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Creative Agency Account Manager Podcast

Jenny Plant - Account Management Skills Ltd

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This podcast is for you if you are managing day to day client relationships in a creative agency. The aim of the podcast is to share insights and tips to help you add more value to the client's business, strengthen your relationships with your clients, develop your skills in account management and grow your agency's business.
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12/15/20 • 32 min

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Jenny:So I'm really excited to welcome to the show, Alison Coward today who is the founder of Bracket Creative and Bracket Creative help teams work better together. Now the first time I met Alison was when she was speaking at an Agencynomics event. And she's a very well known keynote speaker. And I was just struck by how she captivated the audience. Literally all of these agency leaders were scribbling notes, because she was just so, so articulate for one, but also, her speech contained so much fact based, you know, there was data, there was thought leadership that she was quoting books and statistics, and it was so impressive, and we've become friends. And I'm, for that reason, we're both in the same kind of industries. Alison works with lots of different types of industry and companies, but specifically, we have an overlap in terms of agencies, because she works with agencies. I would love for you, Alison, I know you've got over 15 years experience, I'd love you to just give us a flavour of your experience. Alison:Yeah, well, firstly, thank you for having me, I always love our chat. So I'm really looking forward to this. I think you've given a really good introduction to what I do already. And my company is Bracket, I specialise in team culture and collaboration, I have been working in the creative industries, literally most of my career. And specifically what I do at Bracket is around helping teams to become more creative, more productive together, essentially looking at that high performance, but how can they make the most of the talents of the team and, get them to work together so they can achieve amazing things together and enjoy while they're doing it, as well. So I do a lot of workshop facilitation, which are sessions where we bring teams together, helping them to have productive discussions, and, you know, figure out what they're going to do, how they're going to do it, strategy, sessions, kickoff, sessions, brainstorming, you know, new idea type brainstorming sessions as well. The other thing that I do around that is a lot of my work is influenced by workshop facilitation. And I'll probably get into that a little bit later. We also do kind of training and coaching and consultancy, because I think one of the things that's really important to me is that people within teams become owners of their culture and responsible for their culture. So I'm really kind of quite keen on helping people to develop the skills that I have in particularly in facilitation, and how they can have better conversations about how they work together. Jenny:Fantastic, what I love, you always pop up on LinkedIn. And it's not necessarily that you're posting, it's because your clients tend to post about the experience of working with you. And they're usually just glowing with great feedback. So I know that you do some great work in the world, and why specifically, like turning our attention specifically to agencies, because this is the audience that I'm talking to mainly, why do you think it's important for agencies to pay attention to their team culture? Alison:Yeah. So I mean, I come from the creative industries and create, like a creative background. So my history is in working with creative people, people that have you know, have got creativity as their currency. And there's one thing about like, being creative. But then there's another thing about the conditions that foster more creativity, and foster high performance. And that often comes down to things like the culture like, you know, how easy is it for people to put forward ideas? How supportive do they feel in their environment? How easy, how comfortable do they feel, taking risks, and making mistakes in front of their team members. And that's all cultural. So within an agency environment, focusing on the aspects around the team, which kind of create the environment for people to do their best work is super important. You know, you can be creative without some of those conditions. But if you do put those things in place, then you're going to get much more kind of productivity and creativity from a team. And as I say, they're going to enjoy doing it as well. Oh, and you know, enjoyment is a big part, enjoyment and engagement is a big part of doing great work. It's not kind of you know, if you do the work, and then you have fun, it's, it's completely interlinked. If you can enjoy what you do, then you produce better outputs. It's just as simple as that. Jenny:It's so true. I mean, you mentioned the creative output, which is so key to what we do as an industry and how great team collaboration and culture can foster that. What do you think the impact on the agency's bottom line is as a result of a strong team culture? Alison:Yeah, well, I mean, the thing that comes to mind when you when you talk about that is, and this is what I spoke about at the Agencynomics event, it was one of the things that I mentioned was the idea of psychologi...
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12/15/20 • 32 min

