Developing a digital-first DNA with Chris Aarons

Speaker 1:

If you’re going to take the risk of running an agency, shouldn’t you get the benefits too? Welcome to Agency Management Institute’s Build A Better Agency podcast, presented by HubSpot. We’ll show you how to build an agency that can scale and grow with better clients, invested employees and best of all, more money to the bottom line. Bringing his 25 plus years of experience as both an agency owner and agency consultant, please welcome your host, Drew McLellan.

Drew McLellan:

Hey everybody, Drew McLellan here with another episode of Build A Better Agency. My guest today is a fascinating guy, and I think his trajectory and his career sort of reminds us how the business has changed. So one of the things that I admire about this guest is the idea of reinvention. And I’ll tell you a little bit about him in a second. But first, I want to talk a little bit about reinvention because I think a lot of you are struggling with this right now. So especially if you have been in the business for a while, especially if you are or were a very traditional agency, you bought a lot of traditional media, you did a lot of creative. And now, all of a sudden, in the last 10 years, you’re really being asked to change the game completely. And for some of you, that’s been exciting, and it’s been a challenge that you’ve enjoyed. And for others of you, it has been a challenge, but not one you’ve enjoyed so much. I have a lot of you hearkening back to kind of the good old days.

And I think one of the challenges for us, as agency owners, is the idea that the business is changing. And that quite honestly, we’ve got to either embrace the change or we need to get off the train, because the train is leaving the station and we’re either going to be on it or someone else is going to be driving our train. And quite honestly, for some agency owners, that’s not a bad plan, having someone else step in and help you with the innovation and sort of this shift in terms of the deliverables that you have for clients and the way you serve them, not an all bad strategy. So don’t think that you have to do it all by yourself.

But I think the reality is for all of us, moving in this direction, not really an option for us anymore, to avoid that or to dodge it. And when I look at the agencies, as you know, I see a lot of agencies’ financials, if they’re in the peer groups. And the ones that are really kicking it, the ones that are really making great money and building a culture and a team and attracting the right clients are the ones who have embraced the fact that the agency they were even a year ago, can’t be the agency they are today, and certainly is not going to be the agency that they’re going to be 12 or 24 months down the road. We are in a state of constant evolution and exploration. And that’s one of the topics that I want to talk to our guest, Chris Aarons, about.

So Chris, really kind of a Renaissance man in the agency business. So started his career as a PR guy, in a PR shop and then sort of moved along from PR guy, to in an ad agency guy, to an in-house guy, to a social media agency guy. And now, is sort of a digital consultant. And through all of that, has really pushed this idea of exploration, this idea that it is the agency who must be seeking new opportunities, new directions, because the clients simply don’t have the bandwidth to do it.

So Chris recently wrote a book, let me tell you a little bit about it. So it’s called The Digital Helix, and it’s transforming your organization’s DNA to thrive in a digital age. And he talks a lot about how to create a digital first DNA inside your organization, and also how you can do that for your clients. But one of the themes in the book that I really resonated with was this idea of exploration. I think we got into the business, most of us anyway, because we’re curious and we’d like to sort of figure out how things work and we like to make them work better. We also love this idea of marrying strategy and creative. So how do I understand where I need to get an audience to go? And then, how do I inspire them to go there, to want to go there? And all of that takes exploration and understanding of the audience.

And so, those are some of the topics that I want to explore with Chris as we delve into this episode. So let’s invite him to join us and get started.

Chris Aarons:

I’m glad to be here. Thanks for having me.

Drew McLellan:

Glad to have you. So give folks a little bit of background on you. You certainly have, as I had mentioned in the intro, have had an interesting and varied professional life up to this point, but give everybody sort of the highlights.

Chris Aarons:

Well, I’m a PR person by degree and by training. I run about six agencies, both on my own and for other businesses. I was one of the youngest vice presidents of Shandwick, the PR firm, which we bought up by Weber back in the late ’90s. Now, of course, they give away VP titles to just about anybody, but I was pretty proud of that. And I have started one of the first social media agencies, and now I’m doing a digital consulting thing. So I’ve had kind of a different path than most agency people. And it’s kind of bouncing in and out between corporate agency work and it’s kind of kept me on my toes.

Drew McLellan:

Well, you’ve certainly seen the evolution of agencies. So as we sort of enter into our conversation, talk a little bit about sort of how you’ve seen the evolution of agencies. And where do you think we’re headed next?

Chris Aarons:

That’s a great question. I think that there’s really kind of two kind of agencies. There is the core agency, whether it’s a digital agency, a web agency, PR agency, advertising agency, that kind of does the same thing, maybe with some different technology, maybe with some different flavor. And then, there’s more of a consultative agency. And I think that’s where we’re moving. And you can see that a lot in some of the bigger consulting firms, McKinsey [crosstalk 00:06:23] and people like that.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah, buying up the agencies.

Chris Aarons:

Buying up and adding these things because they see that the agency model is a really great way to get some different fingers in the pie and there’s budget there. There’s problems to be solved there. And so, I really see that there’s these two types of agencies, these core traditional agencies, that’ll probably be around forever and a day, but does the same thing, just a slightly different way. And then, there’s this consultative model that looks at the problem, the challenges, the drivers for the client, and really tries to understand what they can do from a core foundational knowledge base or from a partner base, where they kind of come in and solve the problems for the client.

