Seth Hawthorne: All right, okay, welcome everyone to another episode of The Space Between hosted by me, Seth Hawthorne and my sidekick here, Deb Richardson. Hello, Deb. ⁓ Our guest today, well, you've spent nearly three decades in and around agencies and you now help agencies. Is that right? Am I about that right?
Deb Richardson: Bye for now. Hello?
Robin Bonn: steady on steady on I mean I mean it's right but I mean come on
Deb Richardson: What?
Seth Hawthorne: Yeah, you got a wealth of experience. And you now help agencies, you know, figure out who they really are and why anyone should in fact indeed care. Our guest is of course Robin Bond, the founder of Codefinary. You've advised close to 150 agencies. Is that correct, Robin? Oh, okay. Okay. And although I'm sure not at all at the same time.
Deb Richardson: You don't have to like it.
Robin Bonn: It's probably a bit north of that now, ⁓ but yeah, it's that kind of range.
Seth Hawthorne: ⁓ you're, you're the author of the international bestseller market of one. ⁓ which is great. urge everyone in agency land to buy and read that. I mean, it's really useful and helpful book for all those curious agencies out there. And you're also host of your own podcast, the immortal life of agencies. But Robin, we'd like to welcome you to our own podcast, the space between. So welcome to you and lovely to have you here.
Robin Bonn: Hahaha I am.
Deb Richardson: of me.
Robin Bonn: Thank you so much, I really appreciate it. It's lovely to be here.
Seth Hawthorne: Thank you. So to get into it, and I think I'm right in saying that Codefinary celebrates 10 years this year. Is that correct?
Robin Bonn: Well, kinda, yeah, like the opening, the day of opening the doors is maybe a little bit kind of varied. It's like when you set up your limited company, is it like your first gig? I mean, I don't really know, but it's about, we're in our 11th year, technically, so yeah, it's about We should have a party. That's probably the learning here.
Seth Hawthorne: about 10 years.
Deb Richardson: 10 years.
Seth Hawthorne: Definitely do that, definitely do. So are you able to share with us your journey ⁓ of Codefinery over those last 10 years? And is what you do, is that needed more than ever by agencies today, do feel?
Deb Richardson: Yeah, yeah, yeah, let's do it.
Robin Bonn: Well, I hope so. I mean, we've obviously tried to continually evolve the business to make sure that it continues to be relevant and continues to adapt to what's become an increasingly burning platform. I mean, I'll start with a bit of context, I suppose, in terms of what we do. So we're a consultancy, primarily. We also have an executive coaching practice. But our specialization is that we only deal with positioning and business transformation for agencies of all shapes and sizes. generally, the CEO or the owner will call us when they want to really refine what it is they're uniquely good at or evolve their business model increasingly, explicitly so, when they wanna sell their work at a premium. We basically sort of solve for agency commoditization is kind of the thing we solve for. And obviously that shows up in all sorts of different ways. But yeah, as you say, we've been going about 10 years, 150 plus clients over that time of all shapes and sizes and... disciplines and geographies and ownership models. So, you we've worked with, you know, the AKQAs and the McCanns and ⁓ and DDB for all the good it did them. Some of the big private equity backed ⁓ Indies like VCCP and Next 15 and MSQ, as well as loads of, you know, Indies, some of them famous, you know, analog folk and Amplify and obviously loads of Indies that are, you know, known in their own space, but perhaps not globally. So, so.
Deb Richardson: and probably everything that is fun.
Robin Bonn: So yeah, mean, that's kind of where we've evolved into. The origin story really was that I was ⁓ a sort of fully paid up member of the new business directors union, having always done various variations on selling over the course of my career. And I started in tech at about three years there, which I'm hugely grateful for getting a kind of grounding and a training that I probably wouldn't have got in agencies and then work my way up the agency food chain. So it got to a point where I was sort of senior and increasingly brought on to drive.
Deb Richardson: Thanks.
Robin Bonn: sort of transformative programmes, know, reposition this agency, how do we, you know, appeal to a different kind of buyer, how do we evolve our commercial model, that kind of stuff. And kind of candidly, I've kind of realised that was pretty good at making change happen in the first 12 months, but then the progress kind of slowed after that. And that's, you know, you kind of become part of the furniture a little bit, you've kind of won the battles, you can win, you're no longer new and sexy and exciting.
Deb Richardson: Thanks for watching. .
Robin Bonn: You know, you've got a day job, a team to run, all that stuff. So the sort of the core thesis, if you like, was that you could probably do more good from the outside looking into an agency than from the inside. So, and frankly, happily, luckily that was proved correct kind of from day one really. So back then, you know, we were there to really solve for differentiation. That's kind of how we set ourselves up and sort of addressing the, you know, a lot of the generic messaging in the agency world, you know, from sort of non-positioning nonsense like, you with a street culture agency, which is, no one knows what that means, or sort of platitudes or rearticulating agency value, like we insert brands into culture or we create an unfair share of attention for our clients. You know, that stuff just isn't particularly, it's not differentiating, it's generic, and it kind of, it causes all sorts of downstream problems from a confidence point of view within the agency as well as from a commercial point of view. So. It's kind of just to round out your question. I think how that's changed is that we're now very much in, you know, sort of business transformation space. It's funny reflecting on this the other day, it used to be that we, you perhaps talk to an agency and they would sort of pat us on the head and say, positioning proposition, don't worry, we can do that. That's our day job, you know, we've got this. And, you know, obviously not every client said that otherwise would have gone out of business. But you know, you'd hear that on a fairly regular basis. We've almost gone completely the other direction now. So if we show up talking about
Deb Richardson: Yeah.
Robin Bonn: you know, the book or talking about, you know, commoditization or, you know, positioning or proposition or whatever, people immediately leap to, ⁓ you can help us with the, you know, the organisational change and the culture change to can't you. So I think agencies, and this is, I think something that's been dramatically accelerated in recent times for obvious reasons, but they're more aware than ever, that, you know, there is is a, you know, this isn't about packaging the business, this is about fundamental business strategy. And it's about, ⁓ you know, what, what are the impediments?
Deb Richardson: .
Robin Bonn: you know, the sort of structural impediments, the cultural impediments, where's the inertia in, you know, transforming into the business we want to be. And I think people need help with that a lot of the time. And thankfully, that's where we're well set up to help.
Seth Hawthorne: Yeah. Yeah. And when you go into an agency, are you sort of welcomed with open arms? I is there resistance sometimes? I mean, obviously you've been invited in, but I mean, is there resistance that you find?
Robin Bonn: Hahaha!
Deb Richardson: love that question.
Robin Bonn: Yeah. Yeah, when we arrive, everybody without fail hears the songs of angels in the air. It's a beautiful moment. No, course not. No, mean, inevitably in any sort of multi-stakeholder environment, you know, we learned a long time ago, you need to be brought in by the CEO, because if there's any kind of upstream skepticism or, ⁓ you know, resistance, then that becomes...
Seth Hawthorne: Ha ha!
Robin Bonn: challenging to work through. And it's not that you can't work through it, it just takes energy from everybody and you waste time trying to frame things endlessly and you know, and all the rest of it. So for one, we get brought in by the most senior person or their, you know, them and their people. Inevitably, yes, there will be, you know, in any given board, there'll be different views about, ⁓ God, do we really need a bloody, another bloody consultant coming in? That's quite often because they've got consultant fatigue. Some of them, you know, in different regions might be flying and they're like, I don't need this. I've got a day job to get on with. don't, you know, I'm flying. Thanks very much. There's a little bit of, you you know, sort of it's fine for me. I don't need to get involved with this broader conversation. and I do, what's really interesting about that is that sometimes we'll be warned about it. ⁓ you know, the CEO will say, you know, be careful of, be careful of, of, Bob and Jane because they don't see to eye to eye. But the reality is that when there is some resistance,
Deb Richardson: Yeah.
Robin Bonn: for whatever reason, or there's maybe some what are reported as sort of violently different views held amongst the board. They're usually overstated, usually because the person is right in the mix of them and actually, know, generally agency people want the same thing. They wanna do good work, they wanna do good in the world, they wanna create a great environment for people to thrive in, they wanna make money, they wanna go home at the end of the day and see their families, et cetera. you know, if you can kind of ground what you're there to do in those commonalities, then the differences in perspectives tend to fade away pretty quickly.
Seth Hawthorne: Yeah.
Deb Richardson: Yeah.
Seth Hawthorne: Yeah. Yeah.
Deb Richardson: And I think also as well, know, if the seat, you know. the CEO, ⁓ if an agency is growing, it's going to get something right. And, you know, it could be tweaking and they might, yeah, the over expression of their differences, I get that. But also, you know, if they're running an agency and it's been successful, they'll be doing something right. It's just how do you pull it together? My quick question is, you know, I'm going to bring you in from the 10 years to three. What is the difference you've seen in the last three years and where do you think we're going to be in the next three years?
