Jeffrey Mailey: Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, be sure to subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple podcasts, or really anywhere you get your podcasts. maybe you can share it with someone you know that is either interested in business, interested in founder stories, kind of hearing the behind the scenes of why people do the things that they do. And just in good conversation. So be sure to subscribe ⁓ and follow us Hey everyone, welcome to fast forward the podcast about real conversations, not highlight reels. We explore the people behind the work, how they think, what drives them and how they grow. Today I'm joined by Kelly Kelly, founder and CEO of brand method creative agency, a 20 year marketing leader, podcast host, and someone who has spent the last 15 years building an agency that refuses to choose between creativity and results. She's worked with everyone from law firms. to startups and she has one of the sharpest takes I've heard on why most businesses aren't actually ready for AI, even though they think they are. Kelly, how are you?
BrndMethod Creative Agency: Good, how are you?
Jeffrey Mailey: Good, good to have you on and excited to learn more about you and your story and kind of how you found Brand Method Creative Agency. It's around, been around a while.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: very excited to be here. Yeah, it's been around a while. There's been a couple of iterations, ⁓ the business. But I think we've gotten our groove with where the industry is ⁓ and our expertise lies. And like said, just merging creativity and results without sacrificing either.
Jeffrey Mailey: Yeah. So how do you carve that ideology, that methodology into your business and your creative processes? How do you differentiate yourself in that creative way?
BrndMethod Creative Agency: Absolutely. So one of the first things that we do with every client engagement is that we need to understand the business. What are the actual goals, where are sales, and how is marketing currently supporting that if this is someone that, you know, in a situation we're being brought into. We need to understand that because I think what's happening more often is that people are bringing in an agency, the agency is saying okay we're working with an accounting firm, let's research what's you know going on with that and then they're not factoring in what's going on with your accounting firm client. What are the business goals for your client? And then you work backwards, right? So we're figuring out what the goals are. We're keeping that as the North Star. And then we're saying, okay, now we're down to the sales team. What objections are you guys coming up against? That's gonna drive our creative process. We could go far and wide with creativity around accounting, but if it's not linked back to what actually the closer is coming up against, then this doesn't make sense, right?
Jeffrey Mailey: Mmm.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: So that's really the root of our methodology we've had really great results ⁓ way.
Jeffrey Mailey: So ⁓ a pretty practical approach in what is it? What is that? Like, how does that mean like creative to you? Like, because it seems very practical. There are some the word creative gets thrown around and it's not used the right way. you know, there's so many ways to be creative. So how do you see that ⁓ in your within your business?
BrndMethod Creative Agency: Yes. Yeah, so one of the things could be looking at channels that our clients want to use and expectations and saying, Okay, we want to be on social, obviously. Okay, if we're B2B, which is most of our clients, we want to be on LinkedIn, we might say, hey, based on our research, there is, I think, an area where we could carve out on TikTok. I mean, they're usually going to lose it. They're going to be like, ⁓ we're not on TikTok, that's too, that's for the young people. And it's like, but hang on. If we're delivering... your brand in the B2B space as something that is traditionally super conservative. We don't have to go all the way and make it like not your brand. We can create content that is entertaining while still appropriate for your brand. And that's a dance because you're going to get a lot of pushback, especially when you're talking about professional services or very conservative B2B company.
Jeffrey Mailey: Yeah.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: And it's like, OK, well, the alternative is that we basically chop up a trifold brochure and like spam LinkedIn. Nobody's stopping for that. We do still have to keep in mind. Right. Like, we do still have to keep in mind we have to stop the scroll before we can do anything, right? That's pretty standard information because we're all doing this. Conservative people, creative people, don't matter what kind of people.
Jeffrey Mailey: That's very true. Whether we want to be or not, we're doing it.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: Right, we are flying through that feed. So we have to stop our client and say, hey, first piece we have to do is get them to stop. That's where the creative and the entertainment comes in. It doesn't mean that we disregard your brand or do anything inappropriate, but we can find a way to make this entertaining in 60 seconds.
Jeffrey Mailey: You know what
BrndMethod Creative Agency: find the challenge exciting. always kind of had a brain like that. I've always understood. I love all the creative fun stuff, but we still have to bring this back to the goal. They have to be in sync. So not a stretch for me, but sometimes people, depending on the leadership, they think, creative agency. don't do creative. We do.
Jeffrey Mailey: Mm-hmm. Thank I
BrndMethod Creative Agency: And I'm like, but hey, we could do this and it can be good and entertaining and still appropriate.
Jeffrey Mailey: Yeah, think they're concerned about the cringe element, Of of reels, of like people trying to get people's attention so badly they'll do anything, right? But you do it in a classy, appropriate Like you're saying, you don't have to be, you know, as ridiculous as possible get people's attention. ⁓
BrndMethod Creative Agency: That's a good point. We don't have to get ridiculous. We don't have to do stunts. We don't have to dance. We don't have to lip sync. We don't have to dub. We don't have to, you know, do things. Like we don't have to do that. There are other ways that, you know, if you have an accounting firm or a law firm or, you know, a SaaS product, like we can still be creative in a way that's appropriate. But the creativity is what's going to get the attention. Without it, you are in the void.
Jeffrey Mailey: Yeah, we're flooded with content these days. There's no question about it. I mean, everywhere. And I actually heard something last night that said, ⁓ ⁓ viewership is going down and content is going up. like, there's actually not like a, it's a, you got to be even better now basically ⁓ you ever had to be ⁓ there's so much out.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: Yeah. There is so much then there is an element of having to feed the beast. And this is the other part that I tell ⁓ conservative B2B clients when they wanna post once a month, let's not bother. If we're not gonna keep a consistent content schedule, this isn't gonna work ⁓ because the algorithm at play.
Jeffrey Mailey: Yeah.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: and you have to feed it a little bit. It doesn't mean again you completely away from like your core values but you need a certain amount of content first of all to test. If you haven't done this before you don't know
Jeffrey Mailey: Hmm
BrndMethod Creative Agency: You got to put in you got to put in some some work to even have the algorithm say you exist Otherwise, it's not showing to anybody And then you start to look at your numbers and you say okay This cadence seems to work to get us visibility. We're not even talking about conversions yet. Okay, we're being seen now Let's look at from what's being seen. What are people engaging with and then that's the whole process But you've got to start with getting the attention first. That's it
Jeffrey Mailey: Yeah. Mm-hmm. And that's the consistency part. That's, hard to start, right? Like this past those initial hurdles of like just doing it, just do it. Don't worry about it. ⁓
BrndMethod Creative Agency: It's hard to start. hard to start and I think it's hard for some ⁓ leadership really wrap their brain around how much is needed to start. They're kind of like, well, I did, ⁓ I made video for you last month. It's like, I need 10 videos, sir. That one little video is like, ⁓ we can that up, but we need a batch.
Jeffrey Mailey: Yes. Embrace me. And that takes right approach. requires someone with your skill set to come in and say, this is how you do it. Trust me.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: This is how you do it. Trust us and we have a process. As creative as we like to be, nothing is ad hoc and nothing is willy-nilly. We don't operate, you you text us a video, it's a process. There are systems we have in place and workflows so that neither side is becoming overwhelmed with random bits of a text message here. No, no, no, no, no.
