Numbers and Narratives
Numbers and Narratives bridges the gap between the marketing/customer experience and data - come listen to marketing and CX experts talk about how to use data to better engage with your customers and provide a great experience.
Numbers and Narratives
Agency Management 101: Lessons from a Marketing Veteran - Krystina Rubino
This week, we had an insightful conversation with Krystina Rubino about managing agencies for optimal output and setting yourself up for success. Krystina brings a wealth of experience from her time at various agencies and her current role at Right Side Up, where she started the growth marketing practice for offline marketing.
Three big things that stood out:
1. Choosing the right partner - Be clear about scope and capabilities, and don't ask agencies to go beyond their expertise.
2. Active management is key - Don't "set it and forget it" with agencies, especially if you're not a large client.
3. Briefing is crucial - Provide comprehensive materials and context to avoid miscommunication and unnecessary revisions.
Krystina shared valuable insights on agency dynamics, including the importance of treating agency partners like part of your team, being aware of potential hidden clauses in contracts, and the benefits of working with consultants for smaller brands. You can find more conversations like this on Krystina's podcast, Growth Talks, or check out Right Side Up's website for their services.
rightsideup.com
Christina, thank you so, so much for coming on. Before we get started, can you summarize the conversation that we just had on the length of a tweet or a tweet thread?
Speaker 2:We talked about managing agencies for optimal output and how to set yourself up for success, and so you don't wind up shooting yourself in the foot and everyone enjoy the episode.
Speaker 1:I'm Amy Syed.
Speaker 3:I'm Sean Collins.
Speaker 1:And this is Numbers and Narratives. Have you like tried using like Claude versus ChadGBT? I remember like asking it stuff, and sometimes, like I get into this, like if I'm like asking a bunch of questions or I'm asking to do something, I feel bad, so like I say thank you If you tell ChadGBT like thanks. And sometimes, like I get into this like if I'm like asking a bunch of questions or I'm asking to do something, I feel bad, so like I say thank you if you tell Chad GBT like thanks, uh, and sometimes like you'll give it like a nickname, like jippity or something like that. Um, and the other day I was like ah, thanks, c Dizzle for Claude, and he goes I'm sorry, that's not my name, don't call me that like my name is Claude. And I was like wait what?
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah, hang on, let me pull it up right now and, like Sean, wait, say your thing and I'm going to see what it responds with.
Speaker 3:Well, honestly, it's not about like you feeling weird about it. It's that you got to remember that in a couple of years we're going to be controlled by these overlords and so like do you want to have your historical record? Show that you're a dick or show that you are polite and should be rewarded with the good jobs?
Speaker 2:I watched iRobot Like I know what's up. I don't want to be on their shit list when they're coming up and they're like oh, let me look at that. Oh, were we too demanding of Siri in Christmas of 2024?
Speaker 3:Did you thumbs down a lot of my results. You think I was wrong?
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, there is no wrong. You think I was wrong? Yeah, no, there is no wrong, there is only Zod, I'm so bad, you guys? No, I really am convinced that, like I do, say please and thank you, literally.
Speaker 3:It's just a good habit to get into.
Speaker 2:Oh, there's a whole other thing, like somebody was studying how people talk to the voice assistants when they're a female versus male voice. That's a whole other part of our psyche. That is really interesting.
Speaker 1:I'm trying to remember where I saw it, but I really think they should study it more because, like you know how much of that was people wanting to talk to the GPT voice that sounded like Scarlett Johansson, like they clearly just like, they just clearly like ripped off Scarlett Johansson. Yeah, by the way, I just typed it into Claude. I was like, hey, c-dizzle, and it responds with hello, I appreciate the friendly greeting, but go by Claude rather than C-Dizzle. And then I responded with okay, c-dizzle, and it goes, I prefer to simply go by Claude. Now, what can I help you with today? I was like, oh, okay, I mean, that feels reasonable man, it said please don't like.
Speaker 3:If I called you iDizzle and you were like never, never, do that. And then I immediately called you iDizzle again, you would justify it would be frustrated.
Speaker 2:It'd be. I'm kind of amused that you basically got told bitch, did I stutter by a GPT Like I was? Like I'm no, but okay, see, I'm going to start using that.
Speaker 3:At least it didn't say you can call me sir or something like that. Ooh, you didn't get put down that bad.
Speaker 1:I just opened ChatGPT and it was like what's up, gpd? And it just responds with not much. Amy, what's up, dear bye, chatgpt, total pushover, total pushover. Or he's a bro, or bro Horry's a bro.
Speaker 2:He's like you know. They're hanging out, they're chilling Like. I'm cool with that.
Speaker 3:It's like a Michael who doesn't want to be called Mike, you know, and at some point you get just pushed over the edge. Like my name is Michael, damn it.
Speaker 2:Their edge is apparently.
Speaker 3:Claude's edge is like it's about the training data, you know, yeah.
