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Robert Berkeley  0:06  

Hello and welcome to Inside Jobs insight jobs the podcast for and about creative leaders at In House Agencies in house agencies brought to you by IHAF half the Forum forum for In in House house Aagency professionals and Eexpress KCS who execute agencies creative ideas quickly across all media on brand on time and offshore. This edition is somewhat different from the usual as I brought my microphone to IHAF I have 2019 leadership summit this year hosted in Chicago by McDonald's at their shiny new headquarters. I started by seeking out friend of the show Emily Ffoster of IHAF I have and been asking what the event is for.,

 

Emily Foster   0:41  

To to intimate conference of all In House Agencies in house agencies, senior managers and executives from across the country, gathering for a day long conference to share challenges and success stories and journeys that they've all been through.

 

Robert Berkeley  0:53  

So there's quite a lot of people around me so how many how many are coming? We have

 

Emily Foster  0:57  

We have 100 folks here in the room with us today from some of the top national brands that you probably know like Coca Cola, McDonald's, Experian, and a lot of others.

 

Robert Berkeley  1:06  

Excellent And who are we going to hear from?

 

Emily Foster  1:09  

We're going to hear from Todd Miller of Experian, Matt Croft from McDonald's. We're also going to hear from Shani, Sandy of IBM and Deirdre Begley and Michael Aizen Reich from Bloomberg.

 

Robert Berkeley  1:19  

Fantastic. And we get a tour of McDonald's HQ,

 

Emily Foster 1:22  

we do a VIP guided tour of the beautiful new headquarters they have here in Chicago.

 

Robert Berkeley  1:27  

Excellent. I'm looking forward to it. can't wait. So first up to speak was IBM's, Shani, Sandy, who's thought provoking talk on culture. And the inevitable counterculture was the most optimistic thing I'd heard in a long time. And she stepped down from the stage, I grabbed a few words, asking her first what her specific role at IBM was.

 

Shani Sandy  1:47  

Yeah, sure. So I am a design executive for IBM z. And we focus primarily on creating products specifically for computing, analytics AI, and I'm currently based out of our Poughkeepsie studio., fantastic

 

Robert Berkeley  2:04  

Fantastic talk from from craft to culture, what is it that you're trying to say today?

 

Shani Sandy  2:09  

Yeah, so you know, for me, when I think about this idea of going from crafts to culture, I think about taking the best parts of what we do as crafts people, right, whether that's coming up with campaign ideas, coming up with digital applications, whatever that is we do creatively, and actually applying that to culture, actually saying, you know, what, our culture needs that same type of obsession and focus, and figuring out what does that mean on the dimensions of people, the process, the practice, and actually the product we're putting into the world. So that's, that's how I how I envision this journey from going to craft, and then moving into like designing culture.

 

Robert Berkeley  2:52  

So you have a mission to get a unified culture within IBM, but you're incredibly spread out across the world. I mean, the few companies, they're going to be more international. So how can you hope to achieve this?,

 

Shani Sandy   3:06  

Thethe idea that I use to keep me motivated and focus is thinking about unifying the culture on a progression, right, so that the unification of our culture is not going to happen at one point in time, it's going to be a progressive process. So for example, one of the things that I had mentioned in the talk was one of the first activities I want to do is go and see every single team, meet them, talk to them spent, it's a lot of fun. And it's not always to be fair, it's not always possible for everyone, right? And so you have to get a little magic to imaginative and think of ways to make that happen. But I think the team's really value when you come and spend time with them and listen to them. So that's number one, meeting every single person that seem face to face in real life, as they say.,

 

Robert Berkeley  4:00  

I couldn't agree more. And that's, that's why I'm here in Chicago as well. It's the same deal. You know, it's all about being in the same space as people. And you mentioned something about that, which I totally relate to, because I have teams from India 333 to the west coast. And the fact that we do a lot of hangouts or video conferences now, but it's just not quite enough. What is it that you get in person that did a video conference, no matter how intimate simply can't give you?

 

Shani Sandy  4:25  

Yeah, there is sensibility that happens in person, meaning all of our senses are heightened right when we're just face to face with people. But I also think there's cultural nuance that we miss. And I think for me, that's actually been the most valuable and unexpected takeaway from being in person with people is that something that I may say, and maybe flippant manner, may not be taken as flippantly as I may think so right. And so I think picking up on those like nuances that you Just can't grasp from an interface or a face on whatever it is that makes you understand, Oh, I know what this person is like more than I could have ever imagined. I know what gets them going or, oh, that I know what sex and then this serendipity that happened soon. I think that happens. That's an important part of it.