Jeffrey Mailey: Isn't
BrndMethod Creative Agency: There is a brief, there is a schedule, there is review, there are like it's all very, you know, it's not off the cuff all the time. There are certain situations where we might say, if you're speaking at South by Southwest, can someone there record and then you shoot it to us and then we want to get it out into, that's different. Our client, SIGN and Insights Group, they're huge in HR research and advisory. They do HR tech every year, which is
Jeffrey Mailey: Of course.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: you know, top tier for them. And so we do operate on a much more like they come off the stage and they're shooting us, know, content and we're turning it around. But that is a once a year thing. Everything else has a process so that ⁓ one's getting burnt out. Everything is, you know, finding its place.
Jeffrey Mailey: Yeah. Yeah, that's the live event aspect of it, right? Sometimes you need to be available and showing yourself immediately, which is different, of course. But curious, how do you, so like it's an ever changing industry. Marketing is, I mean, it by the day, I feel like at this point. You have standards, you have practices. How do you ⁓ continue to like stay with, what you've built and also add in or just diversify depending on what's changing in the just the overall industry.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: I think keeping the core principle of...
Jeffrey Mailey: Yeah.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: you know, funnel, you know, people's idea of the different parts of the funnel changes. But at the core, marketing is attention first. can't, nobody do nothing with you for you, support you if they don't know you exist. That is just it. You can label that whatever you want. Awareness, trigger, like you can call it whatever you want. There's the attention, ⁓ there's sort of nurture. Okay. And then there is a conversion. Those three things are core. They might stretch for longer, they might have different elements involved but those are kind of the standards. So now as we see things like AI coming to the fold and our clients wanting to use them to your point about how do we as things come in, we still have to say, what are we using this for? Yes, you can absolutely open Claude or Gemini and put in a prop and it will give you something. What is this for though?
Jeffrey Mailey: Sure. Mm-hmm.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: Like what is the point of this? Where does this go in the mix? When we sat down and we went through kickoff and you guys shared your plan for the year and the goals for the company and revenue goals and sales, talked about what their objections were and what they were trying to do, where does this thing you just put in clog? How does that factor in here? What's the relevancy? And then they're like, ⁓ well, you know, it's just kind of cool to do. And it's like, yeah, well, like got to stay focused.
Jeffrey Mailey: Thank you.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: And you know, I think the shiny object syndrome might be wearing just a little bit. I think most people know you can kind of do anything in these things, but what is the output? How is this relevant to the goals?
Jeffrey Mailey: Yeah. Yeah. Hmm. Cause that goes back to like being flooded with content. And everything's AI generated content, then you're, ⁓ you're off by that because it is, you know, even if it's gotten ⁓ as as it has, know, like it's almost photo realistic or the videos are like pretty freaking close to us real life. You still get a sense that was this really ⁓ genuine honest and
BrndMethod Creative Agency: Mm-hmm.
Jeffrey Mailey: Is it from some a person's creation like that? The creative process is something that is difficult, right? Yeah, you're like, you have to value that. So I still think it's in our inclination to notice these things even as good as they've gotten. So I believe that, you know, your methodology is going to be even more important because like you said, it's starting the shiny object syndrome is is coming down.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: Right. Yeah and I think we you can see this with you know I'm sure a lot of people use it but more in the space when ⁓ AI twins came out and it was like ⁓ like I never have to like actually record again like I could just make it you could make an AI twin it's detectable and even if we're getting to the point where it's not as detectable there's still something about it that doesn't read as authentic, right? So we were a part of a project last year where we were trying to, from the creative arm of this, say, let's not try to serve up the AI twin as like your replacement. Let's not make fun of that, but like, let's put this front, like, let's create a character for company that is an AI twin, and we can bake that into the copy and just present it.
Jeffrey Mailey: Yeah. Yeah.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: such instead of trying to present it as an actual employee or like let's make it plain that you know this is our you know AI twin who is this kind of AI employee like we could build an entire story around this but let's not make the CEO's AI twin and try to serve it to people I don't think that's a good idea.
Jeffrey Mailey: Huh. Mm-hmm. is cool, right? But it's also ⁓
BrndMethod Creative Agency: Right, yeah, and that's what I mean. It's like, my god, I could put in like a prompt and like get a whole twin and I never have to record. You could. You could absolutely do that ⁓ our help. But what does it serve this campaign? Like what is the purpose of this?
Jeffrey Mailey: Yeah. Yeah. Right. Exactly. besides the shiny object syndrome, honestly.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: besides the shine and you can share it a little AI twin of you and share it at parties and it's funny and ha ha ha but what are we doing? ⁓
Jeffrey Mailey: get a laugh out of it. What's the value of this exactly? kind of what I was wondering too. Like why are we so hell bent ⁓ on AI content? we use it for something else? Like why is this the focus? Like we have plenty of minds and people and content and influencers and all kinds of people that are doing this for their livelihoods. Why do we need to turn that over to intelligence? doesn't even make it that important. Like it's why.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: No, no. I think it's, and from what I gather during that phase, that frenzy, a hype of like people feeling like they could just make their AI twin. I think for that, there is something inherent about a lot of people, like this love hate thing about social media and content and what it asks of you and what it kind of requires of you that people have a disdain for and they like, oh begrudgingly, oh God, I gotta.
Jeffrey Mailey: Yeah. Hmm.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: And I get it, I understand being tired, but there are some people that just really, I just, I don't know why have to do this, but like if I don't then, so when something like that comes along, ⁓ I get over. Like I can bypass this piece of it and like win, but you can't. Like not really. ⁓ Absolutely, ⁓ absolutely.
Jeffrey Mailey: Bye It's a false sense of hope. I guess you're probably right. That's probably the origin of the thought is how do I accomplish this thing that I have to do to grow my business now without actually having to do it.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: when it comes to content, everybody's trying to find the cheat code. They want to bypass doing it. Yeah, they definitely don't want to do the recording and the editing. I understand it. I get that. ⁓ AI for editing, think it's great. But twin thing, I was like, I don't know how long this is going to be. Like, this seems wild. Like, ⁓
Jeffrey Mailey: Shortcuts. Yes. No. I was ⁓ with like a, an AI receptionist for my business ⁓ you can actually put your own voice into it and could act as someone who answers the phone for your business and it's actually you talking.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: Mmm. Wow. How was it? Did you like it? ⁓
Jeffrey Mailey: It scared me. ⁓ it was like, gave, I gave it like a 30 second clip of me talking. and then it took that and created an entire like vocabulary and my voice was, I was talking to myself. It was quite creepy, but ⁓ though. I mean, I wouldn't mind someone just taking the calls for me, you know? Yeah. That's me basically. ⁓
BrndMethod Creative Agency: Wow. Oof. hahahaha
Jeffrey Mailey: yeah, It's a crazy world right now and it's, could go on and on with AI. But kind of wanted to learn more about how you to this company ⁓ and ⁓ you doing before it happened and kind of what led you to create the agency in the first place.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: Yeah, so I've, I ⁓ got into relations, but I even knew that was a job. I was in New York, ⁓ moved there shortly after undergrad and got a job ⁓ at the Grand Fade of Glory. It was my first big girl job and I'm in New York. I'm like living the dream. Okay, this is in 2004. So social hasn't hit, reality TV isn't as prominent, but I'm up there living my dream. There was an opportunity that came up with, they had one PR person in house and she just kind of took me under her wing. I didn't even know that was a real job, Jeffrey. I really didn't. We didn't have, I didn't. I was like, she would just say, ⁓ do you want to, you know, come with me to an editor's lunch? I was like, sure.