So I think that’s where we’re moving to, because digital has shifted things and we see that clients need more than just an ad or a website or something like that, because everything is connected. And when everything is connected, your one problem that you’re solving cannot solve the 32 that come after it unless you know where they’re going, where they need to go.

Drew McLellan:

Right. So do you think that consultative agency also is the one that’s doing the actual work and making this stuff? Or do you think that there’s going to be this division between, in essence, agency consultants who build strategy and agency executioners who make this stuff?

Chris Aarons:

Well, I think it depends. You look at McKinsey and some of the other big consulting firms, they have partners and divisions and everything. I mean, literally they can do everything from identifying the data, to figuring out where the data is going to go, to serving up the ad, to running the digital site and then taking that data back in and then putting it all through the machine one more time, under their purview with the client, hand-in-hand, kind of this partner model.

But with that said, one of the things that strikes me with this whole conversation is that you really got to understand where things are going with your client, where the drivers and challenges of your client take you. And if I can, I’ll give you a couple examples.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah, that’d be great.

Chris Aarons:

We were doing a messaging project for a client in northern California, high-tech company, very great technology, right? And they call us, said, “Hey, listen, we’re just having trouble describing what we do and getting people to get excited about it. Because it’s so leading edge, that we just can’t figure out a way to put it in a non-techie way to get the people to understand that we’re in this ballpark and not completely confuse them.” So most agencies would have come in there and said, “Okay, no problem. We’ll charge you X and we’ll do this branding project. And then, maybe can help you out with some other stuff.”

But the first thing we started with, is we starting interviewing their customers that really latched onto this technology and got it. And then, we had a knowledge base to start our branding project, first and foremost. But we learned so much from that, that we saw that there were 15 other things that were going to need to change. Otherwise, if we changed the messaging for this client, their sales motions weren’t going to be right. Their web delivery wasn’t going to be right. Their direct loans wasn’t going to be right. So we really started down a path with just one little hook in the client. And it was like, “Okay guys, we’ll do this, but you’ve got to look at these 15 other things. Otherwise, you’re not going to be any further, you’re just going to have a new headline on your website.”

And when they saw that and they realized how this was going to change. All of a sudden, we became a real trusted advisor to them and we were doing things on the web, with direct, and we’re not a direct agency. We weren’t doing direct. We weren’t doing a lot of web stuff, but we identified the problem, we saw what needed to be done. And then, we marshaled the forces to get it done and make sure the client was going to get where they wanted to go, because we understood their challenges better than they did. They saw it as a messaging problem. I hope that helps.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. So I’m sure a part of the listeners are going, “Okay, but how did you price it? How did you talk about it?” So when you walk into a project like that, when you really don’t know what you’re walking into, how did you frame that up for the client so that both of you… Because no client is going to just say, “Yeah, come on in. I don’t care what it costs.” And you don’t want to say it’s going to cost a buck when it might cost $15. So how did you frame that with them, so that they understood you were sort of walking into the room to do some discovery with talking to the customers and doing all of that, and from that was going to come something, but you weren’t sure what it was going to be?

Chris Aarons:

So I’m going to turn that around just a little bit. So first of all, we went in just like any agency would, with our messaging project. But we started out with this kind of, what I call, and it’s in the book that we just published, it’s called an explorer mentality. And really what that is, you start with your eyes wide open, looking for what you might find, what you might never hope to see and what the other people may have missed.

So we just walked in and said, “Okay, we’re going to do our core project. But part of that is us talking to your customers, because we want to understand where they got to where they are, from your really busted up messaging.” Then we went back and said, “Okay guys, if we do this, you’re going to have to attach and fix these five, 10, 15 things,” I think is the number I was using. And I didn’t wound up being about 15 things. And then, “So let’s talk about what that requires. And then let’s talk about the budget for each and the pilot groups.” So it wasn’t really kind of going in with SOW.

It was an ongoing conversation. And when the client saw the onion peeling back, and if they saw, “Oh yeah, crap. You’re right. We will have to fix that. Well, we don’t have an internal team to do that.” We had a partner do that last year, but they didn’t really do what we want to, we kind of kicked them to the curb. We have a web team, they can do that. So then it became a conversation of what are we best to do? What is best to do internally? What do you have other partners do, that maybe we can kind of dive a little bit and get you to where you want and they want? And they’re going to get you there now.

And so, the pricing and the budgeting really wasn’t like it normally is, where you walk in and, in an RFP situation, where you’re constantly just like, “Hey, we can do X, Y, and Z.” It became a conversation with a partner. Not all 15 were natural, but I’d say about eight or nine were natural.

And so, I was like, “Okay, let’s get the budget for that.” And we were going to do some web development. “So we’ll just carve that out for you guys to work with our web team.” And so, it became an incremental growing of the original SOW, as opposed to proposal after proposal and then having it run up the food chain because the senior leadership team and marketing team saw the need. And once we kind of walked them through it, it was painfully obvious to them. And if they didn’t address it, they were going to be grossly negligent in their job.

