Agency Side
Hi, I'm Justin Levinson. Welcome to the Agency Side Podcast, a weekly show where I interview leaders from creative agencies worldwide to uncover their secrets to success.
Each week, I interview top agency leaders and explore their stories, uncovering the habits, strategies, and mindsets that have helped them succeed.
We talk about everything – the highs, the lows, and the lessons learned from their biggest mistakes. By tuning in, you’ll get a behind-the-scenes look at what goes on in the creative industry, picking up tips and tricks to help you along the way.
I’m excited to bring you conversations with well-known industry figures and unsung heroes who’ve never shared their stories publicly.
Agency Side
Building a Creative Agency: Jeremy Schwartz on Authenticity, Innovation, and Industry Evolution
Jeremy Schwartz, co-founder and managing partner of Truth Collective, shares his journey in the creative agency world. He started as an account guy but was drawn to the creative department. Schwartz and his partners started Truth Collective, focusing on honesty and authenticity in their work. They built relationships with past clients and brought in expert talent when needed.
Some notable campaigns include working with LensCrafters and Luxottica on a millennial-focused campaign called See Good Daily and partnering with Fannie Mae on their Duty to Serve program. The conversation covers various topics related to running an advertising agency, including the importance of purpose and meaning in client work, the process of winning new business, pitching to potential clients, competing against other agencies, and the impact of technology on the industry.
The conversation also touches on the creation of a side project called Punkzels, which was a puzzle brand focused on punk music. The advice for aspiring agency owners is to embrace change and be flexible.
Hey, welcome to Agency Side, the podcast where we dive deep into the world of creative agencies and the brilliant minds behind them. I'm your host, Justin Levinson, and today we have a special guest with us, Jeremy Schwartz. As a co-founder and managing partner of Truth Collective, Jeremy's vision for honest creativity has led him to collaborate with some of the most iconic brands in their industries. His unwavering commitment to crushing mediocrity sets him apart in the field. Today, we'll explore his journey, insights and the principles that drive his exceptional work. Welcome to the show, Jeremy.
Jeremy:Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Justin:Yeah, I'm so excited to be speaking with you today, so really appreciate your time.
Jeremy:No problem.
Justin:Yeah, so let's get into it. How did how did you get involved in the creative agency world? How did you get here?
Jeremy:Well, going way back, I was always that kid who could occupy himself for hours drawing, you know, always pencil drawing. But I kind of knew that I didn't want to be a fine artist. You know, I kind of went through high school didn't really have a portfolio, but I sat down with my dad. My dad said you know, you're kind of an art guy but maybe you like business, why not communications? So I sort of dug in, learned you know what that found the program at Syracuse University which was top--notch communications program at the Newhouse School, and applied, got into the business school where I was studying marketing as well as advertising in the Newhouse School at SU. And then from there I just kind of got in. I was more prepared to be essentially an account guy.
Jeremy:So my first job in advertising I was working in Stanford, connecticut, an agency called Rotondo Partners and they had some fun accounts. We had Ocean Spray, we had Slim Jim, we had the Red Stripe Beer. It was great. But I kind of knew very quickly that I didn't want to be doing competitive analysis all that long. I was looking over at the creative department, saw the fun that they were having and I just knew that maybe I just had to pivot a little bit. So I left that job, went back to where I grew up, which was in Boston, took design courses at Massachusetts College of Art, but then along the way I had some personal things going on.
Jeremy:I was dating someone who then brought me back to Western New York, to Rochester, new York.
Jeremy:So now I was in Boston thinking like, oh, there's this huge vibrant agency world going on there. Now I'm moving to Rochester and while that isn't exactly the advertising mecca that I think most aspiring students would be thinking about, there were some really interesting agencies here and Saatchi. Saatchi had an office it was called Saatchi Saatchi Business Communications where they were servicing DuPont and Kodak were sort of the biggest accounts out of there and it was a pretty significant office. So I jumped around, ended up at Saatchi, but I really kind of understood what this business was about. I had some great mentors worked there for a few years, but then I eventually made my way back to Boston and I was working at some interpublic shops like Hill Holiday and I had some really great opportunities. So again, I've had this interesting career bopping back and forth between New England and Western New York, but along the way I got the broadcast experience that really helped define my career, as well as some really tasty design projects along the way.