Robin Bonn: You Ooh, I mean, that's a good question. I mean, it's hard to answer that without kind of majoring on AI, I suppose. And it's sort of, it's really interesting what's happening in the industry. It's obviously a time of huge disruption, a lot of... Don't you, don't you, well, I mean, we got to be, you know, it's one of the reasons why the book, there's a sort of disclaimer at the front of the book about, this isn't going to pull any punches and it's going to be a bit kind of a difficult read up points. And you might find it a little bit uncomfortable reading.
Deb Richardson: and we're only about positive here on this podcast.
Seth Hawthorne: Robin's only about
Robin Bonn: but it comes from a good place, it comes from a place of affection and love for the industry and all the rest of it. there's no point being kind of Pollyanna-ish, everything's amazing, everything's gonna be great, not least because a shit ton of great people are struggling to find work. That sucks, it absolutely sucks for them and their family. So we can't kind of just ignore that. I do think we are in the middle of a very disruptive period that will lead us to a better place. And I think to your point about the last three years, excuse me, you know, the...
Deb Richardson: Yeah.
Robin Bonn: I suppose the reality is when AI kind of first came along and it was a, know, I say it first came, it's been around for decades, but when it first sort of hit our industry, everybody seemed to jump on it as if it was, you know, the sort of reassuring thought that the industry grabbed hold of to counteract the fear that was, you know, robots are gonna take all our jobs. Was that, don't worry, it's just a tool, it's just a set of tools, it's okay, it's like, you know, an abacus or it's like Excel or it's like a, you know, a drill for a carpenter, it's, you know, it's like, know, illustrator, you know, these things have come along, they haven't killed us before, it's just a set of tools. And I think there's a degree of truth in that. We can talk about the sort of seismic shift in the way that we think as populations, we can talk about it being another industrial revolution or a cognitive revolution. But from a practical point of view, I get that, you know, we majored on efficiency and what I'm starting to call AI's first act. Now, unsurprisingly, if we're suddenly starting to do things much quicker than we used to do them, then ⁓ it's hardly a surprise that clients have turned around and said, well, hang on a minute, you you've always told us that your value was measured in terms of the time it takes you to do stuff, which was a massive strategic error in judgment of the industry, you know, back from the early 80s. So if it's taking you less time, we want to pay you less. So that efficiency might have sort of given a sort of short term boost to profitability, but obviously clients have got wise and said, look, no, we're not paying that, don't be silly. So where do we go? Hence the industry leaping on the sort of, you know, different pricing models conversation, which again, many progressive agencies have been thinking about that for many, many years, not new, but now it's becoming much more mainstream to move away from time and materials. So I think what we're seeing now is I think a much more interesting evolution, sort of AI second act, if you like, where the industry is kind of coalescing around effectiveness. So not just we can do it faster, but we can do it better. And because better is a beautiful subjective term in a lot of instances. we're all again as an industry to one talking about taste and judgment. So the sort of human expertise angle is now coming to the fore. And I think there's a kind of a fork in the road here for agencies where we could as agencies do what we always do, which is everyone just adopt the same generic rhetoric around. And it almost is literally just taste and judgment. It seems to be the two words that we've centered on. ⁓ And it just becomes another kind of, you know, flavor in the sort of usual. patchwork quilt of noise in the industry. Or take the other route of the fork in the road and really apply a you know, an ownable take on taste and judgment and really be able to, you know, exploit what your individual agency has in terms of expertise and point of view. And what does its taste and judgment look like? What does it feel like? How can it be applied? And if we apply that to modern differentiation, that is, think, where lot of smart agencies are surfacing right now. So, you know, the reality is that
Deb Richardson: Thank you.
Seth Hawthorne: Thank the plan.
Robin Bonn: dealing with that efficiency problem by coming up with a new pricing model, for me, that's a non-starter. For one, you can't solve a commoditization problem with a new pricing model, but fundamentally, once you're seen as different by the clients that you care about, and of course, you can't care about all of them all the time, but once they see you as meaningfully different, and I mean, genuinely, tangibly meaningfully different, then you earn the right to have a different conversation with them and to show up differently and to sell differently. And once you can do that,
Seth Hawthorne: Yeah. Thank you.
Robin Bonn: which you've seen as a trusted advisor, you're bringing some scarcity into the mix, that earns you the right to have a different pricing conversation. So those three steps in that order, I think are gonna be increasingly important as we kind of move through this phase and into whatever comes next.
Seth Hawthorne: Peace out. So are you also talking there about sort of productisation as well? So agencies creating products as opposed to time and materials? Yes.
Robin Bonn: Yes, and again, we're very good at sort of using these terms in quite a blanket way without unpacking them. And again, the agencies that do it well are the ones that are sort of appreciate the nuance and how it applies to their individual marketplace, their individual culture, their individual setup, their expertise, etc. But there's a very, very broad spectrum of kind of strategic routes here. So a very simple term, you you might call it a product, but more like a sort of standalone package. So, you know,
Seth Hawthorne: Yes. Yes. Yes.
Robin Bonn: most agencies certainly would have come across, many would have implemented having like a fixed price discovery sprint. It's called X amount of thousand pounds or dollars or whatever, and this is what you get. And most agencies are used to that. You could argue that's a product, there's nuance around what is a product, what isn't, but at the other end of the scale, you can completely reinvent your commercial model. You can describe your, know, sort of reinvent as more of a platform business. You know, we've got WPP Open Pro, you know, it's a sort of mid-market self-service SaaS proposition.
Seth Hawthorne: Yes.
Robin Bonn: That's a hell of a long way away from a fixed price discovery sprint. So I think the fundamental question about productisation is, what is your business strategy? All of this stuff ladders up to what are you, where do you win, where do you not? So I think if you can ensure your definition of product is clear, and particularly how it helps your particular business achieve success for you and for your clients, that's a good place to start. The second thing I'd say is like, don't go too far too fast.
Seth Hawthorne: Yeah.
Robin Bonn: you know, there's a massive culture change involved with a more productized business from, you know, the customer's always right, don't worry, we can fix that. Let me give you those free amends, whatever it's going to be the sort of infinite level of customization that goes along with, you know, selling time, which would be fine if you recoup that time, but we don't, you know, the sort of, yeah, of course, we'll complete that spreadsheet for you. You know, here are our rate cards, feel free to compare like we like moving away from that, that set of biases, those habits, those beliefs.
Seth Hawthorne: Thank you.
Deb Richardson: I'm going to go ahead close the video.
Robin Bonn: that obsequious nature is a big shift. So yeah, it's a cultural shift, it's a strategic shift, but you've got to get really clear on what you mean and why you're adopting that approach.
Seth Hawthorne: And agencies, they can't do this without talent, without people. And we've talked about efficiency, you've talked about agencies laying off thousands of people. So what do you think is going to happen there? Because ⁓ junior people in agencies, I mean, that's kind of stopped at the moment because of this efficiency play. So is there a concern, do you think?
Deb Richardson: So.
Seth Hawthorne: for agencies in terms of nurturing talent.
Robin Bonn: I think there is definitely a concern. I think a lot of people are voicing it. I think actually from what I've read, and I don't claim to be the authority on this because I don't think there's a of definitive set of facts yet emerging, but there is arguably, the sort of stats, if you like, that support a reduction in entry level staff coming into the business. There's also a sort of an adjustment about an over hiring that went on post COVID.
Deb Richardson: Yeah. ⁓
Robin Bonn: So it's maybe not quite so clear cut as the headlines, particularly in the mainstream press. I don't even mean the trade press, but the mainstream press would have you believe. As an optimist, ⁓ I think, yes, we're gonna have some kind of commercial headwinds as people are investing in transformation, which might mean that in the short term, things like grad schemes get impacted, training will be impacted and is being impacted. So some of the softer investments certainly will probably, know, CEOs are having to make hard decisions and we're seeing that. But I think more broadly, I'm not sure I buy the idea that AI makes, you know, young people superfluous. Yeah, because I just think that their roles change as they come into the business. They don't have to do shitty jobs and pin dozens of cutouts of stuff to walls. They just have to, you know, they bring in an AI sensibility most likely.
Seth Hawthorne: Yeah.
Robin Bonn: They're still given guidance. They still get good at stuff that they weren't good at on the day they joined. So I don't fully buy this idea at all.
Seth Hawthorne: Yeah.