Drew McLellan:

Right. So this whole idea of being an Explorer is a fascinating one because on the one hand, it’s sort of why people got into the agency business in the first place. We’re naturally curious, we like to solve problems, we like to learn new things. We’re sort of wired that way, most of us anyway, in the agency business. But on the flip side of that, we have concerns like scope creep and efficiency. And so, we create these systems and processes to do parts of our work.

And sometimes, I think those systems and processes, while in theory are exactly what we need to have. They often squelch the explorer in us. So talk to us a little bit about how do you balance the business necessity of system and process and accountability in terms of budgets and scope work and scope creep and all of that. But how do we also, in our agencies, create this permission? Because I think sometimes our employees feel like they’re not allowed to explore because that might take two extra hours here or an hour here. So how do we create this spirit of exploration and yet still be profitable?

Chris Aarons:

So, a great question. So first and foremost, I think that you can’t be a slave to your systems, period, full stop. So if you have these systems, and one of my favorite examples, because when we started talking about this podcast, it just popped in my head, I don’t know how many times that I’ve been on the client side or I’ve been on the agency side and they’ve had a digital advertising web agency come in and say, “We’re going to redo your website.” And they come up with three examples; the one they want you to choose, the one they think is kind of close to give you a couple of ideas, and the really ugly one to push you towards the original one. And I’ve seen that so many times and I’m not even a client that often, but I’ve seen it as another agency in the mix here.

And so, when you start down that road, I think you really have locked yourself into the non-explorer mentality. And the explorer mindset or mentality is we’re going to go in and figure out what really needs to be done. Again, I’m going to go back to it, it’s challenges and drivers. What are the challenges that the client has that are unique to them? In the book, we talk a lot about DNA and what it takes… Every one of us, every company has its own DNA. Every individual has their own DNA. And with companies, the DNA is marginally what they are. We’ve talked about and we’ve seen companies dramatically change their DNA, like with Netflix. But in general, the company’s DNA is kind of consistent. It’s going to evolve and maybe become revolutionary over time.

So you got to look at that and say, “Okay, what does this client really need? What does their customer really need? What can I do to push that envelope?” And I would say nine times out of 10, we get what we want. And then that 10th time, when the client pulls back and says, “That’s just not what we want.” I don’t think I want to work for that client.

And so, going back to your original question, which was how do we deal with scope creep, well, if you don’t have scope creep baked into everything you do, then you are just literally living on a razor’s edge and you can’t explore. You said it best, how can I donate two hours to this cause, to get something miraculous, if I’m line item then time sheeted to death, to the last 15 minutes or five minutes, whatever it is. So you have to have scope creep in there.

And so, what we tend to do is we build projects on what we think it’s going to cost, knowing the core value that we’re providing and the core amount of hours it’s going to take. We don’t do time sheets. No agency that I’ve owned has ever done time sheets, because I have seen from Shandwick days and from others, that 20%, 30% of the time, that just calculating that is a nightmare. And then, you have to go back for the AP people. So we really do a X price for a deliverable or for a project. And then, you go in, starting with a great mindset. “Okay, I understand what it is the client has asked me. Now, I want to talk to their internal teams. I want to talk to their customers. I want to really find out what needs to take. Yeah, it’s probably going to make me a little bit more expensive than the other guys who were pitching, who aren’t going to do that,” but you’re going to learn so much more, you’re going to be more valuable and your solution’s going to be better.

And also, if somebody’s willing to nickel and dime you for say $10,000, $20,000 or $30,000, then maybe your model should be just knocking stuff out because there’s still a market for that and there always will be a market for that. But the agencies I’ve worked at, have tried to deliver real value that transforms the business because of our partnership. And that’s what I can see agencies, yours, mine, all the people who are listening can really do, is if you have this great knowledge inside of you, think of all the clients that we’ve all worked for, think of all the solutions, think of all the amazing things we’ve done, that’s what we can do. And I think that’s how you get around the scope creep idea, or this lack of mindset.

You go into this, and we’re going to learn so much, and have a good idea of what the solution is probably going to be. And then, we’re going to just turn it to 11, turn it to 15, whatever it happens to be, because of this new knowledge we’re bringing in.

Drew McLellan:

So for you, when you were going to the client and you were talking about this, and you knew you were going to come in at a higher budget point than perhaps… If you’re in a competitive situation, how did you tee that up for a client so that they understood that your $50,000 versus somebody else’s $35,000, that they understood the value difference between that so that they weren’t only making a decision based on price?

Chris Aarons:

Well, it again goes back to that original proposal. I mean, we’re going to tell you that we’re going to talk to your clients. We’re going to identify other things that need to be done. We’re going to show you how you’re going to best… Using my messaging example, take you beyond just giving you a Word doc or PowerPoint doc and say we’re done. So that’s one way.

But secondly, is that if you do this consistently, you can show your clients and prospective clients what people just like them, because that’s the number one thing they want to see, have gotten from the work. I mean, either they bring a project for a company here in Austin, where I’m located, and it would have been real easy for us to do just the branding, right?

Drew McLellan:

Right.