Speaker 2:It's so interesting Like I actually haven't used Cod much, I've just pretty much used GPT and I go on and off with paying for it. I do find it useful. But then I go like a week where I just my brain is just like, oh no, you don't like, like it doesn't go there to use it. And then there's some weeks where I'm just like make me sound less bitchy in this email, please organize this data for me. Nice robot person, thank you.
Speaker 1:So, sean, I don't know, sean, do you want to introduce Christina? Christina, you should introduce yourself. I like, I would love to hear more about you and then we can maybe like kick into it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we can do it this way. So I had the distinct pleasure of being on Christina's podcast. We recorded it last week no idea when it will air and it was a phenomenal conversation and a ton of fun. So I'll say that we planned on talking about how to manage agencies and we'll kind of see if we actually talk about that. But before we possibly talk about that, christina, you should kind of give like a rundown of why you would be a worthy source for that and kind of your background.
Speaker 2:Does agency PTSD qualify me as a good source of information? No, so yeah. So I'm Christina Rubino. I'm an early employee and started the growth marketing practice for offline marketing at Right Side Up Been doing this for coming on seven years now, and prior to that I spent a little over a decade at different agencies of all sizes, scales and function. I am one of those people that is an avowed generalist, but I like to specialize in different channels at different times. So what I mean by that is for a long time.
Speaker 2:When I came out of school in the mid-aughts, I was really hyper-focused on digital media. I did a ton of paid search display, was involved in the early application of programmatic technology to the display medium. Display medium Eventually just got really into communications planning and integrated media and then at one point burnt out crispy fried chicken, was done with New York, thought I was maybe done with agencies, moved to California, realized that I was in fact done with agencies and then went in-house briefly and then wound up here. So yeah, I've worked across a bunch of different channels, I've consulted, I've been agency and I've been in house. You know I'm in house at Right Side Up now. So, yeah, happy to just talk about any and everything. And, yeah, happy always to advise brands on how to get more out of their partners and agencies.
Speaker 3:And could you talk a little bit?
Speaker 2:about Right Side Up Because I think it's first of all at Built. We work with Right Side Up. I love Right Side at the concept, like for the business, and appreciating that it already scaled a little bit. But you know, nothing like this has has really existed before. So it's found by a guy named Tyler Elliston, brilliant growth marketer, worked in house, had a growth at Eventbrite, had kind of like done that San Francisco Bay Area thing for a number of years. Super qualified, brilliant marketer. Eventually realized that he had hired and fired a lot of agencies and worked with a ton of consultants and was like there's got to be a better way to do this than either going it alone completely in-house or hiring an agency and having them do it for you, but outsourcing the function, outsourcing the growth that comes with it, right. And so what he boiled it all down to was that the relationship between talent and brands and brands and agencies and kind of some of these dynamics were upside down. That's actually where the name came from. He mentioned it to his wife and she's like why don't you just call it right side up? And we were all like, oh my God, anne's a genius. Well, he at the time was like Anne's a genius and then eventually it was like Anne's a genius.
Speaker 2:But yeah, we're a very scaled consultancy, probably one of the largest growth marketing consultancies in the world.
Speaker 2:We have several hundred consultants out on projects every month and the goal is it's all about matching top talent to brand needs and getting out of the way, because we all know that the best marketing comes from programs that are very well integrated with in-house functions, right, and so we provide fractional staffing for as long or as short as a brand wishes. There's some I tell people this all the time but there's some podcasts and offline engagements we've had for over six years now where I was the first consultant on them and I built a lot more attrition into this business when I than there has been. And then there's some instances where we help brands kind of just like six to 12 months, help them prove the channel out, help them even write up the JD to like fully in-house the medium. So it's. It really is like we span all growth marketing channels. You know digital offline, et cetera, and you know digital offline etc, and just about all levels. I'd say we usually start at like fractional sourcing for manager. We get all the way up to like fractional CMO.
Speaker 1:Sean, I guess like from can you, can you talk a little bit more about how you guys use a belt, or is that against the rules?
Speaker 3:I have no idea, so we'll just do it. We used them to launch our podcast advertising strategy. So I had no experience with running podcast ads, nor did anyone on my team and at the time, you know, we like to prove out channels before we really invest in them. And so we were ready to hire a full-time person to launch a podcast ad strategy. And we didn't know if it was going to work. We didn't know what the investment was going to be, and so we evaluated a bunch of programmatic uh platforms.
Speaker 3:We talked to some consultants and got connected to right side up and um. For a lot of reasons we we picked right side up, um and and I have been so happy with that, that decision, for I mean, I mean, it's been over a year now I lose track of how long, but it's been a while and it's been great for us. It's really helped us scale the channel and figure out how do you pick shows, how do you test the channel overall, how do you test different verticals of shows and types of shows, different ad formats no-transcript?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's. I always tell people a couple of things like, no, you're not going to hire somebody full time for that rec, right? Like you're going to try and prove out the channel and there may even be times where it doesn't make sense to take a channel like that in house. There may be times where it does. Right, we work with advertisers of all stages and sizes. But one of the points you made is like we wanted to test it.
