RHS 013 - Steve Babcock: How to Lead a Creative Culture

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Speaker 6 Hello, and welcome back to the Ryan Hanley show.

Speaker 6 It is great to have you with us. And today I am interviewing Steve Babcock.
He is the former chief creative officer for Vayner Media. And now he runs his own agency called Made in-House.

Speaker 6 And what I found so interesting about this move that Steve made was he went from being in one of the fastest growing, certainly one of the most well-known outside creative shops to creating his own agency, which is essentially helping organizations create well-run,

Speaker 6 highly functional, effective in-house creative agencies. I thought it was a big move.
It was very

Speaker 6 entrepreneurial move. And I was very interested in his take on in-house versus kind of third-party creative agencies and marketing shops and where he stood on that.

Speaker 6 And then really I wanted to learn more about his perspective on leading a creative team. I thought he had a unique perspective to do that.

Speaker 6 And as business owners, many of you listening to this, when you interact, whether you're a creative yourself or not, when you interact with a creative team, there are specific ways in which you creatives operate that is slightly different from those who do other forms of tasks.

Speaker 6 As every function is slightly different, and I just thought it was a unique perspective, very interesting. Got his thoughts on branding and marketing as well.
And just he's a very good guy.

Speaker 6 I had the chance to meet him in person when I spoke at Gary Vaynerchuk's first conference, Agent 2020.

Speaker 6 I had our Agent 2021, I think it was, down in Miami and found him to be very engaging and funny and but also down to earth. And it was just a pleasure to have him on the show.

Speaker 6 I think you're going to love this episode. Before we get there, guys, my one ask, there's no advertising on this show.

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Guys, great to have you here.

Speaker 6 Let's get to Steve Babcock.

Speaker 8 Cool. Well, I appreciate you coming on the show, man.
It's the

Speaker 8 whole context is fairly conversational.

Speaker 8 I think,

Speaker 8 you know, I'm interested in some of the things that have been happening with your career and just the general decisions you've made and why you've made them. I think that's interesting.

Speaker 8 And then I just have some general kind of branding, business, creativity, creative questions for you as well

Speaker 8 that I want to walk through. And,

Speaker 8 you know, when we stop having interesting things to say to each other, we'll stop talking and we'll wrap it up

Speaker 8 inside of an hour, I promise. So even if we still have fun things to say, we'll be done well before 2 o'clock.
So that just gives you an idea of where we're at.

Speaker 8 I don't know if you remember, but we did actually meet in person at the first conference that

Speaker 8 Vayner had down in Miami. We were on a, you came over and talked on an insurance panel, and I was one of the other panelists.
I think I had been texting you, like, hey, man,

Speaker 8 looking forward to the panel. And that was me.
But that's

Speaker 7 okay. Awesome.
Yeah.

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 8 It's okay. I

Speaker 8 cool. So

Speaker 8 to that end, I kind of wanted to jump in. And I became aware of your work when you joined VaynerMedia.
I was unaware of it before.

Speaker 8 And then I started watching what you were doing and following you on Twitter and stuff. And I just thought you had a pretty interesting perspective.
I really liked the,

Speaker 8 you used to do the, or maybe you still do them and I just don't see them, but the QA's on Instagram where you would answer people's questions. I thought those were really well done.

Speaker 8 They were witty and

Speaker 8 valuable.

Speaker 8 You mixed kind of just being funny and fairly down to earth on some questions that were that could be like, you know, you could have just like surface glossed them and you seemed to give very like real answers, but also made it fun and engaging at the same time.

Speaker 8 I thought that was cool. And that's kind of how I got indoctrinated your stuff.
We met each other in person, which was cool.

Speaker 8 And then, you know, just in general, seeing what was coming out of Vayner was always very interesting. And you guys had your first Super Bowl commercial and that kind of stuff, which is cool.

Speaker 8 Long story short, you know, then the announcement came out that you were making a move to your own shop. And I started digging into what that was going to look like, which is made in-house.

Speaker 8 And for anyone listening who wants to check it out, and I'll have links and stuff to all this, but you can go to madein-house.com to check out the site.

Speaker 8 And I thought this was a really interesting idea and an interesting move considering what the rest of your career had been.

Speaker 8 So I guess where I'd love to start is maybe towards the end or most recent part of your career, which is this move. Like what part of

Speaker 8 in-house versus maybe the previous parts of your career, unless I'm wrong, have been kind of being an outsourced agency work? Like what was the,

Speaker 8 what sparked that? What was the move? What was on your brain when you made that decision?

