About Joe:

Joe Koufman is responsible for introducing three married couples and countless business relationships. In early 2014, he parlayed his passion for connecting people with his deep relationships with marketers and agencies to build the marketing matchmaker service, Setup. Before becoming an entrepreneur, Joe spent six years leading business development and marketing for Engauge. As Senior Vice President of Business Development and Marketing there, he helped the agency build new relationships with high-profile clients like Cisco Systems, Newell Brands, AMC Theatres, Hanesbrands, and Hershey’s. Joe serves on the board of directors of the American Marketing Association (AMA Atlanta), the Atlanta Interactive Marketing

Association (AIMA), and the Terry College of Business at the University of Georgia. He also volunteers weekly at Everybody Wins! Atlanta, and participated in the Entrepreneurs’ Organization Accelerator program.

Joe joins Guy to share how finding the right mix of compatibility and chemistry is crucial for creating long-lasting partnerships between agencies and brands.

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Hi, I'm Guy Powell and welcome to the 10th episode

of the Backstory on Marketing. If you haven't already done so

please visit proelevant.com and sign up for all of these

episodes and podcasts. I am the author of the upcoming book The

post COVID marketing machine, prepare your team to win. You

can find more information on my book at marketing machine dot

pro relevant to.com. Today we'll be speaking with Joe Kaufman.

Joe is responsible for introducing three married

couples and countless business relationships in early 2014. He

parlayed his passion for connecting people to founding

setup at and you can find setup@setup.us setup is a

marketing matchmaker. But before becoming an entrepreneur, Joe

spent six years leading business development and marketing for

engage, which was acquired by the publicist group, and then

merged also with moxie. As Senior Vice President of

Business Development and Marketing. He helped the agency

build new relationships with high profile clients, such as

Cisco Newell brands, AMC theaters, HANES Brands, and a

whole list of others. When Joe isn't working, he loves to

discover new music. And he hosts a weekly radio show at gumbo

show.com. And he spends a lot of time with his wife, Michelle,

and their twins Joss and Radley. Most weekends he's supporting

his kids activities, playing his grandmother's trumpet, running

and immersing himself in music. Joe, welcome, and great to have

you today.

Thanks so much, Guy. It's such a pleasure to be

here with you.

Yeah, thank you. So let's get started. So tell us

about yourself and what your backstory is on marketing. Yeah,

so

I grew up in North Carolina, even though I had

Boston roots. And I graduated from Wake Forest University, and

spent four years in retail. And retail moved me from New

Orleans, Louisiana, to Jackson Hole Wyoming, to Atlanta,

Georgia, where I finally ran the Eddie Bauer at Lenox Square

Mall, which was the biggest of their stores in the southeast.

And at 26 years old. Having 50 employees and running that

store, I did one holiday season and decided I was done with

retail forever. And so I joined a.com called Knowledge storm and

spent eight years there. And we went from all thinking we were

going to be millionaires to layoffs and things over time

during the.com bust, to eventually selling to a recently

company that went public called Tech target bought knowledge

storm for $58 million, used about half of their IPO money.

And then I went to join a small digital agency called spawn

logic was probably 60 or so people that soon got acquired by

engage, which ended up about 250 people. And then we sold as you

said, approval says six years after after I joined. And our

revenue when we sold was roughly 40 to $43 million. And of that

$43 million of annual revenue, I was responsible for probably 60%

of the clients that made up that revenue, maybe a little bit

more, maybe 65%. But and when when we were acquired by pulses

group and merged with moxie, as you mentioned, it became clear

to me that I you know, while it was a very, very good agency and

great holding company, it wasn't going to be the same kind of

agency that I had joined six years earlier. And for me, I

really loved matchmaking as you as you mentioned in my bio,

it's, you know, a hobby, but then I definitely love

connecting people together at at my company set up our purpose is

to unlock the power of human connections. That's our real

purpose. And, you know, it's that is my personal life. That

is my professional life. And I think the people that I've hired

and my team, all would agree that they love also unlocking

the power of human connections. So that's the path that brings

us you know, it's we just had our eighth anniversary in

February of 2022 and It's been quite a journey.

