Tapping into non-obvious thinking and thought leadership in 2025 with Rohit Bhargava

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Running an agency can be a lonely proposition, but it doesn’t have to be. We can learn how to be better faster if we learn together. Welcome to Agency Management Institute’s Build a Better Agency Podcast presented by White Label IQ. Tune in every week for insights on how small to mid-size agencies are surviving and thriving in today’s market with 25 plus years of experience as both an agency owner and agency consultant, please welcome your host, Drew McLellan.

Hey everybody. Drew McLellan here with another episode of Build a Better Agency. Greetings from Agency Management Institute headquarters. Super excited to be kicking off 2025 with you and cannot think of a better guest to sort of start the trend in 2025. So Rohit Bava is a repeat guest. He all of, you’re probably very familiar with him, he’s a trend watcher, he’s a thought leader. His whole sort of brand is around non-obvious. He talks a lot about non-obvious things and how to be a non-obvious thinker, a non obvi, a non-obvious observer.

He’s been on the podcast before, he’s spoken at some of our peer groups. He’s just a really interesting guy. Comes from an agency background, understands our world really, really well. But it sort of made this shift into being sort of a life observer and a translator of what he sees into what it means for businesses or communities for families. He’s fascinating, always fascinating to talk to. Got a brand new book out and he is here to talk to us a little bit about that book and just the whole idea of what he sees coming up trend-wise in 2025 and what we need to be watching for.

So without further ado, let’s welcome him to the show. Welcome back to the podcast. It’s good to have you back.

Oh, thank you. Thanks for the invite. I’m always lucky to talk to you.

And Happy New Year. We’re recording this right before the turn of the new year. So let’s talk a little bit about sort of how you’re coming out of 24 and what you’re thinking about is you approach 25, you have such an interesting insight in that you are one of us. You, you understand agency life being a creative professional, and a lot of your clients are working with agencies. So you kind of can give us sort of both sides of that. So what’s on your mind as, as you go into the first quarter of 25 that you think should be on our minds as well?

Yeah, I’m, I’m, I think quite fortunate in terms of being able to see the perspective that a lot of our clients have in a way that I don’t think I was able to when I was in the agency world because Right. They didn’t always tell me. Right,

Right.

Yeah. They had other agencies, I mean, I was at big agencies, right? So any, anytime I was in a situation where I was working with a client, they probably had other agencies for sure. I mean, I remember there was one time when we had inter-agency meetings and they were literally 14 agencies Yeah. All working on different things. So like, that was pretty common. Right.

Well, and as you know, that’s trickled down to even small agencies. It’s very rare for an agency of any size today to have the whole pota pie. Right. It’s, it’s everybody’s sharing the client with somebody.

Yeah. And I remember, I mean, I remember my perspective as a big agency guy, which was all these small niche agencies doing these things, and we felt like we could do them. Yeah. But then I also remember having some pretty awesome conversations with some of the other agency team members over drinks late at night where they had the opposite perspective, which was that, you know, we’re only being brought in for this one small thing we can do, but we could do a lot more. Right. And so everyone had this perspective that like yeah. We’re being put into a box of what we’re known for or what the client thinks we’re good at, or what the client has typically hired us for. Yeah. And not being appreciated for all of the other things we can do. And I, that carried with me.

Like, I really remember that feeling, whether I was at the big agency feeling that, or whether I was talking to people in much smaller agencies who are also feeling the same thing. Yeah,

Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think you’re right. I think it’s a universal feeling of we could have more, we could do more, but we’ve been, we’ve been put in this lane and they don’t see that we’re capable of being more than the e-commerce agency or the SEO agency or fill in the blank. Right. Of what, whatever it is. So now, now that you’re out of it, how does it look different to you?

Now that I’m out of it, I see the mistakes I made and I see the mistakes that other agency team members make often as well, which is that, you know, there’s a couple of them. So the first one is that we are known for something and we’re really good at that. But the metrics for how we describe being successful at it are meaningless to the client. Yeah. So we talk about being really great at something, and we talk about the metrics identified with being great at that one thing, but we don’t actually tie it to all the other things that the client is trying to do. We don’t tie it to the work that’s happening either in-house or at another agency. And so it’s like we’ve created this little island where we’re super successful on our own island.

Yeah. But not necessarily very successful because we haven’t tied our impact to anyone else. We haven’t tied it to the more holistic thing that the client’s trying to do. And so therefore, we’ve reinforced the idea that we belong in the box that we’re in.

Well, and we also are not giving the client the ammunition they have to defend hiring us when, if and when that gets questioned. Right. Because they can’t tie it back to the KPIs they’re being held accountable to.

Right. Or, you know, even worse, we’re being measured on the wrong KPIs. Right. Right. Right. I mean, the classic example is the car dealership. Right? I mean, the marketing and advertising is meant to drive people into the color car dealership. When you get there, the salespeople are supposed to sell the car. Right. If you got twice the number of people walking into the dealership and you didn’t sell more cars, that means your marketing’s working and your sales isn’t. But we take that and say, oh, the marketing must not be working. ’cause we spent all this money on marketing and we didn’t actually sell any more cars, even though you got twice as many people into the dealership. Right. So the smart marketing person, the smart marketing agency would say, Hey, wait a second, you didn’t sell more cars. That’s actually not on us. We got twice as many people to come to your dealership to consider your car.

