How to future-proof your agency, with Robert Rose

Speaker 1:

It doesn’t matter what kind of agency you run. Traditional, digital, media buying, web dev, PR, whatever your focus, you still need to run a profitable business. That’s why Agency Management Institute started the Build a Better Agency Podcast a few years ago. We help agencies just like yours grow and scale your business, attract and retain the best talent, make more money, and achieve more of what you make. 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 from Agency Management Institute. Welcome to another episode of Build a Better Agency. If this is your first episode, I’m excited for you because you picked a really good one to start with. If you are a regular listener, you are going to be gratified with how awesome this interview is and how interesting and thought-provoking the conversation is going to be.

So, my guest is Robert Rose, who many of you are very familiar with. Robert was instrumental in the Content Marketing Institute creation and growth. He has written several books, co-written several with Joe Pulizzi. His latest is Killing Marketing, which I think is brilliant. It’s not really about killing marketing, but it’s about marketing evolving, and I think we’re all seeing that already.

What we really are going to talk about today is what is an agency’s role today and in the future around content marketing for our clients. So, MarketingProfs and Content Marketing Institute do a research piece every year. In the 2018 piece that they just released this fall, they noted that 55% of the respondents, so CMOs, business owners, that sort of thing, expected an increase in their content marketing budget. I don’t think that comes as any surprise to anybody.

I think that content marketing is growing up, and I think rather than it just being about throwing out random social posts or random blog posts or making an infographic once a quarter, I think content marketing is now beginning to ask the question, “What are we building? What can we become as a brand that is of use to this audience of people that we care about, our prospects, our customers, our business partners? Who can we be for them that actually provides great value?”

I think an agency’s role in that is super exciting. I think it’s an opportunity for us. Every one of us who owns an agency has been complaining because it’s harder and harder to get to the C-suite of the client’s table anymore, that we are being relegated to being order-takers or to a procurement department.

I believe that when we start having strategic conversations with our clients around how they can really leverage content in a way that is much bigger than a set of assets, but that you really become a destination, a media channel if you will, that when you do that, now all of a sudden the entire game changes, and we are back driving strategy for our clients.

I think an interesting thing that I want to talk to Robert about is whether or not we also have the execute. Could we be the strategic partner and either not execute or help the client execute internally, if that makes sense? So, I’m going to dig in to that, for sure. I think this is one of the ways, I believe this a way for agencies to future-proof themselves. If we do not understand content, and if we do not understand how to bring it to a strategic level for our clients, not just making stuff, but making sense of the stuff, making a bigger purpose of the stuff, creating a sense of place and differentiation and a destination, if you will, if we can help our clients do that and we can stay alongside them as they build up that strategy, we become a very valuable partner.

Now, we’re doing what the Accentures of the world and the McKinseys of the world are doing. Now, we’re helping them solve business problems, and it just happens to be that some of the execution is marketing, but some of it is not. Some of it is bigger than that, and there is no reason why your agency cannot be the one that brings this to clients.

I believe this so strongly that I asked Robert to join me, and we are going to co-teach a workshop in January. So, January 23rd and 24th in Orlando, Florida because you know that’s where I like to be in January, we’re going to be on Disney property and we are going to talk about how does an agency structure, package, and sell this content strategy, this bigger picture thinking, and if you want, too, the execution along the way, but how do you do that in a way that is so compelling that it becomes a very sticky thing with clients, and it really does improve your retention, and also improve how you’re seen in the organization? Now, you are a strategic partner. Now, you are an adviser. Now, you are like the Accentures of the world. By the way, that also means you can charge a premium price.

So, Robert and I are going to dig in to that for two days in January. We still have a couple of spots open, more than a couple. We probably have about 10 spots open. So, if you want to check out the workshop, go to agencymanagementinstitute.com and check out. Under Training, you can find the workshop schedule, and you can sign up for that.

In the meantime, whether you’re going to come join us in January or not, I promise you this next hour is going to get you thinking in a completely different way about content, and the way your agency delivers content, charges for content, and talks to clients about content. I am really excited about this conversation.

So, with that, welcome back to the podcast, Robert. Glad to have you back with us.

Robert Rose:

Thank you very much, my friend. It’s always great to be here.

Drew McLellan:

Agencies struggle with this content thing. We’re so used to clients asking for a thing, and we figure out how much time it’s going to take to make the thing, and then we tell them how much the thing is going to cost, and then it’s our job to do the thing in the amount of time that we said it would so we can make money, right? So, I think that that causes a lot of angina for agency owners when it comes to content. Don’t you think?

Robert Rose:

It does. It does, indeed, causes angina. Kudos to you for pulling that word out.

Drew McLellan:

Sure.

Robert Rose:

I think what you’ve got is you’ve identified it perfectly, which is we look at content as a thing. This is a problem. It’s honestly the biggest problem that I end up fixing when I work with the clients that I work with, which is getting them out of this mindset that content as a thing is simply a replacement for a short marketing campaign or a collateral piece or a catalog or an ad.

If content isn’t a focused, thematically connected program, in other words, looking at it as an owned media experience where the individual pieces of content are connected to each other. Ultimately, it just becomes yet another thing, an asset that the agency is creating. So, the biggest challenge that I see with agencies getting and stubbing their toe here is they’ve fallen to the trap of simply getting in to be an execution machine. They look at content as a widget coming out of a factory and, quite frankly, end up looking a little like Lucy and Ethel at the end of that conveyor belt with all that chocolate candy coming off of the end of it, where they just continually can’t keep up.

