Transcript
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Conversations from the front lines of marketing. This is be to be growth.
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Welcome into be to be growth.
Friends, today I'm joined by a fellow
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Austinite, Russ Summers. He is
the CMO at life, though, Russ,
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welcome to be, to be growth, and thank you so much.
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Awesome to be here. Love the
show. So, Russ, you have
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a track record, a history maybe, I would say, working with creative
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teams, and today we want to
get into a lot of the man the
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conundrums, right, the things that
get in the way sometimes, the problems
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we face as creative teams. But
give me some background as to the vantage
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point you have in the work you've
done with creative teams. Sure, I
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mean my perspective, and I've shared
with this with you before. Marketers,
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there's two parts to it. There's
math and magic, right, yeah,
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there's the quantitative part, the data, and that's where I grew up.
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I was the classic marketer, Not
Classic Marketer who, for the first five
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years of my career I opened excel, I opened spss, as all kinds
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of statistical software. I never opened
powerpoint, I never opened illustrator. And
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then when I moved into startups,
one of the first ones I joined was
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called in Poto. We were in
the video commerce space and we realize that,
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yes, we had great technology to
put on our customers sites to make
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video shoppable, but they needed content, and so we moved into creating content
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and there I started really what I
would call a love affair with the creative
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side of marketing, the magic as
opposed to the math. They both matter,
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but when I found it in Voto, and what I found in subsequent
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roles is the real power of marketing
is in the creative and that's, frankly,
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what led me to life, though, because we serve creative teams,
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we help them do better, more
impactful work. So the opportunity to work
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full time with that community was just
absolutely not something I could pass up with
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that unique vantage. But I love
it that you started on nor of the
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math side. I think we need
marketers that have per view into both,
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if it adds such a value to
the teams that were on but now being
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on the the more creative side of
things and working with these teams. What
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are some specific challenges, because this
is where we want to go today.
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What are those key challenges that you
see sort of across the board when it
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comes to creative teams and the things
they're facing. been what if, after
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this conversation, you asked me how
did the show go for you and I
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was silent? Wouldn't that be a
little weird, very awkward? It would
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be super awkward. But this is
the reality of the creative team. Fifty
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five percent of creative content teams rarely
or never get quantitative feedback. They do
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all this work, they're creating.
If you work for Papa John's, you're
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creating a pizza flyer campaign. If
you work in the digital space, you're
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creating a landing page in a website. But what if you never got a
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peep about how that information work for
your stakeholders, who had all kinds of
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opinions? Let's make it blue,
let's put it over here. But then
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when you actually go, what results
are we getting? You get no data.
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So half of them almost get no
data. Only seventeen percent get it
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always or often. And so in
this in this world where now the workflow
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is change, we're now all remote, lots of things and change in our
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work environment. If you don't have
that feedback loop telling you that your creative
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performed well, you're kind of dead
in the water in terms of knowing your
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value to the organization, while seventeen
percent like getting feedback, that is a
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low, low number. I mean, how are you supposed to do great
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work if you don't even know if
you hit the mark right? Well,
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this comes down. It's really interesting
you say that, because this comes down
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to your definition of great work,
and all too often creative work is based
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solely on subjective criteria. I like
it, I love it, it looks
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fantastic. All of those things are
flattering, but they're not useful feedback when
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you can actually say we're putting this
has had out in the wild and in
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the creative brief you told us what
results was expect we're expected. That's where
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the briefing process is where where you
need to start saying what are the what
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are the intended outcomes? We think
this will increase website traffic by twenty percent
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over the next year. We think
this pizza flyer campaign will generate a five
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percent response rate. Whatever it might
be, you actually should be specifying that
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up front as your work with their
creative team, because creatives are problem solvers.
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You tell them what objective you're trying
to hit, they will find ways
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to hit it. But if they're
kept in the dark, they can't help
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with that. And then we're reduced
to can you make it blue? Can
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you make it pretty, can you
make it pop? Yeah, basically viewed
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as output machines. Right, exactly. And what happens with anything else that
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is viewed as an output machine in
business? It becomes a cost center,
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not a profit center. And you
say we need to process invoices, but
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it doesn't drive business when we close
invoices. Well then you're going to offshore
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that process and do it as cheaply
as you can. And the problem with
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doing that with marketing is sence.
