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Robert Berkeley  0:05  

Hello, and thank you once again for joining me Robert Berkeley for another episode of Inside Jobs. They just keep on coming, don't they? Inside Jobs is the podcast for in-house agencies. It's about in-house agency leaders and brought to you by the in-house agency forum or IHAF in partnership with EKCS, who help in-house agencies do far more by handling their outsource production. But this episode, I am thrilled to be joined by Amanda Dinsmore , a fine artist who has refined the art of running a key part of a global business. Amanda, welcome to Inside Jobs.

 

Amanda Dinsmore   0:43  

Thanks for having me, Robert.

 

Robert Berkeley  0:45  

It's an absolute pleasure. And I'm really looking forward to hearing about your career that took you up to where you are now. But let's start there. What's your role, Amanda, and who do you work for? And tell us a little bit about what you work with every day?

 

Amanda Dinsmor  0:58  

Sure. Today, I'm the Global Creative Director at Gallagher. Gallagher is a global insurance brokerage, as well as a risk manager and employee benefits consulting firm, and I run the in house agency that we call the art department.

 

Robert Berkeley  1:18  

Okay, so it's branded the art department and what kind of work are you doing in the art department?

 

Amanda Dinsmore   1:21  

We're supporting our our marketing team through campaign creative ideation. Really anything external facing, supporting our marketing initiatives?

 

Robert Berkeley  1:33  

Okay. It's big team.

 

Amanda Dinsmore   1:35  

It's, it's, I think it's a little on the smaller side. I think. If you compare us to other similar sized companies, we're about 40 people globally,

 

Robert Berkeley  1:45  

globally. So you're wrestling with time zones and cultures as well as we go. Oh, yeah. Okay, now, you've got to that role. You're running the in house agency there, but you've got that role from the creative side. Yeah.

 

Amanda Dinsmore   1:57  

Yeah. Yeah. I, I studied art and went to art school, studied graphic design. And, and now I'm, I'm doing that at a different level.

 

Robert Berkeley  2:08  

This could be the shortest interview ever. This is it. We've done it. We've done it. But no, let's, let's let's, let's actually give our listeners a treat and go way back. So you're you're you're in Chicago now. I think.

 

Amanda Dinsmore   2:20  

Yeah, I'm in Chicago.

 

Robert Berkeley  2:22  

Your native?

 

Amanda Dinsmore  2:23  

No. I'm not I'm actually from Louisiana, originally.

 

Robert Berkeley  2:27  

Okay, so that sounds interesting already. So you're working. So you growing up in Louisiana. Tell us a little bit about your background. 

 

Amanda Dinsmore  2:35  

Okay. I'm from a small town in North Louisiana. And if anyone thinks of Louisiana, they think of like New Orleans and Mardi Gras. That's not where I'm from. I always say I'm from the boring part of Louisiana, but it was a great place to grow up. And yeah, I, I was surrounded by art and artists from a young age.

 

Robert Berkeley  3:02  

How come in the middle of Louisiana? Was it a little collective or something around there?

 

Amanda Dinsmore  3:07  

You know, both of my grandmother's on my mom and dad side. Were hobbyist oil painters. And I spend a lot of time with my grandmother. And, you know, one of my grandmother's my great aunt, she had a closet filled with art supplies, not like Kid art supplies, but like professional arts, grown up stuff, the grown up art supplies, and I spent a lot of time just digging through that closet and playing around with stuff and so around age nine, I started taking oil painting lessons with my grandmother, I went every week until high school until you know I was too cool to go and so yeah, that's kind of how I got started I was I was oil painting and playing with other mediums as well. And

 

Robert Berkeley  3:58  

Did your parents relate to all this? Were they creative too?

 

Amanda Dinsmore  4:01  

Not in the same sense? I would say my mom and dad are more, you know, crafty if anything, but No they weren't of the crafts.

 

Robert Berkeley  4:11  

Crafty of the crafts. 