Speaker 7 Well, I'll give you the honest answer because I'm talking about that's usually the best one. You know, I had,

Speaker 7 I think

Speaker 7 throughout my career,

Speaker 7 I guess I would say I'm sort of a,

Speaker 7 I'm entrepreneurial in spirit, meaning I'm always thinking of ideas and things like that. And I've never, the thing that's separated me from real entrepreneurs is the gut.

Speaker 7 Like I've always just been like, wait, I can't step out on my own. I'm a provider for a family of five and that's scary and this and that and this.
So

Speaker 7 there's been many ideas that I've I've had in the past that have just stayed in my head because of that. But this was something that

Speaker 7 was similar. You know, for the last probably year or two, whatever, I

Speaker 7 like most people have noticed,

Speaker 7 you know, a lot of our clients saying, hey, we're going to take portions of the business back in-house or we want to do that ourselves. We're seeing talent.

Speaker 7 typically you know attracted to agencies starting to work in-house. So you're seeing something happening like, hey, this is, there's a, it call it a trend, call it a movement.

Speaker 7 I don't know, boom, boom, boom. I even, while I was working at Vayner, had some, a lot of people, almost anybody who resigned from Vayner for the most part, wouldn't go to another agency.

Speaker 7 They would be leaving to go in-house somewhere. And so I just, you notice those things.
You're like, okay, this is some good talent is now not only exclusive to agencies. What's going on?

Speaker 7 What's going on? And obviously, working on the agency side for so many years, I had a lot of experience with clients, but and enough to see into their world and go, okay, they function differently.

Speaker 7 So I thought, man, I bet a company would do really well if they set out to help brands

Speaker 7 build their creative capabilities. There's a lot of consultancies out there,

Speaker 7 but no one's really, at least in my experience, I couldn't find anybody that was really focusing on the creative part, which I think is the the most critical part. It's a foundation.

Speaker 7 You got to have good ideas and a system that knows how to make them

Speaker 7 in volume and et cetera. So I was like, that's really cool, but awesome.
I'm never going to, I mean, why would I ever,

Speaker 7 you know, go out on a limb and try that? Then I came to a time where this is like in May, where I was just going to make a change to another agency in New York City.

Speaker 7 And

Speaker 7 because, you know, know that's the comfortable world that I was familiar with and so

Speaker 7 I was going to make that change and during that time it actually it's kind of weird Gary had made

Speaker 7 we made a video to announce my resignation to the agency and somebody leaked the video externally which was fine it was kind of a weird thing to leak if you ask me it's not like anything in it but it became kind of public that I was leaving the agency and so a gentleman who had just got put in in char put in charge of running a marketing division at a company saw that and reached out to me and was just like hey I need some help like would you be open to consulting for a little bit between whatever it is that you're about to go do

Speaker 7 and it was just this weird moment where I was like is that the universe like what is that like I have a client you know and so I just I just kind of

Speaker 7 you know, held my nose and took the gulp and said, I'm going to do this. So I took the other job off the table and said, I'm going to go give this thing a try.

Speaker 7 Because what's the worst that can happen? You know, I've got a client, a paying client. I'm going to go try this thing that I want to do.
And if it flops, it flops. And I go back to the agency life.

Speaker 7 So that's not like a super glamorous

Speaker 7 story of like, I had this vision and I'm doing it. It was like, I had this idea.

Speaker 7 Didn't really know to give it a try. I had a client drop in my lap.
And that gave me the courage to take that step and make it official.

Speaker 7 And I'm super glad that it did because I don't know if I ever would have before so I'm really happy for that and it's going well for you

Speaker 7 it is it is amazing it's it's interesting it's it's it's an emotional roller coaster because

Speaker 7 is

Speaker 7 the demand is is

Speaker 7 off the charts and and I would say the the

Speaker 7 the satisfaction or the like,

Speaker 7 I really feel like I'm helping. Like brands, they want your help.
They want, like, I just really,

Speaker 7 it feels amazing. It feels really good to be, to be providing this service.
It is a real challenge to be

Speaker 7 the travel aspect, to be a family man, like, because you have to go,

Speaker 7 you basically go in-house. You go live wherever the brand is for weeks on end, months on end, build the agency.
there and then go to the next one, go to the next one.

Speaker 7 So the thing I'm honestly trying to figure out is how to make it sustainable with a life, you know, if if

Speaker 7 which is I'm I'm wondering I'm like maybe this is why no one has done this before because it's it's a really odd lifestyle

Speaker 7 but until I figure out the playbook and how to do it I can I can then look to scaling it because I'm leaving jobs on the table I can only do one at a time right

Speaker 7 so that's sort of the answers I figure out how to scale it and build it into something bigger which That's something I'm very interested in figuring out.

Speaker 7 But right now, I'm like, well, I want to make sure that I can, I want some case studies.