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12/15/20 • 32 min

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12/15/20 • 32 min

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09/01/20 • 55 min

Welcome to the Creative Agency Account Manager Podcast with me, Jenny Plant, from Account Management Skills Training. I'm on a mission to help those in agency client service keep and grow their existing relationships, so their agency business can thrive.Welcome to Episode three of the Creative Agency Account Manager podcast. I'm honoured to have a very, very well known salesman and sales trainer in the UK joining me today. My friend Marcus. I was lucky enough to be trained by Marcus when I was at Publicis, and he was actually the one that inspired me to set up Account Management Skills training to provide agency account managers with selling skills. Now, in this episode, Marcus shares some absolute gold for both agency account managers expanding the business but also for those in agency new business. I really enjoyed this discussion. Marcus does not hold back when it comes to how he feels. Agencies need to up their game when it comes to professional selling and no one's ever going to accuse Marcus of being a shrinking violet when it comes to speaking his mind. He's going to share with us the key to being successful in sales and the essential things you have to do when looking to expand the business. What not to do at the point of contract renewal, if you want to avoid a bid situation, what you should be tracking and measuring in your new business activities and the cure for a weak and empty pipeline where the area of really organic growth comes from, and why very few agencies recognise it. And what the transition looks like when your new business person hands over to the account management team. He's going to share loads more tips, loads, more advice and words of wisdom. He's even going to share with us the top 10 books he recommends every agency account manager should be reading. So I hope you enjoy this episode.Jenny: So today I'm delighted to speak to probably the most well known salesman and sales trainer in the UK, Marcus Cauchi, who I also had the pleasure of being coached by in 2010, which you probably don't do anymore, Marcus, do you?Marcus: I do. But there's a twist.Jenny: Okay, because you're far too important to do one on ones, I'm sure.Marcus: Love doing one on ones.Jenny: But you fundamentally changed my career. And you were the most inspiring person I've ever met in my career. So I'm delighted this morning. And he's also happens to be the author of the book Making Channel Sales Work, who I'm holding a picture of now, and also the host of two fantastic podcasts, the Inquisitor podcast, which if you are in sales, or in the business of sales, or you're a business leader, then I highly recommend you read because it's like a master class in selling, frankly. And also a newer podcast called Scale Ups and Hypergrowth, where he interviews leaders of disruptive tech companies about how they reach massive scale and hyper growth.Marcus: Without losing control, is the important bit in that. Most companies that scale fast so you know, hit the edge of a cliff and then fall off it. They don't go over. And the important thing about scale is that you can sustain it so that you end up creating a long lived business with customers for life.Jenny: Well, I've been following your journey and I listened to the podcast and you've had some really, really high level people on there. It's been really impressive. How do you manage that?Marcus: Well, just by asking, they’re incredibly generous. But I've learned so much from those podcasts, you could not even begin to imagine. Jenny: I honestly every time you ask a question, I think I was nervous about asking you on this podcast because I thought I'm not going to be able to reach that level of questioning. But listen, tell me, give us a bit of a short intro anything that I missed out on just for the audience. Marcus: I've been selling for 35 years, been with a company called Sandler for the last 17 years, and just about to embark on a new journey. So I've got some really exciting plans ahead. And the podcasts are really an opportunity for me to learn from the best in the world. And that's working out really nicely. And got married, three kids, worked in probably about 450 - 500 different segments of the market. And that range has been really useful, because what I've discovered is that in a specialist field, people who come with a broad range of experience and they have exercise creativity tend to be far more successful. So what I've found is that with minimal knowledge about what the product is, but an understanding of their customer, the kind of problems they have, the kind of better future they're looking for, I'm able to help people. So my typical client will grow three, four or 500% in a year, if they apply what I teach. And what I've seen is people who were on their last leg in ...
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09/01/20 • 55 min

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What your agency clients really want, with Kate Whittaker