Of course, it then becomes commoditized. Of course, it’s not as good as it can be because we’re not looking at it as a strategic program that is ultimately there to build an audience. We’re looking at it simply as an asset that can ultimately support a campaign. Of course, content is more expensive and harder to do and takes longer than an ad or a piece of collateral material or a brochure because it needs to be thought-provoking. It needs to be inspiring. It needs to be educational. So, it does take longer, should cost more, and is more than just a thing.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. So, I have so much to react to that. So, not in any particular order, number one, if you’re under 40, go to the YouTube and Google Lucy and Ethel chocolate factory and you’ll understand what Robert is talking about.

Robert Rose:

Oh, sorry about that.

Drew McLellan:

I find myself doing it all the time. Number two, as I’m listening to you talk about it, it’s also the same problem that agencies run in to when it comes to creating their own content. So, the idea of everyone in the company just write a blog post on something you want to talk about or however it is that they make content, it’s the same thing. It’s that we have misidentified it as a quantity game as opposed to really having an overarching understanding of how all the pieces need to connect together to tell one single story. They’re not all disparate pieces that you just publish once a week so that you have content.

Robert Rose:

That’s right. That’s right. The only exception to that is if you feel like you can offer some news-oriented or topically oriented feed that would feed something that’s not already there, right? If you’re going to tell me news or marketing news, no, that’s already well-covered. There’s already CNN. There’s already USA Today. There’s already cmo.com. There’s already every Ad Age, Adweek, et cetera. So, you’re not going to cover the general news better than any other media company out there.

So, barring that, the real question is, what is it you’re trying to deliver of value through content to your potential clientele? As Andrew Davis so wonderfully calls them your pre-customer database, your pre-client database. What is it of value that you can teach? What is your point of view on the world that you can bring that no one else does? If we can’t answer that question, in other words, if it’s simply so many times when I talk to agencies and I say, “What is your differentiator?” they say, “Well, it’s our people.” It’s like, “No, it’s not.”

Drew McLellan:

… or we’re a fully integrated marketing agency.

Robert Rose:

Yeah. Exactly right or our service, right? So, none of those things are true differentiators. Your differentiator is going to be your point of view on how you solve clients’ challenges. So, express that, deliver it, actually deliver it through content and you’ll find that the content itself actually starts to take care of itself. I think when I look to somebody like Andy Crestodina and what he’s doing with Orbit Media, and the way that he approaches original research and expresses the point of view that they have on content, SEO and other elements, that’s someone who gets creating a media property that differentiates them as a brand.

Drew McLellan:

Right. So, part of the challenge then, of course, is clients. I’m guessing this is where you’re leading us is when clients say to us, “I need content,” we start talking about, “Okay. Well, we can do an infographic a week, and we can do two blog posts and four Instagram posts,” and blah, blah, blah. We’ve started at the end rather than the beginning. So, of course, then it becomes commoditized and it becomes difficult to have a client understand, to your point earlier, which is it should be more expensive because it’s harder to do. They don’t get it because they don’t understand how it’s different than any other generic piece of social media posting or anything along those lines, right?

Robert Rose:

That’s right. That’s the hard, but also most profitable piece of the shift that has to happen in order to make content marketing truly a practice worth practicing in the agency, which is we have to get beyond that commoditized execution of assets based on some creative brief, and instead, lead the client down an advisory and consulting to a differentiated point of view on the world and teach them, lead them to say it has to be more than just a weekly infographic or a monthly blog post or a quarterly white paper.” It has to be connected to some sort of owned media experience, where their customers are going to want to be part of that for some length of time.

If all we do are produce assets that are behind the gate that, ultimately, customers pay for with data, all you’re doing at that point are producing assets where the commodity is only going to be as good as the last campaign that promoted the piece of content. In other words, you’re only as good as the last Google campaign that promoted the white paper that drove 14 leads. You have to get beyond that and to build something, invest in something in value that’s going to show them long-term investment value that grows. The only way to do that is to, quite frankly, connect all those pieces together.

Drew McLellan:

So, it sounds to be and, again, this perhaps suggests my age, but it sounds to me like what you’re talking about is what we’ve been actually doing for decades, which I come from a brand-centric point of view at my agency. So, really, what you’re talking about is how do you help your clients truly define how they’re different from all the other choices out there, and then that will begin to inform, A, what kind of content to create, what that content should be teaching and helping with, and who the audience is that’s going to care about that content, right?

Robert Rose:

That’s right. That’s exactly it. The way I typically frame it is I say it gets us back to the origins of marketing, which is to say let’s go to our four Ps and let’s truly develop a content product for our clients that will ultimately further their marketing and sales aspirations, which means getting into their brand and find out what it is in their brand that differentiates them in the marketplace, transferring that differentiation into some experience. The reason I call it a product is because it ultimately has all of the markings of the four Ps. It is a content product. In other words, it is a media experience. It should be promoted. It needs to have content so that it has place. All of the things that we would normally associated with developing something that is worth investing in is truly where content will earn its keep.