Speaker 7 here's where made in house got involved with a brand and here's when it how it left it and if if that becomes very obvious that it's significantly better then that's what I'm trying to build right now so it's when whenever someone asks how's it going my honest answer is like man it's amazing the work side of it's amazing I really believe that it's valuable but it's also the hardest thing I've ever done

Speaker 7 just you know from an emotional just from a life standpoint very hard

Speaker 8 and you're living in the New York area still?

Speaker 7 So yeah, my family is out just over the Hudson in New Jersey.

Speaker 7 And people ask where Maven House is based, and I say it's based on Southwest Airlines. So it's

Speaker 7 wherever I am. I've been out in Utah actually working with a brand for the last

Speaker 7 six or seven weeks. And

Speaker 7 then I just, I just kind of go wherever I'm needed back and forth. So it is definitely based

Speaker 7 on the airplane or whatever hotel.

Speaker 8 Do you prefer the one project at a time type of work versus like the agency life, which maybe you'll have seven or a dozen, six dozen projects happening almost simultaneously?

Speaker 8 Or is it is you find it more satisfying to focus or

Speaker 8 was the agency not set up that way? Were you more just singularly project-based?

Speaker 7 No, it's different, you know, because

Speaker 7 there's different types of satisfaction, I guess. This I find really satisfying at the moment because

Speaker 7 I'm

Speaker 7 the project, you know, at an agency, it's like, oh, I'm working on this campaign or this campaign here. I'm building an internal agency.
So it's not apples to apples, a very different thing.

Speaker 7 So it's, yeah, it's one project. I'm being hired to do this thing, but it is a huge, complex

Speaker 7 thing to figure out and to solve. So it's different.
Creative, the actual creative like ideas part is sort of the end part. You have to build a machine.

Speaker 7 You know, the majority of what I'm doing is operations. I'm going in and saying like, whoa, here's how you're set up.
Okay, well, let's change some things. Let's be, let's move this group here.

Speaker 7 This person here is in the wrong job. Boom, boom, boom.
It's like, that's the first part of it. The majority of it.
It's like, let's build the, you know, let's build the race car.

Speaker 7 Let's actually get this thing really, really humming. And then we're going to really focus on, you know, building the driver to populate, you know, all the pipes with the best content possible.

Speaker 7 So it's, it's not, that's really the difference. It's like, I'm not a, I'm not really a freelancer coming in and helping them create work.

Speaker 7 I'm brought in to help build the agency that can then, after I leave, make really great work. So it's very different.
It's unlike, and I've never done, well, that's not true.

Speaker 7 My last agency was largely operational.

Speaker 7 You know, and so that's where I learned. I stepped into a very large creative department that

Speaker 7 was in its infancy, but had a lot of people, but just no organization, no structure.

Speaker 7 And it was, I would call it a pleasant lord of the flies because it was people were happy, but it was chaotic at best.

Speaker 7 And so I had to learn then of like, oh i've got to actually operationally fix this thing before we can then get to focusing on improving our work product and i got a lot of satisfaction out of that and and found that i was good at it and enjoyed doing it and so

Speaker 7 yeah now it's like just being able to do that in each brand is really fun and it's i for me it's significantly more rewarding

Speaker 7 to build an environment where somebody who who previously was unable to or didn't know they were capable of making something amazing and watching them be able to make that versus me just making a thing

Speaker 7 you know what i mean at an agency like

Speaker 7 it's and maybe that's you know maybe that's just because i'm getting older or i don't know what it is but it's really really awesome and rewarding to watch people who

Speaker 7 you know are working in these brands that have felt kind of stuck or have felt kind of like

Speaker 7 to all of a sudden watch these light bulbs turn on and and watch them make it's really awesome I believe that I believe that I

Speaker 8 you know much of my work previous to the life that I live today was helping of all things independent insurance agencies think that what they do on a day-to-day basis is cool

Speaker 7 and

Speaker 7 you want to you

Speaker 8 You want to see someone light up. Try telling them that property casualty insurance is cool.
And if you can get them to believe that, then yeah, I see exactly what you're talking about. There's

Speaker 8 a lot of meaning in that work and you almost take

Speaker 8 you take a level of responsibility for their

Speaker 8 finding that that I think that provides a lot of meaning to your life as well.

Speaker 8 That's interesting.

Speaker 8 So let me ask you this.

Speaker 8 The movement that you saw that you now have moved into, and the answer may be obvious, maybe it's not, but where do you stand on kind of the move back to larger in-house teams when it comes to marketing, creative, you know, that side of the house?

Speaker 8 Like, you know,

Speaker 8 where is the pendulum

Speaker 8 in its natural swing back and forth today? And where do you think it should be?