Right. That’s on us, and we’re, we’re doing it. So you need to fix something else.

Well, and maybe we can help you fix something else if we go, if we look at it together. Right. But at least Right. We’re identifying the real problem.

Yeah. And I think that that’s the way that we want to think of ourselves. We wanna think of ourselves as partners. Right. How often do we say that when we’re pitching for new business, we’re partner? Right. We’re we, we never, I mean, I’ve never seen an agency ever pitch to be your order taker. Right. Or your

Vendor. Right. That’s

Not how we position ourselves, and that’s not how we think of ourselves. And yet when we do the work, are we basically the waiter who’s, you know, substituting the potatoes for the salad, but, you know, maybe suggesting the thing that the check recommends once in a while, but otherwise pretty much doing what they asked for.

Right? Yeah. And then we wonder why we’re not at the, at the table. Right. Yeah. For the big discussions and decisions. Yeah.

Yeah. And I think the big conversation you and I had before was, it’s really hard to be at the table and to be seen as a big thinker if you don’t have a perspective on the world.

Yeah.

Right? And the perspective can’t be just related to the client work that you’re doing. The perspective has to be a perspective based on actually thinking about what’s happening. Yeah. The trends that are out there, the culture shifts that are happening, the world that you’re trying to market into, where it’s more distracting, there’s more noise. What are the other things that people are potentially aying attention to instead of the work that you’re producing for your client? Right. And how do we showcase that we understand that world that we’re about to be promoting and, and telling stories into.

Yeah, that’s an interesting idea. The whole idea of having a perspective, having a point of view, and really building thought leadership around that point of view. So one of the things we were talking about before we hit the record button is content used to be sort of a, kind of a luxury. I mean, you did it when you had time, you had a blog, but today, boy, it is mission critical if you’re gonna stand out from the other agencies or other vendors, freelancers, ai, all the other tools out there and, and be seen as something more than be additive as opposed to just checking a box or, or filling an order.

Yeah. Look, I, one of the things that I only realized after I left the agency world was just how important it was to be top of mind. Yeah. All the time. Right. And by top of mind all the time. I mean, consistently publishing insights, stories, things that are interesting, videos, content, so that people are continually remembering that they liked my perspective, they liked what I, what I had to say. And in my business now, I mean, I don’t really do any agency stuff work. I don’t do any consulting anymore. I don’t do coaching. I sometimes will recommend people to do those things or partner with them, but I don’t do that myself. And I don’t have a team that does that. Right. I do a lot of keynote speaking, I do a lot of workshops.

And in my case, the more frequently they’re seeing my perspective, sometimes it’ll be years down the road and somebody will come to me and say, Hey, I’ve been reading your email newsletter for four years. Right. And my company’s having an offsite and I wanna bring in a speaker, and you were perfect for it. Yeah. And that sale is made over those four years when they’re consistently reading things that are making them smarter, they’re bringing it back to their boss and saying, Hey, look at what I found and taking credit for it, which I love. You know, I don’t need the credit for it. Right. Right. Take the credit for finding it. Right. And now years later, I’m top of mind for them. Right?

Yeah. Yeah. We, we often say, you know, sometimes it takes a day and sometimes it takes a decade. And the key is just to be there every day or every week or every month, depending on what you’re producing, so that when they’re ready, whenever that is, a day or a decade, you’re top of mind and you at least are in the consideration set.

Yeah. Yeah. And it feels like something that we should know. Right. But it’s also hard to do if you don’t like it. Right. And if you are not personally fulfilled by it, which is why sometimes when we do these pro bono jobs and our creative teams get to work on these things that they’re really proud of and they’re really passionate about, I mean, we select them because these are things that people will be passionate about. And so therefore they will produce their best thinking, they’ll do their best work. And the fact that they’re not necessarily getting paid for it is kind of irrelevant because it becomes a showcase that we use for other things. Right. But beyond that one specific case, we don’t do that often enough on an individual level.

Right. Well, I think a lot of agency owners struggle with it because they don’t, you know, as, as you know, because this is how you spend a vast majority of your time, but it takes a long, it takes a lot of time to have a perspective and to craft a message around that perspective. And then to be able to consistently lean on that perspective, to create content that creates a body of work that to your point, somebody goes, look, I’ve been reading you for three years and I’ve, I’ve applied a lot of the things that you’ve said, and now I’m finally ready to open my wallet and bring you into speak, or to hire you as an agency, or to at least have you come respond to the RFP or whatever it is.

That’s, that’s a, you have to have a long game vision for that.

Yeah. I mean, that you do have to have that long game vision. And so I can kind of hear anyone thinking in their head, well, if I haven’t been doing it so far, like how long do I have to sit there and do this for?

Right. Right, right.

But that’s not really the point. Like Yeah. Sometimes, I mean, the example I use, they’ve been following my stuff for four years and that was it. But I have just as many cases where somebody says, oh, I saw you give a keynote here, and I’m thinking about my own company’s thing a couple months from now. And like, your message was perfect.