Jeffrey Mailey: I know.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: what that is but absolutely and like we would take at the time Walmart was trying to get more publicity because high low fashion was out so they were trying to get placement in magazines for like the low pieces and she was the person that would like work with the editor so she would take me to these and I'm like at lunches with ⁓ and Vogue and Bazaar and like you know I have no clue what's going on but I'm learning ⁓
Jeffrey Mailey: That's cool. You
BrndMethod Creative Agency: Communications, I didn't graduate with that. I'm learning communications on the job. I'm learning how to do this. I'm learning how to write pitches. I'm learning how to position a product for and trying to get it ⁓ And then in 2006, I left New York to come back to Atlanta because my mother was ill and I was her only child. So I came back to take care of her. She passed in 2007 and I said to myself, okay, I could move back to New York and like. probably get my old job back and like do that whole thing or I could stay in Atlanta and try to build a business. And so I decided to do that. the time we were getting, ⁓ was when movies were just coming here. So the big influx of like movies doing production here. And I said, well, maybe there's an opportunity to merge relations with that. So that was core of the business at the time. did that for few years and then around 2014, had kind of the writing on the wall with PR and Facebook and Twitter at the time. And I said, this looks like what my PR clients want but you can't demand a magazine show your stuff. But on Facebook, you can just put it out there. This is like, gee, I think this is incredible when it comes to like PR. So I completely pivoted my business from pitching endlessly and relentlessly hoping for things to get picked up and just ditch strictly digital. Then as that grew, ⁓ grew and pivoted ⁓ you know, ⁓ a couple of accelerators, which helped me understand business, not...
Jeffrey Mailey: So.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: how to do social media, but how to run a business which is different. And that was in 2018 and you know, I'm forever grateful for that program and that helped me to learn how to run an agency and to get out of doing the work all of it at least some of it. I still have to I still gotta get in there Jeffrey. I still gotta get in there.
Jeffrey Mailey: Yeah. Sure.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: but doing, helped me to like hire and delegate ⁓ create processes and workflows and SOPs and all that type of stuff. And know, that's how the business came to be. ⁓ but always keeping my eye on what's changing and never feeling like, ⁓ another update or ⁓ I'm always excited by them. I know people will get like, ⁓ my God, Instagram is like not showing my stuff and ⁓ now you have to do this on LinkedIn. I love it because to me it's like another opportunity to like do something creative. And that's how I see updates with all these platforms. It's like, ⁓ like how can we make this work for our clients? Like, what do we need to pivot or change to make this an opportunity rather than, ⁓ my God, another ⁓ or another thread. ⁓ you know, people get like, very ⁓ ⁓ yeah. ⁓
Jeffrey Mailey: All Yeah, you get that a lot. Right. feel like you have ⁓ perfect mindset, perfect mindset to come in, to be able to do these things kind of in a lighthearted ⁓ nature ⁓ approach still like set on accomplishing your goal. Like it takes both sides. You can't be like too... too hard on yourself, you can't be you can't be like overly critical of yourself, but you need to have goals and you need to set them. And I feel like you have a nice balance of of both.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: Yeah, I mean even with you know the influx of AI last year, it was rough. It made business rough because on the the end side, the end user side, it was like well why do we need an agency when we can just again plug in these prompts and you know do it ourselves. we found was by the end of the year after people were playing around and investing in these things and not getting the return because they didn't really know how to use them
Jeffrey Mailey: Yeah.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: ⁓ We found another lane, like another entry point to the conversation. We created the AI marketing readiness assessment, which is just like a free tool that we have.
Jeffrey Mailey: smart.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: it lets you know where you stand. Are you even ready to, we had clients that were investing in know $50,000 AI because ⁓ well you know we could just eliminate agency for a year and like invest it here and now at the end of the year they know what's what or what. They're like well we got some cool pictures, we got some like what ⁓ what the return on this? So ⁓ the ⁓ is designed to
Jeffrey Mailey: Mmm. Yeah.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: show give you a snapshot of where you are and it might be you are ready and oftentimes it's like you need to shore up these other things first like you need to get this other stuff in order before we can start a real strategy around AI because that's what it needs.
Jeffrey Mailey: you really interesting. you can kind of before you even start the strategy itself, can narrow what's going on with their current strategy or current business ⁓ and from there as opposed to just jumping in.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: Yeah, because it's going to ask you questions that you probably haven't thought about. And it's going to force you to look at, and they're not hard questions, but it's going to force you to answer the question of, OK, if you bring in this lead generator or whatever, where are the leads going? do we have a CRM?
Jeffrey Mailey: Yeah, most likely.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: ⁓ no, they go, they just, they opt in on the website and where does that go? ⁓ to an email, think it go, hold on, we need to clean all this up. Because what are we, like if you get this influx of leads from AI or an agency or whatever, and then we don't have a proper way to, like, what, you know, we had this happen last year. The, the, however the forum was connected online. they were going to the void. No one was receiving them because it was like a previous agency and like, ⁓ that's gotta be cleaned up first. That's all gotta be looked at and cleaned up.
Jeffrey Mailey: Bye. Because you need your data points. without that, mean, you're not really even running a business.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: No! you Well, we don't want to do a CRM. We just have, we have an Excel spreadsheet. Okay? Who updates it? Like, what's going on?
Jeffrey Mailey: Right, but you need it all. Yeah, right. Now that's a huge thing. I see that all the time. I see that all the time. a lot of times companies are like, all right, we are ready to utilize AI. I'm like, okay, well, let's look at your internal systems. ⁓ you actually aren't even close to being ready.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: Mm-hmm. shouldn't, you might not be ready for either of us. You might not be ready for agency just yet.
Jeffrey Mailey: Your data sits on Excel spreadsheets or sometimes on paper and...
BrndMethod Creative Agency: Ciao. just sometimes I'm like, and these are huge companies, Jeffrey, like you get in and you're like, what the hell? Like, are y'all ⁓ with this? There's no way.
Jeffrey Mailey: Right. I mean, there are entire industries like this, not even just one company. Like you said, accounting is so old school law firms. know they have sensitive information and that makes sense. get it. But man, the fed, reason that these accounting firms are successful is because of their list of the books. And everything's a file folder still, it's like, how the heck is this company even existing? ⁓
BrndMethod Creative Agency: Yeah. Yeah. Or, you know, my favorite question is, what's the sales process? ⁓
Jeffrey Mailey: idea.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: So if we don't have a process, like what's going on?
Jeffrey Mailey: We've had this. We've had this client for 30 years, that's all we know. We just do our best at managing the relationship.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: Yeah, or you know, I just take I just take calls when they come in. Okay, do you have a follow-up process? Like, you know, because my thing is we always come in and we make it very clear. I think you and I might have talked about this before. We manage expectations upfront. We are not a sales team. We support sales, which is why we have conversations very early about your process because you're the closer. You're the person at the end who has to do this. How do we support you? What type of content do we need to put out to qualify better, to nurture better, to
Jeffrey Mailey: Mm-hmm.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: keep educate like keep them in the ecosystem that's our lane but we have to talk to you to understand but if on your end you don't even have a process you just out here winging it how can we support you?
Jeffrey Mailey: We're not, yeah, you're not ready for us, basically. The partnership isn't going to benefit you because there's nowhere to, the funnel is leading to a dead end, essentially.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: C- Correct. Correct.
Jeffrey Mailey: Yeah, I like that approach because you're thinking you're very much thinking about how do we actually convert whatever we're marketing into real leads or sales or however you want to look at it potential clients and then not only getting them there but then like what are you going to do with them when they get there?