Yeah, wow, eight years is not an easy thing. And

then to and I know you guys are very successful, and you're

definitely in a very interesting space. And I like that concept.

Well, I found, I helped set up three marriages. And then I also

do that for businesses. But I, when I saw that I really smiled.

That was pretty good.

Well, and they're not all still married guy, but I

never claimed to be a marriage counselor.

Yeah, very good. I like that. So, so what kind of

agencies and brands do typically worked for it. So build those

relationships? Yeah.

So the way we normally work is, most of the

brands that we work with are on the medium to large size. So

we've worked with a lot of fortune 500 brands, as well as

some mid market kind of companies too. And the way our

process normally works is that we work with the client to help

them write a brief, to outline and clarify exactly what they're

trying to accomplish from a marketing standpoint, then we

look across a network, a group of agencies to determine if any

of those agencies are a really good fit to solve that problem.

And, and we put those agencies through a very rigorous vetting

process upfront before we even will work with them before we

even write the brief for the client or where there's a need.

But if any of those agencies are a good fit on paper, to solve

the problem, they're capable, they have the client experience

or the discipline expertise, then we typically will introduce

that client to three or four different agencies that are all

capable. And the reason we do that, as any good matchmaker

will tell you, there's compatibility on paper, and then

there's chemistry. And we can predict combative compatibility,

or compatibility with compatibility on paper all day

long. We can't always predict the chemistry. So by introducing

the client to three or four different agencies, we're

allowing the client to own that communication and determine if

there's chemistry and determine if they want a second date with

any of agencies to use the dating analogy again. On the

other hand, when we write the brief, if it's clear that the

need of the client is different than just introducing them to

three or four agencies, and getting out of the way, then we

can work with the client to actually perform a custom agency

search where we run the entire process from writing the profile

of the ideal agency by interviewing all the key

stakeholders, building a really long list of potential agencies,

narrowing the pool down to a much more manageable group,

sending out some requests for information, questions that are

relatively easy for the agency to answer, you know, in a half

hour or something, narrowing the pool down based on those

answers, issuing an RFP to a handful of agencies, and then

picking the top three or four to pitch the client and then

helping the client ultimately make a decision. So we were able

to help the client, find the right agency, whether it's from

the pool of agencies that are already working with us, or a

much larger pool that don't work with us.

Yeah, yeah, very interesting. And I think you're

right, though, I think, you know, one of the challenges, I

think, with selecting an agency is there. There's the

differences between them. Certainly, there's personality,

and there's certainly some people have a creative bent in

one direction versus versus another. But if that chemistry

doesn't match, then it's, it's, well, it's just like a marriage.

If that chemistry doesn't match, boy, it's not going to not going

to do very well over the long term. And it's an expensive,

right, right, right. You need you need, you

need both both capability and chemistry. And I used to think

it was 5050 50% capability and 50% chemistry. Now, I believe

it's actually probably 35% capability and 65% chemistry,

chemistry is probably even more important than capability.

Yeah. And I think even in our relationships with

our clients, you know, if you don't have that rapport and that

chemistry, there's always as good as we all try to be. And,

you know, I think just about every agency is excellent at

what they do, but there's always things that go wrong. There's

something that gets in the way A summer, whatever it happens, and

you need that chemistry in that report to be able to get past

that. So that you're, you know, so that you really are able to

deliver really, really good work for the agencies and that I

think you're right, I think it is definitely 65%. So almost

like, you know, there's in any conversation 80% of the message

is in the in the body language, and only 20% is in the wording.

So maybe it's something similar to that.

Yeah. Oh, yeah, for sure.