 

Amanda Dinsmore   4:15  

You know, my dad was a school teacher. He taught English and literature and was also the town you know, Coach he coached the football team and the the baseball team and then went into school administration but he's he's also like a I call him like a renaissance man he has all sorts of different hobbies that he he still does so a lot of woodworking and building things and figuring things out so but not in the same sense of like you know, fine arts or anything like that No.

 

Robert Berkeley  4:48  

No, but that he clearly got you know what you're about in turn and allowed you to do all this exploration and stuff, but it sounds like so so art fine art was obviously a natural We'll step you said you went on to study it. Did you have anything in mind? Did we? What did you do? If I asked you at the age of, say, 16? Or 17? What are you going to be when you grow up? Amanda? What would you have said?

 

Amanda Dinsmore   5:10  

Oh, gosh, I think I think originally I thought I might want to, you know, be a teacher or, or a doctor, a doctor. You know,

 

Robert Berkeley  5:20  

not an artist,

 

Amanda Dinsmore   5:21  

not not an artist. I you know, I don't think I realised that that was a thing that you could be when you grew up, because I hadn't really seen that it's outside of, you know, instructors, you know, teaching art. So yeah, I hadn't ever really considered that. Um, when I was in high school, I was on the yearbook staff. And that's when I was like, Oh, you can do this on a computer. You can like design what's going to be on the pages? That's cool. I really liked that. So when I enrolled in college and had to pledge my major, I, you know, I went with graphic design, because that seemed very similar to a yearbook. You know what? I really liked the page layout, that was really cool. So yeah, that it was just, I didn't really know what I was getting into. I knew I knew that I liked art. I I always thought of myself as an artist. And so I enrolled in university and I majored in graphic design. Actually, I switched around a bit. I majored in studio painting, and minored in art history. So I was still painting at the college level for a while and then kind of eased my way back into graphic design.

 

Robert Berkeley  6:44  

So this was all available in Louisiana as well, this sort of education.

 

Amanda Dinsmore   6:47  

Yeah, I actually enrolled in the school of design at Louisiana Tech University. And then once I really settled in on graphic design as my focus, I ended up transferring to an art programme in Chicago. And that's why. Is this you're able to do this because you were good at it? It was more of a decision on my part that I wanted to continue studying in a larger city. I was accepted into the art programme, transferred my credits, spent a couple more years in Chicago, going to art school, and finally, graduating with a BFA in visual communications.

 

Robert Berkeley  7:34  

So you got the BFA that was in the early 2000s. Where did you go from there? Because you know it's quite interesting, your background, so you didn't know what was an option, what was available.

 

Amanda Dinsmore  7:47  

I don't even think that marketing was on my radar as a thing to do.

 

Robert Berkeley  7:53  

Interesting. It's so interesting, because so many people say I wanted to do marketing. From day one, I watched an advert on TV and that was my mindset. So you know, as the great Donald Rumsfeld said, it's about the unknown unknowns, the things we don't know that we don't know. So once you get through the college system, of course, these opportunities start opening up, do they not? 

 

Amanda Dinsmore 8:14  

Yeah, I mean, I didn't know anyone who worked in marketing, most of the people I knew who graduated in, in the arts were either had become photographers, you know, running their own business, or they were becoming website developers, again, running their own businesses, or, you know, working in, you know, other in house agencies for for companies like fossil watches, and out of Dallas, designing watches and boxes and things. So I didn't really know what that was, what marketing was, and I kind of stumbled upon it. I was doing some freelance work after graduation. And I got called in to help out with some freelance production design at an agency called min Jonnie, Jonnie continuum marketing. They had a ton of catalogs, they were producing print catalogs. Oh, and I needed some help. Early 2000s Right, early 2000s Yeah, this would have been like 2004. And so they were just pulling in people to help them meet those deadlines. And that's how I kind of got started there. And then I spent the next 10 years there and worked my way up to creative director, leading the design team there.

