Email Icon

EPISODE 30

Where the Magic Happens

TRANSCRIPT

Note: This is an AI-generated transcript and may have transcription errors. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

Robert Berkeley  0:02  

Hello, and thank you for joining me Robert Barkley for another episode of Inside Jjobs the podcast but Iin Hhouse Aagencies and about Iin Hhouse Aagency leaders Iinside Jjobs is brought to you by the one and only Iin Hhouse Aagency forum or IHAFI have in partnership with Express KCS, who helped Iin Hhouse Aagencies do more throughout source production. This episode, I'm delighted to be joined by Scott Jackson, a man with a very enviable job that of running the Iin Hhouse Aagency for Universal Orlando Resort in Orlando pay Scott, is that job as fun as it sounds?

 

Scott Jackson  0:35  

It absolutely is. It's a dream come true every single day. Orlando is a wonderful destination when it comes to vacationing. But the industry itself has been something that I've always wanted to be a part of. And it is very exciting to say the least I'm sure although a little quieter at the moment, given the current pandemic situation then then it is peak time, right? Yeah, absolutely. I used to love to be able to look out the window and see Hogwarts. And and now I just look out my window here at home and I see tree. So it's not quite the same. But just knowing that that's the company that I represent. Still gives me goosebumps.

 

Robert Berkeley  1:11  

What is it you actually do that just tell us a little bit about the Iin Hhouse Aagency in your role?

 

Scott Jackson  1:14  

Yeah, I mean, we're essentially an in house full service Iin Hhouse Aagency. And wWe have a creative Strategy Team, we have a project management team, creative development team full of video and photography services. And, and so there's a team of probably just under 100, we have some promotions team as well. And then so I we call it Mark Comm. operations. And so I lead that team, our name of our team is actually popcorn. So I guess you could technically technically say I'm the Vice President of popcorn, but that might give you a different sense of what I really do.

 

Robert Berkeley  1:52  

Sounds wonderful. I could eat popcorn looking at the Harry Potter World. Quite it's a pretty good gig. I could imagine. I can imagine we get people clamouring for it now. So let's let's, let's just make it clear to Iinside Jjobs listeners. The the path to that wasn't straightforward. You didn't just walk into that. So let's, let's try and understand how Scott Jackson ended up with the best job in the world. Where did you What was your background? Where did you come from? And tell us about your early formative years?

 

Scott Jackson 2:21  

Yeah, so I grew up in Salt Lake City, Utah, I went to Brigham Young University after that, after graduating in a, in a bachelor's degree with in fine arts or actually Communication Arts from their fine arts programme. So

 

Robert Berkeley  2:35  

So you are you're a fine artist, then by kind of calling are you?

 

Scott Jackson  2:37  

you? It was really Communication Arts, it was fine arts

 

Robert Berkeley  2:41  

and what what attracted you to that?

 

Scott Jackson 2:42  

So you know, it's interesting. When I was growing up, and especially in high school, I started running for student government. And I found the campaigning and the, you know, the creation of posters and, and coming up with clever ideas was really intriguing to me. So really, since about the time I was in high school, I loved it. And when I went to college, I started studying advertising, there was a couple of different things that I was interested in. And psychology was one of them and communications was one of them. But I really feel like as I sat through that burst communications, one on one class, and when they started talking about advertising, there's just something inside me that sparked and I'm like, Yes, that's that's what I've always loved about that stuff that I'd love to doing. And, and so as I, as I just continued to study, I ended up graduating with the degree in Communication Arts with an emphasis in advertising, but also a minor in psychology and a minor in English I, I started my career off as a copywriter and loved that creative process and work to the small agency and in Salt Lake City for a while and live the life of a small agency and right

 

Robert Berkeley  3:54  

right what does that mean living the life of a small agency? What did that mean to you,

 