Justin:Yeah, that's really cool. You were more of an accounts guy and you were saying that the creative sort of sparked your interest because you were seeing how much fun those guys were having when you sort of made that transition. What sort of things did you need to do in order to kind of make?
Jeremy:That I kind of skipped over that because when I did move back here, you know it was right around. Some talk is really changing the way design was done. So you know I got myself one. I I remember buying cork express for the first time and photoshop and illustrator you know they were still, you know the the key programs at the time. And I just Illustrator you know they were still you know the key programs at the time. And I just started teaching myself a lot about how, you know, desktop publishing and desktop design was done.
Jeremy:So a lot of my skills were self-taught. I mean, I had a nice foundation of business and advertising in general from Newhouse. I had my hand skills from my whole childhood but then I did have to sort of catch up and kind of learn the business. But luckily I got these great opportunities because there was a lot of cool shops right here in Rochester that gave me a chance. Perhaps even if I was in Boston maybe I wouldn't have gotten the chance because they had people coming from the best portfolio schools in the country.
Jeremy:You know people who were spent, you know, invested years and lots of dollars becoming great at advertising. So in a way, like maybe my move to Rochester actually benefited me because the barrier to entry wasn't as high, yeah, but from there I was able to just grow and, like I said, said, take what I learned here from some incredible mentors. I had some bosses who went on to work at goodby out in san francisco. I mean there were some really talented people here. Because rochester was the home of kodak, kodak it was the home of photography. There was a very visual kind of tradition happening here that, you know, I think is a little bit underestimated. Of course, that whole industry has changed and like it. You know, the creatives that that really helped put the brand on the map, you know, have moved on, but a lot of those people helps really make a very vibrant communications community here yeah, what, what kind of?
Justin:When you say you had some good mentors that sort of helped you, what? What's sort of like the most important type of mentor. Was it more in terms of like um on business mentorship, or was it creative, or were people from that were already working in creative agencies, or what sort of how did that um affect you? Well, first of all, like being sort of a young visual, you know, visual creative.
Jeremy:So I was coming up the art director ranks and some of these, these mentors just really First of all, like being sort of a young, you know, visual creative. So I was coming up the art director ranks and some of these mentors just really showed me how the sausage was made. I mean, we spent a lot of time together, sort of in the trenches, working alongside these very senior creatives and not just understanding what their influences were. I mean, because I went from I was kind of teaching myself the world of advertising really by looking at annuals of communication arts. Now some of these guys that I was working with at Satya at the time they were looking at the world of fashion, they were looking at the world of cinema. You know, they were bringing in influences from outside of just that more narrow advertising path. You know fine art, photography, and it just opened up my world to a more global view.
Jeremy:It was in part like that actual visual inspiration that I think really just expanded my horizons and also getting to really see how. You know, there's the making of the work, and I think most of us can do that. Then there's the selling of the work. So how does that persuasion come in and really instilling the confidence with the clients that these solutions that might be new to them are really viable directions and not just risks. So I think those were really like very influential you know years for me back in the late 90s that you know really set me up for you know, to be successful when I did find myself back at Hill Holiday in Boston and in several other jobs.
Justin:Yeah, very interesting. So when did you sort of tell me how you got into starting your own business and how did you get into starting Truth Collective and what was that process like?
Jeremy:Yeah, so when I made myself back to Rochester I was working at a firm and, it was funny, the strategist that I worked with at Saatchi was also recruited by the same firm. So I had, you know, immediately a really nice rapport with, you know, the head strategy and then also meeting the presidents of that firm who you know, the three of us worked together really tightly on some, you know, on some key clients and a lot of new business over the nine years that we were together there. And you know that agency ended up being sold to an independent network and while we were all kind of on partnership tracks, that kind of ended one day with the sale of that agency no hard feelings, that's, you know, perfectly viable way for that brand story to be told. But it didn't really, it didn't really desires to see what it would be like to run our own agency. So we had to shift gears and think about starting something fresh and you know we wanted to do it really ethically, like we love the shop that we were at. We were, we built it all for about eight, nine, 10 years, so it was not about tearing it down. So one day we just decided, you know, that we had to just make the break. You know, we wanted to win a bunch of business for them and walk away with, like this kind of super golden story, but that didn't happen, you know. So we're almost too busy to quit. So one day we just decided, look, we have to, we have to just pull the trigger on this. Like that agency was asking us to write out five-year plans. It just didn't feel right to be trying to create the plan for an agency that we knew that we weren't going to be at. So we finally decided it was time we wanted to try putting our own shingle out. So we gave notice, we left and it was scary because we were starting an agency with no clients.