Speaker 7 Well,

Speaker 7 it's confused right now because everyone's like, what's going on? What's going on? You know, I think you've got,

Speaker 7 you know, largely speaking, you've got agencies being

Speaker 7 maybe feeling a little bit of a threat, just from

Speaker 7 a cost perspective, like, wait, this is business that we get paid to do. Now someone's doing it themselves, just in any industry, right?

Speaker 7 You know, I mean, as soon as somebody learns how to do something themselves

Speaker 7 because of technology or because of, you know, systems, you know, I don't actually know a lot of travel agents

Speaker 7 anymore because technology made that it really easy for people to do that themselves.

Speaker 7 But I don't, unlike that analogy, I don't really feel like agencies

Speaker 7 I feel what I'm trying to do is build the complement, build a system that complements each other.

Speaker 7 I believe in-house agencies, when they do what their job is, when they do it correctly, complements what agencies can do. So I don't think I'm not trying to build, I'm not trying to,

Speaker 7 you know, make agencies extinct. And I don't think that's the right answer for for brands either.
I really, really don't.

Speaker 7 I think agencies have to change. And I think brands are going to need to change.
But the ultimate goal is for brands to be able to build a system where they can

Speaker 7 be basically content factories for that brand. And they're not really doing campaign style work.

Speaker 7 The analogy I use is they should stop being the kinkos of the brand and start being the Netflix of the brand.

Speaker 7 So think of it as a machine that is throughout all of these social channels where you have to make stuff fast, you have to make it out of volume, and you have to make it inexpensively, where they're just really, really creating these original, you know, quote-unquote shows for the brand, boom, boom, putting that out there on a daily basis,

Speaker 7 trying to find hits, trying to build equity in these creative ideas. Then you're going to have brands, or sorry, agencies that come in and go, you hire us for the campaign work.

Speaker 7 You hire us for a specialty that you don't have in-house, whether it's big video production, whether it's multicultural, whether it's strategy, whatever. And we come in and offset that.

Speaker 7 And together, you know, you kind of complete each other.

Speaker 7 It's hard, I think, for agencies because agencies have typically been in the land grabbing business where it's like, we want to come in and own everything and we want a huge retainer for everything because that's a really easy way to run a business and a profitable one.

Speaker 7 And so that's the thing that needs to get figured out is where agencies need to come and go, okay, my job as an agency is to be valuable,

Speaker 7 whatever it is you need us to be.

Speaker 7 Because if if your business is AOR

Speaker 7 reliant, then I think you're going to

Speaker 7 financially as a model that is not working for a lot of brands. And so you're going to have to get better at project work, figuring out how to build an agency that makes good money doing project work.

Speaker 7 So it's definitely a huge challenge, but I do, I really don't think in-house is the enemy to agencies. And I think it gets getting positioned that way a lot.

Speaker 7 And I think a lot of agency owners, and I get it, because they're like, wait, this is chipping away at our margin.

Speaker 7 They understand that, but at least my opinion,

Speaker 7 I'm not trying to build duplicate agencies within brands.

Speaker 7 I have a different model that I believe in-house agencies should follow that would complement

Speaker 7 outside agencies.

Speaker 8 When you're thinking about the quality of the work that comes out of an in-house agency, how much is the talent or level of creativity that say an individual or a team may have versus the processes that they have in place and maybe the culture they have in place as well to produce those pieces of content or to tell those stories?

Speaker 8 Like, do you need to have the super storyteller and the awesome Photoshop

Speaker 8 woman

Speaker 8 and the video, or is it we have a set of processes and culture in place where we crank out content that's around our story and

Speaker 8 our message?

Speaker 8 And that's like, I guess,

Speaker 8 where do those buckets come in?

Speaker 8 Do you have to be the most creative, or can you make up for that with process if maybe you're not?

Speaker 8 Does that question make sense?

Speaker 7 It does. It does.
I mean,

Speaker 7 I think it's a mix. You know, at the end of the day, talent is talent.
Creative

Speaker 7 is creative.

Speaker 7 And if it's good, it's good. And if it's not, it's not.
That is, it's just the end of the day. But I think, so, yeah, I think it's important for brands.

Speaker 7 And there's a humongous trend for good agency talent looking for in-house brand jobs.

Speaker 7 for a variety of reasons. I've talked to a lot of recruiters to get their opinions on it.
And it seems like a lot of it is lifestyle. You know, it's like, hey, I'm just, I want a different lifestyle.