Creative Agency Account Manager Podcast

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08/12/20 • 36 min

Welcome to the Creative Agency Account Manager Podcast with me, Jenny Plant, from Account Management Skills Training.
I'm on a mission to help those in agency client service keep and growing the existing client relationships, so their agency business can thrive.
Welcome to episode one of my first ever podcast. I'm thrilled to have as my first guest a client, and it's Kate Whittaker and she works at DUAL International, and she's head of corporate communications. And Kate is going to share with us what she looks for when selecting an agency - what to avoid when trying to prospect by cold calling clients, why you should be asking your clients for more referrals and then how to get access to even more of your clients once you're embedded in a client organisation. Also, she's going to share some top tips for building really strong client relationships. So I really enjoyed this chat. I hope you get some value. The sound isn't great in places, but I'm working on this. I'm also working on my interview techniques so hopefully with every episode it's going to get better. So now let's go to the interview.
So today I'm really, really excited about Kate Whittaker joining me. Kate is head of corporate communications at DUAL, and she has three decades of experience working in marketing communications and loads of experience managing agency relationships. And I think it's really exciting to get the perspective from a client, really, about the role of an agency account manager. So I'm just going to ask Kate to introduce herself. Kate, welcome to the show,
Kate: Thank you very much, Jenny. I'm really delighted to be here with you although, of course, we're not actually together. So, I'm head of corporate communications for DUAL Group and we're a global insurance group in 16 countries. But we're just about 700 people or so, so it's very personal and friendly. My role is a mix of communications and marketing, which makes it very varied and interesting. So as, Jenny said, I've been working in marketing for around 30 years in a mix of UK and international roles. These have mainly being client side, so I've worked with agencies throughout that time. And one of the reasons I'm really pleased you've asked me here today, Jenny, is I just don't think enough can be done to bring clients and agencies together, working in partnership, and anything I could do to help that process I am delighted to contribute. Until this role at DUAL, I was a branding marketing consultant for around 15 years, and very often this involved reviewing agency rosters and also running agency selection process, so I hope I've lots to say today.
Jenny: Honestly, Kate, I know that you have because, what I failed to mention that the beginning, was that Kate and I met each other about a year ago at an Agencynomics event and I was invited to facilitate a discussion panel, and Kate was one of the guests. We had about four or five agency people and Kate was the token client, and that discussion was so rich and so brilliant and there were agency owners in the audience furiously taking notes and going away with lots of new ideas. So I know that this is going to be a great discussion. And, by the way, if anyone hasn't joined Agencynomics and they're in charge of an agency, I'm going to put an invitation link in the show notes. If you are an agency owner and you have three employees minimum, then it's one of the largest free agency owner communities that there is, and it's a very thriving community. So, Kate, obviously you've got a huge amount of experience as you say, 15 years as a brand marketing consultant as well as the role that you're in currently. So let's start from the beginning. How did you select your agencies, and in that selection process I also am interested to know if you were approached by agencies and whether you still are. So what does that initial process looked like?
Kate: So, obviously it varies from company to company. But to my mind, the common theme for me is I'm looking for a partner to work with. So the selection process is about being clear and transparent about what you need as a client, and what you're expecting the agency to bring to that relationship. I remember in my first few roles, back in the day, the creative directors' agencies were treated like royalty, and woebetide any client who questioned their thinking. Thankfully, those times behind us now, and it is really or should be about partnership. I think that the client agency meeting should be a single team coming together with common goals, but you're bringing different areas of expertise because otherwise why would you be working with them? So you know, if you're not looking forward to the meetings you have with your agency or with your client, I think there's something that needs fixing.
So back to agency selection, typically it had a creative brief, and I'm a massive bel...
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08/12/20 • 36 min

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10/06/20 • 48 min

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Jenny: Welcome to the Creative Agency Account Manager Podcast with me, Jenny Plant, from Account Management Skills Training. I'm on a mission to help those in agency client service keep and grow the existing relationships, so their agency business can thrive.