Jeremy:Typically, you know, folks like us usually take a pretty significant piece of business and it was a little bit of a struggle because we were, you know, navigating the non-competes that are out there. But the good news was is because there was three of us, we had a pretty good network between the three of us with past clients and past clients that moved beyond the brands that we were. We had a pretty good network between the three of us with past clients and past clients that moved beyond the brands that we were, we had left out. So we had clients from our Kodak days or Bausch and Lomb days that had moved on to other national brands or even some international brands, and we just immediately dove into reaching out to those people, letting them know that we were out there. And the good news is we started getting traction really fast those first few months.
Jeremy:All of a sudden we were taking meetings on Calgary, canada, and in Florida like we were all over the place and business started coming. We were working with some pretty significant brands like Smart Technologies, hoover, vision, but also because of some PR that we got out there, some very small companies were coming out to us and we treated them like gold. It didn't matter. We had a veterinary research contract organization, we had a forensic technology company that specialized in legal tech, some really specialized businesses but we treated them like gold because we knew that we had to establish a great reputation right from the start. So business started rolling in and, yeah, we were busy, almost too busy. We became our own bottlenecks. So that's when we started adding some folks to the team, both from a contract standpoint as well as a full timestamp. But we knew that we already made our biggest risk by leaving Three executives at one firm, leaving to start something totally new with no systems in place, no processes in place, no clients in touch with.
Justin:But they had moved on to other things and they were new places, but because you had such great relations with these people in the past, you were able to come back to them and win new business. That's pretty awesome and it must have been really relieving when some of these folks started to come through and you were getting some work and things were starting to hum.
Jeremy:Yeah, and I think one thing that we were kind of smart from the very beginning and I can really attribute this to my partner, bob, who's more on the operations, the account leg of the stool that we had. We had strategy creative with myself and then kind of operations and account, and so there was a lot that we could do together. But what Bob did from the very beginning is that we treated ourselves like a company. Yeah, we were three guys sitting around our dining room tables in those first few weeks and months, but we really treated ourselves like we were a company, not just three contractors out there, you know, like a SWAT team ready for hire, not just three contractors out there, you know, like a SWAT team ready for hire. We, you know, we I think we punched above our weight in how we were sort of like approaching the business and setting ourselves up to be a company from day one.
Justin:That's really, that's really smart. Yeah, that's cool. And so when, when you guys started to win business and things were were really cruising for you and you, you obviously had that, that, had that trio there. That was really your core and you were starting to scale, how did that sort of work out? Was it? Were you bringing people on sort of like full time, or were you using a pool of freelancers, or what sort of made sense to you at that time when you were beginning to build out the team?
Jeremy:Yeah. So I mean mean, I'm just going to step back for a minute so we call ourselves truth collective. For you know, there's two components to that. Truth is we really felt that honesty was needed in our business at the time. We really wanted to see if we could start an agency by telling the truth, meaning not just like working with clients and telling them what they wanted to hear, but like really get into their challenges, with them and tell them what they needed to hear and then solve those problems along with them. But the second part of that is to collectives.
Jeremy:We always had this model where, you know, we knew that we had a really strong core with just the three of us, but we thought that we could always bring expert, expert mindsets to the table when it was necessary, whether that's because they've got category experience that we didn't have, whether they have skill sets like in maybe some you know real specialty technologies and so forth.
Jeremy:Like we could bring new skill sets and new aesthetics and new experiences to the table when the project needed it.
Jeremy:And it wasn't just about being cheaper, it was just more about having the right brains around the table at the right time to get the best output for our clients, and so we were augmenting ourselves with these really great talented people, people that I brought in from my previous Boston days, other vendors, you know, and these could be individuals, they could be companies.
Jeremy:You know from all of our cumulative experiences working even between Europe, my strategy partners, as well as what we were doing in our previous agency. We had a very vast network, you know, and that's why we've decided to kind of keep things really agile on our end, like we've never tried to be a media buyer, we've never tried to be PR pros, because we can bring those people in as well as really specialist creatives and strategists and so forth. So, yeah, we we contracted a lot in the beginning, but as business came and we knew that we needed a scale, we did start bringing in full-time employees. We had some more account management, some more creatives, because we were starting to actually service some clients on a longer-term basis. For each and every project, it is more effective to sort of start gaining category knowledge and brand knowledge for our clients and leveraging that for all the new projects that we're getting on a longer term basis.