Speaker 7 I want to be out of this crazy market. You know, advertising is a crazy job.
So the talent is starting to not be so exclusive to agencies, but that's key. Like, I don't believe there is a system

Speaker 7 or a process that can fully

Speaker 7 offset a deficiency

Speaker 7 in good ideas. But what's really awesome about an approach,

Speaker 7 a programming approach where you're creating a mass volume of shows into the social and digital space, is that you can have and you should have a variety.

Speaker 7 There are going to be certain ones that, man, that is just much, that idea is, takes a little bit more production. It's just kind of a heavier concept.
It's boom, boom, boom.

Speaker 7 Maybe over here, it's like, oh, there are things that are a little bit more blocking and tackling, boom, boom, that are kind of going out every, you know, so you kind of build a whole program and a whole system.

Speaker 7 So not every single thing you do requires the team captain, you know, but

Speaker 7 you want to figure, but I but I think that's really important to figure that blend out. The other thing that's really interesting about the model is like it's all test, it's all

Speaker 7 you know, exploration, it's all piloting.

Speaker 7 If you have an idea, cool. Make it the best you can and put it out into the world because that's the beauty of today's world is now it's very reciprocal.

Speaker 7 When we put work out, if I put a video out on Facebook, I can see if people like it and if they don't. I can see where they stop liking it.
I can see all of this information.

Speaker 7 And sort of build a system that utilizes that feedback loop to make the work better, to just stop making that work, to make if any data

Speaker 7 that's gleaned from that helps inform a new idea.

Speaker 7 So I think it's got to be

Speaker 7 a mix of both, if that makes sense. You've got to have process that can cover for some of the folks on the team who may not be as

Speaker 7 amazing at it. But if you don't have

Speaker 7 the creative chops, you don't have the creative chops.

Speaker 8 So one of the things that I ran into a lot in my prior life and more of a

Speaker 8 we'll call it a marketing consulting role, even though technically that's not what it was,

Speaker 8 Was this idea that I think people, a lot of people who maybe haven't operated in some of the worlds or ecosystems that you have and probably are many of the people that you're dealing with now, I think the initial inclination is that every piece of content that they create is this, this, is put on a pedestal by every single person that watches it and immediately impacts either positively or negatively their brand perception.

Speaker 8 And my perspective is, and this is where I'm very interested in where you stand, is that

Speaker 8 today,

Speaker 8 2019, going on 2020,

Speaker 8 any individual piece of content, unless it's on the edges of either completely offensive and terrible or, you know, mind-blowingly awesome and earth-shattering, everything in between those two just has a small nudge one way or the other.

Speaker 8 Like the, you know, it's more about getting the work out and then iterating off of the work than it is about dissecting one singular piece of content to make it you know the perfect the perfect uh incarnation of who we are and of our story does that like it just seems like our audience or our clients or the people that we're trying to reach uh they ex they're more accepting of

Speaker 8 things that are slightly off-brand or things that are a little more organically or natively produced versus overly produced and and

Speaker 8 they'll take both. You could have something that was, you know, that took you 10 hours and something that took you 10 minutes side by side in a feed and people are kind of accepting of both.

Speaker 8 Does that make sense?

Speaker 7 Well, I think it's because the definition of

Speaker 7 branding has changed, right? Historically, you would say, okay,

Speaker 7 well, historically, branding is a defensive mechanism. It was how you as a company created whatever.

Speaker 7 Typically, it was designs and a logo, and here's our color, and here's our voice, here's how we do talk, here's all these really rigid things so that nobody could mistake you for your competitor or, you know, or whatever.

Speaker 7 And now we live in a world where

Speaker 7 you don't get the more you try to control

Speaker 7 the narrative of your brand or force I should say not control force it on others then then the weaker it becomes now brands are co-built they're co-created and the best brands in the world

Speaker 7 don't allow they they they replace that rigidity with empathy meaning they become really good conversationalists because now you know instead of going like i'm gonna just focus on this one piece of content and spend a billion dollars on it make sure it's this this this this this this now it's more like well there are so many different types of people potential customers customers in the world who have all these different interests.

Speaker 7 And if my job as a brand is to meet them halfway, that means I can't serve everybody up the same flavor. Like I've got to figure out how

Speaker 7 to be who I am as a brand, but communicate it in a way that is interesting to, you know, 50 different types of people.

Speaker 7 That means you make 50 different types of stuff, you know, and that's really the advantage in more of

Speaker 7 of a volume approach of work,

Speaker 7 of creative, is

Speaker 7 a

Speaker 7 you know, it's it's the I always use the television analogy. It's like that's how television figured it out.

Speaker 7 They for every hit show, there's twenty or thirty pilots that that didn't make it, but they didn't bet the whole farm on each pilot.