Yeah.

Right. And it was literally one time, I mean, they didn’t know me before that one time when they saw me speak.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. A day or a decade. Yep. You gotta be ready for both. Talk a little bit about sort of how you approach, because I think it’s easy in today’s world. I think it’s air quotes, easy to make, to create content. I think it’s different to create thought leadership. How do you differentiate between the two? Right. I can, I can write a blog post about anything, but it doesn’t mean it’s thought leadership. Right? Yeah.

Well, I, I, I mean, me personally, I lean into the brand that I’ve created. Yeah. And the brand I’ve created is non-obvious. That’s the name for it, right? Yep. It’s a trademarked term in my case. And what it means to me is that I’m saying something that not everyone is saying. Right. And so that becomes my starting point for creating thought leadership. So anytime I’m seeing a story that’s going quote unquote viral for some reason, where everyone’s sharing the same perspective, I start to think, well, what could I say about this that would be not the same as everyone else?

Right?

Right. It would be a different point of view that would be looking at it from another angle so that maybe people reevaluate what their position is.

Yeah. Or, or at least understand that you think differently, which is part of the appeal of, of the brand that you’ve created. Right. That you’re not saying the same thing everybody else is saying. So even if they, even if they don’t agree with you, they still understand that your brand is about you seeing what others don’t see.

Yeah. Or even just sometimes asking the question. Right. Like, I, yeah, because I do this every week, like every week I’m looking for stories that I can feature in my newsletter that I consider to be non-obvious. Yep. So every week I’ve got this pressure to find at least five stories that are things people might not have seen. They’re not the biggest stories of the week or things that everybody’s talking about. They’re generally more nuanced, they’re different. And then I have the secondary challenge of saying, okay, this is the story, but now what’s my perspective on it? Yeah. And so sometimes, like there was a story that I wrote about of the Italian government that was outlawing the usage of other languages such as English in government documents, because they wanted to make sure to keep the Italian language alive.

Right. And, you know, my first reaction to that was, that’s totally neophobic. Like, you know, they don’t, like, that’s not gonna backfire, like banning the language in this case. You know, it’s, it’s the hallmark of, of somebody who’s thinking backwards instead of somebody who’s thinking forwards. That was my first reaction to it. But instead of sharing that reaction, I wrote about the story and said to my audience, what do you think? Could this actually save the Italian language? Or is it just a, you know, shortsighted idea. Yeah. And the feedback I got back just by posing it as a question, instead of saying, this is what I think was so much better and so much more, because some people were like, oh, thank goodness they’re doing this because this is the only way we can ever save any language.

And other people were like, such a backwards looking thing from a backwards looking place. And they were, you know, they had a very passionate perspective the other way. And so reading those pieces of feedback gave me more perspective than I would’ve had just coming up with it on my own.

Yeah. So, so where did you land?

I think it was a good idea, honestly. I think that we’re gonna have to do some of these things to keep particularly language alive because there’s so much temptation from people to just learn the language that would allow them to communicate with the most people.

Right, right. Yeah. Makes sense. So all, all of this, this whole idea of non-obvious, you’ve been talking about this, and this has been your brand for a long time, but you, your latest book is all about sort of how do we, your audience apply this non-obvious thinking? How do we sort of look at the world differently? Which at the end of the day, and we’ll after the break, we’ll talk a little bit about some of the things you’re hearing clients say about agencies and what they value. And I wanna talk, I wanna get your perspective on AI for sure. But one of the things I think that your book reminds us is, our job is to be a thinking partner for our clients and think on behalf of our clients and give them that outside perspective where we know enough about them, but we’re not inside the bottle.

So we can still read the label on the outside of the bottle. So talk a little bit about the book and, and sort of what you hope we take away from it.

Well, there’s, there’s a few things I think agency people will both love and identify with. And the first is that the book has a framework, right? Because we all have frameworks, right? Yep.

Right.

And, and the framework is an acronym. And oftentimes we have that too. So you can definitely see my agency side coming out. Yep. Right. In the sense of how the book was written. But the acronym that we used is sift, which itself is a word that means getting through the noise and figuring out what’s most meaningful. Right. Right. Sifting through the noise to get to what’s most meaningful. And what it stands for is creating space. That’s the s finding insights, which is the i having focus to pay attention to what really matters, which is the F. And then seeking the twist, which is the t And the book itself was really interesting to write because my inclination as a writer, and this was my 10th book, so you know, I’ve done this.

Yeah,

I was gonna say, you’ve done this a time or two, right?

Yeah, exactly. And I, and I own a book publishing company. Right. So I’m very much about like the process and how it works and how to do it. But in this case, the book style was really interesting because this is not a research book. This is how to do it book filled with short, easy to read chapters that bring to life exactly how to create more space or how to find your focus. And each chapter has six different short, sorry. Each section has six different chapters with short tips on how to actually do it. So we really went for the practical and try to write it for what I later started describing as people who don’t read business books.