Justin:Interesting and that's cool the story behind sort of the mission statement kind of beyond behind Truth Collective. Do you find that you were searching for that truth with clients because in maybe previous agency experience there was more of a. Was there a bit of more of a like a yes man type mentality, opposed to telling people, telling your clients like hey, this is really the path and I need you to kind of see where I'm going with it? Was there something that kind of made that pivot for you?
Jeremy:Yeah, I mean, I think that exists, you know. I think you know there was a lot. There's a lot of sin in the business, right, and sometimes it just didn't feel good, like sometimes we were we'd be in new business pitches and we were told to pump up the numbers of how many employees the agency had or how many offices we had, and it just didn't feel right, like why do we have to be something different than what we are? Why can't we just tell them? And then it was funny, like we were feeling this way.
Jeremy:And then we saw a Gallup poll at the time. That really was sobering to us because it really showed that our industry, the trust in our industry, was kind of at an all-time low and they actually had a ranking that put the advertising agency business somewhere underneath ambulance chasing lawyers. But we were above Congress, which was actually pretty funny, but still we weren't really held in high esteem and we wanted to change that. It really was like we were three guys that really love rolling up our sleeves and getting into our client's business with them and not sugarcoat things. Sometimes we just had to lay out what we really think the challenge is and then work to solve those problems. So it's definitely about how do we avoid those sort of situations where we are just being yes men to get a scope. We really love marketing, we love business and we really believe that creativity can impact business positively, and that was what our whole objective was.
Justin:I like that. It's great to be authentic and you know represent who you actually are opposed to like coming up with some facade. You know I can understand how a lot of companies want to appear that they're maybe something that they're not and that lack of authenticity. I don't think it really does anybody any good, you know.
Jeremy:Yeah, I mean it's competitive, you know, and you just, you don't. No, really, does anybody any good, you know? Um, yeah, I mean it's competitive, you know, and you just you don't. No one wants to lose a pitch because they're perceived as slightly smaller than the next or whatever those issues are, but ideally, at the end of the day, the work and the thinking that you put into it should is what should make the final determination, and you know, if that's what someone's looking for, then we're not right for them anyhow.
Justin:I like that, I like that and, as far as as work that that you know you guys have done are there, are there any specific like campaigns or things that that you have felt you know really proud of, in particular that that you would be interested in sharing?
Jeremy:Yeah, I mean so much that that we're proud of. But I will say one of the opportunities that we nurtured very early on got us working with Cooper Vision and actually Cooper Vision was partnering at the time with Luxottica, who owns Lens Crafters, and it turns out through this project that we helped them with. We got involved in a project with lens crafters where they wanted to. You know they're a brand known for putting spectacles on people's faces and but there's a huge market for contact lenses and daily disposable contact lenses. So we did this kind of millennial focused campaign called See Good Daily where we were sort of really trying to play into that, that very positive millennial mindset and how you know All the values that they put into seeing the world for what's good in it and trying to nurture really positive values. We sort of engaged that mindset for this campaign for lens crafters. But here we were just a few years in and we were working with this huge national retailer and, you know, one of the world's largest companies, with Luxottica, and we, you know we did several assignments with them, work with Luxonica, you know the umbrella brand. We also got to work on one site which is their nonprofit foundation where we were.
Jeremy:You know, looking at you know this issue that people didn't have access to glasses. You know something like 1.1 billion people around the world just don't have access to vision care, huge problem that can really affect people's ability to learn, people's ability to get great jobs. So it was all around. I mean, not only was it helping us from a stature standpoint as a company, generosity was one of our values from day one and we really loved working on community initiatives and now, all of a sudden, we're working on this global initiative. That was really fulfilling. But since then, I mean, our largest client today is Fannie Mae. Fannie Mae has a wonderful program called Duty to Serve. We make a lot of content for this mission that they have operating to educate people on access to housing and lots of other issues. When there are natural disasters, fannie Mae comes in and helps people get back on their feet and it's been also some really fulfilling work.
