because then we really will get ourselves into trouble,” Louise says.

Check out this special panel discussion episode of The CMO Show for an in-depth look into the relationship between clients and agencies with marketing experts from both sides of the equation. We hope you discover how you can do your part to foster a prosperous partnership.

Resources

You might also like…

####

The CMO Show production team

Producer – Charlotte Goodwin & Natalie Cupac

Audio Engineers – Daniel Marr & Tom Henderson

Got an idea for an upcoming episode or want to be a guest on The CMO Show? We’d love to hear from you: cmoshow@filteredmedia.com.au.

####

Transcript

Host: Jonathan Crossfield

Guests: Mark Jones, Andrew Davis and Louise Eyres

Producer: Charlotte Goodwin and Natalie Cupac

Mark Jones: Do you work with a marketing agency, or a PR agency, or a digital agency? There's an old phrase that's actually applied in other areas, but seems relevant, can't live with them, can't live without them. Is that your experience? Well, my thought for you today is that if you are working with an agency there's a secret to getting it right, and it is simply this, my suggestion, from personal experience is the more love, and the more feedback you give your agency, the more discretionary effort you'll get out the door.

Mark Jones: Friends, hello, Mark Jones here. The CMO Show is back, and I appreciate you listening. This is a fun episode, and we've produced it in partnership with Content Marketing Institute, and CCO Magazine, which is globally I think one of the go-to - if not the best - content platform and resource for content marketers and professionals who are interested in storytelling and content in all its shapes, and forms, and sizes. I was really happy to be invited by Jonathan Crossfield, who's the editor of Chief Content Officer to join him on a panel, and so, in a little slight break with our usual format, today we are presenting a panel podcast, and I'm a guest. It's actually hosted by Jonathan Crossfield, and it was recorded here in the CMO Show studio. Our guests joining myself, and Jonathan is Andrew Davis who is a marketing keynote speaker, and author. He's very well known to anybody in the Content Marketing crowd.

Mark Jones: And, Louise Eyres who is the CMO of Sport Australia, and she really brings a fantastic perspective, of course, from the client side, and we're talking about agencies. The podcast is designed to support the agency issue of CCO in July, and so, Jonathan brought the four of us together to talk about what's going on in agency land? How can you work with agencies? The old phrase can't live with them, can't live without them, so how do you work with them? How do you make it smooth? How can you overcome problems? And, what's the best way of moving forward in the agency world?

Mark Jones: I'm gonna be honest with you, it kind of feels a bit slightly self indulgent, because at The CMO Show we're always talking about issues that relate to you as marketing, comms professional, right? So, the issues that tap into what you're doing, but this time we're kind of getting a bit practical. We're saying actually, it does require a whole partner, if you like ecosystem. People who work with you to get something done. In the spirit of collaboration, here is a special issue of The CMO Show with Jonathan Crossfield, Andrew Davis, Louise Eyres, and myself. I hope you enjoy it.

Jonathan Crossfield: I'm Jonathan Crossfield, editor of CCO, and today I'm moderating or should that be refereeing, an Aussie-themed  panel cause we're in sunny Sydney. With me today is keynote speaker and author Andrew Davis.

Andrew Davis: Hey, thanks for having me. This is great.

Jonathan Crossfield: You're a fence-sitter on the panel today because you've sort of worked on both sides here. It's like giving you a different perspective on how that relationship works out.

Andrew Davis: Well, I hope it has. I don't know, I feel like I learned a lot being on the other side, watching lots of agency pitches about what I should have done when I was running an agency. So I feel like hindsight's always 2020, and I hope I can help somebody else not make the mistakes I made when I was running an agency.

Jonathan Crossfield: Fantastic. Also with us is Mark Jones, CEO of Sydney-based content agency Filtered Media.

Jonathan Crossfield: Mark, your agency has been around for a few years now. How have you seen the client agency landscape change in that time?

Mark Jones: Oh wow. So where do you start? We've been doing this for 10 years and our whole shtick is what I call brand storytelling. And that's a way of describing this big picture notion that brands have taken control of their own narrative. So we do PR and content and social media and video and events and all sorts of good stuff. What's changed has been if you like a siloed approach to wanting these integrated campaigns. So we're working increasingly with other agencies. We're also delivering multiple services at the same time. So that integration thing is probably the biggest thing that's changed in 10 years.

