Agency Dealmasters Podcast

With so much uncertainty at the moment, many agencies are putting sales and marketing on hold, but that may not be the best approach.  Robin Bonn runs a specialist management consultancy for agencies called Codefinery, Helping them find their shortest course from good to great. I asked rob if he can blame agencies for not focusing on sales and new business right now? enjoy the chat.

The coronavirus is hitting creative businesses and agencies pretty hard. The government announced an unprecedented rescue package for UK businesses but there is confusion as to how businesses can access this support.  Today we’re speaking with Stuart Ramsay, the founder of Accountancy Extra. They specialise in helping Digital Creative Agencies in the UK build great Finance functions and help the owners create the lifestyle they deserve. Contact Stuart stuart@accountancyextra.co.uk http://stuart@accountancyextra.co.uk/ Enjoy the chat

My extra special guest this week is Blair Enns, he is the CEO of Win Without Pitching, if you are one if the 15 people in the agency world who has not read the book, I suggest you head over to http://Amazon.com (Amazon.com) or wherever fine books are sold and pick up a copy for you and your business development people. It’s one of those books you realise within the first few pages, yeah this is a good book. It’s short, super practical and full of enduring business development insights. the book has been around over 10 years and it’s still as fresh and relevant today as it was in 2010. He said he wanted to write a book that if you picked it up would feel old while at the same time relevant. Annual sales have increased year after year, It hit the Amazon best seller list in January 2020. Blair is funny, charming, scary smart and has a deeper and smoother voice than I’m told that I do. I could just listen to him talk all day. If you only listen to one podcast this year! this is it. If you are even remotely

Dylan Davenport is the Managing Director of The Wild at Jungle Creations. They are a social-first publisher that is disrupting the traditional agency model. Dylan is a highly regarded advertising veteran. having worked at some of the most prestigious ad agencies of the last decade. Rapier, BMB, Adam&Eve, who later became adam&eveDDB. They’ve got channels like ITV or Channel 4 dedicated to different interests people have like food, crafting, fitness, female empowerment and they have amassed 115 million followers across them. One of their brands is Twisted, the food brand, which has more than 500 million sponsored views 27 million in the community. It’s the number one food and drink Facebook page in the UK and they have launched their own restaurant. Now with this super-engaged audience, they understand what people like, what they share, what they’re fascinated by and what’s emerging and they use those audiences and insights to solve their clients' biggest business challenges. If you are remotely interest

Jeannette Pritchard is the founder and Chair of JPC, a multi-award-winning strategic brand and communications consultancy. In 2018 she was recognised by the queen for services to business and entrepreneurship. and if you are remotely interested in: Entrepreneurship Experiential design Customer experience Social entrepreneurship and Changing people lives you will absolutely love this conversation. She was one of the first people to combine the fields of Operatic and theatre design with the emerging customer experience priority that brands started to have. So for a few years, she flew around the world, hanging Hondas in the air and creating breathtaking displays to launch new cars. She was part of the movement to encourage female entrepreneurs to start their own businesses. We take it for granted now but in the 90s there weren’t that many women entrepreneurs. Her alumni have collectively achieved an astonishing 96% business survival rate against the national average of 25% and they have created more

My extra special guest this week is Rory Sutherland, the vice-chairman of Ogilvy UK. it wasn’t actually this week we recorded it some time ago but this is the final part of our interview. We chopped it into 3 parts because we spoke for such a long time and he packs so much into every minute of the interview, it made sense to break it up just so I could take it all in, reflect, come back to it. In this part, for instance, we talk about: Why placebos are a good thing and why marketers should use them more in our marketing How we can take a perceived weakness of a product and turn it into a strength. The most famous example of this is probably, Avis, we’re number two so we try harder. We discuss why his book, Alchemy has been so popular with the finance community in America. Probably because they’re all obsessed with rational and irrational decision making. His conversations with the Nobel Prize-winning Daniel Khanneman author of thinking fast and slow. wouldn’t you have loved to be a fly on that wall? Th

Jim Hawker is the co-founder of Threepipe, a multi-award-winning integrated agency working with some of the biggest brands in the world. This is just a masterclass in how to continuously reinvent yourself and your offering to make sure it’s a relevant and compelling to the client as possible. They started life as a very well respected PR agency, then transformed its self into a truly digital-first agency as the worlds of PR and SEO began to merge. He’s been confronted with one challenging situation after then next and although each was gut-wrenching and intractable, he found ways to make sure they emerged stronger from the experience. Whether he knew it or not, that’s stoic philosophy in action. He’s open about the mistakes he has made, like how they lost business because they pitched really innovative digital strategies to internal people who didn’t have the knowledge or skillset, so they chose a different agency, they felt more comfortable with. It’s a lesson in starting with a lower commitment, then wi