 

Robert Berkeley  5:23  

Absolutely. So, just one final thing, you said something that really stuck with me? And I'm not sure if you're referring to the creative leader or whether you're referring to the to the whole community within an organisation. But you said that you are not the culture. You are the cultivator. Can you can you drill into that a little bit?

 

Shani Sandy   5:40  

Yeah. And and I'm absolutely foreign to anyone who is in a position to lead anyone and frankly, leadership doesn't come with a title. Leadership is the attitude is the behaviour, right? So I can say yes, I am the design executive for my team. But do I act in a way that is one of a leader basically, do I act in a way where people want to follow me? Right. And so this idea of cultivator has to do with, we want to create environments that people want to be in. That's what we're doing. We're designing vines. People want to be in and do their best work. And so it's not it's not that we are the culture, we're helping to shape the culture. So that's, that's what I mean, when I talk about we're cultivators. We're not the culture, we make up the culture, but our job is to do the thing that will make our cultures the best. Thank you

 

Robert Berkeley  6:28  

Thank you very much. Shani, I hope you look forward to the rest of the day.

 

Shani Sandy  6:31  

Yes, indeed. You're welcome. And it's great to finally meet you

 

Robert Berkeley  6:37  

can can vote from Cronus? You just listened to Chinese talk there. What was your takeaway?

 

Kronus  6:41  

Biggest thing I had to take away? Was she started with what's your core product? Most people when they talk cultural starts with your people. So it's very interesting spins is area? Well, what is actually my people going to be doing? I have to put that at the centre of what I do. Instead of starting with my people at a centre. Now she quickly jumped to people and talked about how they all need to be driving to that same purpose, whether they're remote, whether they're contractors who are full time employees, but that idea of first assessing like why do you even exist, I think sometimes gets skipped. And I think that was a very valid point you made that you don't usually hear people throw out when they're talking culture.

 

Robert Berkeley  7:16  

Ken, thank you very much.

 

Kirsten Doris   7:18  

I'm Kirsten kearson. Doris, I am the video team lead at Coca Cola studios.

 

Robert Berkeley  7:22  

Did you enjoy that last talk from Shani?

 

Kirsten Doris   7:24  

Oh, it was fabulous. You know, we're we're in a position where we are rebranding ourselves and redefining our culture and what it is with a new group of creatives. And what I found so interesting, was particularly her talk on the design culture. I loved her quote that you are not the culture, you are the cultivator. Because I think that's so true. You create this idea, you create this culture, but you need to foster it, you need to grow it and you need to embody it, but encourage others to do so. And and it's not one person, it's not one thing. It's a whole being in a whole idea. The other things that resonated I think I loved the pixel perfect practice. And I love that because it brings design into the perfection and I think it's not perfection, but it's striving for it. And it's that attention to detail. It's such a small scale, that makes all the difference in the world. You know, we always say it's not just what you do, it's how you do it. And I think that pixel perfect there that pixel perfect practice can apply to both sides.

 

Robert Berkeley  8:32  

Absolutely. So Kirsten, who we got talking Next?.

 

Kirsten Doris   8:36  

Next, we're gonna hear from Bloomberg and looking forward to their to their discussion. 

 

Robert Berkeley  8:40  

to their discussion. Me too. Thank you, Kirsten. So Bloomberg, cmo, Deirdre Bigley Begley and Global Head of their own In House Studio in house studio, Mike Kaiser and Reich are up next to give a two handed talk and titled one vision one voice, they discussed starting an In House Agency in house agency from scratch within an established 25 year old company that had many facets. Deirdre Daedra that was a fantastic presentation. Thank you very much. It looks like you had to carve an agency out of out of nothing really, quite a challenge.

 

Deirdre Bigley  9:12  

Yeah, it's a very big challenge. I think when you go into, you know, something that you know, maybe has a, you know, six people in it, and you're trying to build a full fledged marketing organisation, everything is a decision, everything is you know, you have to find the technology, you have to, you know, figure out how you're actually going to get that work done. I mean, there's nothing there. So things that in your previous job you took for granted because all those tools were at your fingertips. They're not anymore and you have to build all those tools so that it was it was surprising to us that it we thought we're gonna hit the ground running. And really it was a it was a year two years of just building the groundwork for it.

 

Robert Berkeley  9:55  

Right any any. Did you go down any blind alleys along the way, or was it pretty straight forward?