Speaker 2:My big thing is like we're all either recovering agency people or in-house growth marketers or both. Right. So what we want to do is look at minimum viable budget for testing. Right, we want to litmus test so that we have like a clear positive, clear negative. We avoid an inconclusive result and we want to make sure that we're removing any variables from the test besides basically proving out whether or not the medium works for the brand.
Speaker 2:Right, and that's why, like Sean and his organization and the way that built is structured, it allows us to focus on what we do best, right, which is podcast advertising, audio advertising etc. And them to weigh in and help us on, you know, the legal and regulatory side and what we can and can't do and can and can't say. You know, there are so many considerations that are brand specific, when it comes to suitability, for example, right, everything is brand safe, but is it brand suitable and like. Those are the parts where we very much lean on our in-house colleagues to be like, hey, here's everything that's available to us, here's what we would think about, here's what we'd watch out for, based on the specific context that you have, because you're a full-time employee built what do you think about X, y and Z? And so it becomes like a really collaborative process.
Speaker 2:We don't do like the whole. Well, I have I get to know these things and you don't get to know them. I'm like I'll, we'll teach you the whole playbook. Nobody, like nobody in-house, is going to walk off and start a growth marketing agency based on the information I give them. I'm like I don't give a shit what you sorry, can I curse? Okay, cool.
Speaker 3:I would never have a podcast where you can't curse oh yeah same.
Speaker 2:I, what was that hard? Even that's okay, that's better. Um, the kids, the kids now do. I'm like this doesn't make. No, yeah, exactly. Like what is that? That's not efficient, but anyway.
Speaker 1:What the heck is. How do you do?
Speaker 2:it, it's like, it's like your middle finger, and I don't know.
Speaker 1:But like guys, we already figured it out, like we don't need to do everything new.
Speaker 3:I would like to take a moment to empathize for all our audio-only audience out there. I just have no clue what the hell happened.
Speaker 1:It's like. It's like also like 90, it's like 90%. It's like 90%. Of our audience too, just like does not know, like the pain that I went through trying to make a little heart with my fingers rather than with my hands.
Speaker 2:I mean honestly, it's worth looking at the video for just that, purely Sorry, we all just went.
Speaker 3:Maybe that's the short for LinkedIn is just trying to make a heart you know different creative pulls in different ways, guys, we call hearts and crafts. There we go, there we go.
Speaker 2:I think I need to leave actually.
Speaker 1:Bye, all right. So also by the way. By the way, sorry Sean, before we keep going, I really just want to point out that I'm pretty sure she does. The first person that we've had that like has her podcast and it like immediately shows, it like immediately shows how proud she is.
Speaker 2:Really, I sound like a real person.
Speaker 3:We didn't actually give you any guidance on the format of the show. We just like, hey, we're going to start recording now.
Speaker 1:And you're like okay, you're like yeah sure.
Speaker 2:Let's just like vibe, which is listen my entire. I joke around and I say that I'm basically like a quasi business therapist for a living so it's just, I like to catch vibes on calls and I'm like that's so much.
Speaker 2:Oh, I mean business therapist really because, like half the time, even if I don't work with clients on an existing basis, I'm really just connecting with, like with people like you and Sean and like going back and forth about, like, what's going on in their business, what's happening. Do you need an outside perspective on this? Because if you have this conversation again with XYZ on your team or this other executive you're going to, you know, unalive yourself, as the kids say. You know there's, there's just it's a. What we do is. I like to say like there's no real marketing emergencies, right, like there's never actually been a marketing emergency, but it's high pressure, high stakes work. So when you're talking to people and it's like I've got to do this, I've got this timeframe, I've got this budget, but oh my God, I don't know how to do X, y and Z, it's like, yeah, just like, tell me what's going on and ask me all of your questions that you think are dumb and let's, and like we'll figure it out.
Speaker 3:If I can't convince you, this made up problem is an emergency. How would I possibly convince you to buy a product?
Speaker 2:I mean, do better. I'm a savage. So we're here to talk about managing agencies.