Welcome to Episode six and this episode I'm thrilled to have two guests, Carey Evans and Simon Rhind-Tutt from Relationship Audits. Now, I first met these guys in 2008 when I invited them into Publicis to audit one of the relationships that we had. It was probably one of the biggest at the time and what they unravelled for us and what they revealed on the golden nuggets they shared on having audited the relationship really helped us keep hold of that client relationship for another two years. And each year that client was worth on average about £700,000. So they added for us £1.4 million. So the value that they gave to my agency was astounding. Now, when I left Publicis in 2010 I actually went to work with them for a little while as a freelancer. So I was so convinced by what they did with our relationship that I started working for them for a little while and they really are phenomenal. They have a huge amount of benchmark data across several industries, and they have a question set which is really established. So they have some predictability around how much information that they can glean about your clients, that your clients might not be sharing with you. And in fact, that's what I found was the beauty of choosing an external third party to come and audit a relationship, because I actually felt a little bit strange about allowing a third party to come and talk to my clients. I felt a little bit exposed, but actually it was so worth it. The exercise really, really helped us. So the reason I've invited them this morning because I know that they have a huge amount of experience and are going to share so many golden nuggets with you. They're going to share things like tips for being seen as a client's trusted advisor, how you could build rapport with your client, the surprising average amount of time a client spends on liaising with all of their agencies - I think you're going to find this quite surprising - and how to ensure for you that you make the time they spend with you count. What 63% of clients say agencies never do but really, really should, what puts clients off agencies, they're gonna share some examples and why you need to make your client not only feel valued but special. That is just the tip of the iceberg. They share so many golden nuggets. So many tips for you. Grab a pen, take some notes and I hope you come away with some value. Enjoy.
So thank you so much again Carey and Simon for joining me today. Do you mind spending a couple of minutes just talking about yourselves, your experience and also what Relationship Audits does?
Simon: My name's Simon Rhind-Tutt. I founded the company along with Carey probably about 20 years ago. My background is in account management work with three very large international advertising agencies, then I went into the world of design and branding and was new business director at what was then the largest independent design agency in the world, and then started my own agency, which I sold after three or four years before Carey and I set up Relationship Audits.
Carey: Well, as you see, I'm Carey Evans and, like Simon, I’ve got a background in marketing services. My background is entirely in account management in large international ad agencies across lots of different kinds of business there and spent quite a lot of time in my last agency and the one before that, involved in building business from existing clients. So, Simon and I both share a passion for great account management and really preach to anybody who'll listen about what good account managers can do for themselves, for their clients and for their agency. So hopefully we'll be able to drop a few nuggets of what experience has shown us works and maybe what doesn’t work.
Jenny: I'm absolutely convinced that you will. I mean, you are my go-to people for you know what's new into the agency world what clients are saying right now. And so I know that this is going to be a really valuable discussion. Obviously, we met when I asked you to come in and audit one of our biggest client accounts. And a bit like Victor Khyam, I was so impressed with what you did I ended up where I left Publicis coming to work for you for a little while because I was just so blown away by the value that you brought and the difference that you made. So do you mind just before we get into a little bit more about account management and agencies in general just telling us a little bit about the different ways that you work specifically with creative agencies?
Simon: Carey, you want to lea...
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10/06/20 • 48 min

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10/23/20 • 42 min

Jenny: Louisa, I'm delighted to have you on the show on the show today, I've been wanting to have a chat with you for ages. And I know what you're going to share is going to be so valuable to people in working agencies. So I'm just going to give you a short introduction. But obviously, we know each other through the healthcare communications industry, you're probably one of the most well known people for having built and sold your own agency Woolley Pau. So I know that you've got a huge amount of experience and having run the agency for 19 years. But you then pivoted to start another business in 2013, which is called Otherboard. And one of the biggest reasons for the listeners that I invited you on the show is because your journey and story is just so powerful. And it's sort of led you to do what you do now. So without revealing too much, I'd love if you could spend a couple of minutes just introducing yourself.
Louisa: Oh, thanks, Jenny. It's lovely to be here. Yes, I mean, you've told my story, really, I founded, built and sold the agency. What people probably don't know is that during that time, I also had four boys, and that it very nearly killed me. And I thought, you know, I learned some, I learnt a lot of lessons the hard way, by just making the mistakes and doing it. And, and now, the reason for setting up Otherboard was that I really felt that I didn't want to do it again, which a lot of people do, they kind of go and do it again, I wanted to help other agency leaders, grow their businesses have it all, and not feel guilty and not nearly killed them. So have it all and have a healthy business and a healthy life. And I felt that I could have more impact by working with lots of agencies rather than just doing it again for myself.
Jenny: So if you take us back to when you were growing your agency, because it probably was one of the most successful agencies, there wasn't anyone in the healthcare industry that didn't know Woolley Pau, the name, you're always winning awards. You were always known as a really creative agency. And so take us back to that time. And when, you know, what would, what's your day typically like, how was your rhythm, you know, running with four boys which is absolutely incredible.
Louisa: Well, it was really crazy. I remember my third child, I went to a pitch two weeks after I had quite a sort of traumatic birth with him. I mean, I just did crazy things. I didn't have any maternity leave. So looking back, it does all look a bit crazy. I mean, I had loads of support at home. And but, you know, about 10 years into the agency life we were doing quite well. I mean, it was slow. People always remember sort of success, but it was very slow. But about 10 years in, we were doing quite well. We had a nice offices in Covent Garden. The children were really young. But you know, but things were kind of going well, we had started winning awards, and we were growing. And then we had, and I remember, I mean I was it was a stressful time. I remember going to an awards dinner, and I was sitting next to this client and he said to me, oh, tell me Louisa, what are your hobbies? I just laughed in his face. There wasn’t really time for anything else. The business and home like that just took up every part of my life. There was no, there wasn't time for anything else. And then we had really terrible year, which most people probably don't know about. We lost nine pitches in a row. We lost two of our biggest clients. We didn't renew their contracts. My husband had a massive work life crisis and decided that he wanted to give up his big job. And, and Dean, my business partner also had sort of family bereavements and things going on for him. So we were really sort of sorely tested at that time. And we just carried on, I think we kind of sat down and I used to tell this story was, how did I come back from that? And, you know, we sat down and we decided and we made a plan. And then three years later, we sold the business. But what I didn't used to tell people was that what the cost of that was, so the stress involved in that. But at the time I didn't really do self reflection. I just did my mantra ,because everyone has a mantra now my mantra was pull your socks up. We nearly wrote a book about it, a sort of self help book called Pull Your Socks Up. But I now sort of laugh about it. It's awful, really. But I had this sense that I could manage on my own, because that's what I've always done. I've set up on my own, you know, obviously with a partner, and with support, but I think my parents say that my first phrase was ‘self do it’. And that's how I was, I just thought I could do everything. And we did sell the business, and it was all very successful. And then a year after we sold the business, I got very ill and nearly died. And I had ignored the warning signs. And and I believe that that illness, the cause of that was probably ...
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10/23/20 • 42 min