It’s not to say that we’d never do content for simple promotional purposes or that we don’t do newsjacking or that we don’t do one-offs, but let’s recognize when we’re doing those one-offs for the short-term benefit of some level of quick fast promotion to get a quick hit versus where we’re trying to actually invest in something that’s going to build a foundation for that brand differentiation and ultimately to drive more revenue, save more cost, whatever the business goal is.

Drew McLellan:

So, from an agency perspective, I mean, when I listen to you talk, I think, “My God! That’s what we’ve been doing forever in our business in theory,” that we have been helping our clients sort out who they are and how do they tell that story. So, is this more of a channel play than … I mean, we talked about it like it’s this brand new magic thing, but arguably, is content, the fact that it’s in your own properties, that you own the channels, is that what makes this different?

Robert Rose:

Well, it is, but it’s also in what we say because one of the things that we’ve been helping clients do since day one is to rethink the positioning and/or packaging of their products and services. So, if we look at it purely as a channel play, all we’re saying is, “Listen. How do I more cleverly describe your products and services across these different channels and ultimately find the audiences and identify the audiences that are looking to buy such things?” If I can position and package them in such a way that differentiates them from others in the market space, then I’ve done my job as an agency.

This is just a bit different where what we’re actually marketing, what we’re actually creating is content that isn’t about the product or service, but that delivers value in and of itself. A great example of this is I think what HubSpot does or maybe used to do is better phrased, but what HubSpot is so good at is delivering content that talks about the inbound marketing process.

Now, you can get value out of that content whether or not you ever buy HubSpot software. It’s valuable. You get the idea of the value of the content in and of itself, which naturally brings you to the conclusion, “Wow! These guys are the most thought-leading company in this space. What do they do? Oh, they provide software that supports this idea that they’re out there evangelizing. I’ve got to go investigate that.”

It’s taking that same model to our own business model and to our clients’ business models to say, “Yes, we understand intimately what it is they do from a product to service standpoint. How do I translate that out to a content value that’s valuable in and of itself without mention of the product or service? How does it solve a customer’s problem so that they naturally come to the conclusion, ‘Wow! Whoever brought me this content, I need to investigate what it is they do’?”

Drew McLellan:

Right. So, it’s like the baby center or what was the scissor company that did all the crafting content?

Robert Rose:

Yeah, it was Fiskars. They ultimately-

Drew McLellan:

They roll together, right? They create events.

Robert Rose:

It was a fantastic program. They sadly discontinued it, I believe, when they got acquired, but, yeah. For a long time, they used to have an entire website built up of templates and things you could cut out for arts and crafts and how-tos and all these amazing things you could do with paper and the way you, of course, cut it. It’s this wonderful resource site that became one of the most popular arts and crafts websites out there, and it ultimately brought to you by Fiskars who were the scissors company where you would, of course, need scissors to do all these wonderful arts and crafts.

Drew McLellan:

Before we delve in to this any deeper, I want to take a quick pause and then we will be right back. I wanted to take just a quick second and remind you about one of the core offerings of Agency Management Institute, and that is our Peer Networks. So, we offer them both for agency owners and also what we call key executives. So, if you’re a traction follower, these would be for your integrators. These are your right-hand people who help you run the business day in and day out.

So, from the owner’s perspective, imagine a business group or an EO group, only everyone around the table owns an agency. These folks become like your board of advisors. They become trusted friends that you learn a lot about their business and they learn a lot about yours. So, not only do you learn from us, the facilitators, but you’re constantly learning from your peer group as well. The same thing happens in the key executive groups. We bring them together and we help them learn how to help you bring your vision to life as an agency owner.

If you want to check out either of these peer groups, you can go over to the AMI website and look under the Networks tab, and there you will find information on both our live and our virtual agency owner peer groups, and also our key executive group. Check it out, and if you’re interested, let us know. We’re happy to have a conversation. Okay. Let’s get back to the episode.

So, it sounds like what you’re saying is that a big part of how we as agencies can serve our clients is to help them answer the question, “What is a part of my pre-customer or pre-client’s world that I can play a part of, that I don’t look out of place in, but I don’t have to be the star?”

So, Fiskars is a great example. I can be the presenter of these great craft ideas and these meetups for crafters and things like that and it makes sense that I’m there, that I’m a part of that world, but I never really have to say, “Oh, and, by the way, here’s the coupon for the scissors,” or “Look, our scissors cut better than other scissors,” because I’m hanging out with them and over time, they recognize, “Oh, my gosh! This is the company that’s bringing me all this value. I should get to know them better. I should look at their products or services.”

Robert Rose:

It’s a really interesting thing because what ends up happening is as you start developing a relationship with an audience, and I’m not going to say customer yet, but I’ll just say when you start to, but we’re treating these audience members as customers, a weird thing happens, which is the walls start to come down, the trust starts to build, and they become much more open to those sales messaging.

So, just exactly to your point, I look at something like what Kraft is doing. So, Kraft, through the delivery of their online recipes database, online. So when you go and you get and they have 3.5 million, by the way, subscribers to their online recipes database, which is remarkable, and the recipes aren’t anything special. They’re just quick and easy dinners. Now, the differentiator, of course, is that they took an editorial slant and said, “What is our unique position on the world?” They said, “Hey, listen. We’re going to deliver you full family meal solutions that can be delivered in 15 minutes or less.”