Speaker 3:What are the key errors that you see in how brands manage agencies? Let's start there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean I would say, leaving the agencies to answer too many of the questions and perform too many functions in the pursuit of that. So what I mean is I'll take an example Just let's say, like you're working with a media agency, right, and they're really experienced in the mediums that you're asking them to cover, but what they're probably not going to be as experienced in, frankly, are the ins and outs of growth marketing. Right Before I went in-house and even before I started working with, like more earlier stage startups, I did not know the business end of our business as well as I do now. I did not understand the relationship between Cacte LTV ratio, because it was so. It was 10 steps away from anything that I needed to worry about on the agency side, because I spent a lot of my career as a media director, right. So if you're starting to ask agencies and functions to do things for which they're not intended, to tie back impact to your business in a way that it's like they're like dude, we're buying spots and dots over here, we'll buy the best spots and dots for you, but we're not going to be able to answer those downstream questions, you do have to. You have to actively understand and manage. Against that. You know what I mean. Like, don't ask an agency to go far and beyond their scope unless it's more of. I'm curious to what you guys think. Can you pull somebody in here? I'd like another opinion, but the biggest parts where I see, like the biggest parts of our business, where I see agencies struggle is when they're going way over their skis and it's like they're now. You know, for some reason you thought it was a good idea to have your traditional podcast agency give you a like a paid social integration plan that includes some elements of managing spend on meta Dude. There's very little chance they have qualified people in seat that are at the caliber that we would all expect for meta management to be able to help you do that, and so that's what I mean by keeping things really tightly to scope.
Speaker 2:Another thing is not actively managing agencies. If you set it and forget it in a corner with most traditional agencies, especially if you're not a particularly scaled brand, you are going to wind up being at the bottom of their to-do list if you're not asking the right questions. So you do want to have people in-house with at least, if not subject matter expertise, because you know, to use the example Sean said before, we don't just have people waiting around in-house with subject matter expertise on every esoteric channel that we want to invest in, right, but if you at least have people who are experienced in managing agencies and managing projects for an output, or you have somebody senior, who has been doing this for X, y, z years and has at least touched the channel before you know, even if it's just somebody who's again very experienced in agency management and knows how to hold an agency to a scope, you're going to get more out of your agency relationship. If that's the case and the last thing I'll say to wrap it up is part of the reason that I was so happy about joining Right Side Up and starting this practice is I was that agency person that people would consistently ask to work with again.
Speaker 2:And that's not like I don't like that.
Speaker 2:That's not like let me brush the dirt off my shoulder.
Speaker 2:That is because I treated my client's business like they were my business and I, you know I'm competent and capable at the channels that I manage, but I care and I show up and I give a shit, and so what I always tell people is, with agencies, it boils down into how good is your contact and how good is the person managing your relationship and the internal resources they're pulling in.
Speaker 2:You can have a wildly different experience with traditional agencies, depending on which team you get Right you can. You can wind up with a C team if you're a tiny brand testing, tiny budgets, brand testing, tiny budgets, and that's like, frankly, like not, I'm not plugging, but that's why I'm very, very distinct when I'm like I don't work at an agency because I staff based on hours and effort, I don't staff based on spend. So you're going to get the same caliber and quality of person that Rocket Money or Robinhood is getting, whether you come to me at that scale or you come to me at a more modest scale. So, yeah, I just dumped. I have 10 other reasons too, but we can start there.
Speaker 1:The way the agency makes money is like minimum human effort to keep the customer for being happy, right when it's like. If you're trying to like take an investor's approach to it, I guess my sort of question for you is, maybe not here, but at other agencies you've worked with, or under other agencies you've worked at, what was the sort of like most common failure point for a brand? Right, like you're basically like listen, a brand has to do these like three things. Right, let's keep it simple. Let's keep it like LinkedIn, like clickbaity, linkedin posts. Brands hate it when you like agencies hate it when you don't do these three things. I don't know if that makes sense.
Speaker 2:It does. So a couple of things. So the biggest place that I see brands fail. Well, all right, I'm going to start here. You ever hear of the cheap, fast and good triangle.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, big time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, my guy, you pick cheap and fast and I'm not going to I'm not going to dispute it. You can only have two right If they're cheap and good, they're not going to be fast. If they're fast and good, they ain't going to be cheap. That other agency you mentioned they ain't cheap, but they're probably going to result in less time intensity from you. And then it just becomes a question of how much time of yours do you want to amortize in terms of where are you investing your time and is it worth your time to be invested in all the guidance that you need to give this agency that was cheaper and still good and blah, blah, blah, but it's going to require more hands-on management versus was it? Is it or was it worth it for you to say you know I'm going to spend a little bit more money in this instance, but it's going to alleviate my bandwidth.
Speaker 2:It's going to be a net ad, not all of a sudden something now where it's like I'm on a status call twice a week and blah, blah, like if I never have to get on an awkward agency status call again, I'd be the happiest person on this earth. They're terrible. I just I have an entirely different voice that I use for them. Like I started, I was like that's just so stupid. And then, honestly, when I was in house, I started to be like stop kissing my ass and just do your fucking job.
Speaker 3:I'm, yeah, I'm. I only have this podcast with you for a discount. That's, that's why we're here.
