TRANSCRIPT
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Robert Berkeley 0:02
Hello, and thank you for joining me once again, Robert Berkeley Barclay. For another episode of Inside Jjobs. The podcast for in house agencies about in house agency leaders Inside Jobsinside jobs is brought to you by the one and only in house agency forum, or IHAF have in partnership with Ehe KCS, who helped in house agencies do more through outsource production. Michelle Clark joins me for what I hope will be unexpected be Michelle, a very sober discussion about your job at E. & J. Gallo WineryE and J. Gallo Winery. But let's go back to the beginning. Michelle., Wwhere do you actually come from originally, and and tell us about your formative years?
Michelle Clark 00:41
Well, thank you. I actually am from Los Angeles, California, born to two public school teachers, and really had a great academically focused upbringing, and went to UCLA for my undergraduate degree and had the great fortune to come out of school. In the mid to late 90s, the economy was going crazy, it was expanding at an unprecedented rate. And the tech boom, was really gaining steam in in the late 90s. And so coming out into the job market, from a school in California, and just having so many opportunities, exploding onto the scene was really a wonderful place to be somebody new in my career trying to find a path.
Robert Berkeley 01:31
How did you come to know that there was such a thing as marketing, though, your TVO parents weren't in business at all? So, so how did you make that connection?
Michelle Clark 01:40
You know, I think what a lot of people in in my area., Ddo you know, we sort of fall in love with advertising., Wwe we find that we can sing jingles, we find that we have an appreciation for creativity. And I think that's really where my passion started to develop was in seeing all these messages around me. And really gravitating towards certain ones and trying to think why why is this attractive to me? And is it attractive to others?
Robert Berkeley 01:31
Right. Okay, so marketing kind of intrigued you then because you were obviously aware of it, just through the ambience of being in LA and growing up there, I guess.
Michelle Clark 02:14
Yeah, I wouldn't say I had any particular mentors, it was more of just an environmental interest. And then as I learned more and more and started talking to more business, people, learning more in classes, and then I did a lot of unpaid internships in college where I said, I will just give you my time, if you'll help me understand what all this is about.
Robert Berkeley 02:35
So you were banging on doors, that places that interested you? Is that how that happened?
Michelle Clark 02:40
I did I said I really wanted to learn more. I still remember I went to Southwest Airlines that at the time had a regional marketing office and was looking for interns completely unpaid. And I just said I'm so passionate. I... I love the company. I knew a lot about it and said I want to come here I'll come as many hours as you need me as many hours I can fit in don't pay me a dime. Just let me look under the hood. And I did.
Robert Berkeley 03:04
Wow. So what do you remember what you did that?
Michelle Clark 03:06
Oh, gosh, I did all manner of things. I sat on the floor and counted Squeezy balls, they were gonna give away a promotion. One time I dressed up in an aeroplane costume and danced around LAX axe. I got stuck in an elevator in that costume. What dressed as an aeroplane. I did when they were opening a new terminal. And here comes a little southwest jet which was actually me as a 20 year old intern. So you know, no pride. This bBusiness thing is great. I love marketing. This is fun. I can do this all my life. Yeah, you know, and I got to be exposed to a lot. I mean, I did cold calls for their b2b enterprise. I went to the airport, one of my favourite things to do was competitive assessment. And so at the time, they, they would have me sit in the LAI X terminal. This is before 9-11. So you could go into the terminal without a ticket. And just watch, just watch what was going on. I would sit in southwest terminals that would sit in competitive terminals, and try to understand how full planes were what types of people were flying. And I would sit there for hours, just making, writing down insights, making observations and then reporting those back to the people who were asking me to give them some information. I bet you felt you were making a difference as well. Yeah, it felt a little bit like detective work, which I loved. And I love trying to figure out what the business implications of that could be. So that was that was a little bit more strategic than sitting on the ground and counting Squeezy balls, but it all sort of came to pass over a couple of years of learning the ropes.
Robert Berkeley 04:38
And it sounds like they were good to you as well. But so so what happened from from the internship there did you did you carry on doing internships because I know you went into publishing, didn't you?
Michelle Clark 04:46
It did you know I interned at a couple different places southwest being the most significant that really got me jazzed on a marketing career. And then coming out of school. There were just a number of jobs and growing up in LA.