Scott Jackson 3:58  

it meant pretty much doing anything that they needed you to do. So although I was a copywriter, there was times that I was, you know, I am doing layout. This will date me, but I remember when we got our first big computer, our first Macintosh and we I mean, the the screen itself was larger than most of our desks. And we only had one and so the art directors would go in and work on it to do a layout. My job often at times, was to even still at that point, we had to run. We had to put everything on big Bernoulli discs and run them over to the to the type shop and get stuff happy. printed out. Yeah, it was I tell people about that. And they're just like, what, I'll just say that I went on to start my own small agency. I was very ambitious, wanted to create my own thing, and did that for about three years before I decided, you know what, I'll go back to a regular and consistent Yeah. And so we

 

Robert Berkeley  4:56  

did say to me on Iran, when we first spoke you said that you We're always trying to sell people stuff. So I'd have thought running around agency would have been grist to the mill for that one.

 

Scott Jackson 5:06  

It was fun. But I think I found that I'll be honest, I wanted more of a consistent paycheck. I was, I was I was getting by, but I didn't have a lot of consistency in the projects that I was getting. And you didn't have family at that had no, right. I didn't, I was single. And I was just worried about feeding myself. So that's all I was doing. So

 

Robert Berkeley  5:36  

I know the feeling. I do know that I've been there. done that. Anyway. So you went to you went to you went to the Wharton group, I think it knew to see what you can do with them

 

Scott Jackson 5:44  

you can do with them to another small agency in Salt Lake and, and really enjoyed my time there. The you know, I was doing local advertising just isn't, you know, this isn't the story where I went to, while I believe Brigham Young University has a great advertising programme. This was you know, 30 years ago, I, I started off in really small shops, and I didn't beat a path to your door, then. Nop. Yep, I steer is no one. Yeah. And so. So I went to the word grip for for a few years and just learned from from Larry Orton, who was my boss at that point. And, and he, he had figured out how to run a small shop and was very successful. All right, so we had me up. Yes, he was. He was inspirational. He did a lot of different he had a lot of different clients. He was great at building relationships with his clients. And that's what I think really made the difference for him. Because a lot of people can do what we do, but those relationships were what helped him be successful. And then I went to a firm called FJC and n at the time, I think they're called Richter seven now, but one of the clients I had when I was working at the Oracle group was a bank was doing financial advertising. And so I leveraged that experience and went to this new agency where they had a larger bank client. And I was told the future was

 

Robert Berkeley  7:20  

was banking and finance Did you at that point? It was at home I met you. It was the future.

 

Scott Jackson 7:30  

It was and and then it was it was it was a really cool opportunity because this bank and another bank were merging. It was gonna be humongous.

 

Robert Berkeley  7:40  

doesn't stop does. It's just just sheer thrill. It's like It's like a roller coaster, in fact, and literally on the first day,

 

Scott Jackson 7:48  

and literally on the first day, they called an emergency meeting and said the merger was off. So we want

 

Scott Jackson 7:55  

to play off the the roller coaster analogy we immediately started going down the hill, right? So with no end in sight, that merger just completely dissolved and fell apart. And but you know, in my mind, I'd always wanted to pry you being outside of Salt Lake i'd also was a huge fan at the time I still am that big fan of Disneyland we had always vacation there and I thought well that would be a pretty fun job. I kept sending them my resume just to see if there was any interest and I never got any response. So it was really literally just you

 

Robert Berkeley  8:33  

really literally just you wanted to do Walt Disney World you did what you weren't sending your resume to loads of other people it was a kind of

 

Scott Jackson  8:38  

it was just like if that dream could come to pass then I would love it right and

 

Robert Berkeley  8:44  

Disney are all about dreams, aren't they?

 

Scott Jackson  8:46  

They are they are and and that Disney Land. I never got a response. But I was one day just reading through an ad week and they had a career section. And while Disney World had an Iin Hhouse Aagency, at the time, it was called yellow shoes, I believe it still is but they they had an ad in there for an account manager. And so even though I started out as a copywriter I had when I ran my own business, there was a lot of, you know, client interaction. And when I went back to working for another agency, I kind of went as an account manager. But at the Oregon group again, it was small, I was doing a lot of different things. So even there was an account manager role at yellow shoes, and I sent them my information and they called me up and had a couple of phone interviews and then they flew me out. Wow. And that was cool. It was really exciting. And then you know, I could tell they were pretty serious because they were asking me about you know what it would take to move me and my my wife at the time what it would take to move us out to Florida and when I got back home they called and offered me a job and then ironically I got a letter in the mail saying we received your resume. And we don't have a position for you. And I was like, Hey, this is really confusing. But it just took a quick phone call for them to say, well, that's what our HR department is kind of Oh, so that

 

Robert Berkeley  10:17  

Oh, oh so that was disney world as well saying that they were simultaneous.