Speaker 2:Like and I always I deal with a lot of like we're affordably priced. And as you scale my, the way that I built this is that a lot of the times, when you scale one-to-one with media commission, for example, all of a sudden everything is costing a lot more money. But it's not like if you double your budget, it's double the work and effort, right? So I built our scale in terms of like, my particular practice. I built our scale to take that into account. Well, that said, sometimes brands come to me and they're like oh, this is too expensive to start in X, y and Z and I'm like, okay, let's go through cost for benefit. I like here's the areas where we can pull up or down these levers. But if you want to actually execute this in a way that you know it'd be to your point, meets the brief that you gave, there's probably going to be a cost benefit analysis that has to occur.
Speaker 2:The last thing I'll tell you is the so three parts of where you know brands go wrong when it comes to agencies. So one is is, frankly, picking the wrong partner, and sometimes that's actually based on the agency overselling their capabilities or their bandwidth. Two is managing scope. And three is briefing, and this is on the brands or the hiring person in question. Shit in, shit out, my guy.
Speaker 2:Depending on how much and not just you, but like it's depending on how much time and effort you take into briefing the agency and letting them ask you every question that they want to ask you, or even just providing materials that are so comprehensive, you don't have to have as much back and forth because you're paying for that back and forth. What I always remind people when you're revising plans because they didn't miss the mark or they didn't hit the mark the first time and they missed, you're paying for that time. Nobody's working for free. So you have to really really be intentional about the brief that you're giving any agency partner or any service partner, frankly, to make sure that they don't miss the mark.
Speaker 3:I felt it when I've been agency side and I've caught myself doing it sometimes here and at my last job, where I would almost treat the need for a question about adjacent information or full context is like, hey, mind your business, man, I don't need you worrying about that. I asked you to run some ads, find me an audience, pump out some ads, let's go. And I remember being agency side and being like I don't have context, worrying about that. Like I asked you to run some ads, like, find me an audience, pump out some ads, let's go. And I remember being agents, decided to be like I don't have context on any of this crap. Like what do you, what do you want me to? How am I supposed to know X? How am I supposed to know Y? How am I supposed to find a creative angle to get here If, like, all I know is what I can read on your website?
Speaker 3:You know, I do think that's an interesting kind of balance of how do you figure out, like, how do you share enough to be relevant? But at the same time, like you don't need to give full business scope to an agency which, which a, maybe working with other similar brands, be nigher and confuse them because you painted like the long term strategy picture and you have a you know, pretty junior media manager buying some ads. It's like do you, do you need to understand all of this stuff to pick my Google ads and run through Facebook ads? No, so I think that's an interesting balance. Like how do you kind of err on that? Or do you have like a framework or guidance you give to teams on, like what is the right amount of information to share?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would definitely say it's need to know basis, but when I get so, when we ask questions or even when so we actually manage agencies as well. You know, when it comes to television, I like to tell people I'm not even crazy enough to buy linear in house. That's not like a particular violence that I want to choose for myself. So we like we literally run RFPs and we manage agencies all the time. And there are some agencies like shout out to Tari, they're great to work with, bliss points another one, but there are a bunch of different TV agencies. When it comes to like, when you're, when you're working with agencies or when I'm on the receiving end, I always tell people to balance curiosity with need to know. Right, we're all, ideally, you're having curious people work on your business. I don't want to work with anybody that's not curious. If you're not asking questions and you're not engaged, like I don't have time for you. Frankly, which is maybe not the nicest thing. What is it? New Yorkers are kind but not nice. Californians are nice but not kind, I don't know. But yeah, I'm more on the kind part, but I'm also like dude, I don't know. There is certainly a point where it's need to know.
Speaker 2:I will say, if you err too much on that side, I'm a reformed agency person. I never want to work at one again. But I will tell you, I remember every client who treated me as less than just because I happened to work at a third party agency, versus their business, and I remember how hard I worked on that business. Versus others, I always put 110% of effort out. But the people that got 150%, those are my homies. Those were the people where it's like hey, I need you to do X, y and Z in an insane amount of time and I'm so sorry, but it's because of this thing and that thing and the board meeting next week and that, okay, I got you, fam, because I know that you take care of me, you spend the time with me to like, educate me on your business and I feel more like a partner with you, as opposed to when, when you get too much into the order taker and order maker dynamic.
Speaker 2:That's just a shitty experience for everybody involved. Nobody wants to treat people that way. Nobody wants to be treated that way. And if you do, probably go to therapy, like I'm just saying, like if that's what, if you are that kind of person where you're managing an agency and you're like kind of taking out your day on them, you will get not. You will not get people who work as hard for you than if you treat them like partners and this is, frankly, something that I balance all the time with our publishers and networks that we work with like those are my partners.
Speaker 2:If they don't give me great deals and first look on shows and we don't have a great relationship, my service offering is downgraded. One of the first things I do I'm actually like can I do this? But I always back channel people that I'm going to hire with salespeople. I want to know do you like them? Do you like working with them? Do they talk to you like a human being? And that really factors in. Another big thing is when I work with salespeople and we go out to, let's just say, a dinner or a lunch or whatever, I look at how you treat the waiter and the service people. Are you an asshole and you're one of those people that's waving when you're at the table? Ugh, I will literally think of that and that will be in my mind when I work with them.