Speaker 7 The notion of a pilot is like, okay, we can make a proof of concept relatively inexpensive, put it into the actual market. People don't know that the fall is pilot season.

Speaker 7 They just know, oh, a bunch of new shows are out. Cool, let's watch them.
And then some just disappear and nobody knows why.

Speaker 7 It's well, it's because they weren't successful enough to keep investing in. Advertising and brands can function the same way

Speaker 7 where

Speaker 7 instead of just deciding in boardrooms that we've got the one thing that everybody is going to love. And so we're going to put a billion dollars behind it and go make it and then hope it works.

Speaker 7 Instead, we can go constantly piloting, constantly exploring. And when you have something that has merit to

Speaker 7 warrant further investment, then you go, oh, cool, let's invest in this one. Let's go.
You're just trying to find hits.

Speaker 7 It's a significant different way to work. As an agency, that was something that I always tried to do in my last agency at Vayner Media.
And it was a challenge because

Speaker 7 it's hard to make money at the end of the day.

Speaker 7 And one of the advantages I find to that model at in-house is like, you don't have that burden. You're not, you know, you're not,

Speaker 7 it seems a little bit easier and natural to just make, make, make, right, because it's like, well, you are the brand. You're not servicing the brand.

Speaker 7 But yeah, no, I think for sure it is a

Speaker 7 make 500 things to find the 10 things that work and then double down on those 10 things. But while you're doubling down on those 10 things, you're still making 500.
It's a constant process.

Speaker 7 I think anyone who looks at the television industry will see that once the, I think it was in the 50s when they sort of invented the pilot mentality, that dramatically changed everything.

Speaker 7 That's where you really saw a boom.

Speaker 7 I think one of the best at it right now is like Netflix. They have so, they're putting out original content daily.
So much of it.

Speaker 7 Most of it sucks, but man, a good percentage of it is really good, and that's how they get their hits. It's a volume game.

Speaker 8 Do you, so this is kind of a two-parter.

Speaker 8 Do you agree that

Speaker 8 consumers, for the most part, use brands

Speaker 8 as signaling tools more than they did in the past? And

Speaker 8 if it, you know, just whichever way you believe that to be, do you think that helps or hurts brands today? Or does it make it maybe a better way, it helps or hurts, probably the wrong way.

Speaker 8 Is that make it more challenging to

Speaker 8 create and share your brand in the world? Or do you think that it actually

Speaker 8 can help make the process a little easier of what your story is and who you connect with?

Speaker 7 Well,

Speaker 7 what do you mean by signaling tools?

Speaker 8 Like

Speaker 8 the

Speaker 8 the type of car you drive. Like I drive a Ford, right? I've always driven Fords.

Speaker 8 I know partially it's because they're of reasonable quality and reasonable price, but I also like the fact that it's American made and that says something about who I am. And

Speaker 8 you know what I'm saying? That's what I mean by signaling.

Speaker 7 Got it, got it, got it. So like a sort of a social status or social status, who you are.

Speaker 8 Like, give you a case of point. So I am,

Speaker 8 those listening know,

Speaker 8 you may not be as aware. I'm the CEO of a fitness,

Speaker 8 an emerging fitness concept. We have six locations.
Our goal is to have 61 in the next, 60 in the next five years, growing about 10 a year or so, a little more.

Speaker 8 And,

Speaker 8 you know,

Speaker 8 One of the ways that we've been able to grow in the last four years from 150 to 3,000 members is that

Speaker 8 our brand, Metabolic, says something about the people who are here. And we know that by surveying our clients.
Our clients

Speaker 8 use

Speaker 8 our logo, they put our stickers on their cars, they wear our shirts because, and for the most part, their response was, if you go to Metabolic, you're hardworking. You are looking for a challenge.

Speaker 8 It like says something about

Speaker 8 your belief in fitness and the style of fitness that you believe in.

Speaker 8 It's a signal. It's a not right or wrong, not a I'm better or worse than you, just this is who I am kind of thing.
And so it has been advantageous to us in that

Speaker 8 for that type of person, we can really hammer in on them and we know exactly what they're looking for and what they really enjoy.

Speaker 8 The hard part is

Speaker 8 because it is so because that's what the brand perception is

Speaker 8 there also become all these

Speaker 8 misnomers,

Speaker 8 misconceptions of what it actually is.

Speaker 8 And that has been a struggle for us to tear down some of those misconceptions, even though we're trying to attack them through different stories and client dismal and stuff.