The magic component is what really makes it
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work. You can't commodify the magic. You can't just, you know,
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send that all offshore or do it
with fiber or whatever, right. And
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so you're actually hurting marketing performance paradoxically, by focusing only on the performance metrics
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and not understand in the impact of
the creative while you brought up creative briefs
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and I think a lot of companies
we go we have a creative brief and
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maybe not so informative, maybe not
quite hitting the mark. What do you
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see there when it comes to the
structure of creative reason some of the pain
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points around it. Well, we
just did a deep dive on this with
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a company out of Australia called better
briefs, and this is their whole business
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that work very closely with creative briefs. I don't remember the exact statistic,
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but it was right around I think
sixty to seventy percent of marketers said that
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their creative briefs were comprehensive and covered
everything that was needed, and maybe twenty
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to thirty percent of creative teams agreed. So there's a big disconnect there in
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what even should be in that creative
brief. And this is where, again,
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thinking of the two teams is two
separate teams hurts us because we don't
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sit together physically, your metaphorically,
now that we're virtual, right, we
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don't spend that time together collaborating to
understand what the desired outcome is. so
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you decide what the outcome of the
campaign is and then you call in the
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creative team. Well, how about
you call them in earlier? How about
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there in the metrics reviews so they
understand the impact? I mean crazy thoughts,
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but you can't influence the outcome when
you don't have visibility to the outcome,
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and that's where to I think the
creative team can set themselves apart by
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using their own agency to know more
of the business outside of just their creative
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department, because we lock ourselves and
I put myself here too, because I'm
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a very creative by nature, so
it's not in my normal tendency to lean
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heavy on the math side. Where
you started rusts where I got it.
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I got around myself out in a
sense, but we can. We have
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agency there to learn and lean in
and then the business should be looking over
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at the creative department going hey,
we should get them into more of these
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these meetings, in these crucial conversations. Right well, and that some of
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the creative directors I've worked with at
a couple different companies have really shaped my
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thinking. They're in being very forward
and pushing themselves into that process and asking
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questions, and it's really interesting when
that happens. been to watch a medium
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switch from why is the creative director
here? We're talking about go to market
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strategy, and then this very quiet
person, because creatives are problem solvers by
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nature, can toss out something that
nobody had even thought of. That turns
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out to be a really a real
genius solution to a problem under discussion.
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So bringing those teams together I frankly
have never regretted. It's always it makes
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me super happy when you see that
start to happen. You know, another
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pain point I know a lot of
creative teams feel is there's just too many
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stakeholders. We have the thing,
we got to do push through, but
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there's so many people with eyes on
the project. Was Voice into the thing?
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How do you experience that as an
issue? What are you hearing as
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well as teams and going while there's
just so many stakeholders and we got it.
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We got to boil down the voices
we're hearing from. Well, I
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mean there's two pieces to that right. One is you have far too many
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stakeholders. The other is you can
have a lot of stakeholders if you have
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sort of a construct for who is
a decider and who is an input giver
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and Opinion Giver and in what order
those things want to happen, because usually
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what happens when stake colder feedback goes
awry is, let's say I've got twenty
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five stakeholders and twenty four of them
have been heard from and are good with
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it and then at the last minute
one swoops in and takes the role that
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I like to call project pigeon of
swooping in and pooping on the whole thing.
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Right, I like that. And
then you're back to revisions. One
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of the things that we do,
and working with teams, is we're able
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to set up this sort of feedback
processes and sequences so you get so you
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can get the feedback from the right
people first and sequence when you ask for
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feedback. In the old world,
and then you are not old enough to
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remember this, I would expect,
it was very common in inhouse agencies for
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the creative team to walk around with
envelopes to get sign off on the work
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and you had on that envelope written
the order of people you're going to get
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feedback from. Digital processes of kind
of blown that up where we ask everybody
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for feedback all at once by default. But it doesn't have to be that
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way. With the right tools you
can structure it just as succinctly as at
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old school and yet also have all
the benefits of you're moving as fast as
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you can at a digital world,
which means that one of the metrics you
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see impact on is number of rounds
of review. Typically, what we see
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in the market is our customers typically
have about three rounds of review. No,
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what was it? It was,
I believe, thirty three percent of
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assets approved on the first round of
review, which is super cool and that's
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a sign that you're doing it right. But not everybody is. And we'll
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get more into some of these solutions. And how do we move past just
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the pain points here in a second
and want to keep establishing because honestly,
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we could have a conversation that lasts
will far too long, longer than a
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typical podcast episode, just around the
problems we experience as creative teams. But
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I'll hit on a couple more here
before we get to any sort of solution
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or way forward. Another one,
and you you touched on this a little
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earlier and I want to expand on
it, is this idea of being a
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prophet center. We have to realize
we are a prophet center. What is
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that breakdown where so many creative teams
operate from a different space, or even
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teams as a whole going and they
just cost it's a mindset shift. Right.