So has that changed at all? Since COVID? Has the

internet as the turnover gotten better? Or worse? Or has have

the relationships changed significantly?

So the short answer is, turnover is increased on the

brand side with marketers and with the agencies in terms of

staff and employees, because of, I'm not calling it the great

resignation, I'm calling it the talent wars, you know, it's

essentially, and but we're finding, we had our busiest

quarter ever, in terms of brands looking for agency support,

because eight brands are leaner than they ever were some of

them, you know, laid off people early in COVID. And then found

themselves pretty short handed in terms of being able to

execute on their marketing initiatives. And right now, you

know, because there are more marketing needs than there are

staff trying to, if you were as a client, trying to add

headcount for creative art director, a copywriter, a email

marketing expert, a social media expert, an analytics person, a

project manager, and account manager, if you wanted to add

all of those headcount, it's really tough to even if you

could find the people, which it's hard to do, do you really

have the room in your organization to bring on six,

seven new people who, some of whom are specialists in their

craft, and not generalists. So we're seeing that brands clients

are hiring, more and more agencies support because with

one single, you know, agreement with an agency, they can get all

of those discipline experts to work on their account. Rather

than trying to hire them all separately. And also, as

projects and need scale up and scale down, you can scale up and

scale down that agency relationship, a lot easier than,

you know, if, if worse, come to worse, and you really, really

needed to cut expenses, it's a lot easier to cut the agency

than it is to lay off seven people. So we're seeing a lot of

velocity right now, in terms of we're busier than we've ever

been in the eight year history, in terms of the total number of

introductions we're making between brands and agencies.

Yeah, and I think your your, your point is

definitely right, the agencies are they have the ability to

scale up and scale down a lot more easily. You know, in

however they do it, but because they have the management team in

place, and then the agency, you know, account management in

place, and then they've got, you know, people that can, you know,

execute on various things that it is a lot easier. And I think

you're right to is it is hard for companies to hire folks find

the folks poach the folks nowadays. And, and, and then and

then they don't have really a guarantee, so to speak, that the

person that they actually hired is actually going to be able to

deliver on what they wanted to hire. And so that is that is

tough, that is really tough for them. That's for sure. So what

do you think the biggest challenges are now and in, in

the post COVID world for finding an agency? Is there? Is there a

lot of demand now, like you said, or how does that how does

that work?

Yeah, I mean, we're, the challenge with

finding an agency, this is actually not even post COVID,

pre COVID. This has always been the challenge is, first of all,

marketers are somewhat limited by their network, right? I only

know who I know, and agencies change pretty rapidly in terms

of an agency that was fantastic two years ago, may not be any

more an agency that was not well known two years ago might be

great now. So we're limited by asking some colleagues or

friends with agencies they've worked with and that kind of

thing. Secondly, time finding, you know, go ahead and Google

user experience agency and see how many 1000s and 1000s of

results come up or, you know, whatever, public relations firm

or advertising agency or web design, whatever the thing is

your need. It's really inefficient to just search and,

you know, so takes a lot One time to find the right agency

and narrow in on the one that's the best fit for you. And then

the other thing is vetting, vetting the agencies and putting

them through a process. It's difficult. It's time consuming.

It's a challenge to Okay. Again, I've got this list of 1000

agencies that came up on a Google search. How do I

differentiate them? They all say they're good at everything.