Speaker 8 So I guess I was just interested in your perspective,

Speaker 8 coming in-house and working with so many brands now and really digging in how other brands are addressing that where

Speaker 8 your core audience, it almost seems too easy but but now it seems a little more difficult with some of the the audience members or potential clients consumers members whatever um who are just outside of that periphery if if you know

Speaker 7 yeah i think it's you know it's really

Speaker 7 beyond critical that in today's world that a brand has a reason for exist or a company or a business has a reason for existing

Speaker 7 in culture that transcends just the thing they sell or transcends you know that the the transactional business part of their company and typically you know that's that's what agencies do strider what's the north star what's the brand positioning da da da da da what i notice is in-house creative

Speaker 7 departments are typically focused on the

Speaker 7 um

Speaker 7 the on the promotion on the on the buy part they don't really think

Speaker 7 strategically for that very reason because you know there's been numerous numerous we don't even need research to to help us understand that like people

Speaker 7 really

Speaker 7 care about the brands that they support where their money goes isn't just like oh i buy this because i bought this no that's my money and my money

Speaker 7 i i have a passion behind the things i'm supporting and i know this brand does this or I know this brand means this, or I know this means this.

Speaker 7 And it doesn't always mean that they're big, philanthropic, dad-da-das, but like you want to, people want to have a relationship with a brand that transcends just the product benefit, if that makes sense.

Speaker 7 So it's very critical, and I think, and that's really a large part of what I'm trying to teach in-house departments is that. It is not just, cool, you make a post that that thing is 50% off.

Speaker 7 It's like, why does this company exist?

Speaker 7 Because understanding that is the root of being able to then make a volume of awesome content that is trying to drive that narrative, trying to drive the reason the brand exists within culture that transcends just the thing itself

Speaker 7 is,

Speaker 7 I would say, more important today than it's ever been. And typically in the past, you know, we would agencies, we would tell that story with a big 60-second anthem TV spot or this or that.

Speaker 7 And what's really exciting now is like that story is actually told more appropriately in a TikTok or a Snapchat filter or a small Instagram story. Like that's where

Speaker 7 this meaning, these real brand meetings are coming to fruition.

Speaker 7 And that's the advantage that I see for in-house agencies to be able to take advantage of that. Because typically it's just been like, no, that's where we just sort of tell you what it is we sell and

Speaker 7 how much it costs and really you know

Speaker 7 surface level but but a lot of brands don't think of these channels as the places to really build the meaning I think people are more conscious than ever I mean I especially younger people I look at my my own children I have a 15 year old daughter and like she's very curated

Speaker 7 like no no no not that not that hydro you know not that bottle has to be a hydro flask not this because of this not this I mean,

Speaker 7 you know,

Speaker 7 one,

Speaker 7 one turtle got a straw stuck in its nose, which is horrible, but like, you can't find a straw within a mile of my daughter because that, you know what I mean? Like, because of that happens.

Speaker 7 So I think it's incredibly important

Speaker 7 to

Speaker 7 have meaning beyond just a figure shell.

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 8 Well, Steve, I want to be respectful of your time, and I've appreciated so much of what you've given us already.

Speaker 8 And I have one kind of final question. And

Speaker 8 so, before I was in the role that I was in today, I was a chief marketing officer for two different insurance technology companies.

Speaker 8 So, I have my own belief structure on this, but one of the questions, and maybe it's because of that background, one of the questions that I've gotten most often recently is from other, we'll say it, non-marketing background leaders.

Speaker 8 And the question usually revolves around like some version of how do you manage

Speaker 8 the herd of cats that are creatives like how do you what is the appropriate way

Speaker 8 to

Speaker 8 put them in line and I don't mean like in the authoritarian sense just like how do I how do I line them up and get them all working in the same direction how do I make sure that they're happy in the culture that we have while still meeting business objectives and I think you know

Speaker 8 I think when you've when you've grown up in the in the creative arena you you that may come a little intuitively maybe not but for people who do not consider themselves creative but are tasked with either as the overall leader of an organization or somewhere in between

Speaker 8 it managing a creative team or a group of creatives, even an individual person who is responsible for marketing or the creative nature of your business,

Speaker 8 it becomes a huge challenge. So now that

Speaker 8 you're doing this work and

Speaker 8 not that you didn't have authority before, but now you have it from both sides, both the agency side and now working with these in-house teams, I would love your perspective or any guidance you could give to individuals who maybe struggle with this piece.

Speaker 8 Like what are some of the things that they could be thinking about

Speaker 8 when they approach

Speaker 8 the creative members of their organization to help them get the most out of them, meet business objectives, and still keep

Speaker 8 the culture of the business together in a way that everyone's pointing in the same direction.

Speaker 7 It's a significant challenge just because creatives, myself included, I think by our very nature are

Speaker 7 an odd

Speaker 7 dichotomy of insecurity and ego.