Deb Richardson: And it's interesting because we're out and about all the time, as are a lot of people, and we do hear different numbers being banded around. And obviously what Seth described is at one end. I'm going to go to the other end. ⁓ What's happening to those, you know, those grey hairs, the senior staff, that wisdom? Because in some reports we're hearing, hey, nothing's changing, their roles are just changing across the board, or we're hearing of mass layoffs. So take us to the other end. what's happening at the sort of the top end of the talent.
Robin Bonn: Well, I mean, again, we love these false binaries in our industry. They make for really simplistic headlines. We can all point to people in the middle parts of their career or even towards the latter part of their career who've lost their job recently. And it's very easy to imagine it's because they're on massive packages and the company they're working for need to save money. That is undoubtedly a real thing. But equally, we can point to agencies that are dramatically improving their average revenue per head. by monetizing the expertise that are hidden in the gaps between those two grain temples. So at the end of the day, I think this is one of the interesting facets of AI is that certainly right now, it's obviously easier to teach an old dog new tricks in terms of here's how Claude works versus trying to teach some young pup who is great on AI but doesn't have... 25 years of experience about how the world works and how humanity works and how agencies work and how client politics works. So I would argue that AI, assuming people are in a position to upskill themselves, AI actually offers an opportunity for older people to deliver even greater. I say older people, Jesus Christ, listen to me, but you know what I mean, in our industry.
Seth Hawthorne: Thanks.
Deb Richardson: Just cause Seth mentioned your 30 years, you know, it's like,
Robin Bonn: I know, I know, I'm feeling, ⁓ yeah, we'll gloss over that. So, but yeah, I do think it's, you know, we've all got to get good at new stuff and very bright people that can upskill themselves and find applications of, you know, ⁓ their abilities will be valuable to different types of organisations. And in that equation, your age doesn't really make a big difference. So, arguably, if you need more money,
Seth Hawthorne: Yeah.
Robin Bonn: because you're at a certain point in your life where you've at a certain salary point and yeah, maybe the onus is on you to have to demonstrate more value to that company, but arguably you've got a massive advantage because you've got the miles on the clock.
Seth Hawthorne: Yeah. So I mean, I'm sure that this will happen. Agencies seem to pop up all the time. But do you think there is space for new agencies in our sort of crowded ⁓ marketplace of agencies?
Robin Bonn: ⁓ 100%. I mean, it was ever thus. I mean, I think this is the sort of natural change agent in our industry. As much as we love these esteemed brands that have been around, agency brands have been around for 100 years or more or whatever, but none of them have a right to exist. we will see and are seeing great startups arriving. We saw it during COVID, obviously, Mischief is a brilliant example of that.
Seth Hawthorne: Yeah. Yes.
Robin Bonn: We've seen it since then with Uncharted, Uncommon is a relatively new agency. Yeah, we're seeing Ace of Hearts come along in maybe the last year or two. So these agencies all have an opportunity to kind of look at what went before and say, yeah, that worked, that was great, that bit didn't, that sucked, let's fix it. And that's the beautiful thing about it. We can argue that our industry is perhaps...
Seth Hawthorne: Amazing.
Robin Bonn: you know, less, I don't know, robust, if you like, in the arm, in the eyes of the C-suite, because we don't have a great deal of professional qualifications to rely on that sort of, you know, sets a bar for quality. But equally, the plus side of that is that any of us with a laptop and a table can get on and do this stuff. So, so yeah, I remain very optimistic. And as, I sort of argue in the book, it doesn't really matter how many agencies there are. You know, that only becomes a problem when they all look the same. So if the onus is on you to compete in a crowded market, it's actually beneficial that everyone else looks the same because then it makes it far easier for your agency to stand out and to be recognised. It really isn't. It's the perfect brief actually. So yeah, I'm very optimistic. One of the things we talk a lot about is the difference between oversupply and under differentiation. ⁓ you know, there's a real kind of, it's like, I think you have to be optimistic in this business. As I say, not kind of unrealistically so, but.
Seth Hawthorne: Yeah.
Deb Richardson: Yeah. Yeah, not that hard, is it? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I love that.
Robin Bonn: One of the things that went into the book was that we kind of codified what we'd learned about what the best agencies do differently. And ⁓ we've got sort of five principles which are kind of baked into it if you like. But the first one is we talk about believing in better. So it's really a sort of call for optimism and a call for being confident that you can make a better future than the one you have right now. So I think a big part of that is recognizing that as long as you continue to tell yourself that the market is oversupplied. There's so many agencies and clients held have all the power and what can you do? And it's like the world is happening to you. But once you realise actually that the market's just under differentiated, you kind of give yourself your authority back. You become the master of your own destiny again. You say, well, we can do things differently. We can tell a different story. Yeah.
Seth Hawthorne: Yeah. Yeah. So.
Deb Richardson: permission to go and be curious. just think, you talked about ⁓ earlier about going to the obvious, i.e. pricing models. The thing that I think is super exciting at the moment in this sector is, and frankly it's a sector all of us have loved and want to give back to and all of that stuff. But I just think we're innovative, we're agile, we're creative. And we just got to do it on ourselves, not just on our clients. And I think that's where I think it remains exciting as a sector. Tiny bit exhausted. We need to have a regroup. But I just think that's why I asked you the three year question. It's exciting to see where we're going to go next.
Robin Bonn: Yeah. I think you make a really important point there about ⁓ kind of taking responsibility. And I think it's a good life lesson generally is, you if you blame other people for the shit that you're facing, however, capable they may be, it doesn't help anybody. So I think, you know, whatever, whatever's happened to you, you know, the ability to sort of dust yourself down and say, right, okay, now what happens next? Big question, what happens next? And be able to take responsibility for that is absolutely crucial. So I think
Deb Richardson: I like.
Robin Bonn: you know, as much as I love many of the trade organisations and communities and trade bodies, etc. I think they have a very difficult brief to try and collectively raise the standards and particularly deal with this commoditisation issue that, you know, the kind of corner that agencies are painting themselves into, generally speaking. So it is a question of sort of physician heal thyself. It's funny, actually, that was so Chuck Rory Sutherland was kind enough to write a testimonial for the book. And he said physician heal thyself was was kind of a big part of what he said, which I think is so true. And
Seth Hawthorne: Yeah.
Deb Richardson: this. Yeah, absolutely.
Seth Hawthorne: bottle.
Robin Bonn: You know, if you can't be optimistic in your own ability to affect change, then my God, you're pushing water uphill, you know, even just emotionally on any given day. So that's not how I wanna spend my life.
Seth Hawthorne: Yeah. Yeah.
Deb Richardson: It goes back to all of those platitudes of,
Seth Hawthorne: and-
Deb Richardson: ⁓ cobbler fix your own shoes, you know, it's like we are at the end of the day we are running businesses and it's, you know, and we are privileged and blessed to be running those businesses and it's down to us to go and seek, you know, seek what the solutions are and I'm frankly I wouldn't want to be around a better equipped group of people. We can do that if we put our minds to it.
Robin Bonn: Yeah, yeah, I agree. I that lovely Margaret Mead quote that gets trotted out quite a lot. It's something like never forget that a small group of committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, no one else ever ever did. And I think I first nicked that from the West Wing. ⁓ But I think it's such a lovely ⁓ framing for, you know, if not, if not you then who?
Deb Richardson: Exactly.
Seth Hawthorne: Yeah.
Robin Bonn: And if not now, then when and you know, all those kind of a lot of the platitudes are true. I think the older I get, the more I realise that there's wisdom tied up in that stuff, which of course you don't, you you sort of poo poo it when you're young because you think you can change the world and you've, know, no one else has ever experienced what you've experienced. as I say, the older I get, the more I realise a lot of that stuff has is more profound than I might have given it credit for.
Deb Richardson: Yeah. . ⁓ that's so.
Seth Hawthorne: Talking about a small group of people, in the challenge of finding, creating, building your market of one, it any different based on agency size? you, going into a small organization versus a large organization, what are the challenges?
Robin Bonn: Yeah, it's a really good question because ⁓ it's funny. Everyone, if they don't believe that this stuff is possible, then everyone assumes that it's the other kind of part of that equation that have got it worse. So like the big agencies go, ⁓ no, this genuine differentiation lag, tangibly different clarity of where you are in the market. That's something only small agencies can do. Whereas small agencies will say, ⁓ no, this is something only the big agencies can do. And it's, it's largely fear talking, I think. And, know, an absence of believing an absence of belief and, know, to some degree, you know, things like a book and a podcast there to kind of help people realise that this stuff is very much possible. But yeah, in practical terms, it, you know, the mechanics of it are, ⁓ you know, more complex in a larger organisation. For obvious reasons, you have more people, you have more geographies, you have different nuances in terms of local market capabilities, or, you know, demand from
Seth Hawthorne: sure.