 

Deirdre Bigley  10:00  

Yeah, we went down some blind alleys. You know, our first email system didn't work for us at all. That was a mistake. I think we we went big into, you know, a research team, a brand team. And I don't think we actually really needed that. So I think as we've evolved, and as we've gotten, you know, we know the company better and better. We know what avenues we have to go down, and we have to be willing to shift. So things that might have been very important to us at one point, over time, become less important. And we have to be able to shift quickly into these new areas.

 

Robert Berkeley  10:34  

But it seems a big part of the success. Is the man standing next to you who I guess you recruited? Yeah. Is that right?

 

Mike eisendrache   10:40  

Yeah. So I'm Mike eisendrache. I lead the Bloomberg Studio Team, which includes our brand, digital, creative and content teams.

 

Robert Berkeley  10:47  

So did DeirdreDaedra hand you this task and say, build me an agency? And if so, what did you do next?

 

Mike eisendrache   10:53  

Somewhat, I had been within the team for several years. And marketing was new, about 10 years ago. Deirdre dierdre was employee number two, and marketing. More or less, there were some people who kind of came along. But we were growing very organically in silos were kind of forming. And yeah, Deirdre dierdre had the strategic vision to put it all together to try and unify the groups to align to something a little bit of a higher order, so that we could truly have collaboration and get the best creative solutions out of the team, because we had, we had really great people, it's just that there were tools, processes, other dynamics that were keeping them from achieving full potential.

 

Robert Berkeley  11:34  

Ryan, okay. And you'd say you said made quite a claim there in the presentation, you said you built an In House Agency in house agency like no other, which is quite a claim. When you're standing in front of people running In House Agencies in house agencies, what would you say? Is the key differentiator? Well, I

 

 11:46  

think for our team, and to clarify, that wasn't a video. So we had licenced to be somewhat braggadocious. But yeah, you know, I think for that we believe our company is is very unique, every company should, anyone who works for a company should feel like their company's unique, right? We're standing here at McDonald's headquarters. They're a unique company in comparison to other other things. The thing that was very unique about our company is we have to, we have to tell market, clear marketing and communication messages to very discerning audiences who are dealing with highly complicated subjects. And so you're talking about financial services, cutting across into media and other business verticals. The challenge for us was to respond to these very abstract concepts in a creative way that made sense that was cohesive. And so it's not to say that we, I think are doing anything that's far exception. I mean, there are certainly lots of other great In House Agencies in house agencies for sure. For us, we believe that we have figured out how to set the intersection within our own company, for content design technology to do great work, obviously a lot more to do and can always improve. But for us, we feel that we are the in the right place to give the company that we work for what they need, because we've grown organically.

 

Robert Berkeley  13:02  

Thank you guys, you got a plane to catch. Cheers.

 

Teresa Martin   13:05  

My name is Teresa Martin. I'm a managing director with Deloitte. I am the leader of account management and integrated operations, and our In House Agency in house agency called the green.shop dot shop.

 

Robert Berkeley  13:20  

I saw you talking to Mike and Deirdre Deirdre after their talk, you seem to have quite a few questions for them.

 

Teresa Martin   13:24  

Yes, they, they are worthy agency of the year. And and we knew that and they were one of the companies I really wanted to learn from here today.

 

Robert Berkeley  13:33  

And what especially intrigued you about what they had to say. Um,

 

Teresa Martin   13:39  

Um, I think just understand we're on the same journey, and just understanding how they were addressing some of the same issues we're addressing, particularly related to views and we're a professional services organisation similar to their financial services, so just how marketing's viewed and, and the brand that we build around ourselves. Yeah.

 

Robert Berkeley  14:02  

Tracy, thank you very much. Okay, so so I've got Todd Miller here. And Inside Jobs inside jobs, fans will remember him from Episode 10, when when I interviewed you, Todd, he just gave a talk there about your agency, the cooler at Experian. And you told me when we interviewed that, you got to start with the idea. And you can build out from there and go in any direction. And in fact, in your talk, you did the same thing there. You seem to have a single idea, which was that when building our In House Agency in house agency, don't start by trying to build an agency. Why not? And what do you do that's different?

 

Todd Miller  14:40  

Well, I think that we have certain preconceptions that are the reasons were afraid of In House Agencies in house agencies, because they're not the, the system that we've gotten so accustomed to. As I had said in the talk. I've been at dozens of agencies, and it's all kind of the same thing. And there's a method That we've kind of grown up with. And I think as well as in house being, you know, as I said, you know, some people feel the death of creative. Is it scary because I don't know what the model will be. Now, what the point I was trying to make is, when I went into an In House in house, I went in for the real reasons of the fact that as I said, on the podcast, I wanted to see my kids. But I also went in there being an agency guy, and that's what I did first was okay, I'm going to build an agency. And it's it that model is not right, even though it's a dozens and dozens of agencies I've worked at that model is not right for In House in house. I think I don't even know what's right. I'm learning it right now. But I think that's the exciting. That's what's exciting is figuring out how to build it is something new.