Chris Aarons:

Just give them the messaging and all of that. But we did a website mock up. We did infographics. We did sample content. So we call it, incubating the content we know they’re going to need. And the executive team and the CEO saw this stuff. He was like, “This is amazing. This is exactly what I want because we’re a different company with a different value proposition that has technology that nobody else has. And I want to show it and communicate it in this way and get people internally and externally excited about it.” So we did all of that stuff in what would typically be a branding thing because it really didn’t take that much more time to do it, than just doing the standard. And he wanted it because he knew he needed it. And then the amazing thing, going back to the website and all that stuff, we mocked up a website for him. He’s like, “This is amazing. It looks different. I love the way you guys kind of envisioned showing my clients and my customers my products.”

He takes it to a very well-known web design firm in Northern California. And they come back with the same standard three website cookie-cutter, that has a logo plastered on the top. And he’s like, “Guys, I don’t want this.” So we got another consulting gig to work with them, to talk to them how they can take what’s in our mind, that he loved, and transform it into what he wanted. Because they just would not get around their non-explorer mentality, their whopping cookie-cutter approach. And I know it’s easy for them to do it, that they could have probably charged him a lot more upfront instead of giving that money to us, if they really just embraced what he had.

And so again, you go in eyes wide open, looking on how you’re going to transform the business, do something. I mean, I want every one of my projects to be worthy of winning an award, being showcased, be something that I’m so proud of. I want to put it on LinkedIn and everywhere else and have people share it because they’re so amazed by it. That’s why I go into every project doing it. It doesn’t always happen, sometimes you’re just a little more pedestrian. Sometimes the client gets in the way. Sometimes you don’t give them something that’s just all that great. But that’s the goal and I’m never going to stop pulling back from that goal.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. So I’m thinking about you talking about how every organization has its own DNA. And I know in the book you talk a lot about this idea that we have to really start thinking about sort of this digital first DNA and that a lot of organizations weren’t born in the digital age. They have traditional DNA and they’re trying desperately to sort of shift. So talk to us a little bit about sort of your vision of how that happens and how a business owner, an agency owner can accelerate that shift.

Chris Aarons:

So let me just give you some statistics from the research to kind of bring the conversation that we did for the book. Virtually every organization of any size is going through some sort of digital transformation. Our research says about 88% and growing. Unfortunately, only about 16% or one in six are actually seeing true economic returns from all of this time and energy spent on this digital transformation. The really interesting thing is that about 40% of these organizations have slowed down or abandoned their digital transformations because they don’t see that result.

Drew McLellan:

Interesting.

Chris Aarons:

The thing that gets me really kind of, and this should hit the nail on the head for so many of the agency executives and others that listen this podcast, is that 32% do exactly the same thing as the one in six or 16% that are knocking it out of the ballpark, but get far less results. And if you think about that, that’s where the DNA model came from, in our mind is that one little chromosome here and there, one little change in the DNA between two different species or two different individuals makes a huge difference. So when you see 32% doing virtually the same thing as the 16% and getting really bad results, nothing close to the 16%, you see how you have to have everything work in concert, you see how everything has to flow and be part of a greater effort.

And so, that’s what it looked like to us. And that’s why we came up with the term digital helix, because everything works in concert. If you see things and connect things and there are no silos. Again, going back to my messaging, where we started doing websites and branding and direct and all this other stuff, you see how you have to help some of the clients get over themselves and get over their own internal inertia.

I, one time, had a client say to me, and it was kind of a snotty comment at the time, but he said, “Do you think you’ll ever know my business as well as I do?” And this is a question I think that has probably either been posed to most agency leads or has been subtly kind of insinuated, right?

Drew McLellan:

Absolutely.

Chris Aarons:

And so, he said that, and I thought for a second, I said, “No, there’s no way I’m going to know your business as well as you do because you live there day in and day out. And in some cases, 18 hours a day. You’re taking emails and phone calls and looking at websites and data from internal. There’s no way I can keep up with that. But I can know your industry better. I can certainly know your customers better. I can do the third party perspectives that can help you get around being bogged down in the day-to-day, to elevate you to where you need to go, not to where you’re just going to naturally kind of find yourself.” And that can really… Lighthouse moment, where it’s like, “Okay, it’s not about knowing the business. It’s about getting the message out there.” And that’s one of the things we talk about in the book.

It’s about your signal to noise ratio. If you live internal in an organization, your noise ratio is incredible because you’re digesting everything. If you’re on the agency side, you can balance that by having a much better signal ratio. And lowering the noise by just focusing on, okay, here’s what your customers are telling you. Choose what your internal sales team is telling you. I’ve taken all the stuff together, and now I see a picture where I can start morphing your DNA to where you can take advantage of this stuff, as opposed to just doing what somebody asks for or the next logical thing, which may not be logical at all. It just seems to be the next logical thing to you. Does that make sense?

Drew McLellan:

It does. So I want to take a quick break, but when we come back… So I’m going to give you a second to think about this. When we come back, I’m hoping that you have an example where you can sort of walk us through a sort of pre-digital DNA and the evolution. So we can see what that looks like. And walk us through sort of the steps or the thought process or the danger zones of doing that.