Michelle Clark 5:00
At the time, the LA Times was an enormously prestigious place to be one of the top news outlets in the country. Again, this is right at the cusp of the .com. Boom. So newspapers were very relevant, and within five years would stop being. So it was an amazing turnaround. And they were, you know, in the process of migrating a lot online. So I, when I got an opportunity to join the LA Times and their marketing department, I jumped at it, I thought it was possibly the greatest job I could ever think of.
Robert Berkeley 05:33
So that could be as much fun working for a newspaper marketing as an airline marketing, thenright?
Michelle Clark 05:36
OhWell, yeah. And actually, they put me in the they had a Travel section that was well read. Okay, so my experience.,
Robert Berkeley 05:42
Sso you had to go travelling everywhere?
Michelle Clark 05:44
No, no, no my job was to run data analysis, and to help put together stories for potential advertising sales, and to sit with all sorts of spreadsheets at my fingertips and say, This is why a particular advertiser would want to reach LA Times., Rreaders, and to try to put together a compelling sales story. Because ultimately, marketing is you know, to drive sales and revenue for a company, right? So to try to think through what would be a good story to help sell in ad space. That was really my job.
Robert Berkeley 06:19
Gosh, the sharp end of marketing, though, isn't it really, really? Is that so? sSo? Tell us how you continued in in media for a little while you ended up an American media? I think.
Michelle Clark 06:29
I did. It was a funny way. You know, sometimes we think our paths look like one thing, and then they take a circuitous path somewhere else. So when I was leaving the LA Times, what I realised most through my three years there is I had a passion for b2c marketing, more than b2b., Aa lot of what I did at the LA Times was really specifically towards advertisers who wanted to connect with our readers. And I said, you know, I actually would love to talk to the end consumer more directly, there was an opportunity Kinkos, now FedEx Office Kinkos, was looking for a marketing manager to work on some strategic plans for some of their new offerings. So I was great. I got a role there. But one of my responsibilities was to oversee a custom magazine that Kinkos published and made available to their customers. So my background at the newspaper played really well into what they were looking for. And then I did that, and a number of other things while I was there.,
Robert Berkeley 07:25
Wwell, you left California, I think you're in? Well, around 2005 or so.
Michelle Clark 07:29
Yeah, you know, I went to Weiwieder Ppublications, which was a magazine company that at the time published Muscle and Fitness, Shape magazine, and a whole host of fitness publications, and they got bought by my readers all the time, by the way, just so you know,
Robert Berkeley 7:43
readers all the time, by the way, just so you know every reader of Muscle and Fitness myself.,
Michelle Clark 7:45
Oof course, and so that was sort of again, building on my initial publishing background, but also learning a new industry, which was fitness. And after a couple of years there, I got the opportunity to join Gold's Gym, which was an iconic brand, what a great opportunity to really get into marketing, something that everybody had seen and knew about. So I took that job, which was wonderful. At the time, I oversaw marketing for eight different states for Gold's Gym where we had corporately owned locations, and really understanding market by market dynamics, really getting into media planning,
Robert Berkeley 8:18
Ddigital media and thinking about how you work use that strategically. And tactically, I presume around that time,
Michelle Clark 8:24
Rright around that time, it was starting, I would say, in the in the time I was at Gold, which was probably around 2005-20062005 2006 Digital was coming on the scene, but it was not nearly as explosive as it would be in the 10 years after that. So I would say dipping our toe into the water for sure. But really where that took off was, in the eight years after Gold's Gym, I relocated back to California, and joined in shape health clubs, which was a California based health club company, and rose up the ranks there. And that's really where digital took hold. And as a marketer just became a very exciting landscape that has continued to expand.
Robert Berkeley 9:06
So did you struggle to grasp it because you didn't have a technical education? You sociologist by training, and you'd had this experience in the sort of analogue worlds of publishing and so on? Was it it? Was it a struggle to kind of get get your head around the potential for digital?
Michelle Clark 9:22
For me? No, I think of myself as a really pragmatic marketer, really data driven and results driven. And I think, for those of us who think of ourselves that way, digital is actually a very satisfying area that has been unlocked, which is how do we speak to the consumers of our products or services in a way where we can understand what they're actually doing with that material, how it's impacting them when it's impacting them, what tends to penetrate better? And I think that type of education on the job was really invaluable for me, and has come into play in every role I've been in. So I think I think No, I think any marketer nowadays, who's getting into the communication landscape Digital's just second nature, we're all consumers of it.