Right? And they're not right. So one of those are all problems or

challenges that we solve for the client at setup, because we've

already put the agencies through a really, very rigorous vetting

process, it takes about a month for us to complete. It includes

us talking to serving current clients of the agency and past

clients of the agency that no longer work with them, because

we've found that they're the most candid about what the real

strengths are they agency and their weaknesses. We also survey

the key staff within the agency to understand one how self aware

they are, you know, do they do their answers jive with what

current and past clients say, but also to understand, you

know, where they're going, what they feel their real strengths

are, and that kind of thing. And that whole vetting process helps

us really get to know the agency as well. It also holds a mirror

up to the agency and allows them to learn more about themselves

and their strengths and weaknesses. But also, it

sometimes even uncovers opportunities, because we'll

sometimes survey a past client that says, Man, I really we

asked them a question like, What do you wish this agency could

have? Could have done for you? And sometimes the answer is

something that they've added, since they stopped working with

agency or something. So that whole process, we call it our

agency assessment process. It helps us upfront, cut down on

some of that information overload of Google search of

being able to help the client only work with agencies that

have been really well vetted only work with agencies that

have demonstrated success with, you know, similar clients in the

industry and similar types of projects and things like that.

And so it's, it's a time thing, it's an efficiency thing, and

it's not limiting the client to just a couple of agencies that

they've heard of.

Yeah, absolutely. I can definitely see that. And so

do you think now, the agencies or the searches are trying to

consolidate, you know, down to, let's say, you know, just a

handful of agencies versus having, you know, a whole bunch

and being very specialized with each one is, how do you how do

you see that as the trend in the industry, or is it, it's still

just totally dynamic going back and forth, depending on the

company.

It's a pendulum that definitely swings back and

forth, and we see it every year or two, there's a, we'll see.

Some clients that really want to work with One Agency of record a

general agency that we found that they are often very, very,

they're often good at many things, they have a larger host

of disciplines of marketing that they cover, but they aren't

necessarily specialists. So they're not super deep in a

specific discipline. We have other clients that like to

manage a group of specialists. And the challenge there is that

the specialists aren't always seeing the real big picture of

what the company is trying to accomplish. And, and it's a lot

more management for the client to manage multiple agencies

instead of having one quote neck to choke, you know, one agency.

I personally, would, if I were the client, I would prefer to

manage multiple specialists, rather than one big agency of

record because I feel that I would, I'm willing to spend more

time and energy managing multiple agencies but getting

the DIS the best of the best in terms of discipline expertise.

But we see that pendulum swing back and forth with a pendulum

we see guy is companies that want to build in house agencies

and in house, you know, capabilities versus partnering

with age external agencies to do work. And we see that go back

and forth. Many big brands try to build their in house agency

as a shared service that maybe multiple brands within the

agency come to the shared service for marketing. The

challenge with that is that often you know the client As a

people that want to go work for an agency, are different than

the kinds because they want to work on multiple clients and

multiple different industries are somewhat different than the

kinds of people that want to work on one for one company and

one brand. So and also one of the one other piece with the in

house agencies versus external is that often those shared

services teams are strapped with capacity issues. And so it

leaves the brands that are the clients, the internal clients,

sometimes frustrated, trying to get good quality work out of

that internal agency, and then they say, I'm just gonna go hire

my own agency, outside of the shared services.

Well, and especially to if if you have a, you know,

if you're a family of brands, and they all have certain things

that are specific to a specific holiday, and, and all of a

sudden, they need a whole bunch of stuff for the Memorial Day

sale or the and then, you know, you got this peak in demand

that, that the internal agency may not be able to handle. Yeah,

and I think you're right to that, there's no question even

for us, when we, one of the, we do like quarterly updates for a

lot of our analytics work. And, you know, so that's four times a

year that for our clients, we're super busy, if they were going

to hire and do that internally, that person that would be doing

our work, so to speak, would have nothing to do for three or

four, you know, three more, maybe even six weeks out of the

quarter. And, you know, and these people in our industry

analytics, and in your, you know, in agencies, these

creative people, they don't want to sit around doing nothing for

six weeks, you know, they'd rather be doing, you know,

something that's very interesting and very, you know,

sparks their curiosity and really gets their juices going.

And I think that's one of the big challenges on both sides,

you know, even for the agencies, to be able to keep those people

and keep them really busy and give them then the new the new

deal. Every you know, every, every once in a while, hey, you

got to work on this one, and then this one and this one, then

jump back and jump back. You know, that's a that that

requires a special type of person, and they don't want to,

you know, be bored, so to speak, necessarily with working on an

internal agency and trying to run an internal agency. Yeah.