 

Scott Jackson  10:21  

They had already offered me a job. And then the computer who who saw my resume was like, oh, that might not be a good fit.

 

Robert Berkeley  10:30  

Scott, do you feel that the path you took by working for these small agencies was was pretty key. And Walt Disney's decision to choose you because clearly they they liked what they saw. It wasn't that you were uneasy when they flew around. They moved your family and all that, do you think that that that beginning for you really counted for something, and if so, why

 

Scott Jackson  10:50  

I do it, I think it's really important if you're if you love advertising, I remember someone told me when I first started that advertising is the type of thing that you'll either last a couple of years, or you'll be a lifer. And what they meant by that is, when you start out, it's hard. And you're doing a lot of, you know, garbage work, you're running a lot of errands, you're doing that kind of stuff. But if you're lucky enough to work at a small agency, you get to do a lot of different things. You get to understand production, you get to understand copywriting. You get to write briefs. And it's all of that collectively, I think, is what what gave them pause or gave them the reason to, to hire me because I think I understood all of the parts of what an agency takes to run.

 

Robert Berkeley  11:36  

Yes I mean, I'm certainly aware people who have worked in larger agencies from the get go, and very specialised, they're very specialised in that role. And many of them have gone on to lead Iin Hhouse Aagencies to very successfully as well. But it's interesting, that angle that you you started with as a result, so you, you, you were at yellow shoes for about five years. Tell us briefly about your time there, how you how you ended up there. I mean, how you finished off when you were there? Absolutely.

 

Scott Jackson  12:03  

Absolutely. What I will say is, I felt like when I was there, and not because of me, I just think that the leadership team that had put the team together was really inspired. It was it was one of the most amazing experiences of my life, everybody, I would turn around me and I would look at the people I worked with. And I was so inspired by them, their experience, their energy and their passion for what we did. It was just a really exciting time to be there. And so I worked on a couple of different parts of their business I worked on, I worked on their resorts business, I worked on what we called Central Florida. So as people came into Florida, it's how did we talk to them when they were once they got here? So that segment was was a really interesting learning curve for me,

 

Robert Berkeley  12:52  

abecause you could see how they understood their customers in the context in which the customers were at that one time, and how they needed to be spoken to differently, right. That's very interesting. Yeah, it was,

 

Scott Jackson  13:03  

it was, it was a it was really amazing. And every outdoor board every, you know, touch point that they might have while they were in market, that's, that was part of what that was part of my first experience with them, including, you know, they had to enter in television in their in their resorts. And so it was a really unique look at a segment of people. And then I went on to to work on several different parts of the business. One of the things I loved about my experience there is you would be on a business for, say, a year to 18 months, and then you'd moved to another part of the business and really gave you a chance to understand all of the of the business. And that's something that that has really stuck with me as I've as I moved on to other opportunities

 

Robert Berkeley  13:47  

and your role. There was a county executive, but your next role was a step up.

 

Scott Jackson  13:52  

Yeah. So while I was there, I had the opportunity to meet some great people. And they were ambitious. And they went on to one particular person, Bonnie Campanella, she was a really great leader. And she had moved on to essentially build a smaller Iin Hhouse Aagency over at Marriott vacations worldwide. And she asked me to come over and help build that team. So it was a really cool experience to go do that. And great to be part of the the framework building the framework for an Iin Hhouse Aagency having had the experience you'd had small agency Disney doing something there at Marriott, you were there for 13 years, something like that. So I started out on the creative side, I went from copywriter started doing account management then started to get a little bit involved in operations and, and those are kind of, to me the three pillars of running an in house team. And so, you know, I think what became a real selling point for me as I took on this opportunity at Universal is I did have experience in all of those pillars. And so if there is anybody out They're, you know, looking for this type of opportunity, I would just say, you know, really learn as much about the entirety of what it takes to run an agency as you can including, like, how do you bill? How do you? How do you time track? How do you do all of those things that, that sometimes you don't even want to think about? But that's the that's the stuff that becomes invisible that critical to success? Absolutely. Absolutely. I