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Welcome to episode nine. I'm continuing the theme today of talking directly to clients to understand their perspective on working with creative agencies, and particularly how agency account managers can help enhance relationships. So today's guests are Iris Gatzweiler and Jess Bowler, both of whom work for a global pharmaceutical company in the procurement team, both of whom have a huge amount of experience dealing with agency relationships. So in this episode, we discuss what procurement look for in long term agency suppliers, where procurement see value in agency account management, and how to ensure you keep the relationship on track, advice for how to approach procurement for the first time if you have no relationship currently, why involving procurement in how you expand your relationship within the company makes total sense and how procurement make an agency selection and how you can stand out from the crowd. There are so many golden nuggets in this episode, I really hope you're going to come away with some value areas. Iris and Jess are very generous with their time and their insight and sharing some examples of both good practice and also some things to avoid. So grab a pen and enjoy this episode, I’ll go straight over now. Jenny: So I'm delighted to welcome Iris and Jess. Iris and Jess both hold senior procurement roles for a global pharmaceutical company. And the reason I've invited them on today is that I believe that agency account managers need to have a better understanding of how their clients work. And also to understand the role of procurement. Because I think sometimes procurement is treated a bit revered, you know, we can't possibly approach them or talk to them, we don't quite know how to manage that relationship. So the reason I've invited Jess and Iris on is to really share some insight into their everyday role. And also some ideas maybe for how agencies can optimise the relationship with procurement, how to approach them, how to deal with them, how to manage the relationship. So I want to hand over to my guests so that they can spend a couple of minutes just talking a bit about their background, and also their experience of working with agencies. So Iris, can I start with you? Iris: Sure. Thank you, Jenny. So yeah, Iris is my name. I have nearly 20 years of experience in procurement, mostly in the pharmaceutical industry a little bit in FMCG, when I started my career. And I've had various types of roles in the local market and cluster markets, or in regional roles, and also in different parts of the world. And currently, I'm based in Asia. I've managed personally, marketing, procurement and agencies since the beginning of my career really. And since the last five to six years, it's more about managing a team. So it's my team being operationally involved with the agencies, managing the relationships with the agencies on a day to day level. Nevertheless, I'm still involved in some of the strategic aspects like QBR meetings, evaluation meetings, and some of the strategic reviews that we do. Jenny: Fantastic. Thanks, Sarah. That's brilliant. Jess? JessicaL Sure, hi, Jessica here. And I have been working in healthcare for over 20 years, and in pharmaceuticals for the majority of that, and in terms of marketing agencies and the operations with that about the last 12 to 13 years. Before that I managed other categories within medical and marketing, for procurement as well. And for me, it's nuts to bolts marketing agencies, from bringing them in to evaluating them to having the tough conversations, and I really enjoy the partnership. Jenny: Amazing. I mean, I can see that you're both hugely experienced. So I'm quite excited about diving into my questions. Now I think the other thing to mention is Iris and I met many years ago when she was working for another pharma company. And we kind of hit it off, didn't we Iris and it's testament to the fact that you're here now that we've continued that relationship so it was successful. So Jess, first for you a quick question. What for you is a good solid, long term agency partnership? Jess: Sure, that's a great question, Jenny. For me, the most important thing is trust, I think it's really, really important to sort of build that foundation of relationship. And without trust, you really can't build that foundation. For me in the job I currently hold long term relationships are key, we don't want to be looking for new agencies all the time. So again, it's just building that foundation. And you know, problems will come up, right. So it's about being proactive, catching them early, working together in that partnership, to come to resolution, whatever that might be and remembering that it's business and not personal. So especially when you're asking an agency maybe to rearrange their people. It's not easy, these conversations are tough. But at the end of the day, they only make the partnership stronger. You have to feel like you're on the...
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11/13/20 • 47 min