Robert Berkeley 10:07
Absolutely. No, that's true. Well, it seems to me that there are two things that, that that sort of characterise where we are up to this point in your career. One is for someone who's not kind of a mathematician by training, and embracing of spreadsheets, and data and analysis, and the other thing appears to be a considerable degree of curiosity.
Michelle Clark 10:26
It's funny when you see that, you know, I'm currently in a role where I get to, to lead a creative group. And I think looking back at thinking about that narrative, that's not a very creative narrative, right? That's a very data driven narrative. But I think parallel to all of that is really understanding people and understanding storytelling, I'm actually a little bit of a writer in my free time. And so I've always had an appreciation for, for creativity, and it's many ways that it expresses itself. So seeing creativity through a lens of utility a. And diversity., I think would probably also be another theme. As we think about where I am today, and what we're trying to do at Gallo.,
Robert Berkeley 11:12
Wellwill you join Gallo in 2016, managing the creative services? So so you had been marketing in the broadest sense, but you're coming to this, I believe, the largest family owned wWinery in the world. Is that right? Yes. Huge brand, well recognised here in Europe, as well as across the United States. A gazillion sub brands, I would imagine, right? Yes. I'm sure you know, the number is probably not really exactly a gazillion. But it's it's a number. They wereIt's over a 100. 1st of all I've got to ask how did the opportunity come up? And what tempted you to move out of what you thought was your life speciality, which was health and welfare, I guess, health clubs, and fitness. Your last three jobs have been all around that I presume you thought this is it. I'm an expert in this sector. And that's my real kind of met. Yeah, that's the thing people want me for. But somehow you ended up Gallo. So how did how did that happen?
Michelle Clark 12:05
Finally, I think we all have these milestones in our career where we have to choose a path. And as I was thinking about leaving in shape, I had been there for eight years, we had grown it like a startup. When I joined, we have 28 clubs, we grew the company to 75 clubs, I worked for one of the owners, it was a wonderful experience through and through. And there were some changes going on with in shape and within the industry. And it was starting to seem like a good time to think about my next move. And I'll be honest, I had an opportunity to join another health club company, actually, two different ones, had approached me. And I made the deliberate decision to pivot, I actually looked at my experience, I thought, well, the 12 years prior, I had been in fitness and health clubs in some form or another. And I had a choice to make, would I become a specialist and I would just become a health club executive. Or did I want to pivot and take an opportunity to learn a new industry, be around new professionals, and really grow my skill set and my knowledge. And so I actually decided to do that to pivot to take a great opportunity at Gallo, which at the time was leading the account management team. So it actually wasn't even over the creative department. It was the team of account managers who worked with the creatives to do project management, timeline management, budgeting, and the really the business side of creative at the time. And even though it was a shift in titling and a little bit of a step back in narrowing of scope, I jumped at the opportunity because Gallo is a fantastic company, and such an incredible place to learn. I just considered myself lucky to be able to make the pivot.
Robert Berkeley 13:49
Wow. Okay, so you made that step very consciously, then by the sound of it. Tell us a bit more about what you what you found. When you got to GalloGala. Then you said you were leading the account team tell us a little bit about the structure that was in place at that time.
Michelle Clark 14:03
Gallo has a really seasoned in house creative legacy. The Creative Department in some form or another has been around for probably 40 years. And the account management team is really one of the successes of the structure. There's a lot of complexity involved with being in the alcohol beverage industry. There's a three tier system of distribution, and making sure any cross functional partners that are required to bring a project to success are informed. And so there is an enormous amount of responsibility on account management team to push work through the system and to get it out into ultimately the market where customers and consumers can see it. So that was the team that I got to lead when my
Robert Berkeley 14:50
brain was already pretty functional by the sound of it. That's it that can make you a bit tense because you don't want to break it. How do you improve it?
Michelle Clark 14:58
Right? Well, no, it's a wonderful team. And it absolutely was very successful when I got to take the helm. And so I was able to just leverage what they already did really well, and build on it and expand on it. aAnd as a lot of people, when
Robert Berkeley 15:09
When did you What did you do you inherited, I would quite often I hear stories about, I got there, and it was all in a state of chaos night, you know, I had to pick the low hanging fruit and get things organised and bring order to chaos. You're saying I walked in there, and it was all brilliant. So so how Where do you take it from there?