So it’s illustrated, it’s got like hand drawn illustrations throughout the book. It’s less than half the length of some of my other books. So it’s very intentionally done. It’s a smaller format. So it’s very intentionally done in sort of way where you could pick it up quickly, flip through it on an airplane, give it to a client, and help them to just open their perspective a little bit. And by opening their perspective, maybe, you know, in agency language, open their wallets a little too to that new idea, that new thing that you want them to embrace. But they’re hesitating about.

We, you know, one of the things, as you know, we do research every year that we, the series is called the Agency Edge. And one of the things that we talk to, and we always talk to clients of agencies, one of the things we hear over and over and over again is what they’re hungry for is more ideas, bigger ideas, better ideas. Boy, when you courting us and trying to get our business, you had all these ideas, and now to your, what you said earlier, now you just kind of do what we ask you to do. And so one of the, one of the takeaways I had from the book was, this is a way for us to demonstrate that we are always thinking on behalf of our client. It’s not about selling them more stuff, it’s, it’s about giving them something interesting to chew on, which immediately reinforces the idea that we’re thinking about them as opposed to doing for them all the time.

Yeah. I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s partially that for sure. And I do think that there is this bias within agencies to give some people the title of creative and put it on their business card and have everyone else in the agency feel like, well, that’s not their job to

Be creative. Right, right.

Which kind of sucks. ’cause if you’re going and working in an agency, you probably think of yourself as somewhat creative,

Right. No matter what, what role in the agency you play for sure. Right?

Yeah. And, and to be kind of subtly told that that’s not your job through the omission of a term on your business card kind of sucks. Yeah. And I know because I was, that was me, right? Yeah. And I tell stories about that now and how like, I wanted to be creative, but I wasn’t a quote unquote creative. Right. But I think that that also applies to our clients. Like they don’t just want to outsource that creative side of themselves and have you come up with everything. Right. And we all know this in the way that we sell ideas, right? ’cause everyone knows one of the ways to sell the ideas, to have the client feel like they actually came up with it. Right? Right. It’s a basic principle. But at the same time, like what if we could get our clients to just be more open-minded creative thinkers, period.

And have them exist in that state where they were always thinking like that. I mean, that sounds like, you know, impossible, right? Depending on who your clients are. But to get them a little bit further along that way opens the door for everything else we wanna do. Yeah. And by the way, it creates a better, more trusting relationship between us and the client too, because we help them to get to the best version of themselves instead of feeling like they’re stuck because they’re sometimes feeling the same things. We are for sure, in terms of somebody says no to their ideas all the time. Nobody fund gives them the funding they need. They always are fighting an uphill battle. I mean, the things that we struggle with as agency people like our clients are struggling with oftentimes too.

Yeah. Yeah. I think you’re right. Well, and I think it just elevates your relationship, right? They’re not, they’re not, they’re not placed in the order. You’re not taking the order, but you’re actually having kind of deep, meaningful, interesting conversations and you become one of the better parts of their day because it is different and it’s energizing and it’s fresh and it gets them thinking about something in a way that they haven’t been thinking about it. So why wouldn’t they want more of that?

Yeah.

Yeah. And it, you know, as we’re gonna take a break, but here, this is the perfect sort of segue, is it also allows us to differentiate ourselves from all of the ways that our work is being commoditized. Whether it’s freelancers or AI or a mix of those two. So let’s take a quick break and then I would love to hear your perspective on the role of AI inside agencies and then some of the trends, some of the things you are thinking about as we look at 20, 25, 24 was kind of a crazy year. A lot of, a lot of anxiety and turmoil and I think good opportunities for folks. But I think everybody was hoping we would ease into 2025 and everything would be sort of smooth and easy.

So we’ll see if you think that’s the case. But let’s, let’s take a quick break and then we’ll come back and, and get your perspective on those things. Hey everybody, thanks for listening today. Before I go back to the interview, I just wanna remind you that we are always offering some really amazing workshops. And you can see the whole [email protected] on the navigation head to how we help scroll down. And you’ll see workshops and you can see the whole list there with descriptions of each workshop. They are all in Denver and we’ve got them throughout the year for agency owners, account execs, agency leaders, CFOs. We have a little something for everybody no matter what it is that you’re struggling with, people, new business, money, all of those things we’ve got covered.

So check ’em out and come join us. All right. Let’s get back to the show. All right. We are back. And we were just talking about sort of how do we bring this idea of the non-obvious thinking And we were talking about the framework, the sift framework. How do we use that to develop deeper relationships with clients by inviting them to think with us, by putting things on in front of them that maybe they had never considered? You know, I think sometimes as agency folks, we forget how burdened our clients are with meeting after meeting after meeting. And everything is so compressed for them. They don’t have that as that space to sort of allow themselves to think and to dream and to what if.

And if we can be an instigator to that, I think that immediately elevates our relationship. But let’s talk about that from the perspective of as you are talking to clients who are hiring agencies and working with agencies. And from your own perspective, where, where in the landscape do you think AI fits for agencies as we go into the new year and think about how we’re gonna are or aren’t going to lean on that inside our shops?