Because a lot of the listeners, their agency is 50 years old or 30 years old. And their clients, obviously, are demanding all of this digital prowess and expertise. And so, there are some agencies that are really struggling with how to make this transformation to, rather than sort of cobbling together digital resources or tools or whatever. It’s not baked into who they are and they know that it needs to be. So I would love an example of that, when we come back from this quick break.

If you’ve been enjoying the podcasts and you find that you’re nodding your head and taking some notes and maybe even taking some action based on some of the things we talk about, you might be interested in doing a deeper dive. One of the options you have is the AMI remote coaching. So that’s a monthly phone call with homework in between. We start off by setting some goals and prioritizing those goals. And we just work together to get through them. It’s a little bit of coaching. It’s a little bit of best practice, teaching and sharing. It’s a little bit of cheerleading sometimes. On occasion, you’re going to feel our boot on your rear end. Whatever it takes to help you make sure that you hit the goals that you set. If you would like more information about that, check out agencymanagementinstitute.com/coaching.

Okay, let’s get back to the show. All right, we are back with Chris Aarons. And we are talking about digital DNA of our agencies and by extension, the digital DNA of our clients. Because I think if we can wrap our head around this, and especially if, depending on where you are on the spectrum now, if we can sort of master it in our own shop, it becomes something as we sort of put on more of that consultant hat that Chris was talking about earlier in the conversation. It’s something that we can talk to our clients about and be helpful in that space as well.

So Chris, before the break I had said to you, it’d be great if you could give us an example of an organization that has made the transformation so we can sort of see it and you can sort of point out some of the hot spots or places to think about, that would be great.

Chris Aarons:

Okay. So I think the best way to look at this is that first of all, digital transformation is not a technology problem, okay? I know that’s going to shock a few people who may be listening, that the technology is ubiquitous. It’s largely very reasonable. Nine times out of 10, your clients have so much of it. They don’t know what to do with it, and they just keep adding more of it. So it’s not a technology problem. It’s really a mindset problem. And it’s what we call a theme and stream problem.

It’s the use of information and the streamings of data that come in that are what are valuable. And like I said, most of the agency leads that are listening to your podcast, we live on data. We love data, right? And the clients are giving it to us, we’re generating it ourselves. And so, it’s really about understanding that data and getting to insight for what we can do with that data, based on whatever model your agency happens to kind of have at it’s core.

So I think the big thing that most clients, and we talked about it earlier, before the break, the 16% that get it right, they have a mindset that really looks at, “How am I going to do things digitally? How am I going to get things done with the data, the technology, the insights that I can pull off the web, off my clients, from other departments and bring it all together?”

And then, one of the big things that we talk about, and I think this is going to be very relative to the listeners, is that we really believe that marketing and communications is a flow. It’s a constant ebbing and flowing. I remember early in my career, that we used to get really excited for big product launches. Hell, I launched DVD technology with Philips in the early ’90s. And we spent months and months and months getting ready for this DVD launch, and all of this stuff. Launches don’t happen like that anymore. I mean, we all know that. Things come out in daily increments, weekly increments or hourly increments, social and web and digital. So marketing and communications is a constant flow.

And one of the things that ties in with that, which again, is in the book, is that the sails are connected moments. The notion of journeys, while very cute, very ideal is great. But it really doesn’t do what it needs to do because customers don’t buy in journeys. We don’t call it a… If you’re buying a car, you’re buying its… We don’t follow a nice little yellow brick road path to buying that car. You get a bit of information off the web, you get something in an email, you see something in the news. You have-

Drew McLellan:

It’s more of [crosstalk 00:32:04] era of threads, right?

Chris Aarons:

Well, it’s points. It’s [inaudible 00:32:08] points that come together as you build what you need to make your decision, right?

Drew McLellan:

Right.

Chris Aarons:

And it involves social, friends, clients or business or brand content, and all of this stuff. And you can do it in a ADFDR thing, and I may do it in ABC, and somebody else may do it in 32 other different combinations. And so, when you look at those, that’s what clients struggle with, is they want nice and neat and orderly. And most of their systems are designed to kind of sit by the impact, so it works for them and they can put the check mark on their quarterly goals.

Well, that’s great for them, but as an agency, you can come in and say, “Okay, listen, you keep the train going down that path, but I can look at some of this other stuff and I can figure out how we can maybe look at what customers are asking for.” Because the biggest thing I think that agencies should be doing is not helping solve the problem in front of them, but helping identify the problem that’s coming next.

Drew McLellan:

Interesting.

Chris Aarons:

We talked about Netflix and how they have really done a wonderful job of taking a busted, dying industry and turning it into an entire digital industry, which is amazing.

And you can look at all of the businesses, like Sears. I love Sears because when I’m teaching or when I’m talking and I’m lecturing and speaking, it’s like the perfect… Because Sears should have been Amazon. Sears had everybody’s address. I think at one point in time, they had 87% of the addresses in America. They were selling everything. They should have been Amazon, but they missed so many of the themes, so many of the streams. They didn’t see the moment. And you can go through the decades, how they miss, miss, miss, until now. I’m just wondering when the one next to me is going to close. It’s not a question of if, it’s a question of when.