 

Robert Berkeley  9:37  

So that was a 10 year apprenticeship. Really?

 

Amanda Dinsmore  9:39  

I mean, absolutely. That's kind of what I felt like,

 

Robert Berkeley  9:43  

So. 10 years, man. Yeah, it was, as I say, a terrific apprenticeship, but you didn't leave during COVID You left in 2015. What was the opportunity that you saw come up.

 

Amanda Dinsmore  9:55  

You know, I had recently gotten married and I had recently given birth to my son. And it was a time for me where I just was trying to figure out what, what's next I'd never really worked anywhere else. You know. And I had, I had been interested in, in, in experiencing, you know, working somewhere else seeing what it was like in other places was what we were doing the only way. And so you needed another perspective. I did, I think, and that was the biggest thing was, I was just really curious about seeing what else was out there. I mean, I knew a lot of people in and around Chicago, who worked at a lot of different agencies. For me, I was 100% focused on agency life. So that was what you knew. Oh, yeah, that’s what I knew. And I think I had thought, at the time, that that was the way right. All the reasons people want to work at an agency, there's a variety of clients, lots of different problems to solve, you know, all the variety and glory that comes with that. Right. And so yeah, that I just, I started kind of keeping my ears open. And, and I, that's when I joined Merkle in 2015, actually joining their performance creative division. I think Merkel's mainly known for data and analytics. And they had acquired a company in Chicago recently, at the time in 2015. That was really focused on performance, creative I, as it pertains to direct response, mainly for 

 

Robert Berkeley  11:53  

different world for you from different world really was a lot you're in Europe, you're actually going for the pressure, by the sound of it.

 

Amanda Dinsmore  11:59  

You know, what really hooked me when I was talking with that team at the time was the idea that they used data to directly influence the creative and to me, that like really sent off sparks to my nerd brain. Like that was

 

Robert Berkeley  12:19  

Lot of creatives would hate that. That sounds quite interesting. You were drawn to the light like that. 

 

Amanda Dinsmore  12:23  

I just I, to me, that kind of merge of art and science maids made sense. And so yeah, I joined the team at Merkel. And again, doing doing some B2Bb But But now a little bit of B2C as well,

 

Robert Berkeley  12:39  

No grand career plan here. This is literally this is the thing that attracted you. That was 

 

Amanda Dinsmorer  12:45  

Yeah it was like, let's see, let's see what these guys do. How do they do this? And they were similar in a lot of ways and different in a lot of ways. And I learned a lot about I think I learned a lot more about messaging and copywriting at Merkel than than I knew

 

Robert Berkeley  13:03  

the data and the science as well. No, by the sound of it. 

 

Amanda Dinsmore  13:08  

Yeah, we're working closely with those media teams. We learned a lot about media strategy and learned a lot about, you know, real time data and how to interpret that data and to creative solutions is really cool.

 

Robert Berkeley  13:22  

Maybe testing and trying to analyse the results, tons and tons of testing, what everything's a test, isn't it now but, you know, the blue CTA is more effective than the yellow CTA and the one on the left is more effective. The one on the right with the dog, not the cat and all that sort of stuff.

 

Amanda Dinsmore  13:37  

I loved it. Like it was just the best like, Okay, well, then we will make the button green because greens work in, you know, great.

 

Robert Berkeley  13:45  

Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Really interesting psychology there, I guess, as well. So you were there for three years at Merkel. And so you'd been agency side up until that point, you'd work for two different agencies in your entire career at this point. But things changed obviously, in early 2018. In fact, 

 

Amanda Dinsmore  14:03  

Yeah, I got a call one day from a really great friend and mentor of mine. Felicia Stan Zack, she used to be part owner of min Jani. And then she had left me nanny and joined Gallagher, and then came on full time and she called me one day. And she's like, we need your help. You should think about joining Gallagher like, you know, we need your help, did you know who Gallagher was? You know when at the time I didn't and I want to say like within a few weeks of that call. I saw an article online about Gallagher becoming a sponsor of the Chicago Cubs. And you know, it's like oh, I Oh, I Gallagher and I read the articles like oh, this is cool. Okay, cool. So that in some ways, I think that kind of made it real like Oh, Okay, now I know who Gallagher is. They're there at this insurance brokerage. And, you know, I think Felicia had to convince me for a long time. I didn't even have the thought in my head that I would want to go in-house.