Speaker 1:So yeah, Anyway, I kind of went on a rant there, but.
Speaker 2:You have to like put a decent amount of energy in to get like good quality out, cause like they can't read your mind right, like they're not mind readers, and so Be honest Say hey guys, you're missing the mark on the vibe that I'm getting here is like GPT plus and what I thought I was paying for is X, y and Z. If I'm off the mark based on the scope that we identified and what we're supposed to be paying for, et cetera, correct my assumption. But here's what I thought I was getting and there might just be some like lack of clarity around scope. They might think you think you're paying for something that you're not and vice versa. Like it gets into that whole thing where it just gets very amorphous. And so I always tell people just be direct. Like everyone will appreciate it and at the end of the day, if it's not the right partner and the right fit, everybody will realize it together.
Speaker 2:Like there's such a thing as bad partnerships and then on the agency side there is such a thing as bad revenue and I have had so many instances where I'll have conversations with brands and by the end of the conversation I'm like I don't think you want to do this right now. And they're like what do you mean? I'm like I don't think you're ready to launch this channel, like you haven't broken enough and broken and fixed enough things in terms of your customer funnel, to be able to handle the demand that linear television is going to give you Go like pump up affiliate and really scale meta and then come back to me in three months when it makes sense, right? But if I were working in an agency like five or seven, 10 years ago, whatever, I probably would have been like, well, we can do this and we can do that. So it's. You know, it depends on the partner.
Speaker 3:That's funny. I think a lot of agency salespeople are terrified of saying no to revenue, like you said. I think one thing that I've found that is funny is when you tell someone they're not ready to work with you, like you're not big enough, you're not good enough, the amount that person wants to reach that point and come back to you and be like I'm now good enough. I remember one time I got told like I was asking for a specific thing, I'm not going to go into the what about it. But they said, until you're spending kind of this much money and growing at this rate, like we aren't a good fit. And I was like you, mother, I'm coming, I'm going to come back and you're going to be this solution for me and guess what they are. I think you aren't going to lose it. I think people appreciate the honesty and you will get better results and you will attain that revenue better than if you force a sale just to get the sale.
Speaker 2:One of the best engagements that I can remember is there was this one company in the insurance vertical and they had tested podcast advertising with three different agencies in the space and it was all inconclusive results. And I started I kind of dug in with our team because they were like they've done this three times, what the hell? You would think that we had at least like actionable learnings or, you know, like a really clear path forward in terms of iterative testing, whatever. No PS. We ran the experiment the way we always do. We took some things into account from earlier tests and whatever, but we did it our way and at the end of the engagement the channel did not work for this brand and the nicest thing that anybody said to me in that instance was their VP of marketing called me directly and said Christina, thank you for giving me the answer. Now I can prioritize my time and my energy elsewhere, and that's all I was looking for was a definitive answer. And I've gotten business referred from that person.
Speaker 2:So I always tell people I'm like and something that's really funny. My business has grown entirely on inbound referrals. It's literally like we. It's awesome and it is just a testament to it's really about the work and it's about being realistic and I'm a big under promise and over deliver kind of gal and I like my expectations managed and I treat everybody that way and I encourage my team to treat everybody that way.
Speaker 2:But, yeah, it's you. It's funny, sean, because it kind of is like it is like it's not like hard to get, but like there is a moment where it's like, well, but this is not like the right fit for you. Now it's like I'll show you I'm like great, show me like this channel could be a fit for your brand, but like responsibly. And again, as somebody who considers herself more of a generalist, you know like if I went in house, it would be to lead a general marketing function. I'm sitting there going dude, you don't have, you wouldn't even touch Google yet you didn't optimize shit there. My God, please don't invest any money in any of these channels with me or otherwise before you get your mind right on. You know, paid search Like it's so foundational to most brand success that it's like if you didn't build that foundation, the whole house that we're trying to build here is going to crumble. We'll put lovely windows and doors on, but like it's not good.
Speaker 3:You know, how do you think that I feel like a lot of companies and I've struggled with this before when looking for agency, like defining exactly what the scope should be how do you kind of think about how often you should kind of have like an all in one solution?
