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Nick, welcome to the show. I’m so pleased to have you on today. Richard, thank you for having me. Absolutely my pleasure. So for starters, tell us a bit about Maden and your role there. Maden is a full-service creative agency that my business partner, Chief Creative Officer Jamie Monder and I started four years ago. My background’s in private equity. We’ve worked a lot with creative agencies and Jamie’s background, he’s been in creative for 25 years at the highest level. And we wanted to come together to bridge the gap between Sort of what financial outcomes require and obviously still doing amazing creative work. Excellent. Well, the agency model and business has evolved quite a bit, you know, from ad creators to full-blown brand consultants. Can you walk us through how agencies are now supporting every phase of a brand’s journey from, you know, as early as product development to merch drops and all points in between? Yeah. I think it’s so important. And we emphasize this as an agency. We try to own the entire process. We actually just bought an influencer agency because that was a part of the process that we didn’t own. And when we get involved early with companies, whether it’s an established brand and we’re launching a campaign or it’s an early stage business and we’re getting to actually design the brand from the very beginning to launch the DNA of the company and how it’s going to live in the world. we sort of view it like hospitality because hospitality for the longest time has done this in its best way. You know, you’re, they’re thinking about every touch point from scent. The second you walk in, honestly, the second that you hear about them and the digital experience. And I think brands and CPG and other industries are now leaning into that, you know, immersive experience, trying to reach all five senses, um, through activations, through digital, through, um, you know, in real life situations. And then also the purchasing side of, okay, great. You got someone, the hard process of you got someone to believe in your product and your brand. What then happens? What’s that unique experience when there’s an unboxing or unveiling? What community are they buying into? So as you know, there’s so many facets to building culture, which ultimately helps build brand equity. And we like to be involved in every piece. You know, when it comes to a lot of sort of modern brands and especially brands that have been around for a while, it feels like a lot of them tend to fall into these places where they’re kind of doing the same old, same old and expecting a different result, but not getting it possibly because of that cultural issue of not necessarily innovating or thinking outside the box, as it were. What does it look like to you to strategically challenge those sort of category norms in your day-to-day client work? Oh, this is the best question. I mean, we built our agency on reframing the question. I think there is a massive disconnect between what we get told in a brief is the outcome that is desired and how we actually should get there. And there’s a bunch of agencies can do great work and all get to the same endpoint. But how do you do something that’s transformationally impactful beyond a brief, and we spend a lot of time early on understanding why the deliverables are what they are, because we can reframe and come up with, you know, multiple unlocks that we otherwise couldn’t if we weren’t willing to have those honest, candid conversations, and we just cared about getting the work. So we do a lot upfront to lay the groundwork of, you know, why are we here? Why are you actually putting a brief out? What is the real goal? And what’s the reasoning behind the goal? Because there may be an unlock even in that conversation that were would otherwise be overlooked. And when it comes to the budgetary concerns around all of that, you know, some brands have a lot of money, some brands don’t have near as much money. What’s the secret to producing standout work on, you know, say the tighter budget? And can you share an example where a small budget led to a surprisingly large creative win? So financial constraints, I actually think help breed magic. You’re able to be more focused when you have finite resources. Of course, as an agency owner, every agency wants a bigger budget because we want to do bigger things and we want to make a bigger splash. But I think you’re able to be focused. We call it a mischievous anthropologist. We’re able to study culture and humanity and find a way to create social currency. Our goal, and it’s not really budget contingent. With a small budget, you can still create buzz that makes sense. whatever the campaign or moment is worth talking about. And if you can make people feel special and the moment worth talking about, then you’re able to reach the million people that you could have also just reached by doing programmatic ad buying that’s far less exciting. One of our examples is we helped launch a beef tallow skincare company called Mimona Skin in October and very small budget, but the two founders, three founders really care about building community around sort of this ancestral roots of skincare. And there’s a movement there. We have… I