Robin Bonn: that local market or level of sophistication of that market, et cetera, et cetera. So inevitably there has to be some flex in the way that you're trying to describe a value proposition, for example. And equally in a larger organization, there's more complexity in terms of organizational change. There's more work to be done in terms of culture change. There are just more stakeholders to get to sort of step up and lead their teams in different ways. But fundamentally, it's no different to how it is in a single location, single office agency. The principles are still exactly the same. As I say, it's just a question of ⁓ kind of practical complexity. But as I say, it's no different really.
Seth Hawthorne: Yeah. And I guess it's ⁓ a task that never ⁓ stops. You have to keep working at it. So have you been brought back into agencies to kind of reignite the process?
Robin Bonn: ⁓ That's so interesting. That's so interesting. ⁓ no is the short answer. And ⁓ you can infer what you want from that either we've done a brilliant job first time and yeah, let's take the, you know, it was a shit show and they never hire us again. No, mean, no, it's a short answer because we, again, I think probably in the first five years of the business, again, to sort of be more serious on the first five years of the business, we were less, you know, less. ⁓
Seth Hawthorne: Right.
Deb Richardson: That's a very brave answer, Walter.
Seth Hawthorne: My work here is done.
Robin Bonn: we took less responsibility for the legacy of the strategic thinking that we had co-created with the agency. So on occasion, we'd do great work together and ⁓ it wasn't particularly well ⁓ operationalized or ⁓ in one occasion we did brilliant work and it didn't run because the agency changed ownership. Now stuff like that's gonna happen. But I think if you just sort of do the thinking bit and then don't help them translate it into action, then you're kind of at the mercy of. business as usual getting in the way or a change of ownership or any one of a hundred predictable things that can get in the way of that happening. I think latterly, we've increasingly got much better and been increasingly asked, demanded to be much, much better. So that we now have a much clearer product set around helping that transition be real. So we talk about three phases to creating a market of one, one of which is to define what on earth it means in this business. So the sort of the strategy bit. The second bit is like, okay, great, well done. We've done some cool stuff in Miro. So what, you know, the tills are not ringing yet. What does this implementation plan look like? So, you know, how do we sort of bridge the gap between, you know, a motivated aligned leadership team and real clarity over where we win? How do we bring that, make those changes happen in the business? You know, what are the work streams? Who's doing what, et cetera, et cetera. What are the blockers? How do we mitigate risk, et cetera? And then the third phase is about, great, you've now got an implementation plan. also doesn't mean anything yet. How do we actually kind of stand shoulder to shoulder with you, own some of the work streams, oversee them, make sure that stuff happens, make sure that you don't again get lost in business as usual, and sort of go through, know, sort of take it through to, you know, actual commercial activation. How does this, you know, how does this market of one actually help you command a premium? How does genuine differentiation show up in, you know, in your accounts, if you like? So when we do that, there shouldn't be any cause for us to come back in. And you know, we brought back in to do executive leadership coaching and stuff like that. That's often, you know, kind of goes hand in hand. But what we do have, and happily is we have some frequent flyers. So as I lovingly call them, so people that are, you know, have moved, I think was one CEO that has hired us, I think three times. That's good. Yeah, we like that. And, and also there was another brilliant situation where we
Deb Richardson: Yeah.
Seth Hawthorne: That's good.
Robin Bonn: worked with one agency in a group and then we worked with another agency in the same group and then they merged and then we worked with the combined entity and did it for a third time. So another version of frequent flyer. So no, mean, obviously, it doesn't always work like that, painting up the sort of perfect picture of it. There are always bumps along the way, everything has to be adapted to what's coming down the wires and...
Seth Hawthorne: Yeah.
Robin Bonn: know, events getting in the way, know, stuff happens, but, you know, generally speaking, we've built a business that really executes this stuff rather than just sort of initiating it. And that I'm really proud of.
Seth Hawthorne: Yeah. Amazing. So, I mean, if you're an agency founder leader listening ⁓ to this episode, how would you like agency leaders to feel about the industry that they're in?
Robin Bonn: yeah, good question. mean, I don't think I really have a right to ⁓ suggest how they feel. I can only really speak from my own perspective. I think now is an opportunity for agency leaders ⁓ to, I suppose, accept that the proposition, let's say, it's not just a cool line in your creds, it's not just a tagline that goes on your email signature. It's not just some cool shit to say to people. It's not packaging, it's business strategy. I think, you know, recognising that there needs to be a level of strategic rigour which is often missing, what we often see is that having that grounding ⁓ and that clarity, it builds a deeper conviction in where you're taking your business and that kind of protects you from the ups and downs of everyday business as usual. So I suspect that...
Deb Richardson: it.
Robin Bonn: that feeling of confidence, that feeling of actually, you know what, I can now build the agency I've always wanted to run. There's all sorts of positive emotions that will come out for that. But it's very different, I think, for each person. But yeah, I'd like to hope we contribute to a level of optimism that that stuff is possible and that the benefits are entirely within reach.
Seth Hawthorne: Yeah, yeah.
Deb Richardson: And I think you ⁓ have to make time to do the work, don't you? Do the thinking, do the work, look at yourself as we've mentioned it a couple of times as we look at clients. So I think that's the first big decision. Actually, I'm gonna do this and I'm gonna do it properly.
Robin Bonn: 100%, 100%. And again, we gave up being in the education business a long time ago. You we're not there to sort of persuade or convince or anything like that, you should do this because I think people need to reach that on their own. And of course, we furnish that, you know, that sort of journey with, with, you know, a book and podcasts and, you know, stuff like this, which is all good. But there's no, in my experience, there's very little point trying to persuade an agency CEO that this stuff is important. They have to reach that conclusion for themselves. And And that's when they're committed, that's when they become ready to make meaningful change happen. ⁓ And that's when getting support from us or anyone else, when the timing becomes right.
Seth Hawthorne: That's amazing. Robin, thank you so much. ⁓ Really interesting conversation. ⁓ And if you are an agency leader out there listening and you want to get in touch with Robin, how should they get in touch with you?
Robin Bonn: Thank you. So I'm gonna fall foul of the old adage about if you throw one ball at someone, they'll catch it. If you throw three, they'll drop all three, but ⁓ screw that. So we've alluded to the book a couple of times. So it's called Market of One, how your agency could rewrite the rules and create a lasting competitive advantage. There's a lot in there, I think, that unpack some of the things I've alluded to. So it should be a fun read. It should be a challenging read. It's written with a lot of real world perspective as well. So that's a good place to start.
Deb Richardson: is.
Robin Bonn: The second thing is if you like podcasts, obviously listen to this one, but also listen to our the immortal life of agencies as you've heard about. we basically get very senior agency people to talk about what they're optimistic about and cool stuff they've done. And then the last thing I would give you, which hopefully is useful, we have a diagnostic that we've built, which is very helpful because it's kind of codifies those five principles that I alluded to earlier. So what is it that the best agencies are doing differently in form? the questions in this questionnaire. So it's just 20 questions, you get a bespoke report out of the back of it. if you go to, I will, I will indeed. Yes, and it's codifinary.com slash DQ for diagnostic questionnaire. I'll ping you the link.
Deb Richardson: Do you want to send us a link to that? And we'll put it in the comments. Okay, we'll find that. And I personally just want to thank you for mentioning the West Wing. It's a TV program that I get a lot of my life inspiration from. So thank you for mentioning it.
Robin Bonn: you No, was funny enough, it came up yesterday in, ⁓ I was talking to an agency chief of staff, it's quite a common role in the US, but not so well known over here. And of course, ⁓ most of the people in the UK here, chief of staff with it, it's Leo McGarry, that's the end of that conversation.
Deb Richardson: Leo's the guy. I was about to say I've learnt a lot from Josh and CJ and Sam over the years so thanks for mentioning it.
Seth Hawthorne: Yeah.
Robin Bonn: Yeah, yep, yep, yep. I still can't put my jacket on like President Bartlett, but one day I'll get there.
Seth Hawthorne: Well, thank you.
Deb Richardson: But we can keep trying them. Thank you.
Seth Hawthorne: Thank very much, Robin. Thank you. And best of luck with all the mods over the bank holiday weekend. I'm sure they'll be out in force.
Robin Bonn: I'm out of here, I'm going to America.
Deb Richardson: Yeah, I was going to say and enjoy, enjoy mirroring. think you're going to mirror on you.
Robin Bonn: I mean, Austin, I'm gonna need to take a big suitcase. It's like 35 degrees in Austin and then it's brass monkeys in New York. but no, we'll have a lovely time. Thank you very much. It's been a real pleasure. Yeah, wonderful. Thanks, Deb. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Cheers, Seth. Take care, bye.