Yeah, so So is there any big difference between larger brands

doing a search for a larger brand versus a smaller brand, or

potentially even a startup? You know, if you get a start up and

an IPO, and you're about to try and get on the Superbowl, or

whatever, you know, it's the search is different there than

otherwise?

Well, if you're trying to get into Super Bowl,

the search is very different, because that's a full on RFP

process, usually, because those are millions and millions of

dollars. But to answer your question, smaller agencies

usually hire sorry, smaller clients, smaller brands usually

hire smaller agencies that are a little more generalists. Because

they can't afford to hire for different agencies, they only

have the budget to hire one. And that one better be able to do at

least many of the things that the client really needs. The

larger the client, the more likely they are to work with

specialist agencies, either a big AOR and some specialists or

all specialists, because they, you know, they hire an agency

specifically to do CRM and marketing automation, they hire

an agency specifically to do content creation, they hire an

agency specifically to do public relations, or web design or app

development, or whatever the thing is that they need help

with, they know that they're a large agency of record, probably

doesn't have all of the chops to do all of those individual

things. Well, so the bigger the brand, the more likely they are

to hire a group of specialists and you know, the smaller brands

have to hire a generalist that smaller on the smaller side in

terms of staff too, because they can't afford the same scale that

a bigger Yes,

he could divide. Yeah. And they need on boats.

And it's on both sides as well. Because, you know, the fees are

one thing, but also you need personnel to manage all that.

And, you know, then the more you have going on on the outside,

you gotta have more people on the inside to manage what's

going on on the outside. So, yeah, so the market and

marketing has certainly changed over the last Well, certainly

since COVID. And pre COVID versus post COVID. And, and, and

we definitely saw it, you know, I was my book has a basically

has that is that one of its premises is that there is a big

big difference. Pre COVID versus post COVID in technology. What

do you see then now, post COVID are as the biggest Challenges

facing facing agencies and even on the other side, the brands

that that they're working with.

It's funny, you asked that question now, because

we're in the midst of wrapping up our fourth annual marketing

relationship survey. And in fact, it's going to close soon,

I'm not sure, by the time this airs, we may already have closed

it. But essentially, what this is the fourth year that we've

looked at those, that marketing landscape and how it's changed,

and also those relationships between brands and agencies,

that sort of part of it. Interestingly, in last year

survey, which we were fortunate enough to have, at age,

published it on their homepage and the print and send it out

via all their newsletters and things. So they got widely

promoted, and by Ad Age. But what their headline was that

within the next six months, one in three brands will change

agencies. And I kind of chuckled when I saw the headline, because

I think at any given moment, one in three brands is thinking

about changing agencies that was validated by our that's

validated almost every year and survey, which is, you know, two

thirds of the clients are perfectly happy with their

agency and 1/3 are not going to get to switch what a client's

care about and what brands care about clients care about? Well,

what they don't care about is the proximity of their agency,

whether the agency is down the street from them or not, it's

especially during post COVID, we all learned that we could work

remotely successfully, and that we don't need to be in the room

with the with our customers, with our clients with our

agencies. They don't care about whether the agencies win a lot

of awards. They don't care so much about the seniority of the

team or whether or not they have specialized capabilities. They

do care about which this is heartening. Because these are

things that agency people can control. They care about

creativity. They care about professionalism. They care about

chemistry. They care about cost. And they're looking for

transparency in the relationship, they're looking

for vulnerability, they're looking for some employee

retention, even though the agency business is typically as

pretty transient in terms of people coming and going. There

is value in some longevity and institutional knowledge, that

kind of thing. And they just want clear expectations. You

know, part of that this survey is to understand what clients

wish agencies knew what agencies wish clients knew. And it's kind

of funny, because they're, like, look, the clients wish the

agencies would act as more strategic partners, and agencies

wished the clients would let them do more strategic work. So

what's the problem here? There's a disconnect. And the answer is,

you know, the clients say things like, I don't think the agency

truly understands bureaucratic red tape within my organization,

or your other priorities that aren't just this marketing,

stuff that I'm working on with you. And agencies want to be led

into the inner circle, and part of the planning meetings and all

of those things. So it's just there's a, you know, that

transparency, that vulnerability, that clear

expectations, that would go a long way in, in really improving

relationships between brands and agencies.