BrndMethod Creative Agency: Absolutely. Right. Do we need to on your sales enablement library, do we need to create a campaign at this part of the funnel that's gonna help you after you had your initial call? But we know this. We gotta understand your process. it's not just, okay, well we got the lead, you run it. Sometimes it's we got the lead, but...
Jeffrey Mailey: Hmm.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: we booked the call and we haven't heard from them, like what can we do to get them back in the, ⁓ okay, well we can, you know, like let's talk about the call and how that's structured and what you guys discussed and what materials were presented or the demo or whatever. And then if we have this small bucket, this is not your LinkedIn campaign, this might be an email thing and we say, okay, so every qualified lead that you spoke to in this timeframe that you haven't heard from within seven days, we're gonna start talking.
Jeffrey Mailey: Mmm. ⁓
BrndMethod Creative Agency: them with X, Y, and Z. That's where we can help and support but we gotta know the process. It's not just doing their own thing.
Jeffrey Mailey: Yeah. Mm hmm. And I feel like a typical structure is more like ⁓ thinking about generating things, not thinking about the conversion side of things. And kind of, I think it's pretty unique what you're doing. I like your approach ⁓ because I that should be the first conversation when you're talking to a business because
BrndMethod Creative Agency: has to be.
Jeffrey Mailey: You don't want them, you're helping, you're saving them from potentially losing or spending on something that's not going to help because not because of the strategy, but because of what's happening on their end. So ironing that out first benefits everyone. And then know that once you've ironed that out from your side of things, that what you're doing is going to benefit them, whatever strategy you use.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: Right. Exactly. Yeah. And like I said, working in tandem with the sales department is imperative. We have to be working together. As things change and things shift, we have to be in communication for them to say, okay, our client is, you know, the idea of us doing this for them is we're not closing on that. They have more questions about how they can do XYZ on their own. Okay, well, we don't want to lose them. We can't just say, okay, well, I guess they're not going to give us the business. So like, let's just kind of bow. Okay, well, hold on. Let's try to
Jeffrey Mailey: Yeah.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: salvage it and figure out there something else? Is there a pivot we can do? Is there an angle that we can come in with? But that's our role ⁓ then ⁓ working together so that's gonna give the company the best shot at success. ⁓ what I find is and you can probably agree with this, ⁓ lot of people ⁓ ⁓ try to hang sales on a marketing person and it's not gonna work. ⁓ times out of ten, it's not going to work because these are two different functions. ⁓ are like well you you're doing email, why isn't it closing? Because this is a six month sales process, like a sales cycle, and we are not salespeople, and you don't have any, or you know, don't have a proper process set up in place. So we can't just keep shooting out email and hoping that this closes a $75,000 client. Like we're not doing this the right way.
Jeffrey Mailey: Right. Hmm Yeah, I mean, it's such an important process of marketing and strategy and trying to grow your business. I think oftentimes it gets overlooked. So pretty unique strategy that you have with a business. And I'm wondering when you first adopted this, this thinking or has it always been part of your ⁓ makeup? ⁓
BrndMethod Creative Agency: It's all, it's kind of always been part, you know, I can remember back in doing PR, maybe not being fleshed out and when I was doing PR you had so many disgruntled clients because the question always kept coming back, well okay you got us in this on this morning show or you got us in the magazine but where are the sales? It's like We work on the visibility part. We work on the exposure part. And so that piece was always missing. So in constantly trying to look at our company and say, how can we be of value without promising something we don't do, is that when we got stripped on our ICP, you've got to have a sales team in place. If that's two people, got to have a proper sales team in place. We are not an ad hoc, we are not a makeshift sales team.
Jeffrey Mailey: Hmm. Yeah.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: you We don't come in for that. That's not our role. We absolutely support the sales team We absolutely have our KPIs, but it is not the end sale Especially in b2b these things these deals are lasting six to nine months and you want us on the hook For a piece that we're we're not responsible for that's not gonna work. So we come in very transparent like that and we say Yes, we are gonna we certainly have metrics that we can report on but it won't be what sales are made
Jeffrey Mailey: Yeah, right. No. Mm.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: two months after we get on. That doesn't make any sense. But we do have our KPIs and we are in work with your sales team. We are not operating independently and making whatever kind of fun content we just feel like making. ⁓ all comes back from them.
Jeffrey Mailey: Yeah. it's really fascinating and something that I'm sure you from others because of your consideration of their needs, just yours. But yeah, so how do you see, so if you're moving forward fast forward three to five what does Brand Method Creative Agency look like? Do you set long-term, short-term goals for you want the business to be or yourself?
BrndMethod Creative Agency: Yeah, I think we are, and this is already happening, it's hard to set long-term goals because the rate at which things change is in like hypermode. Even when I first started this iteration of the company after coming out of the sort of accelerator in 2019, you of course it was a 15 month program, so it was like, oh, your goals and this and. That was 29th to now is so different. Like what we talked about six, doing six months ago, I was like, oh, that's come and gone. Like we need to shift. But I do see us certainly integrating AI more into our creative process in terms of output while working with clients who understand and want to establish a brand, not a...
Jeffrey Mailey: Thank
BrndMethod Creative Agency: you know, let's let's turn it out. Let's like get it out. Let's let's flood our message to everybody. Everyone like companies that are really interested in building a brand and they care about brand integrity and they care about creativity because that's another one. I'm sure you've probably had this happen. Some some companies don't don't care about marketing. We saw this during COVID for
Jeffrey Mailey: Mm-hmm.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: at least in my world, half the people I knew was like, I'm not spending nothing or doing anything on marketing, for what? And the other half I knew doubled down and they were like, we need to stay visible. And a lot of those were like, have now become mainstay podcasts and like they have all these, Like you're watching this happen in real life, why would I market? Why would I promote? the world is shut down. And then this other group of where my brain goes is like, no, now's the time to like double down. You stay visible. Right? there are people that just don't believe in marketing. And that's not, you know, I had to come to terms with that and realize that that is, that has to be weeded out in our qualification process because we're not, we don't come in ⁓ and the intent of constantly proving why we're there. ⁓
Jeffrey Mailey: This would be an absolute time to do it. ⁓ Mmm.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: We are there to deliver results. We are there to be team players. My take in the culture with the company is very much positive, good energy. I don't keep nobody on my team that is like, I'm just here to check some boxes and I don't really care and maybe look on Zoom looking crazy. No, I don't keep anybody on my team like that. I like good energy. It doesn't mean we're faking like best friends, but I like good energy. So when we come in with that, we can't spend our time ⁓ every status update justifying our literal presence. We're going to report on what we have, present ideas, and it's gonna flow like that. So going forward, we're going to be working with organizations that really want to tap into creativity because we can do so much. ⁓ We don't have to get creative to the point of ridiculousness, but we can do a lot. And it can be fun, and it can be engaging. And that's really where our focus is going to be going forward.
Jeffrey Mailey: Mmm. That sounds great. I imagine your team is ⁓ about results. Gotta those results to Kelly. She's a... ⁓
BrndMethod Creative Agency: Yeah, good results, but good vibes too. We don't put ourselves in positions where status means coming up and we're all nervous. No, we ⁓ out a plan. We got, it's nothing to, we don't need any negative energy around us. Enough negativity going on. We coming in, we're doing something fun and cool and it's tied to results that are gonna help the company. That's a good thing.
Jeffrey Mailey: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. You have an open channel of communication. And guys are all on the same page about how to best go about creating the solutions for all of your clients.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: Absolutely.