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If you are fortunate, you have
leadership in the organization that recognizes inherently
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the value of creative work. Because
we all watched the Super Bowl Camp Super
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Bowl ads, you know, a
couple weeks ago, right, and nobody
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talks about the quantitative aspect of those
ads other than the coin base one where
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you ask how many scans were there
and how long did the servers stay up?
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But that's not not normal. Usually
you talk about the creative concepts and
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which ones really stood out in which
ones didn't. So it starts with leadership
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that understands the value of creatively standing
out. But it also starts you raised
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a really good point on the agency
of the creative teams. Are they walking
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across the hall and having that conversation
of what's it? What's the output this
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is going to generate and how do
we know that we're successful? You think
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it's like less than twenty percent of
CEO's have a background and marketing. So
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you have to do a lot of
extra work from the marketing department, from
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the creative department, to continue to
put yourself out there and go hey,
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this is how we drive profits and
put it at the forefront of the team's
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mind early and often, and then
from there. You know, then it
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becomes like, oh well, we
love what the creative teams doing, we
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love what marketing is doing, the
value that they add. But to assume
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that your your they're going to see
the value add that assumption is is going
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to get in the way and breaks
down communication. It does all sorts of
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things, unintended consequences, I would
say. Right. I think it absolutely
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does. You simply have to not
assume that people are going to understand what
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you're doing. And it's interesting how
when other areas of marketing we've gotten kind
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of used to it. Nobody shows
up saying I know how to use Google,
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so I know everything about Seo.
Right, you assume when you're SEO
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team meets with your leadership that they're
going to need to educate. Let me
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explain the three branches of Seo and
how things work etc. Creative leaders need
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to take on that same mantle of
when they walk in, explaining here's the
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role of creative in a well run
campaign and here's how you see the difference
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in terms of campaign response. One
more issue I want to hit on,
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and that is what that skill sets
now are way more complex and my opinion,
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what's needed and so I know what
you think on that one. I
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heard an audible. I yes on
that one. But what are your thoughts
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there on the development of what's required? It's a really good question because we
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a lot of time and I'm glad
you asked. A lot of times we
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talk about creative is though it is
just a group of visual or graphic designers,
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right, but you're right, at
this point multi media is expected.
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You've got to have people with fluency
and video, with people in fluency and
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audio for podcasts, people who understand
the many different social media formats and what
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works and what doesn't, because what
works on tech talk is not what works
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on Linkedin, right, and so
you need all these skill sets and that's
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a very that requires you to keep
track of your team skill sets and know,
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yes, I've got twenty people and
it looks like we have a lot
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of bandwidth, but I understand that
I have only two video people that are
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skilled there and the next three big
projects are video projects. So that's a
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huge issue. You know, and
basically we keep hearing this from creative teams
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that they're expected to work much faster
than seventy three percent of them say this.
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But then also that they are needing
to now increasingly outsource and work without
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outsourced partners where they have specialized skill
sets, because a big reason used to
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be you brought on additional contract creative
resources to increase your bandwidth. Now typically
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the driving reason is there is a
skill set that we don't have that we
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need, whether that be video,
audio something else. So I don't want
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to jump to solutions because I said
I wouldn't do it, but I do
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have a follow up question for you
on this one, because you said track
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skill sets and there's a way that
this naturally happens right where you're just in
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conversation and someone's passion comes out or
a special project comes up and someone goes,
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Oh, I can do that video. But what are some ways rust
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that you have tracked or you see
teams tracking people's skill sets beyond just the
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traditional like this is what you were
hired for, kind of stick in your
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lane? Well, there's a couple
pieces. One is obviously a good leader
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to an extent knows that information.
They always know what what their people are
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capable of and they push their teams
to increase their skills. So you know,
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a lot of times a good leader
will not only be asking what are
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you good at, but what are
you interested in and could be real good
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at? That we can upscale the
skill that you can learn how come out
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and do our team or invest in
development, which is huge. Then the
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other thing is, frankly, you
know, good tools do have that capability.
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We recently added to our workflow solution
resource management to enable you to assign
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specialties and know who on your team
can do what, understand their workload,
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etcetera, so you can sort of
start to now see those bottlenecks and whatever
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you're using for project management tools,
you should be thinking of it that way.