Yeah, that is definitely funny. And I think I

think you're right on the outside, you know, even with our

relationships, on the outside, we are always providing kind of

the strategic look at whatever it is that we produce. And, and

yet, in terms of actually getting across, what we think,

you know, is going to be potentially important, or at

least getting that feedback so that we can build it into what

we deliver is sometimes is sometimes lacking, and, you

know, and you're basically, you know, instead of being, you

know, the, at least the collar on the dog, you're kind of the

tail and you find you find out when that when that dog starts

to wag its tail, you don't find out, you know, right next to it,

you know, you know, when they first heard it, so, yeah, yeah,

I think I think that's, that's a really good, that's a really

good, good point. So otherwise, you know, there's things like

and we were just at an event together on NF Ts. I'm just

curious. How you see that now. Influencing agencies, are there

going to be now NF T specialists and or are they going to be

generalized into a digital or is it going to be both or all of

the above?

Yeah. Well, that's one reason In that I think a lot

of clients hire agencies is because they rely on their

agencies to keep their fingers on the pulse of emerging trends.

You know, if you're working for a giant hotel company or for a

company that sells soda, or you're working for a company

that sells hammers and paint and home renovation supplies, you're

focused on selling more paint and hammers and are selling more

soda or selling more booking more hotel rooms. You're not

focused on every emerging trend that as it comes along, I mean,

even with social media, there was Friendster, and then there

was,

I'm gonna MySpace,

MySpace, thank you Myspace, Facebook, and then

Facebook, and then Instagram, and then Snapchat and Tiktok.

And whatever's next right, and metaverse. And I'm not saying

that some of the some of these emerging technologies will

stick, you know, Instagram and Snapchat are here to stay right.

Tick tock is here to stay, I think. But and there were some

time there were days when we weren't sure that tick tock was

right, make it right. For a number of reasons. But my point

is that all of these trends NFT, and cryptocurrency and

blockchain, I think elements of them are here to stay agencies

are part of their job is to keep their finger on the pulse and be

helpful and advise their clients as to how to get into into them

in a safe way. And I would say that clients and agencies need

to reserve a portion of their budget for testing, you might

not spend 95% of your money on your budget on on NF T's. But

man, you shouldn't be spending 5% of it. So that your, if it

really does become a massive part of our world, or our new

world, then at the very least you are in it. So I think but I

think that agencies are more likely to stay abreast of those

trends, because they live and breathe it all day, every day,

versus having to take time away to sell some more hammers and

lumber, or take time away to try to get right help hotel rooms

booked.

Well, and I think, you know, even going back to

when the internet started, you know how many domain names were,

you know, not taken, when I think of delta.com paying, I

don't know, nobody knows how much they had to pay. But if

they had used, you know, even one or 2% of their budget to

understand what was going on, they would have realized that

they need to protect their domain, you know, delta.com, or

whatever, just so that they could be ready in case it really

took off. And then secondly, though, I think those companies

that get in early, like get into Snapchat early on or get into

Instagram early on, they can get a very short term, very high

return, because it's kind of it's, it's, you know, it's the

wild wild west. So you can try a whole bunch of stuff, get known

for it, and then all of a sudden, you, you get all of that

brand, you know, brand value out of it. And and those companies

that that go in late, they kind of only get the mature growth or

mature value as opposed to that early on big value.