think a number of brands playing on that. But that led to super unique community building events where we were not even talking about product. And then at the end of it, people would be like, why are we here? And oh, my gosh, your skin’s glowing. And it led to this dramatic growth in a six month period for Momona. And they’re now expanding into other products and grow it. We actually have campaign budget now as well, which is exciting. Very cool. I mean, anytime you can take something that was small budget, make a big splash, and that leads to the ability to do more creative work for the client at the end. That’s amazing. We also, I think, thank you. I think it’s interesting, too, because there will forever be trends and fads that get cycled, rinsed, and repeat. And we view them as waves, right? So you shouldn’t avoid them. You should sort of jump into the wave and ride it. But you’re gonna get some brand exposure and brand growth through that. But then after it, the wave will crash and you need to be able to stand and have a brand ethos and a reason for people to buy in beyond whatever trend they’re following. So that’s sort of the constant evolution of brand. Like Momona was a good example. They’re riding the Beef Tallow natural skincare wave. And now we’re in the phase of, all right, we’ve done that. We wrote it successfully. We know it’s gonna crash at some point. How do we evolve and build real community and culture around the business so we can become a mainstream brand doing unique things? Let’s move on to something that hopefully isn’t a trend. You’ve done a lot of work with San Diego FC. Let’s discuss, how did you turn a brand new soccer club into a cultural movement? And what sort of creative strategies and fan engagement tactics helped redefine sports marketing in that project? San Diego FCU is one of the most fulfilling projects we got to work out on as Maden. And what I’ll say before I dive in directly answering your question was the first game this season, because it was their first season playing, obviously. And we got involved in May of 2023. So before… there was a team before there were players before we knew the coach was going to be, we, you know, helped build the brand. We didn’t even know what the colors were, what the jerseys were going to look like. And so being in that room and getting to have the candid conversations and say, you know, really, why are we here? How are we going to do this different than every other team? And then evolving to the first game, we went an hour early and I just sat in the stadium and it was so fulfilling and it’s why we are in this space because you get to see the kids and the families coming in with merchandise that you got to help design and you know long queues for different apparel and items that are a part of the club that are limited release that you know everything is thoughtful from our standpoint and we really took the time with San Diego FC to listen to the community and understand what makes San Diego as a county, not just a city. And the cultural makeup of it is so diverse. So the question we posed back to ourselves was, how can we create a club that encapsulates the diverse culture of the entire county where everyone feels like they have equity in the club? And that led to, you know, the Chromeball Tour, which was an 18-month campaign that went from city to city. And we involved local artists, local restaurants, local musicians. And we let each town dictate who would be the showcased artists. And that, you know, created merchandise and apparel representing the city, but with San Diego FC ingrained in the city. So you had, you know, Encinitas or… Temecula, for example, with the design of whatever represents Encinitas, and an artist got to decide that, people got to vote, and then there was this activation in each town leading up to… We had 18 months to lead up to actually launching the campaign, which sounds like a long time and is, but also… isn’t a massive amount of time to get 4 million people behind a new team. It absolutely blows my mind that that team went from inception to reality in such a small span of time, let alone how effective all the awareness plays around it were. You know, and, you know, kudos to you for doing that. When it comes to getting the word out that all of these opportunities are available for locals to, you know, vote, participate, you know, find their favorite artists to, you know, submit work. How was that accomplished? I mean, is that largely a social media thing or how did that work? It multi-channel. So, you know, we had budget that went towards social media and localized influencers and content creators that we worked We basically reached out to them before we launched the news that San Diego was going to have a pro team because then we gave them the chance to be involved in something new and sort of a part of this secret before it launched. And we went to all these creators and said, hey, we’re trying to build this community of creators in San Diego. You already are that community. but specific for San Diego FC, we want you guys to be our brand ambassadors to go out and reach out to your following and your local community to help build up the audience. And then we also, did a super unique um ticket i guess sale strategy