And so, agencies should be being there, trying to figure out what is next, what is around, because that’s where the money’s going to be. That’s where they’re going to need a partner that’s really not going to send out an RFP or RFQ. That’s where you can kind of embed yourself. And so to me, one of the things that every agency really should do is think about this, and this is something that I have thought of many times, I remind myself, is that the best agencies in the world, which I hope to be part of in every time I do something, get better over time. Your worst day as an agency should be your first day on the job, because you don’t know what you don’t know, and you don’t have access to all the data the client’s going to give you and all the customer insights that you’re going to be able [inaudible 00:34:42]. So you should get better incrementally and then exponentially over time.

And I think that most agencies wound up doing the opposite, certainly many of the ones I’ve worked at. And certainly many of the ones I’ve seen, actually degrade because they get comfortable. They start doing the ABC, what’s next. And they don’t show the client what is coming around the corner, which I think is where the huge value, the huge POs are to be found.

Drew McLellan:

So this gets back to the story you told earlier about the client who said to you, “Will you know my business better than I do?” And it gets back to the idea of while we can’t know our client’s business better than they do, one of the places where we really can know more, because we have an objectivity that the client can never have, is to really understand the customer and where the customer is at and where they want to go and what they need to get from where they’re at, to where they want to go. And I think that’s part of what you’re talking about, is having that ongoing conversation literally and figuratively. So you’re literally talking to their customers, but you’re also looking at the data points and all of that, to be able to project what they need and what they’re going to need in the next iteration of the product or service. So it’s not just, “What do they need to buy the car today? But what’s the car that they need in 2025?”

Chris Aarons:

Yeah. And let me give you a story. I don’t know if it will be on the site, but one of the things that I’m probably best known for, aside from the book, which is doing very well thankfully, is this thing called 31 Days of the Dragon, which I did for Hewlett Packard. And I think it was 2009. And I started a social media group within AMD in 2008, when social media and Twitter wasn’t even around in 2008, in case your listeners don’t realize how far back that is in the grand scope of digital time.

And I was hired at AMD to be a partner guy, to work with partners like Microsoft and VMware and people like that, to basically get press releases written and kind of co-promote our product in a very boring pedestrian style. But one of the things I realized was that technology, and AMD had used them on the gaming side, but never really on the business side. And I happened to come across them in a program you did with Microsoft. And all of a sudden, I had this aha moment that these guys and girls really understood this technology far better than many of the journalists, because they loved it. They didn’t do it for a paycheck. They did it because it was their passion.

And we just couldn’t get them on board to talk and say the things that needed to be said about the AMD products and technology, that would take years and months, and maybe not even happen in the traditional media setting. So I completely pivoted and turned my one man desk into a social media group. And I only stayed there a year, but the day I left, I had the largest single line item for any marketing program within AMD, including PR and a lot of the other kind of stuff outside of advertising, again, ours was still larger.

But I think my budget was around $3.4 million when I left, for the partner guy. That’s because everybody’s-

Drew McLellan:

In…

Chris Aarons:

Go ahead.

Drew McLellan:

Is that in ’08? I mean, we’re talking 10 years ago. That’s what it was.

Chris Aarons:

Yeah. And that’s when AMD had, of course, that kind of money, but that was one of those things that people saw the value. And then it wasn’t just saying, “Listen, these guys and girls can [inaudible 00:38:22].” These individuals create content. And this is before content marketing. They create content that can go on sale stacks. They create content that can go on websites. They create content that go on an event. So now, let’s take what they’re doing, and let’s blow it up. Let’s just push it out everywhere, because people don’t really care so much where it’s coming from, as they care about the message and there is credibility from the source. And these individuals were as credible as credible be, because these were people who lived and breathed on the razor’s edge of technology.

And we were fighting Intel at the time, which I’m sure many of your listeners probably knew. So we had to be more creative. We had to be more Google-alike in our tactics because we didn’t have the budget that Intel had. So HP was one of my partners. And the woman at HP had come to me many times and she just loved it. And finally, I said, “I’m going to leave. I’m going to start my own social agency,” because it just seemed like the right time. And I loved it so much. And I didn’t want to keep kind of going back to the partner stuff and divorcing myself from the social stuff. Because I had to do both. So I’m just going to do the social stuff.

So one of the first things we did for HP is that they have this $5,000, 21 inch laptop, and let that sink in for a second.

Drew McLellan:

Wow.

Chris Aarons:

And they couldn’t sell them.

Drew McLellan:

Shocker.

Chris Aarons:

Yeah, shock. But this goes back to the drivers and challenges. The challenge is they couldn’t sell it. But the first thing we thought, “Well, let’s cut the price. Let’s do a slick advertising campaign.” But I asked some of the influencers I talking to about this and we were talking about computers all the time, just kind of engaging with the buyers and influencers. And it struck me that the reason people didn’t buy it is not because it wasn’t a great product or that it was too expensive, it’s they didn’t have a concept of what you could do with it and why having a $5,000, 21 inch laptop was really the most impressive thing on the planet.