Michelle Clark 15:25
You know, I think one of the reasons I came into the role and why it was a good fit on both sides is coming from a marketing perspective, most of our internal clients for Gallo creative, are marketers. And so the decision to bring in somebody with a marketing background to lead account management was delivered for Gallo, it was saying, Listen, we need to be able to really understand the needs of our internal clients, and be nimble and quick about adapting to them. And so I think that's one of the key things that I made a priority when I first came in was Yes, an account management team that was great and established was really wonderful at managing projects. But what are we doing to help our marketers write better briefs? What are we doing to help be flexible and nimble to the needs of the organisation so that we remain relevant and useful, especially as needs are changing, the digital landscape is constantly evolving, E-Ce commerce becomes bigger. So as the lead on account management, really was helping our account management team, whether they're account executives, or managers, really partner the right ways with our internal clients. And I will tell you, I did not I did not meet any pushback, the team was hungry for it. And we just needed to start using the right kinds of language, and to start restructuring ourselves so that we were being the right kinds of partners internally.
Robert Berkeley16:48
So you've got 100 brands, how many, how many marketers you interfacing with, and how many account managers when you when you got there,
Michelle Clark 16:55
Sso the team of account, it's grown a little bit in the last few years, but I would say the team at Gallo is between, you know, 15 and 20, account management folks at various levels. And we interface with Gosh, at least 50 marketers, if not more in various parts of the company. And then some of the internal clients we have are not necessarily in a marketing function, but still need creative, right. So they could be the HR department or various operations departments. But I would say by and large, you know, 90% of our work is on behalf of marketing efforts for the company.
Robert Berkeley 17:30
Well, you develop that role and rose to the position you're at now where the other senior director of the whole creative team, which is quite substantial, you've 60 odd people, is it?
Michelle Clark 17:44
Yeah, we have about 65 people in creative and about 20 and account management.
Robert Berkeley 17:49
Wow. So So tell us now how you you've changed things in the time that you've been there and that you've been there about five or six years, I think now, how things developed and evolved and responded to various situations a. And we'll come to COVID in a bit. But I you know, up to that point.
Michelle Clark 18:07
So yeah, I've been with Gallogala total five and a half years, three years leading account management. And now two and a half years leading creative. Gallo as a whole. And I absolutely cannot take credit for this Gallo gala as a whole has an enormous amount of talent on the internal team. But we had some challenges with some foundational elements, our structure, our funding model. And when our prior lead, our pro VP of creative retired, I got to shift over from leading account management to leading creative and it has been such a rewarding, fantastic shift for me personally getting to because I still get to work with all the people I worked with, on account management, and now of getting to really be behind the scenes with the creative team in how we produce the best possible work on a daily basis. So it is a very busy enterprise at any given point, we have, you know, five to 600 active projects, we churn out probably over 10,000 assets a year of varying scope. Some of them could be very tactical quick turn projects, but some of them are brand development, very in depth, package design, product design initiatives, or they could be holistic 360 activation projects where it's point of sale and digital and video, and the list goes on. So we have a really robust department that is just I think best in class.
Robert Berkeley 19:36
How do you keep them best of class though, because there's a lot of moving parts. You've got all of these marketers you're interfacing with. You've got creative people there who who don't necessarily like to work within tight confines per system. You've got obviously production going on there, too. How on earth you coordinating all this and keeping it lean? And again, I want to wait to come to COVID and working from home in a bit but up to that point.
Michelle Clark 19:58
Well it's a dance right. It's trying to figure out what the needs are and what is needed most on any particular day. One of the corporate values of Gallo and one of the reasons why I joined the company is this sense of never being at the top of our game and always needing to stay curious. And that is a cultural norm in the company as well as in the creative department. I would again, yeah. So humility is one of our corporate values, right? It is woven into everything we do. So as a creative department, we always expect feedback, right? I don't think you've had a single person on this show that hasn't received lots of feedback all the time and had to adjust to it. At Gallo. wWe're constantly working with our internal clients and our partners to say, Okay, what else can we be doing? Did we miss the mark? If we missed the mark, where can we get back on track?