Jeffrey Mailey: That's cool. it's been a pleasure. ⁓ been good getting ⁓ talk to you again, Lauren, learn more about brand method creative agency. I forward to seeing you guys grow in the next three to five years, learning ⁓ all of things about cloud cowork and cloud code and all these really, really fun topics. And yeah, been pleasure.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: Yeah. Thanks, Jeffrey, this has been great. Thank you so much.
Jeffrey Mailey: Thanks for coming on and I'll talk to you soon.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: Good, how are you?
Jeffrey Mailey: Good, good to have you on and excited to learn more about you and your story and kind of how you found Brand Method Creative Agency. It's around, been around a while.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: very excited to be here. Yeah, it's been around a while. There's been a couple of iterations, ⁓ the business. But I think we've gotten our groove with where the industry is ⁓ and our expertise lies. And like said, just merging creativity and results without sacrificing either.
Jeffrey Mailey: Yeah. So how do you carve that ideology, that methodology into your business and your creative processes? How do you differentiate yourself in that creative way?
BrndMethod Creative Agency: Absolutely. So one of the first things that we do with every client engagement is that we need to understand the business. What are the actual goals, where are sales, and how is marketing currently supporting that if this is someone that, you know, in a situation we're being brought into. We need to understand that because I think what's happening more often is that people are bringing in an agency, the agency is saying okay we're working with an accounting firm, let's research what's you know going on with that and then they're not factoring in what's going on with your accounting firm client. What are the business goals for your client? And then you work backwards, right? So we're figuring out what the goals are. We're keeping that as the North Star. And then we're saying, okay, now we're down to the sales team. What objections are you guys coming up against? That's gonna drive our creative process. We could go far and wide with creativity around accounting, but if it's not linked back to what actually the closer is coming up against, then this doesn't make sense, right?
Jeffrey Mailey: Mmm.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: So that's really the root of our methodology we've had really great results ⁓ way.
Jeffrey Mailey: So ⁓ a pretty practical approach in what is it? What is that? Like, how does that mean like creative to you? Like, because it seems very practical. There are some the word creative gets thrown around and it's not used the right way. you know, there's so many ways to be creative. So how do you see that ⁓ in your within your business?
BrndMethod Creative Agency: Yes. Yeah, so one of the things could be looking at channels that our clients want to use and expectations and saying, Okay, we want to be on social, obviously. Okay, if we're B2B, which is most of our clients, we want to be on LinkedIn, we might say, hey, based on our research, there is, I think, an area where we could carve out on TikTok. I mean, they're usually going to lose it. They're going to be like, ⁓ we're not on TikTok, that's too, that's for the young people. And it's like, but hang on. If we're delivering... your brand in the B2B space as something that is traditionally super conservative. We don't have to go all the way and make it like not your brand. We can create content that is entertaining while still appropriate for your brand. And that's a dance because you're going to get a lot of pushback, especially when you're talking about professional services or very conservative B2B company.
Jeffrey Mailey: Yeah.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: And it's like, OK, well, the alternative is that we basically chop up a trifold brochure and like spam LinkedIn. Nobody's stopping for that. We do still have to keep in mind. Right. Like, we do still have to keep in mind we have to stop the scroll before we can do anything, right? That's pretty standard information because we're all doing this. Conservative people, creative people, don't matter what kind of people.
Jeffrey Mailey: That's very true. Whether we want to be or not, we're doing it.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: Right, we are flying through that feed. So we have to stop our client and say, hey, first piece we have to do is get them to stop. That's where the creative and the entertainment comes in. It doesn't mean that we disregard your brand or do anything inappropriate, but we can find a way to make this entertaining in 60 seconds.
Jeffrey Mailey: You know what
BrndMethod Creative Agency: find the challenge exciting. always kind of had a brain like that. I've always understood. I love all the creative fun stuff, but we still have to bring this back to the goal. They have to be in sync. So not a stretch for me, but sometimes people, depending on the leadership, they think, creative agency. don't do creative. We do.
Jeffrey Mailey: Mm-hmm. Thank I
BrndMethod Creative Agency: And I'm like, but hey, we could do this and it can be good and entertaining and still appropriate.
Jeffrey Mailey: Yeah, think they're concerned about the cringe element, Of of reels, of like people trying to get people's attention so badly they'll do anything, right? But you do it in a classy, appropriate Like you're saying, you don't have to be, you know, as ridiculous as possible get people's attention. ⁓
BrndMethod Creative Agency: That's a good point. We don't have to get ridiculous. We don't have to do stunts. We don't have to dance. We don't have to lip sync. We don't have to dub. We don't have to, you know, do things. Like we don't have to do that. There are other ways that, you know, if you have an accounting firm or a law firm or, you know, a SaaS product, like we can still be creative in a way that's appropriate. But the creativity is what's going to get the attention. Without it, you are in the void.
Jeffrey Mailey: Yeah, we're flooded with content these days. There's no question about it. I mean, everywhere. And I actually heard something last night that said, ⁓ ⁓ viewership is going down and content is going up. like, there's actually not like a, it's a, you got to be even better now basically ⁓ you ever had to be ⁓ there's so much out.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: Yeah. There is so much then there is an element of having to feed the beast. And this is the other part that I tell ⁓ conservative B2B clients when they wanna post once a month, let's not bother. If we're not gonna keep a consistent content schedule, this isn't gonna work ⁓ because the algorithm at play.
Jeffrey Mailey: Yeah.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: and you have to feed it a little bit. It doesn't mean again you completely away from like your core values but you need a certain amount of content first of all to test. If you haven't done this before you don't know
Jeffrey Mailey: Hmm
BrndMethod Creative Agency: You got to put in you got to put in some some work to even have the algorithm say you exist Otherwise, it's not showing to anybody And then you start to look at your numbers and you say okay This cadence seems to work to get us visibility. We're not even talking about conversions yet. Okay, we're being seen now Let's look at from what's being seen. What are people engaging with and then that's the whole process But you've got to start with getting the attention first. That's it
Jeffrey Mailey: Yeah. Mm-hmm. And that's the consistency part. That's, hard to start, right? Like this past those initial hurdles of like just doing it, just do it. Don't worry about it. ⁓
BrndMethod Creative Agency: It's hard to start. hard to start and I think it's hard for some ⁓ leadership really wrap their brain around how much is needed to start. They're kind of like, well, I did, ⁓ I made video for you last month. It's like, I need 10 videos, sir. That one little video is like, ⁓ we can that up, but we need a batch.
Jeffrey Mailey: Yes. Embrace me. And that takes right approach. requires someone with your skill set to come in and say, this is how you do it. Trust me.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: This is how you do it. Trust us and we have a process. As creative as we like to be, nothing is ad hoc and nothing is willy-nilly. We don't operate, you you text us a video, it's a process. There are systems we have in place and workflows so that neither side is becoming overwhelmed with random bits of a text message here. No, no, no, no, no.
Jeffrey Mailey: Isn't
BrndMethod Creative Agency: There is a brief, there is a schedule, there is review, there are like it's all very, you know, it's not off the cuff all the time. There are certain situations where we might say, if you're speaking at South by Southwest, can someone there record and then you shoot it to us and then we want to get it out into, that's different. Our client, SIGN and Insights Group, they're huge in HR research and advisory. They do HR tech every year, which is
Jeffrey Mailey: Of course.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: you know, top tier for them. And so we do operate on a much more like they come off the stage and they're shooting us, know, content and we're turning it around. But that is a once a year thing. Everything else has a process so that ⁓ one's getting burnt out. Everything is, you know, finding its place.