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10/14/20 • 46 min

Jenny: Welcome to the Creative Agency Account Manager Podcast with me, Jenny Plant, from Account Management Skills Training. I'm on a mission to help those in agency client service keep and grow the existing relationships, so their agency business can thrive.

Welcome to Episode Seven. I have a real treat for you today, particularly if you're an agency owner. I've managed to grab an hour in Spencer Gallagher’s diary and Spencer is in the middle of rewriting his book Agencynomics, which he wrote with his partner, Peter Hall and in this chat, we discuss what makes a successful agency leader now and what successful agency leaders are doing differently to accelerate their growth. What he’d do differently today if he was starting out his agency, what trends he's seeing in the agency landscape and why you need to keep learning to keep yourself relevant. He also shares loads of fantastic, really useful tips, particularly if you're an agency owner or leader and also if you're managing tribe relationships. So sit back, relax and I will introduce Spencer in more detail.
Spencer - for those in the agency world, you need no introduction whatsoever. But for those in the audience who may not have heard of you or met you, you run one of the leading well, the leading, UK agency growth consultancy, Cactus. You're also co founder of Cactus Academy, which is online training for agency leaders. You're also the author of the bestselling book Agencynomics, which is a phenomenal book for anyone growing an agency. And you also run the biggest global community for agency owners of the same name, Agencynomics. And you're also the host of the vodcast agency Phonics. So I'm thrilled because I know you advise companies, you're a non exec, you do a lot of speaking gigs so to get some time with you, I know you usually sit on this side of the fence, is an absolute delight for me. I'm absolutely thrilled. Just a short intro before I pass over to you to ask you to talk a bit about your history. We obviously met a couple of years ago and what struck me about you was first of all your energy, which is phenomenal. I just don't know how you get everything done, but also how you essentially adopted me into the Cactus and Agencynomics family, which I will be forever grateful for. And you've also gone on to trust me with many of your clients. So I just feel so at home in the community. I think you obviously attract a really decent, lovely type of person and you've created this really supportive community which is really active, really involved. And you just seemed so generous with everybody that you meet. So I would love you to share your journey with us because I obviously haven't mentioned the fact that you built a 20 billion turnover agency and sold it. So I would love you to share your journey with us.
Spencer: Thank you. That was a wonderful introduction. Thank you. When I hear it back, sometimes I'm also thinking, Wow, how do I find time to do all those things myself? Well I'm so busy, I had a complaint this week from someone, who said your PA, Abbie, who you know very well, has said it's currently 58 days to get a meeting with you.
Jenny: I'm not surprised.
Spencer: And I was trying to make the point that I actually look after about £100 million worth of agencies with 1000 staff and I think people don't always realise what I do in my day job. Agencynomics is obviously something that I do as a bit of a charity, sort of social enterprise ‘pay it forward’ my spare time. But yes, I mean a brief history of time. You know, I'm one of those kind of classic entrepreneur types, I think. I left school at 16. No qualifications Left home at 16. Didn't have the best start in life. You know, worked in clothes shops, selling clothes and so life wasn't that good for me in the beginning. It wasn't like, you know, pure poverty. But put it this way, you know, I brought myself up and your life wasn't simple and I had to be quite independent from a young age and I don't know, like I just worked really hard at everything I did, and I got some lucky breaks and I ended up at the age of about 27 getting made redundant. I went through three jobs in a year, got made redundant twice and decided that in my spare time I'd been playing on this thing called the Internet since about 93. So to give you an idea, Tim Berners Lee came up with the Internet html and in 1991 so 2 years later I'm taught myself to write websites and after being made redundant from a purple shed in my mum's back garden, I started to build websites. And I started to build at the time what I thought was a web development company. And then about three years later, somebody walked into the business and said I really love your agency and I was like, what's an agency and then from that moment onwards, the business really, really grew quickly. So that's kind of briefly how it started, obviously aside building websites when it was a joke to build websites. So if you...
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10/14/20 • 46 min