So, you can immediately see their target market there, busy moms and dads who are looking to feed their family in less than 15 minutes and need a fast, easy-to-make dinner. Now, you go download those recipes. You don’t need Kraft food to deliver those recipes, but what they do is they start using the data and the permission that you’ve given them through the idea of giving your zip code, as well as your email address. As you start surfing around, guess what you start seeing targeted ads for. You start seeing targeted ads for Kraft macaroni and cheese and for other things that they sell, but not only for Kraft macaroni and cheese, but because you’ve given them, trustingly, willingly, your zip code, you’re now seeing targeted ads and coupons for your local grocery store.

So, using that first-party data to then make the rest of their advertising, regular old marketing and advertising better is the goal of what they’re trying to do by creating a connected owned media experience. That’s the heart of content marketing, and that’s the heart of a great agency, by the way, which is their entire program that’s driven out of an agency that helps Kraft do that.

Drew McLellan:

So, do you believe then, back to the beginning of our conversation, do you believe that agencies should be in the business of actually executing content or should we be on the front end of the strategy and the point of view, and what is the community that you’re going to build and serve, and how can you uniquely craft content for them and then should the agency tap out or should an agency be able to follow that all the way through and be able to actually make the things as we started this conversation and do that profitably?

Robert Rose:

Yeah. That is right now, I think, the $64 million question. It truly is. Here’s the way I’ll answer it. I think if your agency is generally focused on a horizontal play, which means you’re, in the words that the kids dancing through these days, you’re fully integrated and you’re offering all kinds of services, everything from website design to media buying, to project management, to creative services, to analytics. You’re offering the full gamut there.

I think it’s really hard to be in the content creation game because you’re ultimately going to have a hard time becoming really deep and expert at any one particular topic or subject matter area.

Having said that, if you’re all the way on the other side of the spectrum, and I know, for example, a PR agency that I do a ton of work with in Denver, and all they do is work with insurance companies and institutional financial services companies. They know that business better than, quite frankly, most of the institutional investing companies that they work for. They have amazing thought leaders in that agency.

For them, writing subject matter expert material is really easy and, quite frankly, their main differentiator. So, for them, getting into the content execution game is a really smart idea because they can take that expertise and apply it across their vertical and just go 10 miles deep in that vertical. So, those are two extremes.

For those that are somewhere in the middle of that spectrum, it’s really going to be how do you want to scale that over time because, truly, where you’ll make a difference is where you can actually go really, really deep. It’s why, quite frankly, publishers are having a better time of it right now because publishers have a deep bench of writers and content creators that can create against a vertical like a Meredith Xcelerated, which had ran the craft business for as long as it has because they can offer up the talent.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah, yeah. So, that’s the story that I’ve been preaching for a while.

Robert Rose:

It’s a drug. It’s a drug that you have to wean yourself off of in many cases because you want to do it, right? As an agency, creating four blog posts a month, man, is that an attractive project until all of a sudden they go, “Your blogs aren’t that great. You’re fired.”

Drew McLellan:

I think, for agencies, if we want to compete today and tomorrow, I honestly think that for most agencies, my listeners size, so you’re under 200 people and you’re not owned by some big box agency or you’re privately held and you could be anywhere from Tupelo, Mississippi to Jacksonville, Florida, to a small city in Australia. For us to compete against all the other agencies, we’re going to have to have some specialization. I believe that it’s a combination of the vertical expertise with this idea of a point of view of how you approach the world.

So, much like our clients need to have a point of view, I think agencies need to have a point of view as well. I think that’s about how we solve our clients’ problems and when we can do that and we say, “Not only is this my point of view, but I especially do it in pharma products for women over 50,” or whatever your verticals are. Now, I think you are able to have a really interesting conversation with clients about how do you help them deliver their message not just in content, but, certainly, there’s a content play there.

Robert Rose:

I agree with that so very much. It is truly where I’m seeing the differentiation today because guess what here. When we start worrying about the Publicises, and the WPPs, and the Omnicoms, and the Havas, and the network of agencies there, I will tell you with rare exception, those companies just don’t get it.

They’re struggling with this. Their scale has not helped them one little bit in this idea of content. The agencies that I’m really seeing excel here, the ones that are really, truly growing like weeds are those that are exactly what you’re explaining, where they are vertically focused or some very specific service-focused, whether that be deep in SEO or deep in email or deep in content or deep in whatever it may be, creative services, and are really focusing in getting specific about their point of view on the world, and those mid-sized agencies are just, they’re killing it right now because, quite frankly, they’re providing the value that the big agencies, the big box agencies just can’t provide.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. I think that’s the future for most agencies. The average agency in the US, anyways, have less than 100 people. So, for most agencies, and I’m guessing that that’s not a US-centric number. I’m guessing it’s similar to other places all over the globe.

Robert Rose:

I would guess it’s even smaller in most countries. Yeah.

Drew McLellan:

So, for us, the way for us to compete and thrive is to pick a lane and to invest in that lane, to your point, so that we do have the subject matter expertise, which, by the way, and this is where I want to get to next is that then defines our content strategy because I also think what we’re talking about is not just what we do for clients, but as you said early on the conversation, this is a double whammy for us as agencies because this is how we demonstrate our thought leadership and our position in the marketplace as well is how do we create the content that attracts those pre-clients and has them knocking on our doors saying, “You know what? You seem to be an expert in this. I want to come talk to you about that.” That’s the holy grail for agencies and we can’t do that if we’re generic.