Robert Berkeley 20:52
Now is there is there a formal method of getting that feedback and evaluating it and acting on it? We do,
Michelle Clark 20:58
We do, depending on the type of project, some of it is just delivered as you normally would deliver feedback, whether that's in person or in writing, but we do sometimes for really complex projects, use scorecards to try to de personalise the feedback and really make sure that it is matching back to the brief as needed. So we have partners and other departments who work with us on that. But that's not always the case, right? Sometimes you just have something, it's got to be relatively quick or relatively direct. Sometimes we take things to research, and there will be a budget for that, which is always best if we have time and budget to do it. So there's a lot of ways that we can make sure we're getting the right feedback. And ultimately, you know, our success is if we're supporting the business the right way, listening to the needs and adjusting regularly. You know, we consider that pretty successful. You know, we don't have to be perfect, but we sure as heck need to always be striving to have fantastic creative, that meets the mark. We call it creative integrity. That's the word our CEO uses. Ernest Gallo, which is, is this something we'd be proud of? Are we using creative integrity to deliver the best work possible? Are we making compromises we're not proud of? Because if it's the ladder latter, we're not going to present it?
Robert Berkeley 22:10
And is this is there all this creative coming from within? Or do you go look outside ever for creative ideas and creative input.,
Michelle Clark 22:17
Wwe have a really talented internal team, but we surge and partner. So surge is the word we use to say we work with freelancers and specialists on a daily basis to complement what we do internally or even for extra capacity. So I'd say at any given time, we're surging with partners 10 to 15%, meaning we have plenty of work for our internal team. And we're adding 15% more capacity, through relationships with freelancers and consultants and specialists. And we also partner with agencies all the time. They could be big campaign agencies. And they also could be more specific tactical agencies, people who work with social media only, or people who might be just working on strategy. So absolutely have a big ecosystem of agencies and others that we partner with to bring in knowledge.
Robert Berkeley 23:06
But it sounds like you effectively are the agency of record here as well., for a lot of
Michelle Clark 23:11
For a lot of things. Yeah, we also do have a couple agencies of record that work with us on campaign work. And that's been really important to Gallo to say, Listen, we always need to be thinking outside of our category. And thinking outside of the business we're in so that we don't get myopic, and having agencies who are activating across channels and brands and categories is a really important push for us.
Robert Berkeley 23:32
So how are you on that effect? as well? How how do you evolve the team to meet those changes?
Michelle Clark 23:38
Well, sometimes we just have these incredibly curious, talented people who want to evolve their own skill sets, right? That's wonderful. It's gonna
Robert Berkeley 23:46
It's gonna be curious. Bingo. Every time you hear the word curious, you get another number. This is good. It's good. I'm big into curiosity, for sure.
Michelle Clark 23:52
Yeah, that's, that's a big part of what we talked about and what we focus on. So that's funny that you're sensing I'm saying, so much. But yeah, we sometimes have that ability to just even up our skill set internally. And that's done through training programmes, through webinars, through going out into the world through talking to agencies, lots of different ways that those capabilities can grow. And then sometimes we need to hire it in or we need to contract for it. Right. So it really depends on whether it's an ongoing need, and it's something we need to build, or it's a limited need, that we want to actually contract for, and learn about and then decide. So the beautiful thing with Gallo is we have support from our leadership to look at things both ways. And if we start by testing and understand that it's now going to be an ongoing need, we usually have the ability to bring it on in house when we've proven that case.
Robert Berkeley 24:49
Yeah. Okay. You mentioned earlier on you just touched on it very briefly about charging model. I'm curious, do you do you do you have a internal chargeback model?
Michelle Clark 24:57
So we do we charge back as A house of brands, it's been vital. our finance department requires us to charge back so that the brand managers who oversee the budgets for their different brands understand their relative use of creative. So we we build back in an evolved way than we did a couple of years ago.
Robert Berkeley 25:21
Whoa, tell us about that evolution then.
Michelle Clark 25:23
Yeah. So we previously we had what I refer to as a very broken chargeback model.
Robert Berkeley 25:28
That's the technical definition,
Michelle Clark 25:31
right? It, I came in and immediately said, Oh, this is terrible. We have to change this. Why
Robert Berkeley 25:36
Why was it broken? What was happening? Did it have unintended consequences the way it was working?