Yeah, a AI is an interesting one for me ’cause I’ve done a lot of experimentation with it and I’ve gone to a number of events looking at some pretty futuristic ways of using it that aren’t reality today, but will be at some point. Is it going to disrupt the way that we work and the way that we deliver the things that we deliver? Yeah. And it already is. And I think we’re all experiencing that to some degree.

Yep. The

Core value proposition though, of what we’re trying to sell, I think is going to be relatively unchanged by it. It’s going to be much more, at least in the short term, much more of a how we make the things we need to deliver. And it’s gonna be much more of a tool for us to optimize the way that we actually work and how we deliver what the client’s happy with than it is something that’s front facing to the client. It’s much more of a backend process game changer, I think, especially for agencies. So the value proposition for agencies, and look, I spent a lot of time thinking about this because before I left the, the big agency, I was leading a lot of global pitches. So I was doing a lot of pitches.

I was kind of a pitch guy. So I was always doing new business, partially because I was good at it and partially ’cause I actually liked it, which was unique in the yes agency world, right. People hate it. Right. Which I don’t get. I mean, you’re coming up with awesome creative ideas, right? You get to pitch them and then you don’t have to execute anything.

I was gonna say, then you don’t have to do anything. Right? That

Sounds like a dream gig to me. I don’t know why anybody would not like new business, but I guess that’s why I was, you know, in that role and other people weren’t whatever. But one of the things I’ve really learned there is what they’re actually buying is different from what they say they’re buying. And then I learned it again in a much different way because one of the first things I did the year after I left Ogilvy is I actually conducted a agency search on behalf of a brand. So I was a pitch consultant, basically. Yeah. Who went out and found a number of agencies to put onto our shortlist to respond to our RFPI did. I think agency people will appreciate this. I made sure that they had some compensation in the business model for the creative ideas that were coming up during the page.

So agencies actually got paid. Everybody

Wants to hear that

Got paid something, which I remember was always a sticking point for, for us and definitely for, for smaller agencies it was. But then I learned kind of why they were going through the agency search, what they were looking for, what they were influenced by. And, and the most fascinating thing to me was the reinforcing of something I kind of already knew, which was that what they were really buying on at a certain point, because you’re buying creative services from relatively equally talented people, right? Right. They may come up with a slightly different idea here or there, but once you get to a certain level, anybody who’s just not creative or has bad creative gets weeded out at some

Point.

Yep. So when you get to that final round of two, three agencies, whatever that last round is, it’s all about can they imagine spending day in, day out working with you and your team? Yep. What is the personal connection they have to you and your team and the way you treat them and the way that they relate to you and not just the pitch leaders on the team, the guys like me who are pitching, it’s the actual team. Right. For sure. For sure. That they’re going to be working with. Right. Who, you know, smart clients will demand to meet with some of those people. They won’t just hire based on what the pitch guy says. Right?

Right.

And so when you have that personal connection, like that’s when they feel like, okay, these guys are the partners. And then your challenge becomes to keep it over a long period of time, which is not a trivial thing to do.

Right. Yeah. I, I think we underestimate, well I think everybody knows, to your point, I think everyone knows that there is a lot of chemistry check in that final pitch. But the question is how do you, in such a structured, formal process, how do you actually demonstrate real chemistry and real connection? So what were some of the ways you saw agencies do that? Well,

Well you gotta remember, I mean, when we were pitching, like we would have a pitch team of, you know, 20, 25 people. I mean these were large pitches. Yeah. Some of the things that we did, I think any agency of any size could do one of them was that we made sure that the youngest, most inexperienced team members on the team were very well prepared to talk. Yeah. Not just to be there to put together the PowerPoint or to do stuff. And that was really important because one of the things that clients are going to look at is not just the most senior level members. Right. ’cause they’re pretty savvy. They know that, you know, based on billable hours and your rate and, and the number of other clients and everything else, you’re not gonna be working on their account all the time.

Right. You might be there for the strategy session and you know, a few things along the way and maybe like the monthly check in, but you’re not working on it day to day.

Right.

And so making sure that the younger people on your team are very well prepared to answer questions. They know exactly what their role’s going to be and that they’re impressive as team members is super important. Yeah. So that was one of the ways that we would demonstrate that. The other was in how we interacted with one another. I’ll never forget one of the, ’cause sometimes we would get feedback after a pitch for, you know, why we lost. And I’ll never remember. One of the pieces of feedback we got from one pitch that we did that I was part of was that they said you had the best creative by far, your stuff was amazing, but as we watched your team, we didn’t feel like you enjoyed working with each other.

We didn’t think we you liked each other.

Interesting.

And the dynamic in that pitch in particular was that we had brought, ’cause we were part of the, you know, the big holding company WPP. Right. So there were three agencies that were brought together for that pitch. And it wasn’t particularly transparent to the client. Right. We renamed ourselves something else. And it was like one of those pitches, right. Where it’s like, this

Is your team team and you probably didn’t know each other very well. Right.

Agency and this agency and you know, the PR agency and Yeah. And there was no team dynamic and we all kind of had come in late the night before and nobody got to know each other that well. And so it wasn’t really that we disliked each other. There was a little bit

Know each other of

Dislike, I think. Yeah. But it was just unfamiliarity. Yeah. And it came through in the pitch in a bad way.