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12/01/20 • 53 min

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Jenny: So today I'm delighted to have Bill Wallsgrove, who is a bit of a guru I'd say in the branding world. He has over 30 years experience helping companies with branding. And now he helps agencies established their brands. And that's particularly one of the reasons I wanted to invite him along today was to talk a little bit more about this. Bill has such an impressive background that I struggled to pick out some key points in his career to kind of highlight, but there are a couple of things. One, you were Creative Director for Coley Porter Bell and also Future Bands. Obviously, run your own branding consultancy for many, many years. And you have a lot of experience both in paint and branding beers. And some of the names are Heineken, Budweiser, Pils. You've also worked on Benetton, B&Q, and I'm sure hundreds of others. You also run workshops for agencies to establish their brand. And you're also a university lecturer, I don't know where you find the time to do that. Is if that wasn't enough, you also advise agencies. So you sit on the board of a couple of agencies, one of which is Studio Blup as non-exec. So Bill, welcome to the show. I'm really delighted to have someone with such experience here. So thank you for joining me.
Bill: Thank you. That's just a great introduction. And I feel like it's like if I was on stage, I'd say, Hello, London town!
Jenny: You can still say that. But I will always say, would you mind spending a couple of minutes first of all, just kind of filling in the gaps to your background and experience?
Bill: Yeah, well, it's interesting what you say, I'm not a university lecturer. I'm a visiting lecturer at several art colleges, universities, and one of the lectures I give is all about personal branding. And personal branding is really to help some third year students think about how they brand themselves to go out to the world, how they launch themselves, how they celebrate their differences and their unique qualities. And one of the slides I put up is saying, ‘where I never knew that I'd be where I am now 30 years ago’, because you know, here am I now a brand consultant, specialising in digital strategy for agencies. And talking about personal branding, talking about colour theory. These are not things I started out doing. When I kind of left school, I went to art college, to be a graphic designer. And that was a pretty difficult choice because I also was offered a place to do history, which is my other passion, at University. Well, I told my father, I said, Look, I'm not going to take the history place. I'm gonna go to art school he said, and I've used this adage before, he said, you know, go to art school, you'll never get a career out of that. Also it's, it's it's sex, drugs and rock and roll. I said, Dad, you just sold it to me.
Brilliant account management. So yeah, I went to art school and thought I wanted to go into advertising. In fact, I did, I spent, after I left art school, I went to the creative department at Ogilvy and Mather.
And I was there for about three or four months, I really didn't like advertising. I didn't like being in a creative department that had no contact with the clients. And I was talking to friends about it. And they said, Well, you ought to go work, maybe for more branding agency. And you know, you're not stuck in advertising. I then went to work for a very small agency before I joined Coley Porter Bell and really enjoyed it because with a small agency, you were both creating, and also presenting your work to clients. And I began to realise my passion was not just about the creative work itself, but also being passionate about explaining why the creative solutions, right from clients, I began to enjoy talking about why creativity, creativity mattered. And I went on to be creative director at Coley Porter Bell. And I was stopped one day by my managing director who said, and she was a very bright woman, she said, you know, Bill, I think you're wasted in the studio. And I thought I'd been told off, you know, you know, you're no good. And she actually didn't mean that as well. She said, you're much more valuable to us selling design to our clients, than you are actually being stuck on the drawing board as it was then and then the computer. And I began to think about so I went back and told my wife this and she said, Oh yeah, she's right. You know, you're passionate about your subjects and obviously, you know, she’d seen when I've been out with friends at dinner parties and describing the latest projects, I'm working on how passionate I was about. And so I kind of moved from being a creative to by default, being a sort of client manager, if you like and managing fairly large accounts at the time, which included things like Dulux Paint, Holsten Pils, which is where the beer and paint thing started. And several other brands like Nestle and Unilever and retail brands like Tesco and began to becom...
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12/01/20 • 53 min