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How do I see if the demand
that's coming down the pipeline is going
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to match the skills that my team
has? Okay, so we're going to
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go back through this list basically,
and now we'll just start to dive into
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some solutions that I love the one
you just gave there, but I'll just
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kind of rehash for us some of
these problems that we're wanting to address in
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this episode. One was this idea
that often creative teams are viewed as output
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machines. Second one is that these
creative briefs aren't informative enough. Yet too
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many stakeholders. We have to realize
right as a creative team, that we
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are a profit center. Make sure
people are aware of that and we're talking
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about it. And then that final
one was a skill sets are far more
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complex. So when it comes to
creative teams being viewed as an output machine,
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one thing you brought up to me
was this idea of a project management
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triangle and would you walk me through
some of that Russ and I think it
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would be informative as a potential mean, I know, not solution right,
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but part of the missing piece.
Well, it's a tool, right.
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It's just a mental tool for thinking
about things. And just you know,
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the project management Tryad is super simple. You've got cost, scope and time
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and those are the three legs of
the triangle. In the middle is quality,
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because qualities what you're trying to produce. But almost any leg of that
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triangle can be shortened to some extent. If you've got twelve weeks to take
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something to market and something happens and
you need to cut it to six weeks,
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what do you do? You look
at the other legs of the triangle.
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Well, can we reduce scope,
because you can do something that takes
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twelve weeks to do, you can
do about half of in six weeks,
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or do you increase budget right where
you say gee, the time need just
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got compressed. Can we throw budget
at it to bring more people on to
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get the work done quicker? And
there's obviously not every project can be accelerated
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in that way, but the fundamental
insight is you're always struggling to allocate resources
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wisely and if you understand that time, scope and cost can be traded off
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against each other, then you can
have those intelligent conversations with your stakeholders to
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say, if you want to accelerate
the timeline, here are the options.
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We may reduce SCOPE, we may
increase budget, etc. But it helps
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put you, as a leader of
that team, in the driver's seat to
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use that framework. Is there anything
outside of that framework that you've found to
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be particularly useful as it comes to
trying to shift the narrative that we aren't
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just this department that is consistently just
an output machine? You know a couple
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of things. One, obviously,
is to maintain metrics on your team so
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that people so that you can easily
demonstrate here's how fully loaded we are,
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here's our average number of rounds of
revisions, et Cetera, just sort of
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those basic throughput mess metrics. Yes, we're talking about efficiency, not results,
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but it's still gives you a window, so you've got a leg to
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stand on. And then the other
that I've seen is this is super simple.
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Ask A ton of questions. We're
used to the idea of creative projects
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start with the request. Creative project
should start with a conversation and that conversation
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should be documented in the brief.
So never accept this is what the business
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ask for. Ask why did the
business ask for this? Can I talk
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to you? Tell me what outcomes
you're trying to drive with this? Can
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we document those? When will mey? We measure against those? It truly
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is just a mindset shift, which
leads perfectly into what we said. Creative
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briefs Aren't informative enough. If it's
going to be a conversation over just a
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request, how are we navigating that? What is that practically look like?
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Is it another meeting, or is
it just that request is far more detailed
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and gives opportunity for some some push
and pull? What do you think?
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And around that rust? That's a
really good question, because when you ask,
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is it another meeting. My own
flat reflexive thing was none of us
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need more and meeting, and I
almost I must. I don't know how
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I'll throw up in my mouth or
something. Are Yeah, exactly, and
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I get it. It might need
to be for something complex. But really
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the big thing, and you know, the guys from better brief spoke about
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this far more eloquently than I can
because they're experts in it, but a
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big piece of it is iteration.
Then yeah, rather than you give me
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the brief and I take the brief
as a given, whether it's facetoface,
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zoom to zoom, acing by email
and slack, let's go back and forth
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and fine tune that brief till we
both agree that it's got all the information
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we both need. I think that
that iteration process, that back and forth,
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it changes the perception of being an
output machine as well, because if
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you're just saying yes to requests and
it's like yeah, well, anything that's
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requested of us, are creative team
fulfills and just pushing it out and we're
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kind of in the silo over here
and we do the thing that the communication
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back and forth that locks it in
to where you better understand it and then
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also have the ability to push back
some proves your value and your worth over
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time. So I love that.