Jeffrey Mailey: Yeah. Yeah, that's the live event aspect of it, right? Sometimes you need to be available and showing yourself immediately, which is different, of course. But curious, how do you, so like it's an ever changing industry. Marketing is, I mean, it by the day, I feel like at this point. You have standards, you have practices. How do you ⁓ continue to like stay with, what you've built and also add in or just diversify depending on what's changing in the just the overall industry.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: I think keeping the core principle of...
Jeffrey Mailey: Yeah.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: you know, funnel, you know, people's idea of the different parts of the funnel changes. But at the core, marketing is attention first. can't, nobody do nothing with you for you, support you if they don't know you exist. That is just it. You can label that whatever you want. Awareness, trigger, like you can call it whatever you want. There's the attention, ⁓ there's sort of nurture. Okay. And then there is a conversion. Those three things are core. They might stretch for longer, they might have different elements involved but those are kind of the standards. So now as we see things like AI coming to the fold and our clients wanting to use them to your point about how do we as things come in, we still have to say, what are we using this for? Yes, you can absolutely open Claude or Gemini and put in a prop and it will give you something. What is this for though?
Jeffrey Mailey: Sure. Mm-hmm.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: Like what is the point of this? Where does this go in the mix? When we sat down and we went through kickoff and you guys shared your plan for the year and the goals for the company and revenue goals and sales, talked about what their objections were and what they were trying to do, where does this thing you just put in clog? How does that factor in here? What's the relevancy? And then they're like, ⁓ well, you know, it's just kind of cool to do. And it's like, yeah, well, like got to stay focused.
Jeffrey Mailey: Thank you.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: And you know, I think the shiny object syndrome might be wearing just a little bit. I think most people know you can kind of do anything in these things, but what is the output? How is this relevant to the goals?
Jeffrey Mailey: Yeah. Yeah. Hmm. Cause that goes back to like being flooded with content. And everything's AI generated content, then you're, ⁓ you're off by that because it is, you know, even if it's gotten ⁓ as as it has, know, like it's almost photo realistic or the videos are like pretty freaking close to us real life. You still get a sense that was this really ⁓ genuine honest and
BrndMethod Creative Agency: Mm-hmm.
Jeffrey Mailey: Is it from some a person's creation like that? The creative process is something that is difficult, right? Yeah, you're like, you have to value that. So I still think it's in our inclination to notice these things even as good as they've gotten. So I believe that, you know, your methodology is going to be even more important because like you said, it's starting the shiny object syndrome is is coming down.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: Right. Yeah and I think we you can see this with you know I'm sure a lot of people use it but more in the space when ⁓ AI twins came out and it was like ⁓ like I never have to like actually record again like I could just make it you could make an AI twin it's detectable and even if we're getting to the point where it's not as detectable there's still something about it that doesn't read as authentic, right? So we were a part of a project last year where we were trying to, from the creative arm of this, say, let's not try to serve up the AI twin as like your replacement. Let's not make fun of that, but like, let's put this front, like, let's create a character for company that is an AI twin, and we can bake that into the copy and just present it.
Jeffrey Mailey: Yeah. Yeah.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: such instead of trying to present it as an actual employee or like let's make it plain that you know this is our you know AI twin who is this kind of AI employee like we could build an entire story around this but let's not make the CEO's AI twin and try to serve it to people I don't think that's a good idea.
Jeffrey Mailey: Huh. Mm-hmm. is cool, right? But it's also ⁓
BrndMethod Creative Agency: Right, yeah, and that's what I mean. It's like, my god, I could put in like a prompt and like get a whole twin and I never have to record. You could. You could absolutely do that ⁓ our help. But what does it serve this campaign? Like what is the purpose of this?
Jeffrey Mailey: Yeah. Yeah. Right. Exactly. besides the shiny object syndrome, honestly.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: besides the shine and you can share it a little AI twin of you and share it at parties and it's funny and ha ha ha but what are we doing? ⁓
Jeffrey Mailey: get a laugh out of it. What's the value of this exactly? kind of what I was wondering too. Like why are we so hell bent ⁓ on AI content? we use it for something else? Like why is this the focus? Like we have plenty of minds and people and content and influencers and all kinds of people that are doing this for their livelihoods. Why do we need to turn that over to intelligence? doesn't even make it that important. Like it's why.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: No, no. I think it's, and from what I gather during that phase, that frenzy, a hype of like people feeling like they could just make their AI twin. I think for that, there is something inherent about a lot of people, like this love hate thing about social media and content and what it asks of you and what it kind of requires of you that people have a disdain for and they like, oh begrudgingly, oh God, I gotta.
Jeffrey Mailey: Yeah. Hmm.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: And I get it, I understand being tired, but there are some people that just really, I just, I don't know why have to do this, but like if I don't then, so when something like that comes along, ⁓ I get over. Like I can bypass this piece of it and like win, but you can't. Like not really. ⁓ Absolutely, ⁓ absolutely.
Jeffrey Mailey: Bye It's a false sense of hope. I guess you're probably right. That's probably the origin of the thought is how do I accomplish this thing that I have to do to grow my business now without actually having to do it.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: when it comes to content, everybody's trying to find the cheat code. They want to bypass doing it. Yeah, they definitely don't want to do the recording and the editing. I understand it. I get that. ⁓ AI for editing, think it's great. But twin thing, I was like, I don't know how long this is going to be. Like, this seems wild. Like, ⁓
Jeffrey Mailey: Shortcuts. Yes. No. I was ⁓ with like a, an AI receptionist for my business ⁓ you can actually put your own voice into it and could act as someone who answers the phone for your business and it's actually you talking.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: Mmm. Wow. How was it? Did you like it? ⁓
Jeffrey Mailey: It scared me. ⁓ it was like, gave, I gave it like a 30 second clip of me talking. and then it took that and created an entire like vocabulary and my voice was, I was talking to myself. It was quite creepy, but ⁓ though. I mean, I wouldn't mind someone just taking the calls for me, you know? Yeah. That's me basically. ⁓
BrndMethod Creative Agency: Wow. Oof. hahahaha
Jeffrey Mailey: yeah, It's a crazy world right now and it's, could go on and on with AI. But kind of wanted to learn more about how you to this company ⁓ and ⁓ you doing before it happened and kind of what led you to create the agency in the first place.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: Yeah, so I've, I ⁓ got into relations, but I even knew that was a job. I was in New York, ⁓ moved there shortly after undergrad and got a job ⁓ at the Grand Fade of Glory. It was my first big girl job and I'm in New York. I'm like living the dream. Okay, this is in 2004. So social hasn't hit, reality TV isn't as prominent, but I'm up there living my dream. There was an opportunity that came up with, they had one PR person in house and she just kind of took me under her wing. I didn't even know that was a real job, Jeffrey. I really didn't. We didn't have, I didn't. I was like, she would just say, ⁓ do you want to, you know, come with me to an editor's lunch? I was like, sure.