Deb Richardson: Well, have a great time and see you when you get back. ⁓
Seth Hawthorne: Thank you very much.
Deb Richardson: Bye for now. Hello?
Robin Bonn: steady on steady on I mean I mean it's right but I mean come on
Deb Richardson: What?
Seth Hawthorne: Yeah, you got a wealth of experience. And you now help agencies, you know, figure out who they really are and why anyone should in fact indeed care. Our guest is of course Robin Bond, the founder of Codefinary. You've advised close to 150 agencies. Is that correct, Robin? Oh, okay. Okay. And although I'm sure not at all at the same time.
Deb Richardson: You don't have to like it.
Robin Bonn: It's probably a bit north of that now, ⁓ but yeah, it's that kind of range.
Seth Hawthorne: ⁓ you're, you're the author of the international bestseller market of one. ⁓ which is great. urge everyone in agency land to buy and read that. I mean, it's really useful and helpful book for all those curious agencies out there. And you're also host of your own podcast, the immortal life of agencies. But Robin, we'd like to welcome you to our own podcast, the space between. So welcome to you and lovely to have you here.
Robin Bonn: Hahaha I am.
Deb Richardson: of me.
Robin Bonn: Thank you so much, I really appreciate it. It's lovely to be here.
Seth Hawthorne: Thank you. So to get into it, and I think I'm right in saying that Codefinary celebrates 10 years this year. Is that correct?
Robin Bonn: Well, kinda, yeah, like the opening, the day of opening the doors is maybe a little bit kind of varied. It's like when you set up your limited company, is it like your first gig? I mean, I don't really know, but it's about, we're in our 11th year, technically, so yeah, it's about We should have a party. That's probably the learning here.
Seth Hawthorne: about 10 years.
Deb Richardson: 10 years.
Seth Hawthorne: Definitely do that, definitely do. So are you able to share with us your journey ⁓ of Codefinery over those last 10 years? And is what you do, is that needed more than ever by agencies today, do feel?
Deb Richardson: Yeah, yeah, yeah, let's do it.
Robin Bonn: Well, I hope so. I mean, we've obviously tried to continually evolve the business to make sure that it continues to be relevant and continues to adapt to what's become an increasingly burning platform. I mean, I'll start with a bit of context, I suppose, in terms of what we do. So we're a consultancy, primarily. We also have an executive coaching practice. But our specialization is that we only deal with positioning and business transformation for agencies of all shapes and sizes. generally, the CEO or the owner will call us when they want to really refine what it is they're uniquely good at or evolve their business model increasingly, explicitly so, when they wanna sell their work at a premium. We basically sort of solve for agency commoditization is kind of the thing we solve for. And obviously that shows up in all sorts of different ways. But yeah, as you say, we've been going about 10 years, 150 plus clients over that time of all shapes and sizes and... disciplines and geographies and ownership models. So, you we've worked with, you know, the AKQAs and the McCanns and ⁓ and DDB for all the good it did them. Some of the big private equity backed ⁓ Indies like VCCP and Next 15 and MSQ, as well as loads of, you know, Indies, some of them famous, you know, analog folk and Amplify and obviously loads of Indies that are, you know, known in their own space, but perhaps not globally. So, so.
Deb Richardson: and probably everything that is fun.
Robin Bonn: So yeah, mean, that's kind of where we've evolved into. The origin story really was that I was ⁓ a sort of fully paid up member of the new business directors union, having always done various variations on selling over the course of my career. And I started in tech at about three years there, which I'm hugely grateful for getting a kind of grounding and a training that I probably wouldn't have got in agencies and then work my way up the agency food chain. So it got to a point where I was sort of senior and increasingly brought on to drive.
Deb Richardson: Thanks.
Robin Bonn: sort of transformative programmes, know, reposition this agency, how do we, you know, appeal to a different kind of buyer, how do we evolve our commercial model, that kind of stuff. And kind of candidly, I've kind of realised that was pretty good at making change happen in the first 12 months, but then the progress kind of slowed after that. And that's, you know, you kind of become part of the furniture a little bit, you've kind of won the battles, you can win, you're no longer new and sexy and exciting.
Deb Richardson: Thanks for watching. .
Robin Bonn: You know, you've got a day job, a team to run, all that stuff. So the sort of the core thesis, if you like, was that you could probably do more good from the outside looking into an agency than from the inside. So, and frankly, happily, luckily that was proved correct kind of from day one really. So back then, you know, we were there to really solve for differentiation. That's kind of how we set ourselves up and sort of addressing the, you know, a lot of the generic messaging in the agency world, you know, from sort of non-positioning nonsense like, you with a street culture agency, which is, no one knows what that means, or sort of platitudes or rearticulating agency value, like we insert brands into culture or we create an unfair share of attention for our clients. You know, that stuff just isn't particularly, it's not differentiating, it's generic, and it kind of, it causes all sorts of downstream problems from a confidence point of view within the agency as well as from a commercial point of view. So. It's kind of just to round out your question. I think how that's changed is that we're now very much in, you know, sort of business transformation space. It's funny reflecting on this the other day, it used to be that we, you perhaps talk to an agency and they would sort of pat us on the head and say, positioning proposition, don't worry, we can do that. That's our day job, you know, we've got this. And, you know, obviously not every client said that otherwise would have gone out of business. But you know, you'd hear that on a fairly regular basis. We've almost gone completely the other direction now. So if we show up talking about
Deb Richardson: Yeah.
Robin Bonn: you know, the book or talking about, you know, commoditization or, you know, positioning or proposition or whatever, people immediately leap to, ⁓ you can help us with the, you know, the organisational change and the culture change to can't you. So I think agencies, and this is, I think something that's been dramatically accelerated in recent times for obvious reasons, but they're more aware than ever, that, you know, there is is a, you know, this isn't about packaging the business, this is about fundamental business strategy. And it's about, ⁓ you know, what, what are the impediments?
Deb Richardson: .
Robin Bonn: you know, the sort of structural impediments, the cultural impediments, where's the inertia in, you know, transforming into the business we want to be. And I think people need help with that a lot of the time. And thankfully, that's where we're well set up to help.
Seth Hawthorne: Yeah. Yeah. And when you go into an agency, are you sort of welcomed with open arms? I is there resistance sometimes? I mean, obviously you've been invited in, but I mean, is there resistance that you find?
Robin Bonn: Hahaha!
Deb Richardson: love that question.
Robin Bonn: Yeah. Yeah, when we arrive, everybody without fail hears the songs of angels in the air. It's a beautiful moment. No, course not. No, mean, inevitably in any sort of multi-stakeholder environment, you know, we learned a long time ago, you need to be brought in by the CEO, because if there's any kind of upstream skepticism or, ⁓ you know, resistance, then that becomes...
Seth Hawthorne: Ha ha!
Robin Bonn: challenging to work through. And it's not that you can't work through it, it just takes energy from everybody and you waste time trying to frame things endlessly and you know, and all the rest of it. So for one, we get brought in by the most senior person or their, you know, them and their people. Inevitably, yes, there will be, you know, in any given board, there'll be different views about, ⁓ God, do we really need a bloody, another bloody consultant coming in? That's quite often because they've got consultant fatigue. Some of them, you know, in different regions might be flying and they're like, I don't need this. I've got a day job to get on with. don't, you know, I'm flying. Thanks very much. There's a little bit of, you you know, sort of it's fine for me. I don't need to get involved with this broader conversation. and I do, what's really interesting about that is that sometimes we'll be warned about it. ⁓ you know, the CEO will say, you know, be careful of, be careful of, of, Bob and Jane because they don't see to eye to eye. But the reality is that when there is some resistance,
Deb Richardson: Yeah.
Robin Bonn: for whatever reason, or there's maybe some what are reported as sort of violently different views held amongst the board. They're usually overstated, usually because the person is right in the mix of them and actually, know, generally agency people want the same thing. They wanna do good work, they wanna do good in the world, they wanna create a great environment for people to thrive in, they wanna make money, they wanna go home at the end of the day and see their families, et cetera. you know, if you can kind of ground what you're there to do in those commonalities, then the differences in perspectives tend to fade away pretty quickly.
Seth Hawthorne: Yeah.
Deb Richardson: Yeah.
Seth Hawthorne: Yeah. Yeah.
Deb Richardson: And I think also as well, know, if the seat, you know. the CEO, ⁓ if an agency is growing, it's going to get something right. And, you know, it could be tweaking and they might, yeah, the over expression of their differences, I get that. But also, you know, if they're running an agency and it's been successful, they'll be doing something right. It's just how do you pull it together? My quick question is, you know, I'm going to bring you in from the 10 years to three. What is the difference you've seen in the last three years and where do you think we're going to be in the next three years?