Anything else there on creative briefs that you
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would go hey, make sure you
include this or value adds that we can
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we can have there to the creative
brief process. Really the only thing I
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would say is take nothing for granted. Assume the people you're writing the brief
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for don't know anything about sort of
the you know, sort of the implicit
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assumptions of the business, except etc. Just make them explicit, spell everything
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out that you can and then work
through it in iteration to figure out what
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needs to be kept in what needs
to go away. Typically in any editing
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process you end up with a longer
document first in a shorter document second.
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So don't be afraid to put the
information in there, whether you need it
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or not, and then iterate and
whittle it down. The scope of things
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and determining what the true scope is. Right to know. I think that
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helps in the iteration process as well. Like if you're going back and forth,
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you're going to understand how involved is
this about to be? But to
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know and watch out for for I
think what we said is like scope creep.
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It's that the terminology that you use
us. It is indeed. I
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love that idea and I think it's
a huge part. It's like you start
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saying yes to everything and man,
it gets complicated and you don't realize the
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scope of what you committed to.
Well, and this, you know,
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for a classic example of SCOPE CREEP, and I'm glad you use that phrase
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because it reminds me of a classic
example. You know, I might brief
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you in and say that what we
need is a landing page and a content
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asset for people to download. Totally
cool, that is what I need.
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What about social ads to promote that? What format will those ads be in?
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What channels will they be on?
Will they be video ads, in
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which case there's also a need for
video content, because that does to perform
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better in adds, as I'm sure
you know. So that's a classic scope
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creep thing where we would assume,
somebody might assume. The team will know
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this. Of course we're going to
want social heads. No, don't assume.
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You probably better ensure that it's documented
in there. Continuing down the list
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here, which we kind of mentioned, part of the solution around too many
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stakeholders, but I'd love to have
you reiterate their what your thought processes around.
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Okay, there's a lot of people
are who are going to have eyes
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on this, but who can actually
who needs to sign off on this,
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who actually is a full on stakeholder
versus someone that maybe just you know,
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is taken a look but isn't necessarily
have to sign off. Any any practical
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tips on sort of easing the burden
that is too many stakeholders? There are
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two pieces to it. One is
are familiar with the concept of racy?
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No, it's a project management concept. It's was responsible, who is accountable,
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who is consulted and who is informed. So take your stakeholders and think
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about where they fit in terms of
giving the feedback, because you're going to
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have really only a couple of people
that would be responsible right or accountable to
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the deliverables in there, and awful
lot of other people are going to fall
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in the consulted or informed. So
when you think about it, you've got
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just a few stakeholders likely that can
have true veto power or true send it
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back and start overpower, and most
of the there's are consulted are informed.
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So whatever process you use, make
sure that you're using tools and or process
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that can keep those two categories of
stakeholders separate. And then the other thing
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is the order, the sequence with
which you get the feedback, because,
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again, blasted it to everybody at
once usually has terrible results. You've got
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people you're going to want to have
feedback early, and they're often the consulted
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and informed ones that just have good
opinions to weigh in with, and you
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may want those earlier in the review
cycle, and sort of the final approvers,
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you know, the ones that can
veto towards the end. But you
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will also may want the final approvers
and some of the initial rounds just in
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case you're so you don't waste time
on a direction that they would say,
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this is not what we want at
all. So think about the roles people
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play and the sequence in which you
ask for feedback. Yeah, I think
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when you don't do that adequately,
you end up with a lot of people
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that don't really can't articulate why they're
frustrated because they don't really know. A
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lot of people saw had eyes on
this, a few people had objections.
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We don't really have it really prioritize
the voices in the room and so responsible,
359
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accountable, consulted informed. I love
that. That idea there and I
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think there's a lot of just practical
ways to walk that out. Okay,
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how do we begin to instill in
our teams this idea that skill sets are
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far more complex? You mentioned that
keeping track of it, but is there
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anything else we can do to like
incentivize our teams to continue to learn and
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grow and add to their skill sets? What are what are ways that were
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dealing with the fact that that's just
the new reality? Well, I mean
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a few things. What a good
question. In a few things come to
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mind. They're one is for starters. You should always hire people that want
368
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to learn and grow right. So
a piece that I'm not saying if your
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team isn't doesn't desire to learn and
grow, you've hired the wrong team,
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but you may not of cared form
it for them in the way that you
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should. Most people do want to
learn and grow, so make sure they
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come in with that as a desire
and that they come in knowing this is
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something the organization supports. Then,
with the sort of flattening of the world,
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as we now have a whole lot
more people to do perhaps less work,
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as we've all gone gone remote or
more work. As we've all gone
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remote, most teams do report feeling
considerably overwhelmed. That's where, again,
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potentially bringing in outside resources is something
that teams sometimes have to do. But
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the first thing to do is simply
know an inventory those skills. What is
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your team capable of? What are
their specialties? You know, I think
380
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in terms of priorities, availability,
workload and specialties when I'm thinking of teams,
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team loading priorities. What's important?