Jeffrey Mailey: I know.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: what that is but absolutely and like we would take at the time Walmart was trying to get more publicity because high low fashion was out so they were trying to get placement in magazines for like the low pieces and she was the person that would like work with the editor so she would take me to these and I'm like at lunches with ⁓ and Vogue and Bazaar and like you know I have no clue what's going on but I'm learning ⁓
Jeffrey Mailey: That's cool. You
BrndMethod Creative Agency: Communications, I didn't graduate with that. I'm learning communications on the job. I'm learning how to do this. I'm learning how to write pitches. I'm learning how to position a product for and trying to get it ⁓ And then in 2006, I left New York to come back to Atlanta because my mother was ill and I was her only child. So I came back to take care of her. She passed in 2007 and I said to myself, okay, I could move back to New York and like. probably get my old job back and like do that whole thing or I could stay in Atlanta and try to build a business. And so I decided to do that. the time we were getting, ⁓ was when movies were just coming here. So the big influx of like movies doing production here. And I said, well, maybe there's an opportunity to merge relations with that. So that was core of the business at the time. did that for few years and then around 2014, had kind of the writing on the wall with PR and Facebook and Twitter at the time. And I said, this looks like what my PR clients want but you can't demand a magazine show your stuff. But on Facebook, you can just put it out there. This is like, gee, I think this is incredible when it comes to like PR. So I completely pivoted my business from pitching endlessly and relentlessly hoping for things to get picked up and just ditch strictly digital. Then as that grew, ⁓ grew and pivoted ⁓ you know, ⁓ a couple of accelerators, which helped me understand business, not...
Jeffrey Mailey: So.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: how to do social media, but how to run a business which is different. And that was in 2018 and you know, I'm forever grateful for that program and that helped me to learn how to run an agency and to get out of doing the work all of it at least some of it. I still have to I still gotta get in there Jeffrey. I still gotta get in there.
Jeffrey Mailey: Yeah. Sure.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: but doing, helped me to like hire and delegate ⁓ create processes and workflows and SOPs and all that type of stuff. And know, that's how the business came to be. ⁓ but always keeping my eye on what's changing and never feeling like, ⁓ another update or ⁓ I'm always excited by them. I know people will get like, ⁓ my God, Instagram is like not showing my stuff and ⁓ now you have to do this on LinkedIn. I love it because to me it's like another opportunity to like do something creative. And that's how I see updates with all these platforms. It's like, ⁓ like how can we make this work for our clients? Like, what do we need to pivot or change to make this an opportunity rather than, ⁓ my God, another ⁓ or another thread. ⁓ you know, people get like, very ⁓ ⁓ yeah. ⁓
Jeffrey Mailey: All Yeah, you get that a lot. Right. feel like you have ⁓ perfect mindset, perfect mindset to come in, to be able to do these things kind of in a lighthearted ⁓ nature ⁓ approach still like set on accomplishing your goal. Like it takes both sides. You can't be like too... too hard on yourself, you can't be you can't be like overly critical of yourself, but you need to have goals and you need to set them. And I feel like you have a nice balance of of both.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: Yeah, I mean even with you know the influx of AI last year, it was rough. It made business rough because on the the end side, the end user side, it was like well why do we need an agency when we can just again plug in these prompts and you know do it ourselves. we found was by the end of the year after people were playing around and investing in these things and not getting the return because they didn't really know how to use them
Jeffrey Mailey: Yeah.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: ⁓ We found another lane, like another entry point to the conversation. We created the AI marketing readiness assessment, which is just like a free tool that we have.
Jeffrey Mailey: smart.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: it lets you know where you stand. Are you even ready to, we had clients that were investing in know $50,000 AI because ⁓ well you know we could just eliminate agency for a year and like invest it here and now at the end of the year they know what's what or what. They're like well we got some cool pictures, we got some like what ⁓ what the return on this? So ⁓ the ⁓ is designed to
Jeffrey Mailey: Mmm. Yeah.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: show give you a snapshot of where you are and it might be you are ready and oftentimes it's like you need to shore up these other things first like you need to get this other stuff in order before we can start a real strategy around AI because that's what it needs.
Jeffrey Mailey: you really interesting. you can kind of before you even start the strategy itself, can narrow what's going on with their current strategy or current business ⁓ and from there as opposed to just jumping in.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: Yeah, because it's going to ask you questions that you probably haven't thought about. And it's going to force you to look at, and they're not hard questions, but it's going to force you to answer the question of, OK, if you bring in this lead generator or whatever, where are the leads going? do we have a CRM?
Jeffrey Mailey: Yeah, most likely.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: ⁓ no, they go, they just, they opt in on the website and where does that go? ⁓ to an email, think it go, hold on, we need to clean all this up. Because what are we, like if you get this influx of leads from AI or an agency or whatever, and then we don't have a proper way to, like, what, you know, we had this happen last year. The, the, however the forum was connected online. they were going to the void. No one was receiving them because it was like a previous agency and like, ⁓ that's gotta be cleaned up first. That's all gotta be looked at and cleaned up.
Jeffrey Mailey: Bye. Because you need your data points. without that, mean, you're not really even running a business.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: No! you Well, we don't want to do a CRM. We just have, we have an Excel spreadsheet. Okay? Who updates it? Like, what's going on?
Jeffrey Mailey: Right, but you need it all. Yeah, right. Now that's a huge thing. I see that all the time. I see that all the time. a lot of times companies are like, all right, we are ready to utilize AI. I'm like, okay, well, let's look at your internal systems. ⁓ you actually aren't even close to being ready.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: Mm-hmm. shouldn't, you might not be ready for either of us. You might not be ready for agency just yet.
Jeffrey Mailey: Your data sits on Excel spreadsheets or sometimes on paper and...
BrndMethod Creative Agency: Ciao. just sometimes I'm like, and these are huge companies, Jeffrey, like you get in and you're like, what the hell? Like, are y'all ⁓ with this? There's no way.
Jeffrey Mailey: Right. I mean, there are entire industries like this, not even just one company. Like you said, accounting is so old school law firms. know they have sensitive information and that makes sense. get it. But man, the fed, reason that these accounting firms are successful is because of their list of the books. And everything's a file folder still, it's like, how the heck is this company even existing? ⁓
BrndMethod Creative Agency: Yeah. Yeah. Or, you know, my favorite question is, what's the sales process? ⁓
Jeffrey Mailey: idea.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: So if we don't have a process, like what's going on?
Jeffrey Mailey: We've had this. We've had this client for 30 years, that's all we know. We just do our best at managing the relationship.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: Yeah, or you know, I just take I just take calls when they come in. Okay, do you have a follow-up process? Like, you know, because my thing is we always come in and we make it very clear. I think you and I might have talked about this before. We manage expectations upfront. We are not a sales team. We support sales, which is why we have conversations very early about your process because you're the closer. You're the person at the end who has to do this. How do we support you? What type of content do we need to put out to qualify better, to nurture better, to
Jeffrey Mailey: Mm-hmm.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: keep educate like keep them in the ecosystem that's our lane but we have to talk to you to understand but if on your end you don't even have a process you just out here winging it how can we support you?
Jeffrey Mailey: We're not, yeah, you're not ready for us, basically. The partnership isn't going to benefit you because there's nowhere to, the funnel is leading to a dead end, essentially.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: C- Correct. Correct.
Jeffrey Mailey: Yeah, I like that approach because you're thinking you're very much thinking about how do we actually convert whatever we're marketing into real leads or sales or however you want to look at it potential clients and then not only getting them there but then like what are you going to do with them when they get there?
BrndMethod Creative Agency: Absolutely. Right. Do we need to on your sales enablement library, do we need to create a campaign at this part of the funnel that's gonna help you after you had your initial call? But we know this. We gotta understand your process. it's not just, okay, well we got the lead, you run it. Sometimes it's we got the lead, but...