 

Robert Berkeley  15:13  

Did you know what in house was even though you have come across in house agencies where many people work in it? No. And traditional agencies don't come across in house agencies, they kind of know they exist, but they run on parallel tracks. Occasionally they interact, but quite often they don't.

 

Amanda Dinsmore 15:25  

Yeah, I think that's interesting. I definitely had the prejudices. I think that everyone, all your listeners would come on, listen, aware of. Okay, I've heard you let's the previous episodes, you know, it was a corporate environment, with the headquarters in the suburbs with a dress code. What really, you know, and it was also that fear of, well, I guess I'm gonna just work on Gallagher projects forever and not have the variety of of different clients and pitching work. And those things come with me.

 

Robert Berkeley  16:08  

So how are you persuaded otherwise? Because you're having a great time, your ACD I haven’t a great time. Stuff by e data? How did they persuade you? How big was the check? Or what was it?

 

Amanda Dinsmore  16:18  

No, I, you know, at the end of the day, what I came, I met with lots of people, I was really interested in it, I was really, really drawn to the fact that I wouldn't be able to build the team. And we haven't talked about that quite so much. But you know, managing the team, you know, inserting some culture, that's something that that I was pretty good at. I'm just gonna like, ring that bell. Like, I was pretty good.

 

Robert Berkeley  16:49  

This podcast is an opportunity to toot their own horn. That is the whole point. So with Gallagher did they not have an in house creative team at that point.

 

Amanda Dinsmore  16:56  

They have a creative team.

 

Robert Berkeley  16:59  

So why did they need help? She said she wanted help. She needed your help, specifically?

 

Amanda Dinsmore  17:03  

Yeah. I mean, they had a team of designers. At that time, Gallagher was going through kind of a building of their marketing organisation globally. And the team that was in place at Gallagher at the time, full of really talented designers and support staff, they, they weren't structured in that agency, way they were actually reporting into procurement, if that tells you anything. And so it really was a team that was lacking in that creative culture. There was a lack of, of, of trust, I guess that's the word I'm looking for the you know, they were reporting into procurement before I came on board. They were order takers. They were just like

 

Robert Berkeley  17:56  

Document Services, as you say, order takers. Not not strategically part of marketing and,

 

Amanda Dinsmorer  18:03  

and so that that challenge to kind of transform that team into something that more resembled an agency structure was what drew me what that's really what drew me together.

 

Robert Berkeley  18:18  

So were you from the get go? And they were they were they were part of procurement. You know, was that was that to be changed with your, with your position? Or did is that something you said had to happen? Or yeah, a lot of those decisions? Or do you still work from procurement, I don't

 

Amanda Dinsmore  18:32  

I don't report into procurement anymore. No, a lot of those decisions had, thankfully, already been made, and kind of that direction was what that path had been forged. Prior to me joining, they were going to, they they moved that that team and to under the brand team under the corporate brand team, which is still where we sit today we're part where I actually are part of the the corporate brand team, which is part of the marketing organisation, which I think makes a whole lot of sense is you know, and I would be interested to hear from from any of your listeners in house, you know, where their teams sit within their organisation. But for us, it makes a lot of sense because not only were we building out a marketing organisation globally, but we were rebranding ourselves. A lot of things were happening all at once. We were building out this internal creative team to support what was being built. So it was kind of, you know, we, we were, you know, what, painting the walls as they were being built, all the ways. So it was that was really exciting to me to be able to inform that and, and, and I knew I, I knew how to pull that team together and it was just a matter of finding the right people to help support.