I'll give you a perfect example since your book

is about marketing in the post COVID world. Ecommerce is a huge

example of this. The brands and companies particularly retail

brands, or Restaurant Brands that were already involved in E

commerce had already set up their ecommerce infrastructure.

And already were selling goods online, whether that good is

delivered by you know, FedEx or UPS or USPS, or whether that

good is I'm going to drive by the restaurant and pick up a

takeout order or Beauprez, buy online, pick up in store,

whatever, whatever the delivery mechanism is. Those that had

already gotten into E commerce pre COVID emerged really strong

because they already could deliver to the new norm that was

set because of the pandemic that I might not want to step foot in

the store or in the restaurant, but I'm still willing to eat the

food or I'm still willing to buy the item. And those that didn't

have that infrastructure in place, really struggled to, for

example, hire agencies that can support ecommerce, but who were

swamped, you know, because they're so so So to your point,

the early adopters of as new technologies emerge, the early

adopters, I think, are in a better position to thrive long

term than those that are waiting to see if it's gonna pan out.

Right, right. And a good example of that is

Chick-fil-A, they had online ordering figured out well before

the COVID, lockdown started, and they were then able to once they

were able to open up again, they were able to take orders

immediately, whereas a lot of the other, you know, drive thru

restaurants were not. And so you could order online, and then

pick up like you said, pickup in the drive thru and Chick-fil A

was just, they exploded during COVID. Because they were ready

because they had the technology ready. So that when people were

coming back and didn't want to come into the restaurant, but

we're ready to do the drive thru the bonus, I like that, I'm

going to use that one. But you know, being able to pick up

their sales just just exploded, and they, you can just see how

well they've done compared to the other ones.

I have a related example. Speaking of Chick fil

A, I hired a really smart and talented young man to set up,

who found he got an opportunity to take his dream job, which is

that he was hired by Chick fil A before the pandemic began to

help them roll out delivery. So initially, they worked with

DoorDash and Uber Eats and the other delivery services to

deliver food. And they had to figure out which food travels

well for delivery, which who doesn't then figure out how to

efficiently get it to the people that were ordering it at their

homes. But again, they were looking at delivery as a as a

distribution model before the pandemic hit. And when pandemic

hit, you can bet that delivery service became huge. And this

young man is thriving within the company. Because, you know, all

of a sudden, everybody started looking at him and saying, Wow,

you're the guy that's going to help us get this food to the

customers who don't want to go sit in our restaurant right now.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And, and, and I

think, you know, to, to, you know, the point about being able

to have a couple of percent of your budget ready for

experiments, you know, whether it's NFT's nowadays, or whatever

the next big thing is or the metaverse or whatever, it's,

it's definitely being ready. And, you know, and if it, you

know, I think there's still a lot of challenges with NF T's

and, but nevertheless, to be ready to either do some short

term things and experiment and find out that they work or find

out that they don't, and then be ready when that when that

explosion starts to take off that you can ride that wave

going all the way up. And and I think brands can can really do a

good job with that. And then you know, getting back to agencies

and brand relationships, you know, the if the brand, if the

agencies aren't bringing those ideas, or if the brands aren't

asking for it, then I don't think they're, you know, they're

probably doing themselves a disservice by not, you know,

thinking about outside the box as to what what might be

possible coming up over the next, you know, year, maybe it's

even six months, or maybe it's a little further out. Yeah,

absolutely. Yeah. So, anyway, we're about out of time, I'd

love to keep going. But anything, anything you'd like to

close with, that we didn't get to talk about? Yeah,

there's one other thing, one other service that we

provide that might be interesting to some of your

listeners. And that's what we call marketing ecosystem

planning. And what that means is that, in some cases, the client

is not ready to hire an agency yet. What they really need to

understand is what's the right balance or mix between internal

resources, you know, hiring headcount, and external

partners, agencies or otherwise. And so, one of the things we

launched because clients were demanding this, we just finished

a project for a fortune 500 company, that they weren't ready

to hire an agency yet, they really truly needed to

understand what their Nirvana should look like from a

marketing ecosystem standpoint. So we help them paint the

picture of what the ecosystem should look like. And then we

help them understand where they are today and get a roadmap to

how they get from where they are today to where they should be.