Robin Bonn: You Ooh, I mean, that's a good question. I mean, it's hard to answer that without kind of majoring on AI, I suppose. And it's sort of, it's really interesting what's happening in the industry. It's obviously a time of huge disruption, a lot of... Don't you, don't you, well, I mean, we got to be, you know, it's one of the reasons why the book, there's a sort of disclaimer at the front of the book about, this isn't going to pull any punches and it's going to be a bit kind of a difficult read up points. And you might find it a little bit uncomfortable reading.
Deb Richardson: and we're only about positive here on this podcast.
Seth Hawthorne: Robin's only about
Robin Bonn: but it comes from a good place, it comes from a place of affection and love for the industry and all the rest of it. there's no point being kind of Pollyanna-ish, everything's amazing, everything's gonna be great, not least because a shit ton of great people are struggling to find work. That sucks, it absolutely sucks for them and their family. So we can't kind of just ignore that. I do think we are in the middle of a very disruptive period that will lead us to a better place. And I think to your point about the last three years, excuse me, you know, the...
Deb Richardson: Yeah.
Robin Bonn: I suppose the reality is when AI kind of first came along and it was a, know, I say it first came, it's been around for decades, but when it first sort of hit our industry, everybody seemed to jump on it as if it was, you know, the sort of reassuring thought that the industry grabbed hold of to counteract the fear that was, you know, robots are gonna take all our jobs. Was that, don't worry, it's just a tool, it's just a set of tools, it's okay, it's like, you know, an abacus or it's like Excel or it's like a, you know, a drill for a carpenter, it's, you know, it's like, know, illustrator, you know, these things have come along, they haven't killed us before, it's just a set of tools. And I think there's a degree of truth in that. We can talk about the sort of seismic shift in the way that we think as populations, we can talk about it being another industrial revolution or a cognitive revolution. But from a practical point of view, I get that, you know, we majored on efficiency and what I'm starting to call AI's first act. Now, unsurprisingly, if we're suddenly starting to do things much quicker than we used to do them, then ⁓ it's hardly a surprise that clients have turned around and said, well, hang on a minute, you you've always told us that your value was measured in terms of the time it takes you to do stuff, which was a massive strategic error in judgment of the industry, you know, back from the early 80s. So if it's taking you less time, we want to pay you less. So that efficiency might have sort of given a sort of short term boost to profitability, but obviously clients have got wise and said, look, no, we're not paying that, don't be silly. So where do we go? Hence the industry leaping on the sort of, you know, different pricing models conversation, which again, many progressive agencies have been thinking about that for many, many years, not new, but now it's becoming much more mainstream to move away from time and materials. So I think what we're seeing now is I think a much more interesting evolution, sort of AI second act, if you like, where the industry is kind of coalescing around effectiveness. So not just we can do it faster, but we can do it better. And because better is a beautiful subjective term in a lot of instances. we're all again as an industry to one talking about taste and judgment. So the sort of human expertise angle is now coming to the fore. And I think there's a kind of a fork in the road here for agencies where we could as agencies do what we always do, which is everyone just adopt the same generic rhetoric around. And it almost is literally just taste and judgment. It seems to be the two words that we've centered on. ⁓ And it just becomes another kind of, you know, flavor in the sort of usual. patchwork quilt of noise in the industry. Or take the other route of the fork in the road and really apply a you know, an ownable take on taste and judgment and really be able to, you know, exploit what your individual agency has in terms of expertise and point of view. And what does its taste and judgment look like? What does it feel like? How can it be applied? And if we apply that to modern differentiation, that is, think, where lot of smart agencies are surfacing right now. So, you know, the reality is that
Deb Richardson: Thank you.
Seth Hawthorne: Thank the plan.
Robin Bonn: dealing with that efficiency problem by coming up with a new pricing model, for me, that's a non-starter. For one, you can't solve a commoditization problem with a new pricing model, but fundamentally, once you're seen as different by the clients that you care about, and of course, you can't care about all of them all the time, but once they see you as meaningfully different, and I mean, genuinely, tangibly meaningfully different, then you earn the right to have a different conversation with them and to show up differently and to sell differently. And once you can do that,
Seth Hawthorne: Yeah. Thank you.
Robin Bonn: which you've seen as a trusted advisor, you're bringing some scarcity into the mix, that earns you the right to have a different pricing conversation. So those three steps in that order, I think are gonna be increasingly important as we kind of move through this phase and into whatever comes next.
Seth Hawthorne: Peace out. So are you also talking there about sort of productisation as well? So agencies creating products as opposed to time and materials? Yes.
Robin Bonn: Yes, and again, we're very good at sort of using these terms in quite a blanket way without unpacking them. And again, the agencies that do it well are the ones that are sort of appreciate the nuance and how it applies to their individual marketplace, their individual culture, their individual setup, their expertise, etc. But there's a very, very broad spectrum of kind of strategic routes here. So a very simple term, you you might call it a product, but more like a sort of standalone package. So, you know,
Seth Hawthorne: Yes. Yes. Yes.
Robin Bonn: most agencies certainly would have come across, many would have implemented having like a fixed price discovery sprint. It's called X amount of thousand pounds or dollars or whatever, and this is what you get. And most agencies are used to that. You could argue that's a product, there's nuance around what is a product, what isn't, but at the other end of the scale, you can completely reinvent your commercial model. You can describe your, know, sort of reinvent as more of a platform business. You know, we've got WPP Open Pro, you know, it's a sort of mid-market self-service SaaS proposition.
Seth Hawthorne: Yes.
Robin Bonn: That's a hell of a long way away from a fixed price discovery sprint. So I think the fundamental question about productisation is, what is your business strategy? All of this stuff ladders up to what are you, where do you win, where do you not? So I think if you can ensure your definition of product is clear, and particularly how it helps your particular business achieve success for you and for your clients, that's a good place to start. The second thing I'd say is like, don't go too far too fast.
Seth Hawthorne: Yeah.
Robin Bonn: you know, there's a massive culture change involved with a more productized business from, you know, the customer's always right, don't worry, we can fix that. Let me give you those free amends, whatever it's going to be the sort of infinite level of customization that goes along with, you know, selling time, which would be fine if you recoup that time, but we don't, you know, the sort of, yeah, of course, we'll complete that spreadsheet for you. You know, here are our rate cards, feel free to compare like we like moving away from that, that set of biases, those habits, those beliefs.
Seth Hawthorne: Thank you.
Deb Richardson: I'm going to go ahead close the video.
Robin Bonn: that obsequious nature is a big shift. So yeah, it's a cultural shift, it's a strategic shift, but you've got to get really clear on what you mean and why you're adopting that approach.
Seth Hawthorne: And agencies, they can't do this without talent, without people. And we've talked about efficiency, you've talked about agencies laying off thousands of people. So what do you think is going to happen there? Because ⁓ junior people in agencies, I mean, that's kind of stopped at the moment because of this efficiency play. So is there a concern, do you think?
Deb Richardson: So.
Seth Hawthorne: for agencies in terms of nurturing talent.
Robin Bonn: I think there is definitely a concern. I think a lot of people are voicing it. I think actually from what I've read, and I don't claim to be the authority on this because I don't think there's a of definitive set of facts yet emerging, but there is arguably, the sort of stats, if you like, that support a reduction in entry level staff coming into the business. There's also a sort of an adjustment about an over hiring that went on post COVID.
Deb Richardson: Yeah. ⁓
Robin Bonn: So it's maybe not quite so clear cut as the headlines, particularly in the mainstream press. I don't even mean the trade press, but the mainstream press would have you believe. As an optimist, ⁓ I think, yes, we're gonna have some kind of commercial headwinds as people are investing in transformation, which might mean that in the short term, things like grad schemes get impacted, training will be impacted and is being impacted. So some of the softer investments certainly will probably, know, CEOs are having to make hard decisions and we're seeing that. But I think more broadly, I'm not sure I buy the idea that AI makes, you know, young people superfluous. Yeah, because I just think that their roles change as they come into the business. They don't have to do shitty jobs and pin dozens of cutouts of stuff to walls. They just have to, you know, they bring in an AI sensibility most likely.
Seth Hawthorne: Yeah.
Robin Bonn: They're still given guidance. They still get good at stuff that they weren't good at on the day they joined. So I don't fully buy this idea at all.
Seth Hawthorne: Yeah.
Deb Richardson: And it's interesting because we're out and about all the time, as are a lot of people, and we do hear different numbers being banded around. And obviously what Seth described is at one end. I'm going to go to the other end. ⁓ What's happening to those, you know, those grey hairs, the senior staff, that wisdom? Because in some reports we're hearing, hey, nothing's changing, their roles are just changing across the board, or we're hearing of mass layoffs. So take us to the other end. what's happening at the sort of the top end of the talent.