Yeah. It isn’t it interesting that with all the sophistication and all of the complications of the work we do, it still boils down to the relationship. Yeah.

Yeah.

So

As, I mean, think about it from the client’s perspective, right? Right. They want great creative work, but they feel relatively good about being able to get that from a lot of different people.

That’s right. And, and again, to your point, when when they’re in the final round, they’re like, any one of these three agencies could do this work with some guidance and direction from us and getting to know us a little better. We’re confident that they could do good air quote good work.

Yeah. It’s just, you know, who’s gonna, who’s gonna not only be easier to work with, but who’s gonna make me look good? Like who and what is the potential that they are so difficult to work with then now it reflects badly on me. Right. And worst case scenario, I have to fire them after six months because they just couldn’t work with everybody. And worst, worst case scenario, I get fired.

Right. Right. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I think you’re right. I think we, we underestimate the client’s concern about how we reflect upon them inside their organization.

Yeah. Look, I see this in a, in a speaking perspective too, right? Because hiring a keynote speaker for your big annual conference, right. Is a major risk for anyone. Right? Right. Right. I mean, you’re kind of putting your reputation on the line and kind of your job on the line as a yes. Communications person or a event director when you select that keynote speaker. So you need to know that A, they’re going to be great to work with and they’re gonna show up and make you look good. B, you need to know that they’re great on stage. And CI knew those first two things, but the third thing kind of surprised me is that they wanna kind of know what you’re gonna say to the point where they’ve watched, like oftentimes when I’ll get hired for a keynote, they would’ve watched eight full length keynote talks of mine, many of which have similar content overlapping, right.

Because they’re watch, so they’re literally watching eight hours, they’re streaming me. Right. Right. For eight hours straight because they wanna make sure that this content is going to work for their audience. And then when I show up they, and I say, oh, I can customize this and I can do that and I’m happy to make an industry specific. They’re like, no, no, no. Right. We watch the videos, that’s what we like, that’s what we want. Right. Like we want you, it was like, I, I, I started, this is not a good comparison ’cause it’s drives my ego, which is great for me. But you know, whatever, you know when U2 goes on onto Jimmy Kimmel, like they don’t want the song, no one’s heard. They want the new song that everyone’s listening to. Right. And that was kind of what speaking was like when you got to a certain level for me and that, that surprised me. I thought people would want more customization and want it to be specific to their industry and all that stuff.

And the event planner’s like, no, no, no. Yeah, customize a little bit, that’s great. But we basically want what we saw. Yeah. Because we feel comfortable with that and we know that it feels safe. Our job is secure.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think the whole sense of safety and that I’m look good is under considered. I, we don’t always often think about how do we communicate that? How do we make sure prospects feel that and know that we number one, know that that’s important to them and B, we do that all, all day every day for our clients.

Yeah. And how do we take them with us too? Right. Right. I mean, a lot of times, especially like around the beginning of the year, a lot of agencies will have one-on-one meetings or annual reviews. And one of the things we’ll talk about is like professional development, right? How do you want to grow as a professional? What training courses do you want to do? What conferences would you love to go to? You know, how much budget do we have for you to actually go to those things? Right? And the way we think about it is very self-centered, which I kind of should be, right? I mean, we’re thinking about our own personal professional development, but at the same time, like how many times do we not ask the question we should ask? Which is, which of these things could I take my client to? You know, if there’s an amazing event that’s gonna open up my creative potential, like if I really want to go to South by Southwest, why can’t I take my client there?

Why can’t I at least invite my client to come right? And say, Hey, we’ve looked at all of these different events, this one would be great for you from a learning perspective and add that type of value too.

Well, and again, back to the relationship, when you learn together, there’s, there’s magic in that, right? When you’re hearing ideas together and turning to each other and going, oh, that’s kind of interesting, we could twist that and do this with this. And I mean there’s an energy to that sort of shared experience. Yeah.

Yeah.

So as you look into 2025 and, and you know, you have been somebody who has always sort of identified trends, educated people about trends. What do you think from our perspective as agency folks, what’s coming around the bend that we should be aying attention to?

So, I mean, let’s start with technology. Yeah. Because it’s on everyone’s mind. AI technology is advancing very fast, right? Yeah. And so we do as agency professionals need to have someone who is sort of a scout for us, and I’m speaking of like a specific person. Yeah. Who part of their job is to be constantly looking at what’s new, what’s come out and trying it. And the sort of person who’s ideal for this is not the youngest, most inexperienced person in the office. Right. Which is who you’re gonna be tempted to put it with or an intern. Right?

Right,

Right. It has to be someone who has a level of experience that knows when a disruption is really transformative from how things have been done before. So if someone tries out, you know, one of the AI platforms and a new development of it and knows how much time that thing that AI is doing used to take, yeah. They will appreciate what a game changer this is. And they’ll also be able to evaluate the quality level of it. Is it producing shit content? Right? Is it producing, you know, slightly stinky shit content, but like that could be fixed Or is it producing like something that’s actually really good and with someone collaborating with it, a human professional, creative professional collaborating with it could be really great.