Robert Rose:

It’s so true. I mean, I will tell you, in all the client work that I do on the strategy side when at the end of that at my little agency, we don’t do any execution. We’ve picked our lane and we do a very specific set of strategy consulting advisory work. We turn over every bit of execution to other agencies. I will tell you when the client comes to me and says, “We want to select an agency to help us through this execution bit. What should we look for?” I say, “Go look at how they’re doing content. If they’re doing content well, that’s an agency you want to talk to. If you hear the word Cobbler’s kids one time, then you can hang up the phone and never talk to that agency again because if they don’t have time for themselves, they don’t have time for you.”

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. Well, I have said to many agency this is one of those emperor’s clothing sort of things. You can’t go out and preach this stuff and then have somebody come to your website and see that you haven’t added new content in three months, right?

Robert Rose:

Exactly. That’s exactly right.

Drew McLellan:

Because they just go, “Oh, my God! These people are naked. So, I’m not going to have them make my clothes.”

Robert Rose:

Yeah, and, by the way, not just creating content, but creating content that actually-

Drew McLellan:

… is useful.

Robert Rose:

Look, you’re not looking to, as a small agency, one of the things that I get asked a lot is, “Okay. We buy into the idea of content as a small agency, but, look, we need to level set our expectations. We’re never going to be Seth Godin. We’re just not. We’re just not built to be that way. By the way, does the world really need another marketing blog?”

The answer to that, of course, is no. The world does not need another marketing blog. There are nine gajillion, that’s a technical number, marketing blogs that are out there. The world doesn’t need another one. However, the world needs you. So, your story, your content, what your point of view on the world is doesn’t even necessarily have to demonstrate your abilities as an agency. Your blog could be about … Now, obviously, it should be aligned, and it should deliver value, and it should be good, but your content doesn’t necessarily have to demonstrate your prowess in SEO. Your content simply has to differentiate from all the other agencies out there and be interesting and valuable. That’s the real key.

In other words, if you tell me, “Well, is there really a unique point of view to have on the world of SEO?” No. Probably not these days. There probably isn’t. Although I certainly don’t want to preclude that. There may be something out there that is certainly a unique point of view, but find out what is your unique point of view and create content around that and demonstrate value time and time and consistently, and you will definitely at that point attract more potential clients than not.

An example of this is my own blog. My company’s blog, it’s mostly 90% me and then, occasionally, we have guest posts and, occasionally, we have some other people blog. Most of my stuff is, quite frankly, inspirational, a daily, it’s a weekly blog, but it’s basically, “Hey, here’s something interesting to think about motivating you throughout your day.” That’s my unique point of view on the world. It’s not going to be about strategy or the framework for that or the framework for that. I got plenty of other places to write and deliver that content that will get more eyeballs, right?

I will go out to cmo.com or Adweek or Harvard Business Review or Content Marketing Institute. That’s where I’m going to put my big old strategic thick piece or I’m going to write a book or something like that or I’m going to do a guest webinar to get that in front of an audience. For my own blog, I’m just going to make sure that you understand our point of view on the world. That can be a great strategy.

Drew McLellan:

Well, I think the agencies of old had a better sense of the fact that they had to differentiate themselves by talking about what their point of view was. I think we’ve gotten so caught up in the stuff that we’re not positioning ourselves the way that we should. One of the questions that I know somebody is asking right now is, “Okay. How do I figure out what my point of view is?” or “How do I help a client figure out what their point of view is?”

So, if somebody’s going to hire me to do this higher level strategy stuff, which is figure out who I am and what my point of view is, and then I will figure out what kind of a sandbox can I build that will attract the people that I want to play with to come in and play. Okay, but, first, it starts with this point of view idea. How do I guide a client or my own agency or myself if I’m the owner? How do I guide my own brain through the process of figuring out what … This sounds ludicrous. What is my point of view? Well, I guess you should probably know it, but how do you uncover it?

Robert Rose:

First of all, it’s a process not a project, right? So, it is an ongoing thing that I will tell you that I have been developing my own for I would call it 10 years. So, it’s not the kind of thing where you’re going to do this in an exercise of card sorting and all of a sudden you’re going to have some magic eureka moment. You’re going to develop a point of view over a period of time. So, know that.

The second thing is that what you want to do is you want to start asking yourself what it is that you believe. What is it that you believe about the world and about your place, and when I say your place, your philosophy in it, and how is it different than what other people? What inspires you to want to do the thing you do?

If the only answer you have is, “I want to copy what WPP,” or “I want to copy what agency X is doing and make money at it,” that’s not good enough and you will fail. You have to have some level of passion or feel like you have something to offer that the world doesn’t have yet in order to succeed.

So, whatever that is for you, whether it’s, “I have a creative vision about this particular vertical. I have an approach that I think that agencies have all wrong and I think that I believe my approach is better. The way that we manage projects is better. The way that we …” whatever. There’s something. Literally, if you’re a small company, it may be sitting alone by yourself or it may be sitting with your management team or it may be sitting with your closest family or whoever the right group is for you and literally asking yourself, “What do I believe? What do I believe about the world and how is it different? How do I apply that and help my clients understand that?” because at the end of the day, all we’re trying to do, this is what we do as agencies, through the creation of pretty pictures, clever words, and multimedia, whatever you want, through the creation of media, we help our clients believe in different things. That’s it. That’s what we do.