Jonathan Crossfield: And on the line from Melbourne, we're joined by Louise Eyres, representing the client side of this debate. CMO for Sports Australia. Thanks for joining us.

Louise Eyres: My pleasure. Great to be on the panel.

Jonathan Crossfield: So just to kick us off, Louise, could you tell us how many different agencies you currently work within your role? I mean, is it ever like herding cats?

Louise Eyres: No, I think it's interesting, and the contrast that I've taken now from going from the corporate sector into government and really trying to apply many learnings in a government. I think we’re establishing a really strong agency village. But I think the key is to make sure it's a village that doesn't become a metropolis because then we really will get ourselves into trouble. But by having a core group, I would say we have five key partners and really working quite connectedly for almost the first time in my career.

Jonathan Crossfield: Thank you. And welcome all of you. So in the beginning it always starts with the pitch. So we should start there. What's good or bad do we think about the pitching process, the way it's carried out today? What do agencies or clients maybe think the other side could do better?

Mark Jones: I'm going to jump in. And firstly with a qualifier. My greatest fear in this whole conversation is that I upset my own clients. So I just want to put that out there. Let me just say that there's a couple of things wrong with pitching at the moment. And the first one is we don't get paid for it. The issue is not so much wanting to be paid for the pitch, it's how much of your ideas do you give away. And secondly, in many cases, you're pitching without enough knowledge of what they're looking for or who your competitors are or what the budget is or what the scope of the project is. We're finding ourselves needing to be very direct. It's like, "If you would like us to pitch, here are our questions."

Mark Jones: And whatever your criteria should be as an agency, you got to be very firm in your head about what gives you the green light to play? It really varies across sectors and companies in terms of how much information they're going to give you.

Jonathan Crossfield: Is that possibly because sometimes a client may not know exactly what they want yet the sort of it is that, "I'll know it when I see it," approach.

Mark Jones: You get the sense that they want to keep their cards close to their chest and then want to see what they can get. If you lose it's because you were way off, but you didn't know what you were way off from or perhaps what the starting point was. Pitching in the dark, it's just the worst.

Jonathan Crossfield: Is that your experience, Louise? Are you keeping them in the dark or are you thinking you're giving them what they need to know?

Louise Eyres: No, I'm sitting here feeling slightly guilty. If I reflect probably over the last 10 years. I think certainly Mark's got some strong points in there, but I think there is something around that sense as well of the evolving staff from the client that it's just not about quantity. So I've certainly experienced those pitches where the agency turns up with 10 to 15 people that you know you will never see again. And it is not the team that's going to be on your business. And so it's not the quantity of people, the quantity of ideas, it's are you actually going to solve my business problem? But I take Mark's point, that if we haven't told you what our business problem is, it's very hard for you to put forward how to help me solve it.

Andrew Davis: I mean look, it's kind of silly, Mark though. We all know what the real business problem is, which is they need to sell more of whatever they sell. At the end of the day that's the problem. So I think one of the big mistakes we made as an agency, is we didn't make enough assumptions. We should always just assume that if they're inviting us to pitch or we have an opportunity to pitch that whatever we do must deliver on that problem. And if there are other problems, great, we can learn about that then but if you deliver a pitch that’s like “we can actually sell more stuff, get people to pay you more money, more often for whatever it is you sell.”

Andrew Davis: It's going to be a better pitch. I think the other thing we do wrong as agencies is our pitches are way too long, especially when you're not getting paid for it. If you limit the time you're going to be in front of a client, I think it does two things. It forces you to be efficient about the things you're going to pitch. So one of the things we did right was we would only do 25 minute pitch meetings. That was our rule. And even if they wanted to go longer we always made it sound, Louise, this is a tip. We always made it sound like we had to go. We were like, "We would love to stay. And I know you have a lot of questions for me." Exactly. But we're super busy and we must run.

Louise Eyres: And we’re running to your competitor right.