Yeah.

And that’s the sort of person that you want as your early warning system for the new technology. And the upside of having someone nominated in that role to do that also is when they do find something that is game changing, they can advocate for it within your agency and other people will listen to them.

Yeah. And again, that can’t be an intern. Right. It’s gotta be somebody who has some gravitas inside the agency. Yeah, yeah,

Yeah. And the intern can look, the intern can do the work to find the platforms or find the technologies Right. And say, here are the five that someone should try. And then the person who you’ve nominated as this kind of early scout can go and evaluate it. Yeah. Right.

Alright. So from a non-technology point of view, what, what should we be thinking about? Or what should we be watching around that’s coming around the corner? I would

Say, what is the thing that you can do that makes you stand out as having a unique perspective in the world of all the other agencies that you compete against? What is the thing that you can put out in the world that shows potential clients that you are smarter, more creative, more in tune, more up to date, whatever the kind of metric you want to use is they just shows those potential clients that you are a little bit above everyone else. And I think my perspective is that that comes from the type of thinking and creative output that you’re putting out in the world that’s not related to your client work.

Right. It’s that thought leadership we were talking about.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, some people consider like case studies to be thought leadership, but like, that’s not what I’m talking about. Yeah. I’m not talking about like, Hey, let’s promote this one great campaign that we did because maybe we’ll get an award and we’ll get more campaigns out of it.

Right. Right. Yeah. You’re thinking about what do you say from a stage? What do you write about in a book? What do you talk on podcasts about? Like what, what, what are you an authority in that you can

Talk about showcase the, your professional expertise and the thing that you want to be known for? Right. And there are great examples of that out there that many of us from an agency’s perspective look at and say, wow, you know, that’s really great. But then we don’t kind of take the next step to say, well, what’s our version of that? Right. Right. Like Edelman’s Trust Barometer is a great example, right? Yeah. They’ve been doing it for 20 years or however long it is. They’re known for this thing now. Right. And they measure the level of trust in our society for all of these different places, and they’re the go-to resource and Yeah. You know, it helps their PR business because oftentimes PR companies are being hired because of trust and reputational issues.

Right. So it ties to their business, but it’s this known piece of thought leadership that’s been out there for a long period of time and, and everybody in PR at least, and probably many of the agency people listening to this, to this show know that for sure at least know of

It. Right. Every, everybody watches for it every year, I think.

Right? Yeah.

But

You know, how many of them have had that one meeting to say, well, what’s our,

It’s our trust barometer. Yeah.

It’s going to be like that. Yeah. And if they had that meeting and they’ve launched that thing, did they commit to it for 20 years?

Right. Right,

Right, right. ’cause that was the other reason why it worked. They did it over and over and over and over and over. Yeah. And they didn’t go to the next thing because the person who was in charge of it got fired or left.

Right. Or not enough people paid attention to it the first time they did it. I think sometimes agencies will land on a thought leadership position, and one of the things we’re always counseling them on is it’s gonna take a year before people even notice. So you gotta be committed to it. So whether it’s a podcast or a newsletter or you writing a book or whatever it is, it doesn’t, it’s not, it’s not a, you build it and they will come sort of thing. It’s, you know, you gotta be out there doing the hard work over and over and over again, and eventually it generates traction, but it takes time.

Yeah. I mean, look, my version of this was doing my non-obvious trend report, which I did every year for 10 years. Right. And the first years that I did it, I was still working at Ogilvy. Then it took me on my journey to leave. And eventually, after 10 years when I published the 10th anniversary edition of it, which was called Non Mega Trends. Right? That’s what hit number one on the Wall Street Journal list. That’s what got me a lot of the attention that then I relayed into many of the other things that I’ve been doing. So it’s an overnight 10 year success. Right. Right. I mean, that’s kind of how it goes. But I committed to it every single year. Same thing with my email newsletter. I’ve been writing it every Thursday, every single week for the last seven years. Yeah.

So there’s consistency in these things. For me at least, that has allowed me to then make it part of my platform.

Agreed. Yep. Again, it’s, it is about sort of the long game and, and making that commitment. Yeah. This, this has been fascinating, which it always is when you make time to spend with us. So I’m, I’m grateful for that. Any, any final thoughts that you wanna make sure agency owners kind of have in their head as they, as they roll into the new year and start thinking about what 2025 is gonna bring to them and their team and their clients?

Yeah, I mean, I would, the one thing I would say to anybody who works in, in agency world is that we are, I mean, it’s hard to remember on a day-to-day basis, but we are the ones, like we’re the ones in our professional lives who everyone else looks to to be the most pioneering, the most innovative. Yep. The most forward thinking, you know, the ones who see around the corner before anyone else, like for better or worse, whether you feel like it’s fair or not. Right? You are the one within your professional community who everyone else is looking at as the trendsetter. And you may not see yourself that way, but that is how people see agency people.