Availability? Who may have time on
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deck? Work load are they?
WHO's carrying more of the load versus last?
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And then specialties is where it gets
super interested and you say yes,
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but only three people on the team
can do this particular work. You've just
385
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got to have that inventory of your
team in some fashion. I always love
386
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this, getting people's insight on on
this question. But what would you rust
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be willing to outsource from a strategy
perspective in marketing, and what would you
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it's like a Nope, this has
to actually be someone on our team full
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time. What comes to mind when
I ask you that? Oh my gosh,
390
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it is such a good question and
the answer is a little situational.
391
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Absolutely, yeah, yeah, I
love content to largely be created in house
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or heavily influenced in house, because
we know our voice, we know who
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we are, we know that we
do this because our customers were born to
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create right. We have those values
inherent. So I like content to be
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in house or heavily influenced within house. Performance Marketing I tend to like in
396
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house as well. I know not
everybody does things that I am comfortable.
397
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Outsourcing are often when you have sort
of a temporal need, a short term
398
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need, and I was talking about
this with a friend today with regards to
399
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product marketing. I think product marketing
is a whole is a function that must
400
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be in house because you really need
somebody to understand your customers in your world
401
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very deeply. But there are times
when you're working on things like your strategic
402
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narrative, where an outside person is
really, really strong and you need an
403
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outside person. You need that skill
set, that high power skill set,
404
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for a short time. So those
are times either you need a specific skill
405
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set for a short time or you
just need more hands to do the work.
406
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Those are the two situations in which
I'm most likely to say let's look
407
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outside. Love the opinion there.
I love the differences and what people are
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willing to consider around it, and
it's always intriguing to ask that question.
409
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So as we start to wrap up
here, US around these these issues that
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we all faces creative teams, and
then, you know, these solutions I
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love. I love some of what
we got to digest there and just a
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practical insight you gave. But anything
you want to add as we start to
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00:30:42.160 --> 00:30:48.759
wrap this conversation up, just fundamentally
think around the whole life cycle of your
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00:30:48.759 --> 00:30:51.720
content. How do you produce it? How do you create it? How
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00:30:51.720 --> 00:30:53.960
do you collaborate on it? How
do you store and distribute? You've got
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00:30:55.000 --> 00:30:57.599
to think through that and have a
strategy at each place to make sure you're
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00:30:57.640 --> 00:31:03.440
able to stay in touch with your
stakeholders and get the input from them you
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00:31:03.480 --> 00:31:07.759
need and get them the outputs they
need from you. Fantastic. Well,
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00:31:07.880 --> 00:31:11.000
Russ. For those that want to
continue to follow you, stay connected what
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00:31:11.039 --> 00:31:15.160
you guys are doing at life.
Oh, give us a best ways to
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00:31:15.160 --> 00:31:19.559
connect easy. Obviously, you can
always follow us on social you know we're
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00:31:19.640 --> 00:31:23.880
on all of the twitters, Linkedins, etcetera. Feel free to connect with
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00:31:23.920 --> 00:31:27.880
me on Linkedin. I'm pretty active
there. I'm just rust summers, Cemo
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00:31:29.000 --> 00:31:32.079
of life, though, or anybody
can always feel free to shoot me an
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00:31:32.119 --> 00:31:36.759
email at rust summers at life otcom. And, of course, you know,
426
00:31:36.799 --> 00:31:38.680
feel free to visit us at life
though, and sign up. Will
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00:31:38.720 --> 00:31:44.000
send you good information and we won't
waste your time with spam. Love it,
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00:31:44.440 --> 00:31:47.799
rust, thank you for stopping by
be to be growth today. Bennett's
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00:31:47.839 --> 00:31:52.599
been great talking. Thank you so
much, but we're always having conversations just
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like this that are going to help
fuel your growth. They're gonna man,
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00:31:56.240 --> 00:31:59.799
they're going to speak directly to some
of the challenges that you're facing and hopefully
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bring some innovation to the work that
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You can subscribe to the show right
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on, and a connect with me
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talking about marketing, business and life
over there. Keep doing work that
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matters. Will be back real soon
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this episode. Share the love by
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