Andrew Davis: Exactly. "If you don't like this idea, I know someone who will." I think those kinds of things help. And I think the other thing is we live in an age, when we first started pitching business in 2000, you didn't have access to the kind of information and insight you can get today. And so we used to wonder what budget is available to us to pitch after. But today, we can go online and in two minutes make a pretty good assumption about what they're spending on Google ad words and say, "You know what, this looks like a budget that we could go after." And so I don't think we need as many things as we think we need anymore cause we could make those assumptions, be really efficient about it and at the end of the day Louise would have a much better pitch experience.

Jonathan Crossfield: Is the risk for agencies doing that, it's making the assumption and going this is what we think how to interpret that problem and then the solution. Cause it's trying to work out why aren't they selling more. Is it they don't have understand the customer? Or is it a problem about whatever the case may be? And so that risk of going in and they say, "No, that's not what we think our problem is."

Andrew Davis: Definitely there's that risk. But that's a really good conversation to have. And our motto at our agency was faster to “no”. Because you're not getting paid to pitch. So we need to get really fast to a no. And if we assess the problem wrong a lot of times we can get to a really fast no. Like, "No, we just want to raise brand awareness.” But to be honest, that wasn't the kind of work we wanted to do anyway. And we weren't the right agency for it.

Mark Jones: One of the challenges I've found in this has been actually what is the ask from the client in these meetings? And one of the asks is “show us what you would do”. So, in other words, "Do the creative work, come up with three different options and then show us and we'll choose the agency that looks the best." It's a beauty contest. So we'd really try to avoid that. If you think about Deloitte and big consulting agencies, you don't, you might go in the strength of the track record because they're big organisations, yada, yada. But really what they do is go in and sell a model or an approach. "If you work with us, this is how we do it."

Andrew Davis: Yeah. But we're not consulting.

Mark Jones: But I think we are.

Andrew Davis: We shouldn't. That's not ...

Mark Jones: But if you want, it's like, "What's your business problem?" So that's a consulting question. Write it straight away.

Andrew Davis: But we know their business problems. They're not selling. They want to sell more. I think that's the problem with agencies, we try to become consultants. Louise, what do you want? Do you want a consultative person to come in and say, "Let's talk about your problems. Tell me what your trying to achieve. I would love to understand how you’re trying to grow your business." Or would you rather have someone come in and say, "Hey look, we understand you want to sell more, do more, get more people to do more stuff. We've made this assumption and we have two ideas, but we only have 15 minutes left. So we're going to pitch them really fast. Then we got to run."

Louise Eyres: Yeah. And I always say it's about how do you make me a better marketer? And that's a better way of getting to the selling more, the impact more, achieving a connection with our customers far greater than my competitors. And if you can get to that I don't need the consulting component, I need the outcomes.

Andrew Davis: Ding, ding, ding, ding that was one for Drew. That is one for me. I just want to put that on the board.

Mark Jones: It's always a risk taking on Andrew isn’t? How long have you not been in an agency? Anyway carry on.

Andrew Davis: It's been a long time. Fair enough. Fair point.

Jonathan Crossfield: So after the pitch of course then you've got to deliver on whatever you've promised. Is there ever that sense that an agency might be promising the Mona Lisa on a house painters' budget and then all you're setting up is a series of problems down the track when expectations aren't met?

Andrew Davis: Yeah, yeah, that's a big problem.

Louise Eyres: The team that you thought you were getting, the team you thought you were buying into were really just the pitch team, and they vanish and then you try and start this relationship and it's not with the people you thought you were going to be working with.

Mark Jones: Yup. I got to say from our point of view, we always go in with two or three people and I'm explicit with the client. "The reason why these people are here is that if you work with us, these are the people."

Andrew Davis: This is the team.

Mark Jones: And in fact, they do most of the talking because you get me started and I can't stop. So that's one personal problem. But I've got to say this notion of expectations really underlies our previous argument. Which is what is the client for? And Louise, I'd be interested in your thoughts because I find there's really two dynamics to this. Does the marketer or head of comms or whoever it is, have a very clear picture of what they are trying to achieve, therefore, I need a tactical agency to execute my ideas? Or are they still trying to figure it out and then they need help to define the problem further and then through that process define the outcomes that I'm looking for?