And by the way, once we identified some of those

external partner buckets that were empty or leaky, we can also

help them find agencies but this is before you get there. There's

an ecosystem that needs has to be planned for before we can

start filling those buckets. So it's, we call it a marketing

ecosystem planning. And it's another service that we offer to

clients that are truly not quite ready to hire agencies or

anything like that.

Yeah, understood. And and I think you're right and

potentially even for, you know, brands that are in kind of a,

rebuild the refresh mode where they, you know, had maybe a down

quarter, maybe something went wrong, maybe they are just

recovering from supply chain issues, or where they were just

acquired and you know, they've got challenges and then, you

know, the this, then they really, not only that, do they

need the strategy on how they're going to recover and get out of

the hole that they're in. But then as they're trying to get

out of that whole is, what is the right ecosystem, I can see

that being very valuable for brands exactly like that. And

making sure they put those partners in place that can

really help them propel, because otherwise the marketing team is

going to lose, and then marketing for most of these

brands. If marketing doesn't work, they're gonna lose.

Yeah, and this case, the client that hired us

was brand new VP of Marketing with a lot of direct reports,

and they had a lot of direct reports. And they were doing

lots and lots and lots of marketing projects, but they

weren't really looking carefully at should they be doing all

these marketing projects. And are they the best, you know,

there's the output, the best quality and all of these things.

And the other thing is that a lot of the marketing efforts

were because several companies came together to become a larger

company, that's a fortune 500. In some cases, her predecessors

were running marketing, like they were still a smaller

company and working with, you know, did they have the right

team in place for them to scale to the next level, do they have

the right set of partners to scale to the next level, so

we're, we were that that particular project was about

helping them understand that. And now, now that we've

delivered our output from that, they definitely are going to

need help figuring out how to, they're gonna have to hire some

people, they're gonna have to hire some agencies, potentially,

or at least review their agencies and make sure they're

getting what they need out of them. So anyway, I love that

service, because it's very consultative, and it's a way

that we can help the clients think through that ecosystem,

and that perfect mix of internal and external resources that

sometimes the client is too close to it, you know, to be

able to really get a fresh set of eyes and perspective from the

outside to understand what could be.

Yeah, now, and, and definitely to support those

existing or potentially relationships that need to be

replaced. I definitely see that and, and, and I could see a

whole lot of different triggers, you know, industry downturn, you

know, supply chain, whatever those problems are, as well as,

you know, new hires or whatever were you, you just gotta get a

good feel for what's going on before you commit to the to

trying to deliver on a strategy when you realize that, hey, my

team isn't there. And the team is not only the internal side,

but it's the external you've got to have that that the capability

and the chemistry with the exhales. Right, right, right.

Yeah. Well, Joe, it's been great. I really appreciate it.

And it was so good to be able to set up our podcast relationship

for today. Thanks. Thank you. I thought I'd try and figure out a

way to get all that in there. Our name has become very

intentional. Yep. Yeah. Absolutely. And I think we were

able to get some chemistry going. So even got some messages

and, and whatever. But in any case, for the listeners, please

stay tuned. We've got many many other videos in this series

coming on the backstory on marketing, please visit

marketing machine dot pro relevant.com. And if you'd like

to go there, and you'll be able to download the first chapter of

my book. And then there's also valuable excerpts and a whole

bunch of other stuff. And if you liked this podcast, please

definitely give me give us five stars and that way it'll get

proliferated out to a whole bunch of other for a whole bunch

of other folks and other listeners. Joe, thank you so

much.

Hey, thanks so much guy. Appreciate your having me.