so we there are 18 cities in san diego county and so we played on 18 in a number of ways but we had an 18 deposit because again you couldn’t buy tickets for like 18 months right but you donated 18 dollars And it went to a nonprofit. And that put you on the list to ultimately be notified about all the community building stuff that we were doing, the activations, and then the season ticket purchasing eventually. But we gamified it. So let’s say you donated $18 and then you referred 10 people. We would highlight you. And we actually created a cohort of the people that were referring the most people. And we listened to them on, you know, what they wanted to see in the community, which again, gave them equity and gave them a voice, which I think amplified the organic outreach, which was super helpful. Let’s shift over to influencers for a moment. You had mentioned you had acquired a influencer company. Why do that now? And what makes your approach when utilizing influencers different from maybe what other agencies are out there doing? So we’ve worked with a number of influencer agencies. And like I said, that’s the one piece that we’ve never had in house because, you know, we’ll build the campaign strategy. And then maybe a line item of that is influencer marketing. And we have the strategy and then we just go outsource it to a large agency that has it’s, you know, really a talent agency. We finally decided to bring it in-house because we just were sick of the fragmented goals, I guess. In my opinion, influencers are the best form of marketing if utilized correctly because it’s scalable word-of-mouth marketing. If you and I are friends and I tell you, hey, you should look at this skincare company, you’re more likely to look at it because you trust what I’m saying. And influencers at their best own an audience. that relies and believes in what they’re saying, I think that’s been commoditized. And so we’re trying to take that back in house within a larger brand campaign message for our clients and have super trusted relationships that we have in the influencer world to push out messaging for our campaigns. And when it comes to choosing the right partners, you know, on the brand side, what should brands be looking for when seeking a creative agency today? What are their, you know, sort of green flags versus red flags? I love this question. We were just talking about this with a client and we always do a debrief at the end of a project and sort of go through what went great and what didn’t go well. And what she said was we loved at the beginning of… the engagement before we hired you guys that you didn’t ask about budget. You cared to understand what we were truly trying to accomplish. Budget, of course, matters. But I think when there are certain sized agencies, of course, that can’t handle small work, which we understand, and vice versa. But if you don’t have an agency that’s there to deeply understand understand the inner workings of your business, why you’re in the business that you’re in, you are not going to get a company that cares enough about you as a client to be able to properly market and advertise your business to the world because the consumers have no reason to care unless you give them a reason. And so, you know, I really think that the best creative agencies are the ones that are the most insightful 24 seven. Like our, our entire job is to be sort of cultural anthropologists on a day-to-day basis and be able to relate to culture and be hyper empathetic to every subsect of culture, even if we haven’t experienced that. And so I think green flag is people that are asking the deeper questions in the beginning without budget. Red flag would be asking for budget immediately because then it’s just a transaction. Very, very good answer. My next question, and this is kind of a two-parter and also the final question, on the industry side and looking ahead a couple of years, let’s say, what do you feel will be the opportunities and challenges for agencies in the road ahead just over the next couple of years? I think anyone that’s resistant to technological change, which we’ve seen time and time again over history, is going to get left behind in any industry. I also think that people, agencies that rely on, and there are many smaller agencies, this isn’t as big of an issue with the middle market and larger agencies, but smaller agencies that solely rely on technology, you know, AI from a production standpoint or coming up with, you know, middle market strategies that are just blocking and tackling rinse and repeat campaign initiatives like you were talking about earlier. I think those agencies will get left behind, too. The best… agencies will be the ones that are able to sort of remove themselves and think bigger and in a way that provides dramatic change from a campaign perspective. And, you know, there’s our job as marketers is to constantly reinvent how we’re marketing and how we’re talking to people. So technology should just be an amplifier of that. If one wanted to find out more about Maden, where should they go? Maden.com, M-A-D-I-N.com. Excellent. Well, Nick, thanks so much for taking the time to be on the show today. This was fantastic. Thank you for inviting me. I really appreciate the conversation.