Justin:Yeah, that's really nice that the things that you're working on you can feel passionate about creatively, but they're also yeah, they're doing good in the world as well.
Jeremy:Don't get me wrong. I love a really good campaign, just about beer and coffee too.
Justin:Yeah.
Jeremy:We've had to work with some. There's some really great distilleries and you know we've got some classic beer brands here and those are also super fun as well. But it's really nice blend. There's purpose and meaning behind a lot of the work that we do.
Justin:Yeah, no, I totally understand that. What's the process for you in terms of, like, winning new business now? I mean, it seems like you've got a core group of people and repeat business. How do you see like growth and, looking at other avenues as well?
Jeremy:Well, funny enough, we're about 11 years in and we've actually just hired a full-time new business development person to work alongside my partner, bob, who is also, you know, that's really primarily his charge is business development, so we're a little late in the game, but it's great because, you know, she joined us three, four months ago and already just having someone just totally focused on working like our HubSpot CRM platform and she's kind of organizing our own efforts around LinkedIn, outreach and so forth, it's getting traction, traction and we're starting to see a lot more prospects in the pipeline and we're getting a lot of meetings and, thankfully, we've been converting a lot of new clients. So we're in this process right now where, like, our client roster is really getting a pretty big refresh.
Justin:That's really exciting. When you do get a client that's potentially interested in you, how do you typically pitch to them? Is it like via, do you have like a PowerPoint, or how does it sort of work with like if I was your potential? What does that sort of look like when you speak to somebody like that?
Jeremy:Yeah, I mean you know we love telling our story. We love telling the story of what we believe in, and it does start usually with we try to keep those meetings really conversational. We've got a credentials deck that tells our story and what we believe in. That I think we can do in six or seven minutes. It's you know we don't want. We believe that the more effective meeting is when we can give them a foundation of who we are, give them a good, strong backstory of what we believe in, but then get them talking.
Jeremy:So we actually switched totally over to Google Suite because of all the collaboration that was required, especially in the last four or five years.
Jeremy:But the GDocs are really great because we can collaborate on decks simultaneously between the account team, the creative team and the strategy team.
Jeremy:The GDoc credentials is key to tell our story of what we believe in. Then we tailor it depending on who the prospect is, especially if we know what they need, whether it's something like brand identity or brand activation, like campaign development. We can kind of skew our story a little bit to those different avenues and then we usually try to put some insights right into our about the category. And you know it's really great, especially when we can do a little bit of a strategic dig and maybe show them that we already have some insights that maybe they're not even aware of and they're working in the category each and every day. So it really kind of depends on how big that pitch is and how much we invest in it. But we always really love to put some prompts in there to get them speaking, because those meetings are really successful when we can hear them talk and hear what their challenges are from their point of view, not just agency folks talking at them.
Justin:Totally. Now that makes a lot of sense. It's nice to kind of listen to the problems and see where t t r a pinpoints listening where where the pold p told t adage is.
Justin:We were given two ears and one mouth for a reason, and sometimes being a good listener can pay dividends.
Jeremy:Yeah, and certain opportunities we might have, like really good case studies, that kind of like walk them through our process. That might be really similar to some of their challenges. You know, it really just depends on who we're speaking to and what that challenge is.
Justin:And are you typically competing against a number of different agencies? How does that sort of work?
Jeremy:Yeah, I mean I would say that most of these conversations, when you know that someone is really in need of agency service lists there usually is a roster of agencies that they are speaking to it's always better. We'd rather know that it's a shorter list rather than a longer list. I mean, we have taken part in conversations with brands and then we find out that they're speaking to 12 or more agencies and you're like, wow, that's. You know, we usually have to be a little careful of like how much we're going to put into it when it's a numbers game like that. But you know, I think that the marketers who've been around the block really savvy marketers, they, you know, especially ones that maybe you've even worked on the agency side I think that they're the ones that kind of tend to keep those discussions down to just a small handful of agencies where you feel like you really have a shot and we'll put our best foot forward and we'll invest in in doing so.
Jeremy:Uh, when we know that that, you know there's a better chance of winning. It's tough when you know, all of a sudden, sometimes we've even spoken to some governmental bodies and there's 20 different agencies in it. So you just have to sort of be careful about how much you're going to invest, because there's a likelihood to lose.