So I have this idea, when the woman at HP called me. And I said, “Hey, what we could do is we could basically get all of the influencers to give one away because frankly, you got more than you know what to do with it, because you can’t sell them. And we’ll do it over 31 days. And we’ll have each one of the influencers promote each other.” Again, this was in ’09. So this is commonplace today, but this was nowhere back then. And they did it. We got, I think the number was like 30, 50, 60 million views. There were YouTube videos. There were posts in mainstream media.

And of course, HP sold out of these units at full retail price. They did not have to discount the price. So that’s because I saw where we had to go.

Drew McLellan:

Before influencer marketing was a thing, you were doing influencer marketing?

Chris Aarons:

Yeah. Well, I would say it was early stages, because certainly the folks at Microsoft would say they were doing it for quite some time. But I saw how it could be more broadly applied. And as there’s a kicker to the story that I want to give you and your listeners, is that HP sells out, we get renewed for a whole bunch of other stuff at HP, they’re thrilled with it. We won tons of awards for this thing. Everybody who’s seen it just thinks it’s just absolutely amazing, which I can’t thank people enough for, because that’s really gratifying. But Toshiba had a copycat product and Toshiba tried to do the exact same thing, except they missed the DNA.

Just like we talked about with the digital transformation in the earlier segment, they missed some of the DNA pieces, where I had a truly organic influencer model, where these individuals were promoting each other and talking about it, they did a paid for media within Gadget, I think it was. And it bombed. I think they had like 10,000 page views the day they gave it away, which even back in ’09, that’s abysmal. That’s like fireable offense. And it’s because they didn’t understand it.

And so, I saw this and I was gratified, but it took another swing when I went to a word of mouth marketing association and I had been given the awards for the campaign of the year. And one of the guys from DuPont said, “I tried this thing. And I think the program is bogus. I don’t think it works.” And I said, “Well, no, it absolutely works. We did it and I have the data to prove it. HP has the data to prove it. Tell me what you did.” And he told me, and what he told me was that he missed some of the genuine natural attributes of it. And he didn’t do it. He shortcut some of the things that were required for our success. And when I walked him through it, he was like, “Oh, crap. Now I get it. Now I see what it is.” Because he thought it was either a BS program, which it wasn’t, or because he was trying to… Like it was non-stick cookware, that it didn’t work for something like non-stick cookware.

And so, really what it takes, you’re interested in cases out there and anything, but really what it takes is you have to connect every dot. Everything is connected, everything. And so, you can’t shortcut, you can’t do cookie thing. And the virtue and the strength of 31 Days of the Dragon, we got contacted by Kraft Foods to do something they want. And we were going to do something that was really social and wonderful and wonderfully engaging and get people sharing recipes where they want and talking about it. And we had this really great campaign and we lost it. We lost it to another agency who did a cookie-cutter social media campaign, broke my heart. Because I saw what they did, because it came out like three months after we pitched, and it was awful and the results were awful. But the client, clearly in our conversations, just wanted the check mark for doing social media.

And if that’s your end goal, then that’s not my end goal. And maybe we’re not good agency partners for you. And so, it’s okay that we didn’t get that.

Drew McLellan:

And this idea of everything being connected, I think as technology and the channels and everything sort of gets sort of morphed together more and more so, I think we’re seeing that every day, that it used to be you bought, back in the day, at least when I started in the business, you would buy media and you would flight it. Sometimes you’d run the radio so it was over the TV. And that was what we thought interactive. Everything being connected was that we would hit them on multiple channels. But today, everything literally is connected. And so, I think one of the challenges for agencies is to anticipate all of the places where the work matters and the work connects and how they can amplify some of those points to really propel a project or a campaign, like you did with the dragon, right?

Chris Aarons:

Well, Drew, I’m going to make it easier for you and for the listeners, you don’t have to be everywhere. That’s the whole point about moments. You can’t be everywhere. Visual has this wonderful feeling that you can be everywhere all the time, 24/7. But what you really need to understand is where the client’s moments matter.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah, absolutely.

Chris Aarons:

And that company in San Francisco that we did the messaging project for, we interviewed their customers, we interviewed their sales teams. And when we identified, I think it was 12 or 15 moments that the client’s made critical decisions about their types of technology. Once we identified those 15, 12 types scenarios when they were transferring, or they were transitioning to this, or they had added a complimentary software package or something like that, very concrete thing. Then we were able to say, “Okay, now we need content for those very specific scenarios. We need to have our sales people trained to look for and handle those. We to then keep looking for additional ones, because I don’t think we got them all. And maybe some of these are going to be far more important, and others not so.” So it really comes down to getting that right collection of moments from the customers and from the internal resources, which again, most clients don’t have the time.

We have a client right now that when we get on a phone call with her, and she is reading our stuff minutes before we get on the phone call because she’s so over-scheduled. She has no ability to get ahead.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah, I don’t think that’s uncommon.

Chris Aarons:

No, it’s not.

Drew McLellan:

They have no time to actually think and connect dots.

Chris Aarons:

No, they just react. There’s so many things to react to, executives, other leaders, market trends, competitors. So what we did is we get ahead of that. And again, if you’re one step ahead, always for your client, you are the most valuable person in any room you’re in. You’re the most valuable partner in anyone. You’re not a vendor. The worst thing an agent can be to a client is a vendor.