 

Robert Berkeley  15:47  

So what fundamentally the differences that you figured out so far, between an agency and an In House Agency in house agency, that maybe you've you've learned, you've learned along the way?

 

Todd Miller  15:58  

I think a lot of it has to do with the the kind of false sense of separation, or actually, it's a real sense of separation that I was trying to create falsely, is that, you know, the creatives, you're at an agency, let's face it, you know, the marketers, we think, were the hipsters, you know, we come in, we fly, and we do this great presentation, all the bells and whistles, and I loved it. I mean, I loved doing that. And then we split and we do the magic. I mean, now, that was a great model. But now In House in house, I didn't realise Besides, okay, I'm going to back up a little bit being fearful that we didn't have that. What it ultimately became as I was wrong is that we have so much exposure and so much learning. And being embedded with the team, I would never learn all these things about about product development, I would never be exposed to all these things, you know, all this bit of information about how TV spots and social networking were kind of, to some degree creatives are cut off for that. I don't think anybody cuts us off intentionally. But it's just something that we don't talk about. But

 

Robert Berkeley  17:01  

But you also mentioned that you're involved with product development now, which would never have happened, right?

 

Todd Miller  17:05  

Absolutely. I mean, as I as I had alluded to, I mean, you know, from being a car guy as well, there's sometimes like, we've got a great idea, if there was just one more cup holder, like this car would just sell like crazy. And you're like, Okay, you go to the product team, like, what if you put in one more cup holder, and it's you know, designed, you know, six years ago, it's like, yeah, we'll get a cup holder, another six years, whereas now we are with the product development team. They're asking our insight, we're asking their insight, and we are understanding the product so much more because of that relationship. And listen, we're trying to make it you know, so consumers are interested in it, we're trying to make it so it helps, you know, some perhaps hole in their lives and makes things easier, which is the same thing, the product people are trying to do. And they're, they have any credible way of building things. But when we team together, we can build incredible things and also know better ways to market them.

 

Robert Berkeley  17:58  

So that's an added value to In House Agencies in house agencies that no one talks about., oh, well, I

 

Todd Miller  18:02  

Oh, well, I didn't realise no one talking about it. But it's certainly pretty amazing the amount that I've learned and then listen creatives, whether we're learning the latest version of Photoshop, or were watching some cultural, you know, thing go on and learning about Snapchat, we love learning stuff. That's what makes this interesting. That's what keeps this world from being stale. And being having this opportunity to learn so much again, which isn't again, like, oh, here comes another version of Photoshop. It really is. Every day creatives are learning something new. We're being exposed to stuff. We're problem solving. We're figuring stuff out in ways that we never had before. And it's endless.

 

Robert Berkeley  18:35  

So don't tell me that working in In House Agencies in house agencies is boring for creatives. Todd Miller, thank you very much indeed.

 

Todd Miller  18:41  

Thank you appreciate it.

 

Robert Berkeley  18:43  

The last talk of the day was given by our host Matt Croft, who is the director of project strategy at McDonald's. The move to their new office coincided with a lot of changes at McDonald's not least was their In House Creative in house creative unit haft in size and forced to rethink their place within the new corporate firmament, they tapped consultant martyr struggling to help them take a long, hard look at themselves. Their talk was the brutally honest story of that. Oh, man, you gave the last talk along with Marta. And I think of all the talks yours stood out most because it was, shall we say, Frank, in the extreme, you were actually very open about a survey that you'd done of your clients within McDonald's. And I'm sure there are lots of good things that weren't mentioned. But you, you focused on the bad things. But you You seem to have used that to influence what you were doing with your real kind of the agency that you were rebuilding at that point. And I'm curious, in what ways did that really steer your direction?

 

Matt Croft   19:48  

So ultimately, when we started working with Marta, she she had kind of posed a question that kind of stood out to us which was the if you really want To be how can you be a truly client centric organisation without involving them in the process of your model, right? So, you know, we've, again, I've gotten client feedback in the past, but it's usually very sanitised. When it's you and the client, either via written word or even you're talking face to face with them. So bringing in a third party, you get some pretty honest, raw, almost, to honest to an extent, feedback. So Marta interviewed 30 of our key clients. And again, got some very, very useful, but at first kind of like, you read this, and like, wow, this is not easy to hear, right? You got to get past that and understand that our clients want us to succeed, they want us to do well, they want us they want to use us, they see the value in using us. But there's some things that we need to do from a client experience standpoint, to kind of return and reprove ourselves to our clients.