Jeffrey Mailey: Hmm.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: we booked the call and we haven't heard from them, like what can we do to get them back in the, ⁓ okay, well we can, you know, like let's talk about the call and how that's structured and what you guys discussed and what materials were presented or the demo or whatever. And then if we have this small bucket, this is not your LinkedIn campaign, this might be an email thing and we say, okay, so every qualified lead that you spoke to in this timeframe that you haven't heard from within seven days, we're gonna start talking.
Jeffrey Mailey: Mmm. ⁓
BrndMethod Creative Agency: them with X, Y, and Z. That's where we can help and support but we gotta know the process. It's not just doing their own thing.
Jeffrey Mailey: Yeah. Mm hmm. And I feel like a typical structure is more like ⁓ thinking about generating things, not thinking about the conversion side of things. And kind of, I think it's pretty unique what you're doing. I like your approach ⁓ because I that should be the first conversation when you're talking to a business because
BrndMethod Creative Agency: has to be.
Jeffrey Mailey: You don't want them, you're helping, you're saving them from potentially losing or spending on something that's not going to help because not because of the strategy, but because of what's happening on their end. So ironing that out first benefits everyone. And then know that once you've ironed that out from your side of things, that what you're doing is going to benefit them, whatever strategy you use.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: Right. Exactly. Yeah. And like I said, working in tandem with the sales department is imperative. We have to be working together. As things change and things shift, we have to be in communication for them to say, okay, our client is, you know, the idea of us doing this for them is we're not closing on that. They have more questions about how they can do XYZ on their own. Okay, well, we don't want to lose them. We can't just say, okay, well, I guess they're not going to give us the business. So like, let's just kind of bow. Okay, well, hold on. Let's try to
Jeffrey Mailey: Yeah.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: salvage it and figure out there something else? Is there a pivot we can do? Is there an angle that we can come in with? But that's our role ⁓ then ⁓ working together so that's gonna give the company the best shot at success. ⁓ what I find is and you can probably agree with this, ⁓ lot of people ⁓ ⁓ try to hang sales on a marketing person and it's not gonna work. ⁓ times out of ten, it's not going to work because these are two different functions. ⁓ are like well you you're doing email, why isn't it closing? Because this is a six month sales process, like a sales cycle, and we are not salespeople, and you don't have any, or you know, don't have a proper process set up in place. So we can't just keep shooting out email and hoping that this closes a $75,000 client. Like we're not doing this the right way.
Jeffrey Mailey: Right. Hmm Yeah, I mean, it's such an important process of marketing and strategy and trying to grow your business. I think oftentimes it gets overlooked. So pretty unique strategy that you have with a business. And I'm wondering when you first adopted this, this thinking or has it always been part of your ⁓ makeup? ⁓
BrndMethod Creative Agency: It's all, it's kind of always been part, you know, I can remember back in doing PR, maybe not being fleshed out and when I was doing PR you had so many disgruntled clients because the question always kept coming back, well okay you got us in this on this morning show or you got us in the magazine but where are the sales? It's like We work on the visibility part. We work on the exposure part. And so that piece was always missing. So in constantly trying to look at our company and say, how can we be of value without promising something we don't do, is that when we got stripped on our ICP, you've got to have a sales team in place. If that's two people, got to have a proper sales team in place. We are not an ad hoc, we are not a makeshift sales team.
Jeffrey Mailey: Hmm. Yeah.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: you We don't come in for that. That's not our role. We absolutely support the sales team We absolutely have our KPIs, but it is not the end sale Especially in b2b these things these deals are lasting six to nine months and you want us on the hook For a piece that we're we're not responsible for that's not gonna work. So we come in very transparent like that and we say Yes, we are gonna we certainly have metrics that we can report on but it won't be what sales are made
Jeffrey Mailey: Yeah, right. No. Mm.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: two months after we get on. That doesn't make any sense. But we do have our KPIs and we are in work with your sales team. We are not operating independently and making whatever kind of fun content we just feel like making. ⁓ all comes back from them.
Jeffrey Mailey: Yeah. it's really fascinating and something that I'm sure you from others because of your consideration of their needs, just yours. But yeah, so how do you see, so if you're moving forward fast forward three to five what does Brand Method Creative Agency look like? Do you set long-term, short-term goals for you want the business to be or yourself?
BrndMethod Creative Agency: Yeah, I think we are, and this is already happening, it's hard to set long-term goals because the rate at which things change is in like hypermode. Even when I first started this iteration of the company after coming out of the sort of accelerator in 2019, you of course it was a 15 month program, so it was like, oh, your goals and this and. That was 29th to now is so different. Like what we talked about six, doing six months ago, I was like, oh, that's come and gone. Like we need to shift. But I do see us certainly integrating AI more into our creative process in terms of output while working with clients who understand and want to establish a brand, not a...
Jeffrey Mailey: Thank
BrndMethod Creative Agency: you know, let's let's turn it out. Let's like get it out. Let's let's flood our message to everybody. Everyone like companies that are really interested in building a brand and they care about brand integrity and they care about creativity because that's another one. I'm sure you've probably had this happen. Some some companies don't don't care about marketing. We saw this during COVID for
Jeffrey Mailey: Mm-hmm.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: at least in my world, half the people I knew was like, I'm not spending nothing or doing anything on marketing, for what? And the other half I knew doubled down and they were like, we need to stay visible. And a lot of those were like, have now become mainstay podcasts and like they have all these, Like you're watching this happen in real life, why would I market? Why would I promote? the world is shut down. And then this other group of where my brain goes is like, no, now's the time to like double down. You stay visible. Right? there are people that just don't believe in marketing. And that's not, you know, I had to come to terms with that and realize that that is, that has to be weeded out in our qualification process because we're not, we don't come in ⁓ and the intent of constantly proving why we're there. ⁓
Jeffrey Mailey: This would be an absolute time to do it. ⁓ Mmm.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: We are there to deliver results. We are there to be team players. My take in the culture with the company is very much positive, good energy. I don't keep nobody on my team that is like, I'm just here to check some boxes and I don't really care and maybe look on Zoom looking crazy. No, I don't keep anybody on my team like that. I like good energy. It doesn't mean we're faking like best friends, but I like good energy. So when we come in with that, we can't spend our time ⁓ every status update justifying our literal presence. We're going to report on what we have, present ideas, and it's gonna flow like that. So going forward, we're going to be working with organizations that really want to tap into creativity because we can do so much. ⁓ We don't have to get creative to the point of ridiculousness, but we can do a lot. And it can be fun, and it can be engaging. And that's really where our focus is going to be going forward.
Jeffrey Mailey: Mmm. That sounds great. I imagine your team is ⁓ about results. Gotta those results to Kelly. She's a... ⁓
BrndMethod Creative Agency: Yeah, good results, but good vibes too. We don't put ourselves in positions where status means coming up and we're all nervous. No, we ⁓ out a plan. We got, it's nothing to, we don't need any negative energy around us. Enough negativity going on. We coming in, we're doing something fun and cool and it's tied to results that are gonna help the company. That's a good thing.
Jeffrey Mailey: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. You have an open channel of communication. And guys are all on the same page about how to best go about creating the solutions for all of your clients.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: Absolutely.
Jeffrey Mailey: That's cool. it's been a pleasure. ⁓ been good getting ⁓ talk to you again, Lauren, learn more about brand method creative agency. I forward to seeing you guys grow in the next three to five years, learning ⁓ all of things about cloud cowork and cloud code and all these really, really fun topics. And yeah, been pleasure.
BrndMethod Creative Agency: Yeah. Thanks, Jeffrey, this has been great. Thank you so much.
Jeffrey Mailey: Thanks for coming on and I'll talk to you soon.