Speaker 3:Or, like you know I've had, I've had this situationone solution. Or, like you know I've had, I've had this situation where we've brought you know again like a digital ads agency on and so I had the expectation of you're going to be the expert on all things that touch that platform, to include the data pipeline for it. And are we, you know, are you seeing tracking working and stuff like that? And then I've been flummoxed when they were not great at that and like maybe they were good ad buyers but like to me I was like I brought on a Google agency or a meta agency. You should be able to fix the pixel, you should be able to figure out eventing, like how do you think about function? And having you know an agency should be able to serve that whole thing, versus saying like, hey, we're going to have one ops team, agency contractor, whatever, we're going to have an expert in ads. Like how do you think about defining scope problem?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would say this is where you have to look really closely at what the agency is pitching you and what is and isn't included. So like, for example, we have scope assumptions and like, clear scope for what's included. I also am very clear with brands about what's not included and what additional services are needed. You know, for example, we'll commonly work with, like, a third party error checking service to make sure that ads ran right. That's a dependency on my business because if not, we would have to spend time, believe it or not, emailing people for cut files to make sure that things ran, which also is meaningless and doesn't actually prove anything. It just sends me an audio file. So there's all of these interdependencies, sometimes with agency scope. So I would say, look at the dependencies, look at the scope of services that are outlined and you might make an assumption that agencies are able to. For example, you know, if you're running an AdWords like troubleshoot an AdWords pixel, I would argue that's a pretty basic assumption.
Speaker 2:Where I would say the agency probably gets in trouble is from a staffing perspective. If they don't have a strong analytics team on staff, they're not going to be able to do that for you, right? If they're a smaller partner and they don't have those kinds of resources, they're probably not going to be able to get in the mix like that and help troubleshoot things. You actually might even be better off in that particular instance of, like working directly with Google. If you have a name, drop Right, so it's part of it is on.
Speaker 2:You know the with when you're like interviewing agencies and RFPing out for agencies in particular, come up with some scenarios that you've come up across in the past and ask them how they would solve for it. Give them real life, real world scenarios. Hey, you know we're going to be working together on meta Great. You know we actually what would happen if this pixel didn't work? And also, let's just say, three months from now, we asked you guys to help us integrate with an MMM that we're onboarding. Have you guys done that work before? What would you do in that situation? If you start hearing things like that's out of scope, that's not really our core expertise, that'll just help you prepare better and in that instance, the service might be cheaper, but again, you're paying for it somewhere, so you'd be paying for it in terms of internal analytics time and your own time managing it.
Speaker 1:That's awesome, Super, super, super good advice. This is quite actually been like very much like I've. I've only taking some notes on the side and I'm like, oh, this is, this is super good.
Speaker 3:Would you call it business therapy?
Speaker 1:I actually learned I I definitely got some business therapy. I feel like the therapy part of it is like more like hey, like you need to be a little bit better, like sorry, dude, like you're just like not, you're not that good and you need to be a little bit better. But you know, everyone needs to hear that every now and then. Sometimes my therapist just says, hey, man, this is kind of unreasonable, you just need to like be a little bit better and like OK, that's fair.
Speaker 2:When my expectations are disconnected from reality. I just look at it as like why am I expecting this in this situation, right? Why am I expecting that? This agency partner, where I know I'm and also some of this, is knowing yourself, right? So let's just say that you're working at like a not especially well-funded series, a startup, and you guys are making it work and whatever. I'm so sorry if I'm triggering anybody with this conversation, but what's probably happening is you guys should actually see a V space right now. This whole thing is going to be a plug for the video podcast because, also, I'm Italian American and I talk a lot with my hands.
Speaker 2:You know, if you think about it, unfortunately, if you're a smaller client at a mid to large size agency, I tell people this all the time. But, like my last role in New York was a media director at a very scaled holding company and for some of my smaller clients, you know, you'd get me on a status call maybe once a month for a half an hour and I'd probably dip out early like a piece of shit, and the reason why is that I was spending so much time on all of my account, like I did not have enough time left over to basically do the basics on that piece of business to which I was assigned because I had to take care of the larger accounts. I remember one time I was interviewing actually don't, I don't mind saying this I was interviewing at Mediacom and they were like, okay, you're going to split your time between this very scaled pharmaceutical company and the smaller retailer. And I was like, okay, guys, like it was either for media director or group media director. And I was like let me read between the lines here I'm going to give this large pharmaceutical company 100% of my time, no-transcript if it's percent of spend and scale. You're probably going to get deprioritized.
Speaker 2:That's why often I will tell people in those scenarios like work with a consultant, you know, eat through obviously preferably through Right Side Up, because we have the best talent but work with a consultant, find somebody to help you, because what you probably need in that situation is like 10 to 20 hours of a very qualified human's time and you're going to pay an agency premium to get an account director and an account executive and a project manager and a this and a that and a this and a that. Maybe you don't need it yet.
Speaker 3:That's a really interesting point.
Speaker 3:I want to come back to the idea of incentive alignment and the right way to structure that, but I think one thing that's really interesting there is, to your point, if you're going to be a small fish and try and be in a big pond kind of agency, there is a very, very real possibility that you're going to be with the C team, like you said earlier, getting extra hours after hours version of of the B team maybe, where you're like their late night work, or you're going to actually be outsourced to another smaller agency who's going to do the work, and then you're just going to have an account manager who's on the call to present the deck right, and so I think like it is really interesting to kind of have realistic expectations of where you are as a client as well and think about the right fit, not just for you.