Andrew Nicholson is the Co-founder and CEO at Kulea.MA. An award-winning marketing automation platform that is skyrocketing right now and taking significant market share from Hubspot and Marketo. They won ‘emerging vendor of the year at the B2B marketing awards and if you are remotely interested in… Saas marketing automation Behavioral economics This is the podcast for you.  Andrew is the proud owner of a B2B Marketer of the Year Award and has used this accolade to promote a digital agenda to marketing professionals throughout the industry.  He is a passionate advocate of the new discipline of digital psychology and has completed a Masters in the subject, drawing on heuristic theories from the fields of behavioral economics and psychology, and applying them to contemporary digital marketing challenges to drive online behavior change. enjoy the chat. Get your tickets to How to Triple your profit: the 2Y3X methodology http://2y3x.com/event ( 2y3x.com/event)

Guy Wieynk is the global CEO of AnalogFolk, a 300 person digital creative agency with offices in London, New York, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Sydney. You may have heard of some of their clients: Nike, Diageo, BT, Tommy, Unilever, go down the list…. He was the former Managing director of AKQA New York then VP of International. He joined the agency when they had just 20 people, opened 10 offices and worked with some of the most iconic brands of the last 20 years. They sold the agency to WPP for only about 500 million. He then became CEO of Publicis UK where he really had his toughest test to date. working with a portfolio of 5 different brands who had their own way of doing things, didn’t want to play nice, Publicis was losing a lot of money at the time, he says, if it was a private company it would have closed ages ago. and how he turned it around it really a remarkable achievement. This is really a masterclass is getting people to align around a common vision and using EQ, emotional intelligence, not IQ to turn

Paul Allen is a Partner at SI Partners. A Global M&A advisory & Growth Consultancy for creative & technology businesses. He is an Industry specialist in growth, leadership, and commercial behavior change, he leads SI Partners’ global commercial practice spending 50% of my time in the U.S., working with leaders of creative businesses to build high-performance teams that deliver accelerated, profitable growth to build and ultimately realise equity value. And this is just a tour-de-force conversation about everything from: What to look for in a good financial controller for your agency How to manage the relationship between employees and staff costs How the best agencies fund for growth and the pinch points for agencies from 5 -10 people, 15-20 people, 50 people. I’m just scratching the surface…. If you are remotely interested in increasing the profitability of your agency then this is just essential listening.

Rory Sutherland is the Vice Chairman at Ogilvy UK. TED Global speaker and author of Alchemy: The Surprising Power Of Ideas That Don't Make Sense. He is one of the smartest people we’ve had on the show. And for someone who has achieved so much is so humble and is just hilariously funny. We go deep into the weeds about his new book Alchemy - The surprising power of ideas that don’t make sense. This is essential reading if you are in the business of affecting how people think and act.  It’s about human behavior, perception and how we think about the world and the way we are is wrong. If you’re into the work of Daniel Kahneman, Tversky, Richard Thaler on behavioral economics this is the podcast for you. If you are remotely interested in: -Human behavior -The disproportionate effect of fame and winner take all scenarios in marketing. -Why the legacy of ABBA will live on longer than the legacy of the Beatles. -Why Bach was must better than Mozart Enjoy the chat.  

Robert Craven is a first-class, international Keynote business speaker, digital agency expert, author and business growth consultant. I’ve been reading is books for years. He is a true expert in all things around growing your digital agency. In fact, he has had such an impact on me. Whenever I have a big pitch or presentation I so often refer to his work in Grow your digital agency and Grow your service firm, both excellent books and recommend you get both. His clients include Google, Barclays, and Nandos to name a few.  We discuss: What do the high performing agencies do - as found by Google Growing a lifestyle agency business vs growing a big business So many agencies don’t have a sales process, why they are essential to improving your results and how to create one. Why he advises agencies not to sell. We go deep into the conversation about sales and winning new business. He says ‘sales is the best thing you can do with your clothes on’. How most agencies don’t understand sales and marketing the

Happy new year! This week on the podcast we are starting 2020 very strong. My extra special guest this week is Michael Scantlebury, he is the Founder and Creative Director of IMPERO, the winner of 5 agency of the year awards. And if you are at all interested in how to grow a multi-award-winning world-class agency then this is the podcast for you. He arrives in the UK at 29 years old without knowing anyone but his wife and over the next 10 years builds one of the most well-respected agencies in the world. We talk about everything from: How they beat Wieden and Kennedy in a competitive pitch for a huge global account, that put them on the map. How to change the structure of your business every time you go from 8, to 16, 20, 30 people. It really requires a fundamental restructuring. Why he thinks the magic number of employees in an agency is 75. We discuss setting goals for your agency. This is probably one of the most honest and accurate accounts you will hear about the pain, yes the pain of growing a

Paul Sullivan is the founder and CEO of BIAS Digital, a triple-award winning business marketing, sales and training consultancy.  They help their clients with with inbound marketing, sales enablement, and Training. He has over 12 years’ senior management and consulting experience within financial services at tier-one banks and brokers coupled with over a decade’s experience in marketing and business development within the financial, technology and property industries. Paul has a successful track record of 15+ years implementing marketing and brand development strategies, promoting growth across the organisation and enhancing ROI while creating competitive advantages.