What we want them to believe is the same thing that we believe, which is this is the way that you will succeed. So, we have that belief, and finding that over the course of working with a mentor, working with yourself, finding out what it is you believe in and working through an exercise and getting to that is a core piece of understanding you and you will not be able to do it for anyone else until you do it for yourself.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. My agency is 24 years old, and I think about my agency and I think about AMI, and how we worked our way through and to where we landed. You’re right. It keeps evolving is we started thinking about the stories that we always told, the analogies that we always used. It’s like you have a set, a repertoire of example stories, analogies that you use in client meetings, and in conversations, and in proposals, and in pitches.

When you start to peel back the elements of those common stories told, there are truths in them that we used to teach. When you figure out what those are and you lay those all out on the table, you start to see patterns. For us, that was a way for us to go, “Oh, here are the common elements,” and that was what we used as foundational pieces to begin to say, “Well, you know what? When I take these seven truths that we believe, they all pack up together to mean this.”

We start talking about it and it’s like, “You know what? Yes, we do believe that’s true, and we do believe that’s a different better way to solve a problem or to look at this situation or to recognize who our people are or aren’t. Okay. Now, we’re starting to begin to form a unique point of view that we can own and that we can stand up and be proud of and say, “This is what makes us different than the other agencies on my agency side or than the other agency consultants on the AMI side.”

Robert Rose:

Yes. You said it very well. I mean, you said it extraordinarily well, which is really finding out what it is you stand for, what it is you stand for and looking at those patterns of behavior and saying, “You know what? Whether we realize it or not, we had stood up for this and this and this,” and identifying those patterns, and then using your own mad skills to assemble those into a messaging idea and that becomes your point of view on the world.

Then you can take that because that’s the core of any good story, and you can start writing content around that. You can start writing content around that core belief. Instead of writing content that says, “Hey, how are we going to rank for these key terms? We’re rather writing content about differentiating ourselves and we may never win the SEO game, but we’ll win the differentiation game, and that’s the much more important game.”

Drew McLellan:

Well, and I think it gets back to the idea of this is not something we’re making up for our clients. It really is a peeling of the onion to get to the heart of it rather than a creation of something out of nothing.

Robert Rose:

Yes. That’s exactly right. It is getting to the heart. It’s getting to the heart.

Drew McLellan:

So, to me, that’s why this always has felt very brand-centric. I mean, it is the same kind of language we as agencies have always used around brand is just we’re helping clients find new ways to communicate that.

Robert Rose:

Yeah. That’s exactly right. You’re helping them as, maybe I too cutely say with my own agency, “I’m not here to tell you what your story is. I’m here to help you tell it better.” So, in that belief, what I’ve said is I’m not here to tell you what your brand is. I’m not here to be a branding guy for you. I’m here to help you operationalize and creative effective strategies for telling your story better. So, that belief in me keeps me in the business. That’s my point of view on the world, and there are plenty of wonderful amazing people out there, yourself included, who can help clients figure out what their brand is, and that’s not me.

I mean, it’s not that I don’t enjoy doing it. I like being creative and working on brand as much as anybody, but where my point of view on the world, what I can offer the world that is different than anybody else is I can make it sing better than anybody. I can help you sing better than anybody.

Drew McLellan:

You used the word operationalized, and I think that’s part of the content game that agencies have missed so far, and I’m hoping that they are able to circle back around it. This is not just a marketing play. This is much bigger than that, isn’t it?

Robert Rose:

Oh, I mean, that’s a whole other episode for us, but, yeah. I’ll tell you this. When you start looking at what’s happening at the tectonic scales where you start seeing companies like Accenture and EY and PWC and Deloitte basically circumventing all of those agencies, the WPPs, the Omnicoms, and the Publicises of the world, of the top 10 agencies I saw a statistic that I’ll get wrong here, but of the top 10 agencies, I think the top six of them are traditional big five and big 10 consulting firms. What they understand better than anybody is that the trusted adviser is those that help us alter the way that we operationalize our business, and the creative services, and the ability to make pretty pictures and to do media campaigns is, quite frankly, something that we can teach people.

So, we can teach them and we can add that talent as we need and they are taking the business. So, for the mid-sized agencies that are looking to grow and become bigger, becoming that trusted business adviser on the operational, strategic side is where the value is. All of the executional stuff comes right out of that. So, to whatever extent you have any interest in getting into the operational side, I could not encourage that more for smaller and mid-sized agencies because that’s where the value is. Helping businesses operate better is where the money is.

Drew McLellan:

Well, from the content point of view, part of that, too, is that it takes something that is a marketing gimmick and weaves it into the DNA of the organization. When someone more than the marketing department cares about it, and it really is part of how they show up for customers or it influences customer returns or it influences packaging or it influences R&D, all of a sudden, when content has that influence and the agency is sitting at the table for those sorts of discussions, now … Here’s the other part of it. Now, the idea of that program being cut goes down significantly because now, it’s woven into who the company is, right?

Robert Rose:

Exactly. Yeah. You’re part of their DNA. You’re part of their operation. You’re an irreplaceable part of their team and helping them to figure out how to operate better, more effectively, more efficiently is the critical piece. It goes back to the earlier part of our conversation, which is getting into that game is so much better than when somebody comes and says, “Hey, can you deliver us 14 blog posts and a couple of infographics and 68 tweets?” That anybody can do. That is a commodity that anybody can do. Figuring that out as an executional piece of a strategy that we’ve created, that’s being sticky in a business strategy that ultimately doesn’t get cut.