Drew McLellan:

Absolutely.

Chris Aarons:

Unless you’re one of these agencies that’s just a machine. Those are great for you guys. And there’s nothing wrong with that. And like I said, that world will go on forever. But for the type of works that my agencies have done and for what my clients usually hire us for, we need to be one step ahead always, and that’s where we become their partner. A true partner, not just “partner”.

Drew McLellan:

Well, on that, we do a lot of research before we talk to CMOs. And one of the things that they tell us over and over again is they want their agency partner or their agency team, in essence, to make them look smart, to help them stay ahead. So that when they walk into that next meeting, they can say, “Oh, by the way, we’re exploring this or that,” which they had just heard about five minutes ago in your weekly status call. But it’s our job to help them look smart and stay ahead of the game.

Chris Aarons:

And I’m going to go back to one of your previous questions, Drew, where you said, how do we get this extra two hours in scope creep? If you don’t bake that in, you’re not going to be able to be that lighthouse, that oracle of genius, of insight that your clients want and need you for, to keep them ahead. And whether you’re talking to a marketing manager, VP of marketing, all the way up to even the senior level, or CEO at the very top, or even board members who we discuss these things with, you want to make sure that they are being pushed. They have great ideas and insights to explain the business.

But every time you work with a client, that’s another way that you can bring something different. And just again, going back into their customers and looking at the moment that are happening internally and seeing what the drivers and challenges are, and helping them solve those challenges based on what’s driving it, is where agencies can really win with consultative model.

Drew McLellan:

I agree. That seems like a great place to stop. Chris, this has been awesome. Thank you so much for sharing your expertise and your experience. I know that everybody is, if they’re not driving while they’re listening, they probably have already gone to Amazon and bought the book. So I’m sure you’re going to have a bunch more people who are keeping track of the work that you do. If folks want to follow up with you, if they want to learn more about the work that you do, is there a place where they can go to get connected to you?

Chris Aarons:

Sure. So our consulting company is Inc.Digital. And of course I’m on LinkedIn; Chris Aarons. Just search it, there’s not too many Chris Aarons in the world. So I’m using it fine. But the work that I spoke about is all on LinkedIn and on SlideShare as well. We have all 31 Days of the Dragon [inaudible 00:50:34], that won the Word of Mouth Award [inaudible 00:50:38], but those are two good places to look.

Drew McLellan:

Awesome. Thank you so much for your time. I appreciate very much you sharing your wisdom with our audience and hopefully inspiring them to really reinvigorate the idea of being an explorer inside their agency. And that can really be not only a game changer for their agency, but they really can change the trajectory of their client’s business, which obviously is good for the agency, but it’s also sort of good for our soul. It’s why we got into the business in the first place. So there’s no reason for that not to be a part of the DNA of your agency. So I appreciate that reminder and that nudge for all of us. So thank you.

Chris Aarons:

Thank you. It was a real pleasure.

Drew McLellan:

Okay, guys, this wraps up another episode. As always super open and excited to hear from you. If you have comments or thoughts about this episode, I’d love to hear them. Make sure you go track Chris down and learn more about his work. Certainly a body of work that we can all aspire to, and that can learn a lot from, no matter what kind of an agency you’re running today. I’ll be back next week with another episode and another guest. In the meantime, super grateful for reviews, ratings, emails at [email protected]. Really love your input and feedback. It really does shape how we source guests, who we want to talk to next, the topics that we cover. So your voice is super important and I am grateful to hear from you in any way, shape or form. So with that, I will be back next week. Talk to you soon.

Believe it or not, that wraps up another episode of Build A Better Agency. Man, the time goes by quick. Love sharing this content with you, and I love spending the time with you. So thanks so much for listening and sticking all the way to the very end. And for those of you that did stick around to the end, I’ve got a special new twist for you. So many of our podcast guests have books or other things that really expand upon the information and knowledge that they share with us during the podcast. And so, we’ve reached out to them and we’ve asked them if they would like to give away some of their books or whatever classes, whatever it may be. And we’re going to throw some AMI things in there as well. We’re going to have some AMI swag and we’re going to actually give away some workshops.

So all you have to do to be in all of the drawings, you only have to do this once, is go to agencymanagementinstitute.com/podcastgiveaway. So again, agencymanagementinstitute.com/podcastgiveaway. Give us your email address and your mailing address. And every week you will be eligible for whatever drawing we’re doing. And we’re going to change it up every week. So we’re going to have a lot of variety and we will pop an email to you if you are the lucky winner. You can also go back to that page and see who won last week and what they won. So you can see what you’re in the run for. So if you have any questions about that or anything agency related, you know you can reach me at [email protected] and I will talk to you next week. Thanks.

Speaker 1:

That’s all for this episode of AMI’s Built a Better Agency, brought to you by HubSpot. Be sure to visit agencymanagementinstitute.com to learn more about our workshops, online courses, and other ways we serve small to mid-sized agencies. Don’t miss an episode, as we help you build the agency you’ve always dreamed of owning.