Justin:Yeah, no, that really does make sense, I guess, maybe pivoting the conversation just a little bit in terms of just what is going on in the whole world and especially in the advertising agency space. I know I do a lot of work in entertainment as well and obviously there's been so many things going on with the strikes and, of course, the pandemic, a lot of consolidation, and there's been many, many different things that I'm sure have trickled down into all agencies and with those issues, how are you kind of seeing things going on your end? Where do you kind of see this industry moving?
Jeremy:I mean, there is a lot of change. You know, I think one of the things that we really saw even, you know, before the whole world was disrupted by COVID, that was trends towards in-housing. You know, in-housing was something that you know, we've seen it, we've watched it happen over the years. So instead of us I don't know just rebelling against it, we really did decide to embrace it. We sort of understood that maybe there's a role, that it doesn't have to be an either or situation. A lot of our clients today have their own internal communication staff and creative abilities, but we've really geared a lot of our services to be a great complement to that. Like sometimes just a client knows that, like, working with an outside agency can sometimes provide like a really interesting outside perspective that, bogged down by all the internal rules that people feel are in place. You get to objectively break some rules or are in place. You get to objectively break some rules, but we really, I think, have understood that there's some times to lead and then there's some times to partner. So we actually discussed that one of our capabilities is agency integration, and those agency integration can be with the in-house teams. It can also be with specialty agencies in a roster of agencies that might be servicing the clients. So that's been really a significant change.
Jeremy:Then, of course, we've got technology changes, especially, you know, in the last year. You know the proliferation of tools is really changing, I think, what clients are looking for for agencies to do, because in many cases, you know they're doing like their smaller teams are doing a lot. They're maintaining their communications with these newer tools. But, you know, I still think that there's, there'll always be, a place for creatives and strategists and really great account people to build trust, because they have to understand people and I think for a good long time, people are going to understand people better than these AI tools.
Jeremy:Now there's a lot that we can do to make mundane tasks go a lot quicker and we can kind of generate larger volumes of work in a faster way, but I think those core ideas are still going to be the winners for a while. So the technology changes that we're incorporating are still kind of back-of-house changes. It's not really about what we're putting out into the market on behalf of the clients that we're working for. But you know that's going to change as these tools get stronger and the industry starts figuring out some of the trademark issues. And you know, because we're makers and you know. You know that there's a lot of sensitivity about these tools and how they're being perceived to steal from other makers. So we're just trying to not not be ignorant that these tools are coming, but we have to use them in a smart way.
Justin:Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me. And you know it's interesting what you're saying about the in-house and how that work and how you're working more as you're working in partnership with them, as almost as you're an extension of their company, which I really like, that that idea. And and it is interesting about the separation too.
Justin:I know I know with you, know I one of my passions is music and I know that sometimes when I, when I'm making, when I'm creating something and I have invested in it, I really only hear it my way and sometimes when you are able to pass that along to a different set of ears, it can really there's a lot of things that can, can you know there's some things can go wrong, but there's a lot of times it can be like you'll get those aha moments where like wow, I didn't, I didn't hear that that's, that's really cool.
Justin:So I can see why sometimes a fresh set of ears can really make a difference in in how something is is advertised. And I also like going back to how you were an extension of, or I sort of made the analogy that you were sort of an extension of the company itself. I also, in the recruiting world, I noticed that that's also a change that I'm seeing as well, where external third-party recruiters partnering with internal recruiters, working together opposed to being, you know, bickering over things or by working together really makes the product, it makes everything better when everyone is really working together cohesively and it's not this territorial thing, and if you can find that synergy, it's really. I think that's really, that's...
Jeremy:Yeah, because I think so many marketers today, I mean, first of all, they're doing more than ever before. I mean I think a's really that's yeah, because I think so many marketers today, I mean, first of all, they're doing more than ever before. I mean I think a lot of times their job descriptions used to be handled by two or three people, so they've got a lot on their plate and they just want to work with people who are there to solve problems, not get territorial. And it's great to hear that that's happening in your space as well, because I think you know, if you are that person who wants to keep everyone at arm's length or just protect your scopes, I think ultimately you might find yourself outside of that relationship one day.