 

Robert Berkeley  15:25  

Absolutely. Absolutely. I couldn't, couldn't agree with that more. So when you're done your 13 years at Marriott did universal come knocking? Or did you knock on their door, tell us about how that happened and how you assessed you know whether or not you'd be a good fit for that job. And vice versa.

 

Scott Jackson  15:39  

You know, I think it was a little serendipitous to be honest with you, I, I just happened to be on LinkedIn. And it was probably some magical algorithm that a connection that I had had when I worked at Disney, what is now the CMO Universal Orlando. And I see that she posts I mean, it felt almost like meant to be like I was literally on LinkedIn. And it felt like it popped up and said, Hey, I'm looking for someone to come run my Iin Hhouse Aagency. And I went, huh, so I, I hadn't talked to her and probably 15 years. And so I just sent her a quick note and said, Hey, would you mind if I sent you my information? And she's like, sure. And I think that was on a Tuesday. And I was interviewing with with the recruiter on Thursday. And I had a follow up on Saturday morning. And then on the next Tuesday, they had me in meeting a group of people. So it went really quick. Love it. Love them.

 

Robert Berkeley  16:38  

Love it. Love them. So again, were you building a new Iin Hhouse Aagency, though? Do you mean that what they didn't have an Iin Hhouse Aagency? They wanted to build one?

 

Scott Jackson  16:44  

No, well, this, this particular role was new. So they oh I see had moved a couple of people around. And so this was an opportunity for me to come in and lead the entire team, I think before they probably had a couple of peers that were running it some people got promotions. And so this was it was a new opportunity to have a new leader over over the group. And that was, that was pretty exciting.

 

Robert Berkeley  17:07  

That is that's just so exciting. So it's not quite Greenfield, but there's quite a lot to do to align it the way that it needed to be. So he went on a presumably went on a journey of discovery with the management and the people internally and how people interacted and who the who the customers and stakeholders were right early on.

 

Scott Jackson  17:25  

Absolutely. I just like, you know, you you just dive in, you start to understand who your personnel and your staffing is and what talents they have. And I was fortunate to inherit just a remarkable group of people that are passionate about their jobs, and they love it so much. I they inspire me every single day. And they are truly amazing in every way. And so we've gone through some process changes that we've tried to figure some things out, we've

 

Robert Berkeley  17:54  

liked to give us some befores and afters, then what was it before? And what did you change to? Yeah, so

 

Scott Jackson  17:59  

Yeah, so I'll just give you a very small example. But it paid huge dividends. We have a creative review process like most organisations, but one of the things that we that we noticed early on is we had a lot of people giving input before we ever got to that creative review. And so we had essentially multiple rounds of changes happening before we ever got to the decision makers. And that just wasted an inordinate amount of time you gathering those numbers. And we just felt like it was a lot we Luckily, they had a pretty robust workflow management system. So we could see that at times you have four or five, six rounds of changes before they ever even got presented. And some people

 

Robert Berkeley  18:43  

Some people would die to have as few as that they're doing well, already. Some people are talking 1415 2030. So that's great. It's a good start. I

 

Scott Jackson  18:49  

I don't think we were ever there, there might have been moments where we did some of that that I would I would just say we were on the lower side of that. But to me, it still felt like there was an opportunity for efficiencies. So we just worked through the process of of having less conversations, having the conversations solely be with the creative team, and powering them to make sure that what they were creating tied back to the creative brief. And then when we presented to the decision makers, it was the onus was now on us as the creative team to make sure we got it right. And then we would just have much more robust conversations in that creative review process. And we got to decisions quicker. And honestly, upper leadership got to see the ideas in a little bit more conceptual form before they were kind of designed. You know, sometimes it just happens people don't mean to but when you make as many changes as you do, sometimes it starts to feel like you know, you're designing creative by Committee, which is is never really a good solution.