Mark Jones: Because I often find that to be the case as well. So in that case, you need a tactical agency, but you also need somebody who can sort through of all the tactical options, what's the best one that will work for me that would deliver the best outcomes? And so when I say consulting, I mean that like second point. So someone who's going to interrogate you, what you've done, where you're going.

Jonathan Crossfield: To summarise what you just said, are you asking if clients are after expertise or execution?

Mark Jones: Well, often they want both, right? But understanding the client expectation, I think is the key at the beginning. "What do you want from us?"

Louise Eyres: I'd say it's far more up the chain in terms of the insight and the input. But also to that point about stop thinking that even your agency's operating in a vacuum. So I look at the other clients of that agency. Are they talking to the same customers that I'm talking to? Can I leverage their other client base with them? And actually to have just a simple tactical solution based solely on my brief when now I'm in the sport health and activities space. If they've got other brands that they're working with that are also in that similar territory, how can the agency bring a biggest solution to me than simply the execution of what I believe is my marketing plan and the quarter on quarter requirements?

Jonathan Crossfield: Okay. One of the things that we've seen happening as content marketing has gone over the years is a lot of brands are beginning to bring more of the resources in-house. They will hire a writer who's just going to be embedded in and have their own video camera or what have it. Is that fighting with the agencies on their turf now? Should agencies be resisting that or should they be adapting to that new world?

Andrew Davis: Look, we serve the client if you're the agency. At the end of the day, our job is to help them be more successful than they were yesterday. And if they want to bring in in-house staff to do stuff that used to be our territory, I think it's our job to help them do it better than they ever could before. But it comes down to an agency having, I think two things, a clear vision of what they want to become, giving the understanding of the way the market's evolving. And two, being very clear about the services they provide and that they're good at. I know our agency in 2008 got into a really bad predicament because we said we did everything. And it was a product of growing too fast from a small company.

Andrew Davis: So somebody said, "We need rebranding." We're like, "We do rebranding." And then I just turned to the creative director and be like, "Right. Thumbs up." And and all of a sudden we're rebranding someone. And when 2008 came around we realised this is a bad idea. We shouldn't be everything to these people. We don't have a vision for what we think the market will look like in the future. And we need to define the services we provide better than anyone else in the world and stick to those, because then the pitches are very clear, the expectations are clear and anytime they decide to bring a portion or a part of what we're doing in-house, it's very clear that we need to then have a vision for what the future looks like if everybody did that.

Andrew Davis: So we saw them as signals and I think it's our job to figure that out and really help them.

Jonathan Crossfield: I've certainly been in those meetings too. And there's that sense that well if we say that we can't do that thing as well as the other things, does that risk our business? Or does that risk ... My competitor say, "Yes. We can." And then-

Andrew Davis: Can I just say, one of the biggest problems, I think that on the client's side, maybe Louise you've seen this, is having agencies work together in a productive way on behalf of the client. I can't tell you how many times I've been stuck in the middle of a relationship where because we offered a lot of services at the time. We said we offer PR, but they had a really big PR firm working for them. And so as soon as we were in a meeting together, we were both blaring at each other like, "Well, we do PR and your PR idea, it's not such a good idea."

Andrew Davis: You could feel it. So all of a sudden we weren't on the same page and I don't think we were working in the best interest of the client. So I think when you're really clear about what you do, the partnerships you can create are much better and you can actually work together as a better team.

Mark Jones: Yeah. I gotta say, as an agency boss, the last two years we've very intentionally stopped doing certain things. And in fact, it's really powerful in meetings to say, "If you want," for example, in our case, "A media buying agency. We don't do it. If you want a website, I can recommend some really great partners."

Andrew Davis: These are great examples.

Mark Jones: And I just point blank say, "The reason I'm not going to do those things for you is we're not experts. You're not going to get the best value, you're going to waste your money with us. But what we are good at is storytelling." Et cetera. So I think it's a point of maturity in the agency world to grow through that and then to realise, "We can't be all things for people." And I think that's kind of stare in the mirror stuff. Right?

Andrew Davis: Yeah. Louise, do you feel like it looks bad?