Speaker 3:But you know, instead of looking at the world with rose colored glasses of like we're the most important brand, surely will all be treated equally and fairly. Remember that a lot of the your daily contacts are going to be young, junior marketers who have never done this in house and this is kind of of their whole professional experience so far, people who are paying their dues in the marketing world and are being brutally overworked and underpaid, or you're going to be passed down a chain of like outsourced agency to agency to offshore agency.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean I actually when I was in-house right before Right Side Up, it was one of the most shocking things to me. But I was working with an agency in this space One of my competitors here now traditionally structured agency and I was their client and I got a proposal from them one time that had a different brand on it. Like I was literally. I just literally was sitting there and I was like these people are going to hate me and I feel terrible, but they're totally just going to hate me. So I wound up pulling in an agency partner that I blah, blah and they're like oh, we already work with you. No, you don't. What do you mean? My AOR is X, y and Z. No, no, no, we're placing. Oh yeah, they're subcontracting the buying to us. They didn't disclose that firing of an agency. I ever did the second. I found that out because to me that's just like who does that? And then, ironically, the head of that agency tried to call my CEO and get me fired, which I thought was fucking hilarious. But I was like all you did was get yelled at because you didn't disclose a, you know, subcontracting relationship. So it's like those kinds of instances. It's like, yeah, that shit does happen Most of the time.
Speaker 2:I will say I was actually just having this discussion with my husband because we were looking at like this update in one of our games that we play and it was like a bunch of like cover your ass language, but like we're really trying to make X, y and Z better and we're trying to do this, we're trying to that, and he's like no, they're not. They have to just say that. I was like no, you don't understand. There's probably some sweet angel developer somewhere who really wants to do this, but they're being told by a program manager that they can prioritize it in this update. They want to do that for you, but there's something that's holding them back, and I would say that's largely.
Speaker 2:80% of the agencies that you work with are above board. Great people, good resources, want to do good work. It's just that we create these structures and these utilization percentages that make it impossible. I remember one time in my 20s I think it was the first agency I worked at I wore as a badge of honor that I was 170 percent utilized. I look back now and I'm like moron. That just means that that 70% they were just scooping in profit and you made nothing there.
Speaker 2:Hello, like, I'm extremely grateful for that opportunity because it fast-tracked me. I look back and I'm like at what point did somebody think to give a 24-year-old you know, a $36 million or $32 million digital budget in 2011. Like what, I was the most senior person on that account. What? Like? It's crazy fucking shit like that. But you look back and you're like, well, I guess I was competent enough and like it handled it well, but that shit happens all day long. It's crazy the amount of like, lack of experience people have when they get thrown on scopes. That was barely English, but you know what I mean.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, I think that's. I think that's exactly right. I think it's a great summary to say, like the right way to manage an agency is to think of them almost as if they worked for you, right? Like I think a lot of us think that, hey, I got an agency, now it's going to be taken care of, they're the expert. But like you don't hire somebody and then not give them direction, not give them guidance, not develop them Like they're just an employee, it happens that they're a group of people wrapped into one employee.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you might wind up loving working with a particular person in question. Guess what. Hire them, rescue them. Okay, my joke is I've literally gone around and cherry picked the best people that I've met in this business and I've basically played like gotta catch them all, like Pokemon, like like your minds now, and I just I'm you know I'm merciless where that's like, where that's regarded, but I look for good people and I look to hire them and I tell people the same thing when they're working with agencies.
Speaker 2:That's also the one of the party notes I'll give you here is read your MSAs If you're going to get in trouble for poaching people.
Speaker 2:If it's not explicitly outlined, read it.
Speaker 2:If there are insane termination clauses, some of the ones that I've seen are if an agency presents a media plan to you, you have to pay them for the year that that media runs.
Speaker 2:If you wind up going to run it, even with a competitor, like, there is some crazy shit hidden in agency contracts and I always tell people really look through them. You know, and frankly, one of the best contracts I ever got from a brand was they struck our no, compete no poaching clause and said, oh, we're okay, you can even poach our people and vice versa. But we reserve we what was it? We believe that the onus for you know, basically keeping people on staff is on the company, not a partner. So I was like shit, okay, like yes, okay. So yeah, I always tell people, like, make sure that you know, make sure you read the fine print and the terms and conditions and if you really love an agency, person or a resource, like hire them if you can afford it, because you'll be shocked at how much money and time and effort you would spend just by hiring the person.
Speaker 3:Okay, perfect. I think that's the right place to end it. Kristen, thanks so much for coming on, and we'll talk soon.
Speaker 2:Always good, always good. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:Before you jump off, do you have anything to pub?
Speaker 2:I would say I mean check out Right Side Up's website and check out Growth Talks for more conversations, just like this.
Speaker 1:We'll put it in the show notes. Thanks so much again for coming on.