 

Robert Berkeley  20:00  

Right. And the people you had you said there were talented designers there. They just they just they just went orientated right. And they weren't given the opportunity to really stretch themselves, I guess. 

 

Amanda Dinsmore  20:08  

Yeah. Well, I mean, we still have a large number of people on the team today. Well, you know, this was 2018, I joined Gallagher, who were part of that original team. And, you know, it must have been really scary time for them. You know, everything was getting shaken up all of our processes, were changing, new people were joining the team. You know, it was, it was probably not the most fun time for them. But But I think what we have now, you know, spent a lot of time, you know, trying to figure out what was the best way to structure our team to align teams with various parts of the business?

 

Robert Berkeley  20:52  

Well, I'm gonna come I'm gonna come on to that in a minute. And it's quite interesting. You say that because you said you characterised was what you what you found when you got there were order takers. How would you characterise your now global creative director? Yeah. How would you how would you characterise the the department now? If they were order takers?

 

Amanda Dinsmore 21:13  

Oh, that's a great question. I would say we're creative problem solvers today.

 

Robert Berkeley  21:17  

And, and so the next natural question is, and I think you were touching on it with structure, but how did you get from from there from order takers to creative problem solvers? How do you do it? You know, now looking back? A lot of it, you probably kind of just oh, okay,

 

Amanda Dinsmore  21:32  

fingers, and then we Oh, okay.

 

Robert Berkeley  21:34  

I didn't realise. Oh, I didn't know it was that easy? You know, I knew you had magical powers, but I didn't realise quite how magical they were a normal person, what would you advise them? Because it's a challenge. How do we, how do we become important is really, how do we get a seat at the table? How do we become important? So? So you know, how did your journey make that happen?

 

Amanda Dinsmore  21:55  

I think, a number one support from the top and what we were building was into, and for whatever reason, the trust that was going to happen, you know, so given the autonomy to make those decisions, you were given the autonomy. So there's so many things that we've done in the last four years, let me try to remember because it's like, it's yeah, I will say this, it's still ongoing, we're still building this team and figuring it out. Right? And 

 

Robert Berkeley  22:27  

Is that? Because the world is changing all the time? Or is that because you haven't got where you need to get yet?

 

Amanda Dinsmore  22:31  

I think it's a little of both, I think, honestly, I think it's a little both in some ways were were very well established, and then others were still kind of building that out. But, you know, for me, I think the first step was supplementing the existing team with new team members that understood where I was going. And primarily, what I looked for were people that either had an agency background, or or, you know, had a background that lent itself to what we were, what we were trying to do. Yeah, I mean, at the time, it was, the vision was to create these smaller teams within a team that were aligned with the business. And so, you know, instead of one of 20 people working on your piece, now you're going to have a team of three to four people working on all of your pieces, right and, and putting that creative team closer to parts of the business so that they understand stood the nuance and, and really got to understand the business itself, you know, creating better ideas, more efficiency, in creating and coming up with those ideas, and not having to onboard new people and educate them about different parts of our business. Every time we had a project to kick off. So that that was my initial goal is building those those business aligned teams and finding the right creative leaders to to manage that workflow to manage the lead the creative and bringing copywriting into the team, which didn't exist previously.

 

Robert Berkeley  24:10  

And could you I mean, I'm looking back, man, it's very hard sometimes to look back. This serves this structuring that you're talking about where you have these small sort of dedicated teams that align with business, different parts of the business, probably did it see well, I'm guessing it seemed like a pretty obvious step coming from the background that you did. But did you have to sell that into the business? Or were they kind of ready to wait and see how they they got served better?

 

Amanda Dinsmore  24:34  

It wasn't a hard sell if I did, if I did have to sell it, and it must not have been hard. I don't remember there being any challenge to that. I think they they were like whatever it is you need to do to make this work. Please do that. You know, and

 

Robert Berkeley  24:46  

It wasn't working obviously. Were they were they spending a lot of money on external agencies as a result.