 

Robert Berkeley  19:53  

Yeah. Tell us tell us a little more than about what you started with. And it's only been a couple of years really since you've been there but I think you started late 20 At what, what, what are the other major changes that you needed to make along the way? And then tell us where you're at right now?

 

Scott Jackson  20:06  

Yeah. So I think one of the things that that we identified and then went to leadership and they supported us was oftentimes we we would look at, Why is it taking the creative team so long to do something white from, from the time that they get something handed off to them to it being completed, and part of the

 

Robert Berkeley  20:26  

feeling again, because I often, people often feel things that aren't necessarily true, but you are able to back this up with real real numbers and say, yeah, it takes x months from start to finish. And it should only take it, you know, half x or whatever.

 

Scott Jackson  20:38  

Yeah, so we had to identify what some of the issues were like, some of the times, people were considering a job open, or a job might even be open in the system. And yet, we didn't have all of the input that we needed to actually start. And so there might be two or three weeks where nothing's being done, because we're still waiting for some input. Again, that didn't happen all the time. But But those are all things that add to Why is it taking so long? So one of the things we identified was, hey, how can we tighten up input further upstream, before it gets to the creative team so that there's less questions and more clarity, to make sure that we can create against that quicker. The other thing I think, that we really focused on was improving creative brief writing to make sure that that brief was an inspiration to the creative team, and not marketing speak. It wasn't like what are our marketing objectives, but it was an It was a document to inspire our creative team. And and so when we, when we made those two shifts, we really saw a because the, the input was tighter and more clear, we were able to start and be more efficient. But then we also had this creative, brief document that was really inspiring to our creative team and helped them really start to elevate the creative work that they were doing, because they felt a little bit more ownership of it. And they were excited to to push the limits a little bit more. Having that brief as a as a guideline to make sure that you know, they always had a Northstar to come back to

 

Robert Berkeley  22:12  

clearly very effective Tell me how you identified these areas to target and improve. I'm curious to know how that happened. How did they surface?

 

Scott Jackson 22:24  

Well, I think if I were giving any new leader of an organisation any advice, I would advise you take time at the very beginning to interview talk to as many people as you can. And as you do that, you're going to start to hear themes. I think the single most important thing you can do as a leader is listen and hear be curious and. Right? And and be curious and just keep asking why so that you understand what they're going through and make them the priority. And I think the other stuff falls into place.

 

Robert Berkeley  22:55  

Brian Absolutely. No, I think you're right. Reminds me of the the five why's you're familiar with the five why's Yeah, yepIndia, and it can be quite boring to keep doing on people. But you can get to some truth that way? Well,

 

Scott Jackson  23:10  

I do think you have to keep asking, right? You have to, you know, to understand that the impact that it has on them, because no matter how efficient and effective you can be culture is really the most important thing that you can provide to an organisation. In my opinion.

 

Robert Berkeley  23:24  

Yes. Well, that brings us to where we are now you currently have how many people did you say you had in total in a full service agency. So we're a little under 100. And so you've got 100 people is the other the theme parks are closed right now.

 

Scott Jackson 23:41  

The theme parks are not closed, they are running at a limited capacity, so we can't fill them to capacity. So that in and of itself is a really interesting Marketing Challenge, right?

 

Robert Berkeley  23:53  

Well, that's Yes. When's

 

Scott Jackson  23:54  

When's the last time you were told to go get as many people as you can, but not too many. It's just you're always programmed to like, Hey, we got these parks to fill, let's fill them. And now we just have to approach it a little differently. Because we only have a limited capacity of people. And you don't want to be, you know, turning people away. Cuz that's not good for their experience either.

 

Robert Berkeley  24:16  

Exactly. Exactly. So you also have the challenge of a distributed team now that I presume, and correct me if I'm wrong, we're working together in the past.