Jeremy:I think you know it's been great, like I said, becoming an extension of those brands. And, by the way, it's gone the other way. Sometimes our brands the in-house team has gotten to work almost like they're an extension of those brands. And, by the way, it's gone the other way. Sometimes our brands the in-house team has gotten to work almost like they're an extension of our team. They get to be creative, directed by myself or one of my other creative leaders here, to kind of just get out of regular day to day and whoever they're reporting to, and I think that that also can kind of just shake things up and give them a little bit more license to try some things.
Justin:Yeah, that's really cool. As far as the kind of like technology that we were sort of touching on a little bit, and how some AI is impacting everything, I guess what is you know? As far as like, I guess maybe it doesn't have to be on the AI side, but in terms of like technologies, what sort of things do you guys find is working for you, Not necessarily AI driven, but any sort of things that you guys use that have been effective for you?
Jeremy:Oh, man, there's a. That's a pretty loaded question, but you know first of all, yeah.
Jeremy:So I mean on the design side. I mean, obviously I've been a Adobe geek for decades now, but we did bring Figma into our workflow for not just for the user experience and digital design work, but we're actually using it to quickly prototype lots of different types of communications. It's just a really seamless tool. It's great for collaboration amongst teams. You know, we can have multiple designers on one thing, sharing references, actually designing on the very same layout. It's a really, really cool tool, but it is really great for the folks who are working on digital design and user experience.
Jeremy:But then on the AI side, like you know I think I touched on it where there's a lot of mundane tasks that need to get done Note taking, transcribing, you know transcribing, and our account team used to have to handle all of that, and now that is happening almost instantaneously with, you know, some of the generative AI fill type tools that Adobe is bringing right into Illustrator and Photoshop, you know, and we're playing around with that.
Jeremy:And then you know everyone's making a lot of content, both for themselves, for their own agency as well for their clients, and I think that, like through some of these, you know, you know chat, gpt and other large language models and some things that are more tailored to the industry. We're getting from blank page to something quicker. Now I think that something needs to get tweaked and massaged and you TPT and sort of like well, you know, do some prompts and all of a sudden you've got a page of you know or of an outline or at least an approach, and then you kind of see the flaws in those approaches and then you start tweaking it. And of course you know I think some folks here are using Vint Journey to just play around with some visual ideation and then that visual ideation might turn into something much more robust when they start wrapping their creative brains around it.
Jeremy:So, yeah, there's a lot going on. There's a lot of tools, a lot of options out there. We've actually been working on AI homework assignments for our team, where we're giving our team's assignments, and not only just to use AI tools, but to document their process, so we can all learn from what's working and what's not working.
Jeremy:And then that is. You know, our goal is by Q4 is that we have a very specific process. So, like, these are the tools we love, this is how we do it, and then you know, we'll see how that starts affecting our creative output.
Justin:Yeah, that is really cool. I like that idea a lot. Well, I got two more questions for you. One thing that I noticed while I was snooping about you was your company that you have called Punksies.
Jeremy:Oh, it's actually Punkzels, punkzels. I'm sorry, yeah, yeah, yeah, pardon the error. Punkzels, it's Punxels, punxels. I'm sorry, yeah, yeah, yeah, pardon the error Punxels.
Justin:Yeah, I do see that. I made that mistake in my notes and I'm sure when you tell me about it now it's going to make a lot more sense why that is called Punkzels.
Jeremy:Yeah.
Justin:So yeah, can you tell? me about that a little bit.
Jeremy:Yeah, so Punxels was a bit of my COVID baby. But around the time, you know, back in 2020, 2021, we were very interested in wondering if the agency could support more lines of business beyond just serving clients on an hourly basis. And we kind of had this idea that we you know what, if we created a company, that could be a little bit of R&D for the agency, of like, we get to try things out when we're the client. And I just happened to have this idea because we were sitting there in COVID, my wife and I actually got a couple of jigsaw puzzles. I'm not a total jigsaw puzzle nerd, but I was really frustrated that I couldn't find cool puzzles to put together. I enjoyed it that I couldn't find cool puzzles to put together, I enjoyed it.