Michelle Clark 25:40
Yeah, it was well intentioned and cause all sorts of problems. The chargeback model that Gallo creative had had for over a decade before I joined the company was one where every project over three hours was custom estimated. So the account management team was creating custom estimates every time and asked came in, we had some benchmarks. So sometimes it was easier than others on frequently created items. But as you know, in creative, a lot of things are not templated. A lot of things are It depends. And let's see what the need is. And let's understand the brief. And so, account management would work with all of our creative directors every time to build a custom estimate. And those custom estimates would get scrutinised, as you can understand from a brand manager who is beholden to their budget and their leadership. And so we would get questions like, Well, why were four people in a room, I only want the creative director in there, I don't want to pay for four people and creative two seems like a real agency, right? And you can understand when you're waiting in line at the cafeteria at lunch, and that person is in front of you in line that gets a little uncomfortable.
Robert Berkeley 26:51
It won't because they didn't choose you because you were too expensive. And they went somewhere else. And you're standing next to them and saying hi, how are you? Yeah, I can imagine. Yeah,
Michelle Clark 26:58
Yeah, it did not support the levels of partnership, we needed to get the best work. So how did you fix it? Yeah, I think one other thing about it is it put creative in this service level role, where we were in service to the brand managers, but we weren't partnering with them to really drive to the best conclusion. And so quite frankly, we took a couple of years to look at different models, run them all up the flagpole, try to understand what there was appetite for, because if we couldn't get the highest levels of leadership on board, it really wasn't going to work. So ultimately, we were able to evolve the model about two years ago, and we're still charging back. But there's two critical things that we have done to change the model. One is there's now a piece that is set, about 30% of our funding is just a set overhead amount, because the decision to have an in house creative department is a corporate strategic advantage. And all of our business units contribute to that amount. And they get things in return for that they get unlimited product shots, they get consultation, whenever there's an agency involved, they get a lot of miscellaneous pull this asset helped me with this. So we don't have to nickel and dime our partners, right, we just have budgets now where we just do it, we call it basically our miscellaneous budget, just whatever you need come to us, we'll help you. And we don't need to charge you back for pulling up an asset from two months ago, that was a big change in partnership, because it allowed us to stop talking about every hour as if it was, you know, its own individual project. And then the second big change is we standardised our pricing. So instead of requiring custom estimates, for every project, we just said, look, it's basically small, medium, large and extra large. That's it, it's one of these four rates. And we actually split it into eight rates, it's for rates on the activation side of things, which is marketing materials. And it's for rates on the packaging and product development side, which is sort of new brand line extensions and things that we do on the product side, but it has really streamlined our communication. And it means if we go over a little here or under little here, it's no big deal. There's a set cost, you don't have to worry if there's four people in a meeting versus
Robert Berkeley 29:14
Hasthere's this helped has this helped raise your profile and significance within the company then and actually find yourself in receipt of of creative dollars that would have been spent outside the business now coming inside the business as a result of making you're kind of removing a lot of the grit from the machine right, in terms of allowing people to do business with you without this problem of cost cut rearing its head at every stage but so by eliminating that has that has that made a material difference?
Michelle Clark 29:39
It has it the biggest change here has been as we work with agencies, it used to be either or so it used to be you work with internal creative or you work with an agency but you never have the two of them talking because that would double your price. But now because we have this overhead piece and we can consult with agencies we can be in those conversations so that if we have an agency partner that's creating a campaign, we can be in the conversation saying, hey, maybe it makes sense for us to blow out that campaign across point of sale and some digital assets, or hey, maybe we've done some work, that can be a contribution to that campaign. So it allows for synergies to be found and for communication, barriers to come down. That has been an enormous step change for the organisation in so many ways, and has allowed even our brand marketers, who typically would have had to negotiate with us and then separately negotiate with an agency. Now, the brand marketer can even just not be in the conversation, we can talk directly with an agency creative to creative and say, Hey, how do we need to get the best work done on behalf of this brand and this team? So that has been a huge shift in anybody in in the in house agency world who is grappling with funding models and driving the right behaviours, I have a lot of case studies about how this particular model has helped us and it's not perfect, and I'm sure we will continue to evolve. But right now it is it is working way better. For us.
Robert Berkeley 31:03
It certainly sounds more innovative than than almost anything I've heard in this area of cross charging, it's so fraught with with difficulty and issues. By the way, do you do you run timesheets on your on your team as well, for accountability or not?