My extra special guest this week is Nick Cooke. He is the co-founder of The Goat. They are the 4th fastest growing agency in the world as named by Adweek in 2019. In 4 years they have generated 20 million turnover, they have 120 employees, and the average age of everyone is 24. Nick is one of the ancient ones at 30 years old. If you are at all interested in: Influencer marketing social media Platform trends Agency Growth Creating campaigns that deliver tremendous value This is an absolute masterclass in all of that. They started on a shoestring, sharing a co-working space and in 4 years grew it to 20 million and 120 employees and have clients like FIFA and UBER. Nick tells the story of how they won their first huge client wins, New Look, and how they achieved milestones that propelled their growth.  We go deep into the weeds about what’s happening with influencer marketing at the moment. We discussed the massive shift in attention and budget from TV to social. We talked about where we are with

Rory Sutherland is the Vice Chairman of Ogilvy, an attractively vague job title which has allowed him to co-found a behavioral science practice within the agency He was previously a copywriter and creative director at Ogilvy for over 20 years, having joined as a graduate trainee in 1988. He has been President of the IPA, Chair of the Judges for the Direct Jury at Cannes, and has spoken at TED Global.  He writes regular columns for the Spectator, Market Leader and Impact, and also occasional pieces for Wired. He is the author of two books: 'The Wiki Man', available on Amazon at prices between £1.96 and £2,345.54, depending on whether the algorithm is having a bad day, and 'Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don't Make Sense'. This is part 1 of 3. We had to divide it into 3 parts because we spoke for almost 2 hours and if we released it in one go it would break the internet, and probably blow your mind, so we’re going with a softly softly approach.

Clodagh Higgins consults & coaches owners of Digital Marketing & Sales Agencies on how to run a successful and profitable business. She was consulting with HubSpot pre IPO being employee 45. Working on the Hubspot partner program with Pete Caputa, she was exposed to hundreds of agencies so she has a unique inside view into what the best agencies do that the others don’t. She is also an EOS advocator and a published author and sort after speaker. She knows more about the day to day stresses and slings and arrows of running an agency than most. She says; 'growing an agency today is like you’re on a boat, but at the same time, you’re building a bigger boat and hiring a crew, while you’re sailing towards your destination.' If you are at all interested in: -Hiring, she’s been around the block a few times, she knows how to find and keep rockstar employees. She gives you the playbook to just take away the pain that all agencies have in that area. -Growing a profitable agency -Hubspot -Culture Check out he

Doug Kessler is the Co-founder of Velocity Partners. They are multi-award-winning B2B tech marketing agency who help their clients develop compelling stories, then drive these stories into the marketplace. Their content, including CRAP and Insane Honesty, have gone truly vial and has been shared millions of times gaining them international recognition in the process.  Velocity is the Content Marketing Agency of the Year, 2016. They are a London-based, B2B content marketing agency. They help clients develop compelling stories, then drive these stories into the marketplace. Primary weapons: clear positioning, content marketing, lead gen, marketing automation, SEO, killer websites and breakthrough campaigns -- all measured using analytics and progressed through lead nurturing. Performance marketing with content as the arrowhead.

In October 2018 Nik founded Blurred alongside Katy Stolliday and Stuart Lambert. In January 2019 it was named PR Week’s #1 ‘ONE TO WATCH’ FOR 2019. Within a few short months it's secured a number of major global clients, focusing on work which embraces the blurring of the lines between corporate / consumer and internal / external. Prior to founding Blurred Nik co-founded agency Unity, when she was 29. Whilst at Unity, Nik was named one of the Sunday Times 35 under 35. Management Today also featured her on its cover and in an exhibition of business leaders. If you are at all interested in how to win new business by becoming a truly values-led business. Which she sites as the reason these global businesses want to work with her.

Greg McKeown is best known for his New York Times best-selling book 'Essentialism, The disciplined pursuit of less'. We discuss everything from: Why focus is such an essential part of success and why everyone from Bill Gates to Warren Buffet cite it as being the reason they are successful. How to live your life by design and not by default. The importance of saying ‘no’, why we find it so difficult to say no and how to say no. How to deal with the abundance of choices we’re forced to make every day Journaling, gratitude and how success can be its own trap. We talked about the phenomenal success of his book and how that has been its own trap for him. His message of Essentialism is more important now than when he first wrote it in 2011. He talks about the importance of getting clear about what you want and only going after that and forgetting everything else. But in a world of abundance where everything is one click away and we want everything from success at home and in our careers. There are often t