 

Amanda Dinsmore  24:51  

At the time. Yeah, there was quite a few external agencies being leveraged in the end. I think that was a big piece too. Let's get these teams up and running so that we can we can bring these projects in house. Certainly from a financial standpoint, that was a that was a goal of the business. So yeah, I mean, at the same time, you know, we we also had to build out the processes, not only the team structure, but what are the processes? How do we store our files? How do we archive our work? How do how do we, you know, none of this had been done in a way that that made sense for the future. 

 

Robert Berkeley  25:32  

And How did you  How did you figure identifying the problem is one thing, but again, your experience will help you see that there's a problem, how did you solve the problem? How do you set about solving the problem?

 

Amanda Dinsmore  25:41  

Well, for for that I 100%, needed to find an operations manager to all right to come in. And, and luckily, I had worked with an amazing one admin Jonnie and convinced her to come and join us and, and she has been instrumental, her name is Kat Clevenger, she's amazing. Shout out to Kat, she, she thankfully joined us and just made everything made sense. Make sense, she, you know, very process oriented person, not really one of my super strengths. And I know that so brought in the right ops leader to to handle all of that, just figure out what our tech stack was figuring out what what vendors we'd use, what tools we need to do us how to organise things in a way that makes sense getting everyone aligned on on processes, like all the things that that an agency kind of inherently has, when you join it, we just have to create all of those things. And, and I,

 

Robert Berkeley  26:50  

The key seems to be getting the right people are always right.

 

Amanda Dinsmore  26:53  

I think 100% It was about, you know, filling the headcount that we had on our team with the right with the right people to move us in the direction that I know we needed to go.

 

Robert Berkeley  27:05  

So doing that in terms of and in terms of your role, then, you know, you have your former creative director, and as I've discussed with other guests, you know, female creative directors, you know, not not very well represented and out there. But nevertheless, you're now running the in house agency, you claim not to be very process orientated. But you've clearly you had a vision and executed on it, and built out this quite logical structure very easy to understand structure. And I can, I can understand that it's also pretty effective. There must be something of a sort of process person lurking within there, Amanda? We couldn't do it otherwise.

 

Amanda Dinsmore  27:41  

for sure. No, there is in cats, probably laughing to herself. Right now she's listening to this, because sometimes I, you know, I, this might shock you, Robert, I'm a little bit of controlling. And so I had no idea. I've had to learn how to let certain things go and let other people who are who are smarter than me and better than me, you know, figure things out. And, and that that was definitely one of those things where I was for the first year, year and a half trying to not only, you know, build a creative team, hire the right people work on creative projects, do brainstorms and ideation pitch ideas. And at the same time, in the same brain, trying to figure out how to implement all these processes. And, and I'm, I'm hoping, hoping a lot of people have dealt with this where you just had a had to choose, my focus was I got to do apps, or was I gotta do creative and, and that was a no brainer for me. So I'm just, again, I'm learning and figuring these things out as I go, that, you know, bringing the right people in has been key in helping build this team and work. We're expanding this model now to the UK. And again, it's all about leveraging the talent that we have on on the existing team there and bringing in the right people to to lead and you know, we must

 

Robert Berkeley  29:07  

You spent a month in the UK? Didn't you spend a month over here? 

 

Amanda Dinsmore  29:11  

Yeah. I spent a lot of time over there this summer. I did. Yeah. We've brought on a new creative director in the UK, who comes he also comes from a financial background, which is really exciting. But yeah, he's just a couple of months in and we're kind of doing the same thing over again, like filling some headcount identifying needs, aligning the teams with the parts of the business that that need those creative aligned teams and

 

Robert Berkeley  29:41  

the second time around for you in a way chance to do things maybe even better if you're building a similar team in the UK, you finding that, you know, there's there's a cultural difference that is also part of the challenge you have there, or is it actually is it pretty straightforward?