Drew McLellan:

Right. So, give us an example, if you can, of a content strategy that changed the way a company does business, that it became … Give us a concrete example of how it became operational in terms of how they function far beyond their marketing of content.

Robert Rose:

I’ll give you two. I’ll give you two because one of them is a really approachable one that will hopefully resonate, and then the other is going to feel a little esoteric only because it’s a big brand. I’ll give you the big brand first, which is, and the reason I like this example so much is because it truly fundamentally changed the way that they do business, which is it’s actually a Danish bank, Jyske Bank. It’s J-Y-S-K-E, Jyske, Jyske Bank. They were a traditional retail bank, third largest bank in Denmark. So, again, not the biggest bank in Denmark, which is I don’t know how big a claim that would be, but they’re the third largest bank in Denmark.

They’re a regular retail bank like we have here in the states like Wells Fargo or a Bank of America or anything like that. What they did was they completely transformed everything they were doing around content. They basically transformed their marketing department into a media group that created a 24/7, 365-day a year news station, like a TV station. Basically, imagine in your industry creating MSNBC or CNN, 24/7, internet-driven. In concert with that, they transformed all of their content and marketing to this idea. They have flipped advertising and marketing on its head. So, their main marketing used to be going out and doing sponsorships of football, European football, of course, soccer, and having logos and sponsorship over the football teams and running ads.

They have now gotten to a point where the football teams and stadiums are calling Jyske Bank saying, “Hey, listen. We’ll give you the same coverage that you had before if you’ll come cover our games for your TV network, and we’ll pay you to do it.” So, they’re actually making money doing the exact same thing they were doing before, but they’re just covering the financial aspects of the football teams. The rest of the programming is how to balance your checkbook, how to apply for your first home loan, the financial stock market, what’s going on.

Drew McLellan:

So, it’s about financial literacy.

Robert Rose:

Yeah. It’s a financial literacy and consumer-focused television network. They’ve taken that. It was such a huge success. The CEO there, he basically said, “Hey, if you can’t control the media, you must become the media.” They’ve now transformed that to the physical presence.

So, the same group that created the TV station, they’re now transforming all their physical retail locations into cafés, where now you walk into a retail Jyske Bank and it’s a little coffee café where you can get a cup of coffee and you sit down and you talk with a financial consultant who can help you apply for your first home or apply for a car loan or whatever it’s going to be and, of course, you use Jyske Bank online services as a means of that. So, it completely transformed their business by looking at content as a media company for they say, basically, “We’re the first media company that has its own retail bank.” So, it’s a really interesting shift for them.

The one that I’ll give you that I think is a little more approachable. It’s a B2B company. It happens to be another financial services company, but it’s an investment company, and it’s one of our clients, actually. They’re called Capital Group. Capital Group is a big institutional investment firm. American Fund, if you look on your 401(k), is their big fund, and they have a brand problem because you’ve probably heard of American Fund. You’ve probably never heard of Capital Group. So, we’ve been trying to get the Capital Group brand more recognized.

One of the things that they were doing was targeting a very small number of certified financial advisors to recommend their fund. So, instead of doing just more and more PDF files of outlooks and thought leadership and white papers, which is what they were doing forever, they basically recreated and created a media team that created this thing called the Capital Idea. It’s a magazine. It’s a digital magazine that has all their thought leadership, but basically takes a long-term view of investing, and it’s got these beautiful infographics, and they have a podcast in there, and it’s a whole integrated media play that now is the center of all of their advertising.

Drew McLellan:

So, what’s their point of view through all of that?

Robert Rose:

So, the major thing that they were trying to drive forward was, and this is something we came to together with them through working with them was they wanted to bring … So, right now in the investment world is your audience who is familiar for this institutional financing will recognize is human versus bot, human versus algorithm in terms of investing strategies. The big battle right now are those companies that are really leaning into the whole algorithmic invest in a fund and let it go and let the bot control it versus what they call active investing, which is human-powered investing. They’re big on that latter. They’re big on the human-powered investing.

So, the big point of view, and here it comes, we worked their whole exercise to get them to this. So, their unique point of view on the world is the only investing is human investing. They say, “Anything else is just gambling.” You go, “Wow! Okay. That’s a point of view.”

Drew McLellan:

Yeah, big and bold. Right.

Robert Rose:

Yes. So, through this idea of Capital Ideas, they extolled the virtues of how these classically talented emotional wonderful people drive the investment decisions and thought around economies and the way that investments are made, the approach and investment methodologies, and it’s all thought leadership for financial advisors, right? This isn’t for you and I. This isn’t how to buy low and sell high. This is like, “How do you actually create a practice teaching them how to become great financial advisers and what the outlook should be?”

So, this magazine basically became so valuable. They have now centered, really, all their paid media around it. So, instead of spending the millions of dollars that they were spending in terms of driving paid traffic to their website, they’re now spending, they’ve changed their entire paid media plan to drive all of the traffic to this thought leadership, and they’re getting better conversion rates as a result of that, and they’re getting better brand recognition as a result of that, and they’re deepening the trust with these financial advisers.