 

Scott Jackson  24:17  

So you also have the challenge of a distributed team now that I presume, and correct me if I'm wrong, we're working together in the past. For me, one of the things I love about this industry is the camaraderie, the creative energy that just being together is such a great part of what we do that if you would have told me a year ago that this would have been successful this way, I would have had my doubts. But again, I as I said, Our team is amazing. And they have they have worked so hard to figure it out. And really proud of the fact that that they've been able to do that and

 

Robert Berkeley  24:53  

quite nice the culture. Yeah, sorry to drop but you mentioned the culture has this watered down the culture.

 

Scott Jackson  24:58  

I think it's changed. But it's interesting as I so you know, a few months in, I started, you know, reaching out and trying to talk to people interview people understand what they're going through. And this, this theme started to pop up at one, one of the things that I was hearing was, you know, sometimes I feel like we're closer now than we were, when we were all in the building, we had a couple of different we were on two different floors. And people were finding it sometimes easier to just pick up the phone or get up, jump on a, on a web, you know, zoom or a WebEx or whatever, and have those conversations. And I think leaders were trying harder to make sure that their teams felt connected. You know, we've, we've been through a lot, you know, I, I would I'd be lying if I said that this year has been all peachy because it hasn't, you know, you have layoffs in a year, like this when COVID affects your business so dramatically. And so we've seen lots of people that we truly cared about not part of the team anymore. And that's devastating. As a leader that's devastating, but to to the team, they saw many of their peers and friends who they had worked with for a long period of time, now, not part of the team. So there's a bet a lot of challenges with COVID and the new working environment working from home, do you see this is sustainable way

 

Robert Berkeley  26:25  

do you see this is sustainable way to work,

 

Scott Jackson  26:26  

I think we've learned a lot. And I think that it will probably be part of the options that we will afford to people as we move forward. working from home is going to be the new norm for a lot of people. And for some people that's a that's a huge benefit. And they want it and for some people it's terrifying and they'd much rather feedback working, you know with people in the same room with them and and nearby and they love that. And so I think what what I want to figure out and as a as a team as a department, what we've got to figure out is how do we incorporate working from home along with some of the other things if and when they come back?

 

Robert Berkeley  27:07  

Oh work and no play makes jack very dull. So what do you do? When you're not running the Iin Hhouse Aagency? universal,

 

Scott Jackson  27:16  

you know, I, I, Iay, ay, ay, when you were in lockdown. You know, where I used to do more than I do now. Now we have some special health considerations for some of our family members. So we actually just spent a lot of time as a family, which has been wonderful. We we love to cook and to bake and and be together we we still played board games, we they let me try to play video games. I'm just terrible at them. So I just think that, you know, everybody has something that that really gives him a shot in the arm and for me. Fortunately, I feel really blessed that that's my family.

 

Robert Berkeley  27:56  

Yeah. Well, Scott, I feel very, very lucky to have interviewed you, Scott, I really enjoyed this you have you really do have the job of a lifetime. I do hope at some point, I can look out of your office window and look into the Harry Potter. I want to thank

 

 28:10  

wonderful

 

Robert Berkeley  28:12  

it would be and for your time on the Iinside Jjobs podcast and for telling us all about your story, Scott. Thank you. Thanks, Robert. Well, thank you so much to Scott at Universal Orlando for joining us on Iinside Jjobs. His story goes to show that you often need to work hard and pay your dues to get the job you dream of. But goodness me didn't he do that? Thank you so much to the wondrous IHAF have especially Emily Foster and my producer Amy MacNamara for helping set this all up also the Express KCS production team for handling the podcast editing. If you've not heard this podcast before then a very warm welcome to you. Please do take the chance to visit our website at Iinsideght Jjobs podcast.org. To see the ever growing back catalogue of episodes, I can't believe how many people I've interviewed now. Anyway, you can also sign up there to our intermittent Iinsideght jjobs newsletter. And please do also connect with me on LinkedIn. I do try to reply to every email and contact and message I get. Please keep the feedback coming. Thanks for joining us and I'll see you next time.