 

Amanda Dinsmore  29:55  

Oh, definitely. I mean, there there's I'm learning every day A what those differences are. And I and I think part of it for me is understanding, having the self awareness that I know I have those blind spots, and gut checking that with my colleagues in the UK, you know, so know.

 

Robert Berkeley  30:15  

Thyself Exactly, exactly. Well, it's that that's quite an extraordinary journey. One last question I had for you before, before we leave off this, something you mentioned, when we spoke a while back, I want to bring up but is this is this seasonal work you have? Or is it fairly consistent work You have?

 

Amanda Dinsmore  30:35  

That's a good question. It's consistent, it is consistent. We work with our marketing teams, who kind of drive the strategy behind the programmes, they're going to run the campaigns that they're going to run throughout the year. And we we aligned with with their their various plans for the year. So

 

Robert Berkeley  30:57  

So the reason I'm asking the question is, you're busy year round, but does that mean to say that, you know, everyone's got their marketing emergencies? Right. Does that mean to say that you don't allow those to happen?

 

Amanda Dinsmore  31:09  

Oh, no, we definitely do. We definitely do. I would say that's it's a huge percentage of what we deal with, especially in the insurance industry. So to reactive staff, you know, that there, there has to be room for that, because there are things that that we do need to react to there there. I mean, insurance is all about protecting us from the unforeseen, right. And so a lot of those unforeseen, foreseeing things pop up with various catastrophes and and, you know, just your typical, I guess, marketing emergencies that could emerge. So, so yeah, I mean, that's that, that's, I would say, How you deal with those? you know, it's funny, coming from the agency side, I would probably think of those the same way that an agency creative would think of like pitch work, oh, we got a pitch coming up. So it's really just being able to pivot pull people in and prioritise work requests. And, and

 

Robert Berkeley  32:12  

So does that mean that you kind of build in you building capacity into your team to be, you know, in the on the knowledge that these things come up, or do other projects suffer, when these things happen?,

 

Amanda Dinsmore  32:22  

We are continuously building out our team and, and trying to figure out ways to drive efficiency where we can, one of the things that that cat has been instrumental in developing for us as we've expanded a production studio, within our India branch of the company. And that team, actually, we started building and hiring people and identifying the right the right resources for that team in early 2021. And that's ongoing. And so we have almost around the clock support for our team. Now, I think we cover like 22 hours of the day.

 

Robert Berkeley  33:05  

for production support, you're talking about. 

 

Amanda Dinsmore  33:07  

For production support, and, you know, thinking ahead for you know, what, though, what those emergencies could be? Do we have the right tools and or templates, or, or items in place where we can quickly respond to the unforeseen? And I think that's something we continue to build upon as those those kind of aha moments pop up, like, oh, we should we should think about this. What if, what if we build out a template for this? Or what if we build out a toolkit for something like this, and, you know, it really is a mix of, you know, custom bespoke creative execution as well as developing templated repeated work, as well, that I think it kind of that overall balance of the team kind of lives within that where, you know, yeah, we do have a production studio, but our, our core business aligned teams depend on on that, that studio for a number of things, and vice versa. Right. So it really is about being able to respond to those things. And reprioritize work without to your point, Robert, without making that other work suffer for it, right?

 

Robert Berkeley  34:27  

Yes. Yeah, that's always the problem. Is that a compromise. Well, we could go on, but we're going to have to wrap this up, unfortunately.

 

Amanda Dinsmore  34:34  

Thank you, Robert. It's been great talking to you today.

 

Robert Berkeley  34:37  

And back to the listeners. If you're not subscribed, of course, then you pretty well ought to be by now you can go to ijpodcast.com. And you can find over 40 episodes of this podcast, where I interview amazing and fascinating creative leaders, such as Amanda and until next time, thank you all very much.