Michelle Clark 31:16
We do, we log hours, and then we report back. First of all, we look at logged hours and compare it against our rate card rates to make sure that our rates for small, medium, large and extra large are grounded in the amount of effort it actually takes in, in general, right within a certain margin. And so we do that, and we check that and we report back to the business, hey, we pressure tested our rates. And here's what we're finding,
Robert Berkeley 31:39
Rright that proving yourself right and validating yourself all the time. Sounds very smart, you're closing the circle. But that's, that's great.
Michelle Clark 31:46
And they all have businesses to run, right. So this is our business to run and creative. And it's my responsibility with our account management lead to make sure that we're doing the right thing here. So we try to really make when we report back to the business, we try to make it as streamlined and clear as we can knowing and get them to feel confident that we know how to manage the business. And we will be honest and open with them when there's a need to pivot. But so far, so good. And I will tell you the one area we needed to optimise was on those extra large projects. Sometimes big projects take many different forms. And it's really hard to estimate. So even when you have a set rate, things can just get bigger and bigger. And so what we've done is we actually built in some flexibility into our biggest project rate, where now it's an ongoing conversation, when projects change scope, when projects get bigger, that sometimes ultimately we do need to charge by the hour. But that's really an exception. But just to make sure I, you know, give you everything you're asking for in terms of funding model, I will say that there also you can't be too rigid, you've got to be willing to look at it and say, okay, these set rates work for 90- 95% of our projects. But there's 5%, where we do need to look at them differently.
Robert Berkeley 32:59
Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, we're running low on time now. But I do want to just get in a couple of quick questions. The pandemic obviously was horrendous for many, but a lot of us have found new ways of working as a result and some found benefits some otherwise, I'm curious as the new world of working from home, is that something that you're excited and to harness and use going forward? Or do you think it's a backward step in management of a creative team like this,
Michelle Clark 33:25
I think COVID has propelled our work from home productivity 5five to 10 years into the future, I think it would have taken us so much longer to get here had we not had that forcing function. So I see a lot of really good things that have come out of it for our team in particular, we quite frankly, can sometimes be way more productive when we have time away and in quiet, controlled spaces. And we've seen that in our logged hours we're seeing it in the level of creativity, we have not seen a single single dip in creativity, since we've been remote. What about
Robert Berkeley 34:01
What about your account managers and the relationships they have with the marketers? Because that's very, very important, doesn't it?
Michelle Clark 34:06
Right. So I think productivity wise, were propelled forwards. I think collaboration wise and relationship wise, I think things have become a little harder. We're lucky in that Gallo as a again, our corporate values really focus on teamwork and respect and some other intangibles. And so for that reason, we ultimately are not going to be 100% remote department we will be hybrid, right? We will have certainly moments and days where we will be able to be remote, but we have certain functions where we need to be in person we have a photo video studio, you've got to be you know on site in order to direct a photo video shoot, we have production folks who need to be at a press check or in the office to look at colour proofs. We have a tangible product at the end of the day. And we have a lot of people coming together to make that happen. So we We will I think when all is said and done, we will benefit immensely from this period of being remote and what we've learned and the new tools that we've put into practice. But I don't think 100% remote from most of our roles is going to be the right answer.
Robert Berkeley 35:15
Yeah, well, it's so so the best of all worlds as we go forward, then, hopefully out of this nightmare has been has been COVID. Michelle, that's, that's been fantastic. And all too short. Listen, actually about your journey to senior director of creative at E. & J. Gallo WineryE and J. Gallo Winery. You mentioned earlier that people can get hold of you if, if they want to talk to you about cross charging or any other aspect of what you do, what's the best way to get a hold of you, Michelle.,
Michelle Clark 35:43
Yyou'll find me on LinkedIn. I would love to I've learned so much from networking with others in the in house agency community. And I always love connecting and learning about how we can swap stories tuckshop and really learn from each other. And I'm really proud of what we have at Gallo, we continue to build and evolve. So I would welcome the opportunity to exchange ideas.
Robert Berkeley 36:07
So Michelle, Tthank you. Thank you so much for joining us. I want to thank our fabulous partners IHAF have especially Emily Foster, of course, and my producer Amy MacNamara for making this podcast possible as well. And to the EKCSks team who will be editing this, I'm sure to the highest possible quality. Please have a look at the IJ podcast.com website where we have a huge archive of other interviews. So thank you very much for listening. There we go. Rachel. Thank you. Thank you.