Louise Eyres: Well, I think it is that sense of, I've been on, I've had probably two sets of experiences in different companies where it's been a competitive tension amongst the agencies versus complementary. And I think to your point it's around really understanding, but also equally for the client and the brand’ What's our core business?’ So now at Sport Australia. We have graphic design, film, videography in-house. We have a production studio because we're about sport. We're about filmmaking and sport that's core business.

Louise Eyres: Would we bring programmatic media buying in-house? That would make no sense because we're not skilled at it. We can't keep up with the technology changes. And even from a financial services perspective, there's certainly been a move back and forwards around bringing different parts of the media, buying process in-house, but it's actually also as the client, can you keep up with the change in technology? Or is it far better to leave that to your media expert and a new partner with them on what you need?

Mark Jones: It's interesting. I had a conversation with a client of ours this morning about a contract renewal and we were going through the things that we would and wouldn't be doing for them. And it was very much the words from his mouth were, "I'd like you to do these things because we don't have that expertise in-house." And often I find that our competition is not so much other agencies. It's in-house. And also, if there are skills in-house, invariably some of those in-house people will have freelance friends.

Andrew Davis: I think the market is going that way, right? To be honest, it's our fault. I mean, everybody's preached it for 10 years now that you have to think like a media company, now as agencies we're getting really upset when they're hiring-

Louise Eyres: Stop being a media company.

Andrew Davis: Exactly. "Who told you to hire it in-house, we said, be a media company as long as you outsource to an agency like ours." There was no asterisk on that. We know this is coming. It's our job now to envision what does it look like 10 years from now? If you're going to hire an agency and everybody is a media company. What does that agency do?

Mark Jones: Yeah, that's right.

Jonathan Crossfield: So when, as we're saying that particularly if agencies do the right thing, say, "Here are our strengths and we don't do that and we do do that." And so you end up with a handful, maybe more agencies working for a single brand, wandering social, doing SEO, doing the website, whatever. I've certainly been in the situation where there's been six agencies working on the same content hub and none of them would ever meet each other. So the brand team, the CMO was the hub of that wheel. Louise, throwing to you. Does that change the nature of your role then? Does that mean you have to take more responsibility for keeping this thing the final delivery of the strategy when you're working that way?

Louise Eyres: Yes, and I think it's exhausting for everyone when there's that competitive tension amongst the group that are endeavouring to be your partners or this escalation if a piece of work goes to one of the partners and not the other, and you're not working as a partnership then anyway. But I think, certainly my experience, particularly over the last five years, I think agencies themselves have recognised they have to work together otherwise that will be the trigger point to yes again go to pitch because the client, the brand, the CMO cannot work that way and I think won't work that way. So agencies are working at, "Well, how can we be clear? How can we be remunerated well and actually deliver as a system and as a connected system on this client?"

Andrew Davis: Louise, I actually think it's just a true testament to your evolution as a CMO to get your five key partners to work together. Because honestly, I don't think the agencies have changed. I think there's still a lot of competition and there's a lot of turf war. The only times I've seen it being really successful, again to float your boat a little bit is when the CMO, the person in the middle of that mess is very clear that this is only going to work if you guys can work it out. And I've been in a relationship with a CMO like that who basically said, "I will pay for you to all be at an offsite without me for a day so you can fight it out, not in front of me to figure out how you're going to work together."

Jonathan Crossfield: So it's basically about, the brand ultimately is responsible, "You need to work out how you're gonna solve the problem, I'm getting out of the way and I'm not going to be the stakeholder in the middle who works as basically a filter and everything." That just slows everything down.

Mark Jones: I was laughing because of the pistols at dawn metaphor just came to mind. This is not gonna work out well. Can I just tell you one of my biggest bugbears about this is the appointment of a master agency. So as soon as you appoint a master agency, guess who's not the master agency? Everybody else. Right?

Andrew Davis: Including the CMO by the way.

Mark Jones: But my point is if you want them to play nicely then don't put them in categories or tiers. Right? Don't set the table in such a way that somebody is sitting at the top and then you're not going to respect the insights. Because getting back to our point about specialisation, you need to respect the specialised voice that you bring to the table. And if you're going to say that they're not equal in terms of contributing to the greater whole, then you're creating your own problem.