By the way, the agencies that are driving that, of course, are more strategic now because what they’re doing is they’re now taking over much of the media budget, much of the content creation budget, and much of the infrastructure to create that digital magazine. So, it’s a really cool program that they’ve got going on there.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. Fascinating. We could probably do this for four or five days with bio breaks in between, but-

Robert Rose:

Yeah, right.

Drew McLellan:

… we probably have to wrap this up. So, you know what? I was listening to you talk and the idea of boldness, I think, is a part of this. I think it’s one of the ways and reasons why some agencies have not fully doubled down on this. I do think it takes some bravery. I think it is about deciding what you’re about, which by definition defines what you’re not about. I think sometimes it’s hard to leave money on the table when it’s not the right money. So, I think both for our clients and for our own agencies really, really doing content well is a pretty bold play.

Robert Rose:

It is. I think that last piece is where it really hits home. I’ve been there. I have been the head of strategy at a big agency. I have been the head of everything at a small agency, and I am now the owner of my own agency as it were. I recognize the fear of … The classic in the agency world is when a client asks if you can do something, you say yes and you go figure out how to do it and you find the right people and you bring them in and you scale your agency accordingly.

What I have learned, it’s taken me 18 years to learn this, but what I have learned is that, ultimately, it’s a recipe for failure because what ends up happening is you do build. You build an amalgamation of skillsets. So, you convince yourself that you’re truly integrated. You convince yourself that you have all of this broad suite of talent to be able to handle just about anything that comes up, but, ultimately, you’re 10 miles wide and an inch deep. So, you don’t have time to get to be an expert or have a point of view on anything because you’ve not built one.

Drew McLellan:

You do everything pretty well.

Robert Rose:

Yeah. Exactly. So, ultimately, that’s a house of cards that can come down. So, I just find that really finding what it is you want to be and having the bravery to say, “We’re going to say no to a lot of things because of that,” a lot of things, quite frankly, will leave money on the table. It has been really hard for me, I will tell you. It has been really difficult for me to not get into execution. I made a promise to me and the consultants that work for me we will not build websites, we will not install technology, we will not do analytics, we will not do SEO, we will not do anything that is execution because, quite frankly, I don’t want to build those skillsets. Our point of view is we’re not here to do that. We’re here to be 10 miles deep and provide you with amazing roadmaps, advisory, and strategic consulting and we stop. We stop there.

It’s serving me really, really well, and it’s really hard sometimes to say no and have the bravery. It’s a difficult, difficult thing. I think you’ve nailed it there with the fear.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. Absolutely. You know what? That I think is a great punctuation point to wrap this up on is-

Robert Rose:

End up in fear. End in fear.

Drew McLellan:

I’m going to take the upside of this, that the agencies that are bold and brave enough to believe in themselves, to believe in their point of view, to discover and really define their point of view, that’s how you future-proof your agency. That’s how you make sure that you have longevity is that you can’t be commoditized. Every day I talk to agency owners and they talk about the commoditization of our business, and I’m saying to them it does not have to be that way. I think our conversation today is the roadmap for how you avoid being a commodity in our business.

Robert Rose:

Yup. That’s exactly right. That’s exactly right. Finding your point of view and helping your clients understand what it is they can change into is truly where you can become an integral, and intimate, and irreplaceable piece of what it is they do.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. See, that’s how we’re going to end this episode. Perfect. Robert, as always, this has been awesome. Thanks. I know you’re crazy busy. So, I’m grateful that you made the time to spend with us today. Thank you.

Robert Rose:

This is absolutely my pleasure. It’s always fun to hang out with you.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. So, all right. If folks want to track you down and if they want to learn more about you, if they want to read your point of view on your blog posts, where they can find you? What’s the best place?

Robert Rose:

They can find me at robertrose.net, which is simply my little website in the corner of the web. The business where I do most of all my content creation and where we run our little consultancy is contentadvisory.net. Yes, I have two dot net domains. I’ve been told that it’s the dad genes of domains.

Drew McLellan:

Nice. Nice.

Robert Rose:

So, I’m just going to lean into that whole thing. So, it’s contentadvisory.net and Robert Rose.

Drew McLellan:

Awesome. Thank you so much for your time. Really grateful, my friend. Thank you.

Robert Rose:

Thank you.

Drew McLellan:

All right, guys. This wraps up another episode. So, okay. If we did not fire you up in this last hour, I give up. If this did not get you thinking, if this did not get you wondering if you’re headed in the right direction or high-fiving yourself if you are further along in this path than many, this is the future of our business. This is a path where you get to stay relevant for a really, really long time. I implore you to spend some time thinking about this, to relisten to this episode, to bring your leadership team together to talk about how do you bring this to life for yourself and your clients. Come back and take the world by storm.

Here’s the thing. Most agencies do not have the courage to do this. Most agencies are not going to be bold enough to do this. If you do, you will be one of the few, and you will be sought after, and I want that for you. So, please take action. Don’t just listen and nod your head and go, “Oh, yeah. That was interesting.” Do something with what you heard today. All right?

I’ll be back next week with another guest, hopefully, to stretch the way you think about your business. In the meantime, if you’re looking for me, you could find me at [email protected]. Talk to you soon.

That’s a wrap for this week’s episode of Build a Better Agency. Visit agencymanagementinstitute.com to check out our workshops, coaching packages, and all the other ways we serve agencies just like yours. Thanks for listening.