Speaker 7 of equal parts, which doesn't make sense, but

Speaker 7 it's a challenge.

Speaker 7 And I think, and the thing that we create is largely subjective until it is not so if it's just art then it is always subjective which is like oh it's art but commercial art or the work that we do as marketers or advertisers is creativity designed to

Speaker 7 to generate a a preset outcome a KPI, you know, and it can be measurable. So number one is to be very clear on

Speaker 7 how creative will be measured. So that's very, because if you leave that nebulous, then

Speaker 7 in a world where it's like, well, now it's subjective. And a creative person is always going to, you know, right or wrong, then it's like, well, I'm the creative one, so I'm right.

Speaker 7 If all things being subjective, I'm creative. You're not.
I think this is good. So you have to really, really build a system where it's like, okay,

Speaker 7 the creative is going to be measured exactly like this. And so you're going to come up with an idea that is designed to solve this business problem this specific way.

Speaker 7 So to build a system where, and then build a system that takes the subjectivity out of whether something is quote unquote good or not. Basically, whether it worked or not.
And

Speaker 7 then

Speaker 7 and then to

Speaker 7 get out of the way, really, right? Because if you've created a system where it's like, cool,

Speaker 7 we need to create work that makes this thing happen like this. Everyone understands what this and that looks like? Got it.
Cool. See you later.
If it doesn't do that, then it failed.

Speaker 7 If it does do that, but it was red when you wanted it to be purple,

Speaker 7 then it doesn't matter because it worked.

Speaker 7 So I think it's about taking the subjectivity out of it. At the end of the day, you know,

Speaker 7 that's a nice world to live in as a creative too because I always would be like, oh, I can have all the opinions I want, but if it didn't work, I was wrong.

Speaker 8 I feel like that is a very mature way of handling it.

Speaker 7 Easier said than done.

Speaker 8 Yeah, some of our creative brothers and sisters haven't yet adopted.

Speaker 8 But no, I think I completely think you're right.

Speaker 8 I think, you know, I always found step one is just get the damn thing out the door.

Speaker 8 So often, right, we we get hung up on the nuances or details of a of a creative piece and and we forget that like you actually have to hit publish on it for it to, it's like if no one sees the

Speaker 8 tree that fell in the woods and the tree didn't actually fall in the woods, no matter how pretty and how vibrant the colors and

Speaker 7 you know

Speaker 8 what technology you use to create it. So yeah, no, that's I think that's wonderful.
I agree with you. So, all right, well, Steve, I very much appreciated this.
I know that

Speaker 8 we took many different paths, but there's so much about this, the idea of

Speaker 8 what it means to be in a creative team and what creativity means to a business that I think many of the listeners, in particular to this show,

Speaker 8 are interested in because I know they struggle with it.

Speaker 7 I think that,

Speaker 8 and I'm sure you've experienced this, the... the idea of creativity itself is very nebulous and and just what does that actually mean and how does it manifest and at the end of the day,

Speaker 8 I think you hit it on the head. If it doesn't serve your business goals, it's just art and that's fine.

Speaker 8 But, you know, in the capacity that you are a marketer or an advertiser or a copywriter or whatever job title you have inside a business, it needs to serve those goals and that's how we get there.

Speaker 7 100%.

Speaker 8 Well, Steve, where is the best place for someone who's listening to this, if there's a brand that's interested in learning more about you or potentially somewhere in the future working with you or at least

Speaker 8 getting to know you better, where's the best place to send people?

Speaker 7 I would say Instagram. I'm just at Steve Happens.
I have links to everything in my bio there. Or if you just want to go directly to Madein House, it's just madein-house.com.

Speaker 7 And yeah, I'm easy to track down.

Speaker 8 Well, I definitely think,

Speaker 8 I definitely hope that you bring back those Instagram stories where you do the Q ⁇ A's because those were tremendous.

Speaker 7 You've inspired me. I had forgotten about those, and so I'm going to get back on that horse.
You inspired me to do that.

Speaker 7 Oh, good.

Speaker 8 Good, good, good. Because those were tremendous.
I definitely enjoyed those. Those got me to stop, and I would click through them.
And

Speaker 8 I just found,

Speaker 8 for whatever it's worth, you had an interesting way of both delivering value and some humor in maybe a slightly, sometimes slightly non-obvious way that

Speaker 8 was enjoyable. So I think the world will benefit from

Speaker 8 you

Speaker 8 picking that back up from time to time. So

Speaker 8 all right, brother. Thank you so much.
I appreciate it. All the best to you.
And

Speaker 8 this has been tremendous.

Speaker 7 All right. Thanks, man.
I appreciate it. We'll talk to you soon.

Speaker 8 Yep. Bye-bye.

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