Robin Bonn: Well, I mean, again, we love these false binaries in our industry. They make for really simplistic headlines. We can all point to people in the middle parts of their career or even towards the latter part of their career who've lost their job recently. And it's very easy to imagine it's because they're on massive packages and the company they're working for need to save money. That is undoubtedly a real thing. But equally, we can point to agencies that are dramatically improving their average revenue per head. by monetizing the expertise that are hidden in the gaps between those two grain temples. So at the end of the day, I think this is one of the interesting facets of AI is that certainly right now, it's obviously easier to teach an old dog new tricks in terms of here's how Claude works versus trying to teach some young pup who is great on AI but doesn't have... 25 years of experience about how the world works and how humanity works and how agencies work and how client politics works. So I would argue that AI, assuming people are in a position to upskill themselves, AI actually offers an opportunity for older people to deliver even greater. I say older people, Jesus Christ, listen to me, but you know what I mean, in our industry.
Seth Hawthorne: Thanks.
Deb Richardson: Just cause Seth mentioned your 30 years, you know, it's like,
Robin Bonn: I know, I know, I'm feeling, ⁓ yeah, we'll gloss over that. So, but yeah, I do think it's, you know, we've all got to get good at new stuff and very bright people that can upskill themselves and find applications of, you know, ⁓ their abilities will be valuable to different types of organisations. And in that equation, your age doesn't really make a big difference. So, arguably, if you need more money,
Seth Hawthorne: Yeah.
Robin Bonn: because you're at a certain point in your life where you've at a certain salary point and yeah, maybe the onus is on you to have to demonstrate more value to that company, but arguably you've got a massive advantage because you've got the miles on the clock.
Seth Hawthorne: Yeah. So I mean, I'm sure that this will happen. Agencies seem to pop up all the time. But do you think there is space for new agencies in our sort of crowded ⁓ marketplace of agencies?
Robin Bonn: ⁓ 100%. I mean, it was ever thus. I mean, I think this is the sort of natural change agent in our industry. As much as we love these esteemed brands that have been around, agency brands have been around for 100 years or more or whatever, but none of them have a right to exist. we will see and are seeing great startups arriving. We saw it during COVID, obviously, Mischief is a brilliant example of that.
Seth Hawthorne: Yeah. Yes.
Robin Bonn: We've seen it since then with Uncharted, Uncommon is a relatively new agency. Yeah, we're seeing Ace of Hearts come along in maybe the last year or two. So these agencies all have an opportunity to kind of look at what went before and say, yeah, that worked, that was great, that bit didn't, that sucked, let's fix it. And that's the beautiful thing about it. We can argue that our industry is perhaps...
Seth Hawthorne: Amazing.
Robin Bonn: you know, less, I don't know, robust, if you like, in the arm, in the eyes of the C-suite, because we don't have a great deal of professional qualifications to rely on that sort of, you know, sets a bar for quality. But equally, the plus side of that is that any of us with a laptop and a table can get on and do this stuff. So, so yeah, I remain very optimistic. And as, I sort of argue in the book, it doesn't really matter how many agencies there are. You know, that only becomes a problem when they all look the same. So if the onus is on you to compete in a crowded market, it's actually beneficial that everyone else looks the same because then it makes it far easier for your agency to stand out and to be recognised. It really isn't. It's the perfect brief actually. So yeah, I'm very optimistic. One of the things we talk a lot about is the difference between oversupply and under differentiation. ⁓ you know, there's a real kind of, it's like, I think you have to be optimistic in this business. As I say, not kind of unrealistically so, but.
Seth Hawthorne: Yeah.
Deb Richardson: Yeah. Yeah, not that hard, is it? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I love that.
Robin Bonn: One of the things that went into the book was that we kind of codified what we'd learned about what the best agencies do differently. And ⁓ we've got sort of five principles which are kind of baked into it if you like. But the first one is we talk about believing in better. So it's really a sort of call for optimism and a call for being confident that you can make a better future than the one you have right now. So I think a big part of that is recognizing that as long as you continue to tell yourself that the market is oversupplied. There's so many agencies and clients held have all the power and what can you do? And it's like the world is happening to you. But once you realise actually that the market's just under differentiated, you kind of give yourself your authority back. You become the master of your own destiny again. You say, well, we can do things differently. We can tell a different story. Yeah.
Seth Hawthorne: Yeah. Yeah. So.
Deb Richardson: permission to go and be curious. just think, you talked about ⁓ earlier about going to the obvious, i.e. pricing models. The thing that I think is super exciting at the moment in this sector is, and frankly it's a sector all of us have loved and want to give back to and all of that stuff. But I just think we're innovative, we're agile, we're creative. And we just got to do it on ourselves, not just on our clients. And I think that's where I think it remains exciting as a sector. Tiny bit exhausted. We need to have a regroup. But I just think that's why I asked you the three year question. It's exciting to see where we're going to go next.
Robin Bonn: Yeah. I think you make a really important point there about ⁓ kind of taking responsibility. And I think it's a good life lesson generally is, you if you blame other people for the shit that you're facing, however, capable they may be, it doesn't help anybody. So I think, you know, whatever, whatever's happened to you, you know, the ability to sort of dust yourself down and say, right, okay, now what happens next? Big question, what happens next? And be able to take responsibility for that is absolutely crucial. So I think
Deb Richardson: I like.
Robin Bonn: you know, as much as I love many of the trade organisations and communities and trade bodies, etc. I think they have a very difficult brief to try and collectively raise the standards and particularly deal with this commoditisation issue that, you know, the kind of corner that agencies are painting themselves into, generally speaking. So it is a question of sort of physician heal thyself. It's funny, actually, that was so Chuck Rory Sutherland was kind enough to write a testimonial for the book. And he said physician heal thyself was was kind of a big part of what he said, which I think is so true. And
Seth Hawthorne: Yeah.
Deb Richardson: this. Yeah, absolutely.
Seth Hawthorne: bottle.
Robin Bonn: You know, if you can't be optimistic in your own ability to affect change, then my God, you're pushing water uphill, you know, even just emotionally on any given day. So that's not how I wanna spend my life.
Seth Hawthorne: Yeah. Yeah.
Deb Richardson: It goes back to all of those platitudes of,
Seth Hawthorne: and-
Deb Richardson: ⁓ cobbler fix your own shoes, you know, it's like we are at the end of the day we are running businesses and it's, you know, and we are privileged and blessed to be running those businesses and it's down to us to go and seek, you know, seek what the solutions are and I'm frankly I wouldn't want to be around a better equipped group of people. We can do that if we put our minds to it.
Robin Bonn: Yeah, yeah, I agree. I that lovely Margaret Mead quote that gets trotted out quite a lot. It's something like never forget that a small group of committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, no one else ever ever did. And I think I first nicked that from the West Wing. ⁓ But I think it's such a lovely ⁓ framing for, you know, if not, if not you then who?
Deb Richardson: Exactly.
Seth Hawthorne: Yeah.
Robin Bonn: And if not now, then when and you know, all those kind of a lot of the platitudes are true. I think the older I get, the more I realise that there's wisdom tied up in that stuff, which of course you don't, you you sort of poo poo it when you're young because you think you can change the world and you've, know, no one else has ever experienced what you've experienced. as I say, the older I get, the more I realise a lot of that stuff has is more profound than I might have given it credit for.
Deb Richardson: Yeah. . ⁓ that's so.
Seth Hawthorne: Talking about a small group of people, in the challenge of finding, creating, building your market of one, it any different based on agency size? you, going into a small organization versus a large organization, what are the challenges?
Robin Bonn: Yeah, it's a really good question because ⁓ it's funny. Everyone, if they don't believe that this stuff is possible, then everyone assumes that it's the other kind of part of that equation that have got it worse. So like the big agencies go, ⁓ no, this genuine differentiation lag, tangibly different clarity of where you are in the market. That's something only small agencies can do. Whereas small agencies will say, ⁓ no, this is something only the big agencies can do. And it's, it's largely fear talking, I think. And, know, an absence of believing an absence of belief and, know, to some degree, you know, things like a book and a podcast there to kind of help people realise that this stuff is very much possible. But yeah, in practical terms, it, you know, the mechanics of it are, ⁓ you know, more complex in a larger organisation. For obvious reasons, you have more people, you have more geographies, you have different nuances in terms of local market capabilities, or, you know, demand from
Seth Hawthorne: sure.