 

Robert Berkeley  21:05  

So what were the major steps that you took, what were their kind of two or three main things that you took away from that feedback, and that you've either implemented or in the process of implementing?

 

Matt Croft   21:16  

I think the one thing that really one key learning is our structure was is not necessarily right, because the way we're currently structured, it's very much by discipline, and it's not necessarily surrounded and around the client. So we are currently restructuring with client teams. So each client will have a consistent experience with a team of a count manager, a creative lead, and a project manager that will always be on their project. So they will know who to call them know who they're working with all the time, because that is a key thing. Our clients just didn't know who to talk to, when things came up with us. And I think the other thing is just our creative quality, the output of our creative was probably not where our clients want it to be. I think a lot of that has to do with beginning because the experience wasn't so great. It it tends to detract from the creative that you do put out there. You know, because I think we do do really good creative work. But again, perception is reality, you have to fix what they think is right. So by adding that creative lead to that client team and having them very close to that, that is really going to help us from a creative standpoint and upping that creative game with our clients. Okay,

 

Robert Berkeley  22:27  

Okay, so remove the friction in your client engagement, and raise your raise your creative game. Now I want to thank you very much for hosting today's event. It's been amazing. And you put on quite a show. We just had a terrific tour of the brand new building is about a year old. 

 

Matt Croft  22:38  

Newnew building is about a year old. Yeah, just about a year, we moved in May of 2018, . So.

 

Robert Berkeley  22:43  

I think it sets the way for a new way of working actually as well. So thank you very much indeed. Thank you. Thank you.

 

Brooke Butterfield   22:50  

I'm Brooke Butterfield. I am the senior creative manager for hims.

 

Robert Berkeley  22:54  

Great. So Brooke, you were there for the afternoon session. We had Todd Miller from experiment we had Matt from McDonald's, what did you What did you take away from there anything you can apply?

 

Brooke Butterfield   23:03  

Actually, yes, both were particularly relevant. We are going through a rebrand and a reorganisation right now and of our team of our internal creative team. So, you know, the idea of having a In House Agency in house agency and not modelling it after the ad agency model was particularly helpful. And I believe that was from Todd Miller's presentation. And then McDonald's, you know, it was really refreshing to hear kind of the struggles that they're going through, because we're kind of going through some similar struggles. So really learned a lot about how they are addressing those.

 

Robert Berkeley  23:43  

Right, Brooke, thank you very much. So Emily, that was, I think, a pretty successful day for everyone.

 

Emily Foster   23:50  

Yeah, we've heard great feedback so far as we wrap up today on our networking reception, and folks seem to have enjoyed themselves as it was a wonderful day hosted by McDonald's and some really great content shared by our speakers. Okay,

 

Robert Berkeley  24:01  

Okay, well, hold on to IHAF I have on the team, what's the next big event in the pipeline?

 

  24:04  

We have our In House Agency in house agency roundtables happening in June in six different cities across the country. Well, I see there, Robert.

 

Robert Berkeley  24:10  

see there, Robert. Oh, yeah. I might might make one or two I have to say in the sunny cities. Awesome. Look forward to it. So and after that the conference is in November.

 

Emily Foster  24:20  

Yes. November 13 and 14th back in Boston. We'll see you there.

 

Robert Berkeley  24:23  

Look forward to it. Thanks, Emily. Thanks, Robert. Well, I had a fantastic day at McDonald's new HQ in Chicago. And I want to thank not only Matt and Joe for being the consummate hosts at the event, but also Emily Foster and the IHAF I have teamed for organising such a brilliant event. If you've not been to any of IHAF I have events before then you really ought to consider looking at their website and signing up for some of those roundtables may be occurring near you. I also want to thank my producer Prateek Srivastava for making these things happen. And the Express KCS crew for handling the editing the website and well pretty much anything else. What makes this happen? If you do enjoy this podcast and I'm assuming you do if you're still listening, then do please do yourself and me a favour and recommend us to a friend or if you get the chance, why not post a comment and a review to iTunes, it would be much appreciated. Also, you can find all the previous episodes listed on Inside Jobs inside jobs podcast.org as well as sign up to our exclusive listeners email. See you next time.