And I like that, you know, because I’ve made my whole career around being a person like that. But you know, even if you don’t necessarily see your per yourself like that, there are others who do. I mean, let’s face it, much more boring jobs than we do for sure. Yeah. To look at what we do and think you are in the middle of this really exciting thing, and I think it’s easy to forget that. Yeah. And it’s easy to forget the opportunity and joy that comes with that, but also the responsibility that comes with that because we can’t afford to be close-minded people. We can’t afford to put that out into the world because we’re the ones, we’re the ones who are supposed to see stuff like CHATT and not dismiss it immediately.

Right. And say, well, let’s see what the potential is of something like this. Like how, what is gonna change because of it? Like, let’s try it out. And I take that responsibility myself really deeply because I feel like if the world, this is kind of macro mission, right? If the world is gonna move forward, it’s gonna need early adopters and people like me, people like us to see the new disruptions and not dismiss them and not shut them down and not kill them immediately, but rather look at them and say, well, what’s the potential here? Like, what’s the

Downside? Ask the what if, right?

Yeah. Ask the what if, yeah. What’s the downside and, and what’s the upside, right? And to try and embrace it and then maybe try to put it into words or some sort of approachable sort of first step that other people can take to. And I love that about us. Yeah. That we get to be people like that.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, it’s interesting, the keynote that I gave last May at the, at the, at our conference, the summit, that’s what I talked about was we are the change agents. When you think about when people started looking at whether it’s racial equality, whether it’s, whatever it is, it’s our work that sort of sets the stage for normalizing what in the moment isn’t normal yet, or isn’t accepted yet. We start the trend, we start talking about it, we start embracing it. And I think sometimes you’re right. I think we lose sight of that. We get so caught up in the quagmire of the doing, doing, doing that we forget that, that we are setting a course and we are opening people’s eyes.

And the more we get to do that, a, the more fun our work is, but b, the more value we bring to our clients. So yeah. Yeah, yeah. This has been a great conversation. If folks want to learn more about your work, they wanna find one of your many books, including the new one, the Non-Obvious Thinking, what’s the best place for them to go to sign up for the newsletter, to learn more from you on a regular basis, and to get access to all the things that we talked about today?

Everything is at non-obvious dot com. So www dot non-obvious, all one word, no dashes or anything.com. And you can subscribe to newsletter just by going to non-obvious dot com slash subscribe.

Beautiful. Thank you my friend, for being back with us again. It’s always thought provoking and I love that you get everybody sort of fired up and inspired. So I’m, I’m grateful that you took the time to be with us today.

Thank you. You, thanks for having me. It’s always a fun chat and I, I love your, your audience. I mean it’s, I identify with it

Deeply, so they’re your people. Thank you. Yeah, yeah. Yep. Yeah. Alright guys, so what a great way to kick off the year to start thinking about asking yourself, how do you, and by the way, not just you, but how does your entire team, regardless of title, regardless of how long they’ve been in the industry, how do they think differently? How do they be opening of new perspective? How do they provoke and be provocative in the way that they approach the work, in the conversations they have with clients? I always think when, when we can ask a client a question, the client goes, oh, nobody’s ever asked me that before. Oh, I’ve never thought of it that way. The value proposition that brings to us is huge.

They want good thinking partners, they want somebody who’s gonna help them expand the way that they view the world. And, and we’re in the perfect position to do that if we make the time and the space to get that done and that we share it both internally and externally. So lots of great takeaways. All of the books are good, but I will tell you the non-obvious thinking. I love the framework of it. And this is something you guys could read and then take into your leadership team or take into your different departments and say, okay, how do we apply this? If we’re account service, how do we apply this? If we’re creatives, how do we apply this? If we’re the digital team, how do we apply this? If we’re the media buyers and planners, how do we apply this because it is applicable no matter what our role is in the agency and we all have to be better, bigger thinkers if we’re gonna survive and be competitive in today’s world.

I mean, the truth of the matter is, the cost of starting an agency is a laptop and a kitchen table these days. So guess what? Our competitors are not gonna get fewer, but we can be better than most of them. And I think today’s episode is a great sort of stepping stone and sort of roadmap of how to do that. So don’t just listen to this and put it away. Grab the book, learn the framework, talk to your team about it and start practicing it. It’s not something that’s gonna happen overnight, but start practicing it. So lots of good takeaways before I let you go. Couple things. Wanna thank our friends at White Label IQ? As you know, they’re the presenting sponsor of the podcast. We’re super grateful for them. They come alongside agencies and they do white label design Dev and PPC and have been partner, a great partner to many agencies.

They’re born out of an agency so they understand how to partner with you, take great care of your clients, help you make some money, and deliver a quality product. So head over to White Label IQ dot com slash AAMI to learn more about them. And of course, huge thank you for hanging out with me every week. I we’re, we are marching up to episode 500 and I have enjoyed spending all of this time with you and I’m gonna keep coming back and I hope you will too. So I’ll be back next week. See you then. Thanks for listening.

That’s all for this episode of AM I’s Build a Better Agency Podcast. Be sure to visit agency management institute.com to learn more about our workshops, online courses, and other ways we serve small to mid-size agencies. Don’t forget to subscribe today so you don’t miss an episode.