Jeremy:And then one night, you know and I'm a big music fan as well and I grew up listening to a lot of punk rock and just literally that conjoint of punk and puzzles came together in my mind and all of a sudden, like I was just thinking about it this night, and I said, like why not have a puzzle that could be of a really cool image of a musician Maybe, like, like the old vinyl albums that came with liner notes. You could read a whole story about that musician and maybe there would be associated, you know, playlists. Like we could make it an experience. So I came in the next morning I had furiously written up a bunch of notes. You know, that night I came in the next morning and I told my partners this idea and they said it sounds really interesting. You know it was risky because you know we were thinking about the puzzle category, like does punk music fans and puzzle fans, what's the pull there? And you know we gave ourselves the challenge could we actually, instead of pulling puzzle fans to punk, could we actually pull punk and other types of music bands to puzzling as an activity? So we launched Punxels pretty quickly, which was a great experience because I was learning not just about the branding that we do every day and the design that we do every day. I'd figure out every single part of launching a product, you know, from prototyping and manufacturing. You know getting the product here. It gave us a real opportunity to play around with some e-commerce platforms. You know we built a Shopify site which we had never done before as a company. So we're it was fulfilling that that need to sort of be so. Like all of a sudden, we were working on sort of a youth lifestyle oriented brand or a music lifestyle oriented brand. We're playing around with tools that we hadn't used before, like various e-commerce platforms. You know, we were just kind of playing in new categories. We played with some influencer marketing. We were bringing just new things to this brand. We put out a couple of products.
Jeremy:That being said, I'm also realizing it's hard to split my time. You know, like I am an agency, you know managing partner of an agency, you know running that successfully and then also trying to be a marketer at the same time. So it's been a great. It's been a great little experiment.
Jeremy:But you know, I was finding that my manufacturing and supply chain out of China was getting was a little less stable than I want it to be. So it looks like I'm going to kind of wrap up the project, but along the way, like it did exactly what it was supposed to do. It taught us a lot about being a marketer. It gave us some opportunity to play around with different communication tools and I met some great people along the way. Like, my product is sold at the Pump Rocks Museum in Las Vegas. You know I've been meeting small little indie shops all around. They taught me a little bit about getting products on Amazon. It's been a really cool, cool product. But you know I'm in this business because I love what I'm doing here at the agency and I just want to be a little bit more focused on that.
Justin:Yeah, but what a cool thing to be able to kind of experience both parts of the business creating the product and then marketing it yourself, getting to kind of flex those muscles. That's pretty cool, yeah. For for the last question, I guess I would you know. I'd like to see do you have any people that are, you know, maybe at the point where they're a top performer in their creative agency and they might be thinking to themselves hmm, I might be able to do this myself. Is there any sort of advice for them?
Jeremy:Well, yeah, I mean, first of all, you can do it. I mean, I was really it was wild when we first started off to sort of understand how little we needed to actually become an agency. I mean, yes, you've got to put some you know an operating agreement in place. You need to sort of get yourself out there legally as you know, some sort of incorporated entity, so there's a little bit of investment in some legal stuff. You know, it's great to have a great banking relationship, but, man, we bought three Macs. You know, we got a Dropbox account and we're up and running. You know, because you know we need a great story. I mean, of course, there's all that Like you need a story. We have a little bit of history in the business that we could, you know, tell who we worked for in the past, but it's a really low cost of entry to actually get in versus other sectors that need huge capital investment.
Jeremy:You know, the real advice that I would say and I think we've talked about it a little bit in this discussion is about change is that you have to embrace change. I was really surprised, especially in the first five years. It felt like the business was evolving on a really fast timeline. It was like it almost felt like we were completely different every six months and that was really surprising to me and I and I bet you that would continue today with the way. You know all the opportunities in which clients can get their marketing services done and the tools that are out there.
Jeremy:But you just have to embrace change. You have to be flexible, you know, I think a lot of times I see other entrepreneurs get out there and start companies and they've got a very stubborn view of what they're going to do and if they don't, if they don't bring that flexibility to it, they could get left behind, because things are are evolving pretty rapidly. Just because it's changing doesn't mean that it's bad. It means that, like I think, of all the things that we've been embracing, you know, in the last you know handful of years between, like, in-office work versus remote work. You know the tools we're using. It's wild amount of change and I think you just have to be open to it.
Justin:Cool man. Well, jeremy, I really appreciate your time today and doing this podcast with me and I look forward to continue to follow your journey. And yeah, man, thanks so much for being here.
Jeremy:Thanks, justin, I really enjoyed it, and thanks for the conversation. Yeah, hopefully we'll be collaborating again real soon.
Justin:All right man, have a great rest of your week and be well, you well,
Jeremy:you too. Take care
Justin:All right man. Cheers bye.