Robin Bonn: that local market or level of sophistication of that market, et cetera, et cetera. So inevitably there has to be some flex in the way that you're trying to describe a value proposition, for example. And equally in a larger organization, there's more complexity in terms of organizational change. There's more work to be done in terms of culture change. There are just more stakeholders to get to sort of step up and lead their teams in different ways. But fundamentally, it's no different to how it is in a single location, single office agency. The principles are still exactly the same. As I say, it's just a question of ⁓ kind of practical complexity. But as I say, it's no different really.
Seth Hawthorne: Yeah. And I guess it's ⁓ a task that never ⁓ stops. You have to keep working at it. So have you been brought back into agencies to kind of reignite the process?
Robin Bonn: ⁓ That's so interesting. That's so interesting. ⁓ no is the short answer. And ⁓ you can infer what you want from that either we've done a brilliant job first time and yeah, let's take the, you know, it was a shit show and they never hire us again. No, mean, no, it's a short answer because we, again, I think probably in the first five years of the business, again, to sort of be more serious on the first five years of the business, we were less, you know, less. ⁓
Seth Hawthorne: Right.
Deb Richardson: That's a very brave answer, Walter.
Seth Hawthorne: My work here is done.
Robin Bonn: we took less responsibility for the legacy of the strategic thinking that we had co-created with the agency. So on occasion, we'd do great work together and ⁓ it wasn't particularly well ⁓ operationalized or ⁓ in one occasion we did brilliant work and it didn't run because the agency changed ownership. Now stuff like that's gonna happen. But I think if you just sort of do the thinking bit and then don't help them translate it into action, then you're kind of at the mercy of. business as usual getting in the way or a change of ownership or any one of a hundred predictable things that can get in the way of that happening. I think latterly, we've increasingly got much better and been increasingly asked, demanded to be much, much better. So that we now have a much clearer product set around helping that transition be real. So we talk about three phases to creating a market of one, one of which is to define what on earth it means in this business. So the sort of the strategy bit. The second bit is like, okay, great, well done. We've done some cool stuff in Miro. So what, you know, the tills are not ringing yet. What does this implementation plan look like? So, you know, how do we sort of bridge the gap between, you know, a motivated aligned leadership team and real clarity over where we win? How do we bring that, make those changes happen in the business? You know, what are the work streams? Who's doing what, et cetera, et cetera. What are the blockers? How do we mitigate risk, et cetera? And then the third phase is about, great, you've now got an implementation plan. also doesn't mean anything yet. How do we actually kind of stand shoulder to shoulder with you, own some of the work streams, oversee them, make sure that stuff happens, make sure that you don't again get lost in business as usual, and sort of go through, know, sort of take it through to, you know, actual commercial activation. How does this, you know, how does this market of one actually help you command a premium? How does genuine differentiation show up in, you know, in your accounts, if you like? So when we do that, there shouldn't be any cause for us to come back in. And you know, we brought back in to do executive leadership coaching and stuff like that. That's often, you know, kind of goes hand in hand. But what we do have, and happily is we have some frequent flyers. So as I lovingly call them, so people that are, you know, have moved, I think was one CEO that has hired us, I think three times. That's good. Yeah, we like that. And, and also there was another brilliant situation where we
Deb Richardson: Yeah.
Seth Hawthorne: That's good.
Robin Bonn: worked with one agency in a group and then we worked with another agency in the same group and then they merged and then we worked with the combined entity and did it for a third time. So another version of frequent flyer. So no, mean, obviously, it doesn't always work like that, painting up the sort of perfect picture of it. There are always bumps along the way, everything has to be adapted to what's coming down the wires and...
Seth Hawthorne: Yeah.
Robin Bonn: know, events getting in the way, know, stuff happens, but, you know, generally speaking, we've built a business that really executes this stuff rather than just sort of initiating it. And that I'm really proud of.
Seth Hawthorne: Yeah. Amazing. So, I mean, if you're an agency founder leader listening ⁓ to this episode, how would you like agency leaders to feel about the industry that they're in?
Robin Bonn: yeah, good question. mean, I don't think I really have a right to ⁓ suggest how they feel. I can only really speak from my own perspective. I think now is an opportunity for agency leaders ⁓ to, I suppose, accept that the proposition, let's say, it's not just a cool line in your creds, it's not just a tagline that goes on your email signature. It's not just some cool shit to say to people. It's not packaging, it's business strategy. I think, you know, recognising that there needs to be a level of strategic rigour which is often missing, what we often see is that having that grounding ⁓ and that clarity, it builds a deeper conviction in where you're taking your business and that kind of protects you from the ups and downs of everyday business as usual. So I suspect that...
Deb Richardson: it.
Robin Bonn: that feeling of confidence, that feeling of actually, you know what, I can now build the agency I've always wanted to run. There's all sorts of positive emotions that will come out for that. But it's very different, I think, for each person. But yeah, I'd like to hope we contribute to a level of optimism that that stuff is possible and that the benefits are entirely within reach.
Seth Hawthorne: Yeah, yeah.
Deb Richardson: And I think you ⁓ have to make time to do the work, don't you? Do the thinking, do the work, look at yourself as we've mentioned it a couple of times as we look at clients. So I think that's the first big decision. Actually, I'm gonna do this and I'm gonna do it properly.
Robin Bonn: 100%, 100%. And again, we gave up being in the education business a long time ago. You we're not there to sort of persuade or convince or anything like that, you should do this because I think people need to reach that on their own. And of course, we furnish that, you know, that sort of journey with, with, you know, a book and podcasts and, you know, stuff like this, which is all good. But there's no, in my experience, there's very little point trying to persuade an agency CEO that this stuff is important. They have to reach that conclusion for themselves. And And that's when they're committed, that's when they become ready to make meaningful change happen. ⁓ And that's when getting support from us or anyone else, when the timing becomes right.
Seth Hawthorne: That's amazing. Robin, thank you so much. ⁓ Really interesting conversation. ⁓ And if you are an agency leader out there listening and you want to get in touch with Robin, how should they get in touch with you?
Robin Bonn: Thank you. So I'm gonna fall foul of the old adage about if you throw one ball at someone, they'll catch it. If you throw three, they'll drop all three, but ⁓ screw that. So we've alluded to the book a couple of times. So it's called Market of One, how your agency could rewrite the rules and create a lasting competitive advantage. There's a lot in there, I think, that unpack some of the things I've alluded to. So it should be a fun read. It should be a challenging read. It's written with a lot of real world perspective as well. So that's a good place to start.
Deb Richardson: is.
Robin Bonn: The second thing is if you like podcasts, obviously listen to this one, but also listen to our the immortal life of agencies as you've heard about. we basically get very senior agency people to talk about what they're optimistic about and cool stuff they've done. And then the last thing I would give you, which hopefully is useful, we have a diagnostic that we've built, which is very helpful because it's kind of codifies those five principles that I alluded to earlier. So what is it that the best agencies are doing differently in form? the questions in this questionnaire. So it's just 20 questions, you get a bespoke report out of the back of it. if you go to, I will, I will indeed. Yes, and it's codifinary.com slash DQ for diagnostic questionnaire. I'll ping you the link.
Deb Richardson: Do you want to send us a link to that? And we'll put it in the comments. Okay, we'll find that. And I personally just want to thank you for mentioning the West Wing. It's a TV program that I get a lot of my life inspiration from. So thank you for mentioning it.
Robin Bonn: you No, was funny enough, it came up yesterday in, ⁓ I was talking to an agency chief of staff, it's quite a common role in the US, but not so well known over here. And of course, ⁓ most of the people in the UK here, chief of staff with it, it's Leo McGarry, that's the end of that conversation.
Deb Richardson: Leo's the guy. I was about to say I've learnt a lot from Josh and CJ and Sam over the years so thanks for mentioning it.
Seth Hawthorne: Yeah.
Robin Bonn: Yeah, yep, yep, yep. I still can't put my jacket on like President Bartlett, but one day I'll get there.
Seth Hawthorne: Well, thank you.
Deb Richardson: But we can keep trying them. Thank you.
Seth Hawthorne: Thank very much, Robin. Thank you. And best of luck with all the mods over the bank holiday weekend. I'm sure they'll be out in force.
Robin Bonn: I'm out of here, I'm going to America.
Deb Richardson: Yeah, I was going to say and enjoy, enjoy mirroring. think you're going to mirror on you.
Robin Bonn: I mean, Austin, I'm gonna need to take a big suitcase. It's like 35 degrees in Austin and then it's brass monkeys in New York. but no, we'll have a lovely time. Thank you very much. It's been a real pleasure. Yeah, wonderful. Thanks, Deb. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Cheers, Seth. Take care, bye.
Deb Richardson: Well, have a great time and see you when you get back. ⁓
Seth Hawthorne: Thank you very much.