Andrew Davis: On the same token, though, we need to have respect for those other agencies, because we did a lot of content marketing. Every time I went into a big account that had an agency of record that was part of WPP and did a $50 million ad campaigns, I always walked in going, "What a waste. These guys are morons." I think a little bit of humility goes a long way to realise that everybody's doing great work, we just need to figure out how to leverage it best.

Mark Jones: And to be fair, they are not morons. Right?

Andrew Davis: No, no, they're geniuses actually.

Mark Jones: Right. Exactly. Hat Tip. Right?

Andrew Davis: Yeah.

Mark Jones: But my point is how do you structure an agency environment in such a way that it is recognising the strengths of each one more?

Andrew Davis: You just need more Louise’s. That's it.

Louise Eyres: How in that 25 minute fastpitch, cause that almost takes us back to the start is how the behaviour, the humility, the attitude of the people you're going to be working with, you have to be able to then elicit that, feel that, know that in that pitch environment to actually say culturally. and I think that, that word around humility and how you respect all at the table somehow we have to identify that in 25 minutes.

Jonathan Crossfield: Well, we are running out of time so we're just going to go around the final thoughts. What's the one thing you would change?

Andrew Davis: If I was running an agency today, I would cut my pitch decks by two thirds. So for every 10 slides I'd cut seven and talk less about how capable we are and focused much more on what we're actually going to deliver for the client, which is results. And only if they're interested, start talking about a real relationship.

Jonathan Crossfield: Louise, what's your takeaway?

Louise Eyres: I think keep on this journey now from having the dominant creative as say, the big voice in the room and then almost the underling agencies around them. Keep on that journey of equal respect, equal contribution and really respecting what each partner brings to the table.

Mark Jones: I have so many thoughts in my head. I'm going to make Andrew happy by saying, I'm going to go and cut my pitch decks in half.

Louise Eyres: 25 minutes or less.

Mark Jones: I also do some speaking and one of the things that I've learned from engaging and standing and talking to people, is really being, I call it the three m's. What's your message? What's the metaphor to describe your message so that people can engage with it? And then what's the model? So what's the approach that is unique? One thing I want to do is really, even more tightly define what those things are. So it's an instant gimme. "What's your message? Well, your message is, you're broken and here's how we're going to fix it."

Mark Jones: And so I think really tightening up on that aspect is something that I'm currently working on. And I think I'll double down on.

Mark Jones: So that was a fantastic conversation. I gotta say, great energy, loved the vibe, and some great questions from Jonathan. Final point I wanna make about agencies I guess I'll put my hat on as the chief storyteller, and CEO at Filtered Media here. One of the tricks that I've seen across the industry, and also, I guess from our own journey is really deciding as an agency, what's your point of difference? And, how are you going to be perceived by your customers compared to all the other agencies that are out there? For me, it really comes back to what are you best at? And, what do you have a passion for? And, it really starts from that place as opposed to some sort of competitive analysis.

Mark Jones: You've really gotta double down on what you're good at, and what you wanna see happen in the marketplace, and if you get that story right, and tell that story well, it invites people to join you on the journey. I think it's a far more compelling way to engage with an agency that really knows what it's all about, not trying to be jack of all trades, but really trying to be a specialist, and, of course, in our case it's storytelling. It's about this integrated approach to making sure your storytelling is amplified through all the best channels that work for you, so that's our shtick, and if you're out there looking for an agency, my suggestion to you, some advice for free is ask them what are they good at? And, what really makes them different? How are they communicating that passion for their difference, and their unique story in the marketplace? That's a great question to kick off a conversation with any agency that you engage with.

Mark Jones: Thank you once again for joining us on the show, great as always. I love the comments that we get, and if you haven't subscribed, and if you haven't reviewed us on iTunes, or your platform of choice please do. We love it. It helps get the message out there, and helps share the great advice that we're getting from all of our guests, so I do appreciate it. Until next time.

Previous
Previous

Serena Leith on Spotify marketing and the joy of real customer relationships

Next
Next

Teresa Sperti on marketing a poverty-free future