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08/24/20 • 46 min

Welcome to the Creative Agency Account Manager Podcast with me, Jenny Plant from Account Management Skills Training. I'm on a mission to help those in agency client service keep andgrow their existing relationships. So their agency business can thrive

Welcome to Episode two of the Creative Agency Account Manager podcast. Today I'm thrilled to speak to Tina Fegent. Tina is a marketing procurement consultant with 28 years experience, and the great thing about Tina is she's worked for agencies but also for clients, and she's going to tell you a bit about that.
There are loads of golden nuggets for you in this episode, and I really hope you enjoy it. She's going to cover what she sees has changed in terms of procuring services with remote pitching, and some of the trends she's seeing. We're recording this in August 2020. She going to share her views on the latest IPA report about the future of account management. She's going to talk to us about why you need to be developing relationships with procurement and some brilliant insider tips on what to do during a pitch.
And there were loads more nuggets of wisdom that she shares with us. So grab a pen and take some notes, because I think it's really valuable stuff. A side note, there's a bit of background noise in this episode, which I hope is not too distracting. We happened to record it on one of the hottest days of the year in August 2020 and we have Windows open and fans on, so I hope it doesn't distract from the core of this episode, and you come away with some value.
Jenny: All right, well, I am thrilled to have as my second guest Tina Fegent, who is a marketing procurement consultant with over 25 years experience and I first met Tina probably a couple of years ago. We had a few coffees together didn't we, but the moment that I remember the most was when we were walking into the IPA conference business conference together like being with a rock star. Everyone was like Tina, Tina, you're so popular.
So she knows everyone in the industry, and a couple of things that stand out for me before I asked her to introduce herself is she has worked both agency and clients site, so she's got really good understanding of you know how things work on both sides of the fence, which I think is really insightful for us. The second point is, she's very active in the marketing procurement community, and she's sort of got leadership quality. She's always posting articles, she writes for Campaign magazine, so she really shares her voice and lends her voice. So she's very inspiring. I've already listened to a couple of podcasts with her before. Super impressive and, yeah, I'm really excited about getting her views on things and just diving into the interview. So, Tina, welcome.
Tina: Thank you, Jenny.
Jenny: That's all right. Perhaps you could spend a couple of minutes just introducing yourself - anything that I've missed.
Tina: I am honoured to be the second guest on your podcast. Thank you for the kind intro. So yes, I've got over 25 years on this but that makes me sound a bit old if I'm getting toward 30 years. So firstly in marketing procurement, when I worked for Cellnet, I don't if your listeners will know but that is now Telefonica. I got there and, again, for the older generation, the user guides for mobile phones used to be really big and massive. I got there and the advertising agency was buying them. I was, like, from a procurement point of view, you know, can I look at going direct, and it was a 50% saving, so that's why I go into market procurement. And at that time, hardly anybody else was looking at marketing procurement globally. I think the guys at Guinness were, and Natwest were, so yes, I have always been in procurement. I worked for SmithKlineBeecham, Ribena vending machines and Lucozade. Then I went to Orange. I had a fantastic time there, I still have my Orange number and I can't bear to move away from the Orange/EE network. Then I went to with two advertising agencies as a commercial director, so quite an interesting, quite a shock to then work agency-side. I've never worked so hard in my life, but great insight from the point of view as commercial director and I started my own consultancy 14 years ago actually. Actually, to begin with, for agencies but to get involved with clients that could be with CMOs, pitches, could be reviewing the whole agency base, mentoring for procurement people and actually I do a bit of agency work as well, and obviously you and I have worked recently on a client. So looking at tenders, doing trade and stuff like that. I chair our trade body CIPS and I chair the marketing group there. So, yes, I've been doing it for 25 years now.
Jenny: It is so impressive. And I think what we forgot to mention, which I was hoping you would, but you were voted one of the most powerful people in advertising. Yo...
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08/24/20 • 46 min

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Creative Agency Account Manager Podcast currently has 111 episodes available.

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The podcast is about Marketing, Management, Creative, Podcasts and Business.

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The episode title 'How to create a high performing agency team culture, with Alison Coward' is the most popular.

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The average episode length on Creative Agency Account Manager Podcast is 44 minutes.

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Episodes of Creative Agency Account Manager Podcast are typically released every 8 days, 16 hours.

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The first episode of Creative Agency Account Manager Podcast was released on Aug 12, 2020.

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