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Hacking Advertising with Jon Sneider
132 Plays13 days ago
Production companies are increasingly finding growth by building direct relationships with brands and proving the value they can deliver. That’s the heart of Jon Sneider’s book Hacking Advertising, and it’s the focus of this episode. Jon draws on his experience running Wild Gravity and working with brands like Amazon, LEGO, Microsoft, and Coca-Cola to share the hacks he’s used to bypass the old agency model and build stronger, more profitable client partnerships. We’ll dig into where these practices came from, how they work in real life, and how production companies can put them to use to win better work and grow on their own terms.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Crossing the Axis' and Brand Collaboration
00:00:01
Speaker
um
00:00:06
Speaker
You're listening to Crossing the Axis, the podcast that explores the commercial side of film production with your host, James Keblis.
00:00:25
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Welcome listeners, and thank you for tuning in to the show. If you've been following me for a while, you know a big part of my point of view centers on how production companies can grow by working directly with brands and essentially bypassing the agency.
00:00:40
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But don't get me wrong, the agency's responsibilities, in my point of view, are still important in the commercial making process. Of course it is. But what I have suggested is that clients are better served by having these responsibilities split between themselves and the production company directly.
Impact of AI and Direct Brand Partnerships
00:00:56
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This is a growing trend that I've seen and one that I believe will continue because more brands are building more internal capabilities. So for instance, go to market strategy tools are more accessible than ever with AI.
00:01:09
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Production and studio tools are faster and cheaper. Campaigns can be tested, measured and optimized in real time. And I've seen more and more good agency people now working inside the brands themselves. So the expertise is growing there too.
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The result is that more brands are choosing to work directly with production partners who can move fast, think strategically, and then be creative collaborators who then will actually make the work.
00:01:35
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I've talked about this idea across many podcast episodes. I've written about it, and I see it in my own client work.
Overview of 'Hacking Advertising' by John Snyder
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But my guest today, John Snyder, has literally written the book on it, and it's called Hacking Advertising. John developed this strong point of view while working client side.
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He hired agencies, he experienced friction, inefficiency and disconnect firsthand. And in addition to complaining about it, he decided to build a company to address it. And that company is called Wild Gravity. In his book, John lays out practical, experience-driven guide for how advertising can be made faster, simpler, and more effective by collapsing the distance between strategy, creative, and production.
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And it's not just theory in his book. It's an actual playbook for production company owners to use, all built from real work, real brands, and real results. So today we're going to unpack where those ideas come from.
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how John has applied them in practice and what production companies can learn from his approach as they think about this kind of growth, this kind of client relationship and the value they might bring to the table. So John, welcome to the show.
00:02:41
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Oh my God. Thank you so much. That was an incredible introduction. I'm glad you like it. Did I miss anything? Did I get you nailed it. You nailed it. Okay. Well, I should say before we begin, you and I are going to agree a lot here. i mean It sounds like it. i'm trying i'm trying actually I'm going to try to fight you at some point in the conversation just to keep it interesting. ready.
00:03:01
Speaker
I think we agree too much. I might even play devil's advocate here a little bit now because basically you and I both have a very similar point of view, ah perhaps a similar rant that listeners are going to hear today. And I'm excited to talk about that. But before we do, I need to know more about you and who you are. Now, I've read your book. I liked it a lot. it is It's a very, very good read. I strongly recommend any production company owner reading it if they're interested in going direct to brand more.
00:03:29
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But I don't know you. And we're actually both in Seattle together. We don't know each other. How did you get here?
John Snyder's Career Path and Early Experiences
00:03:35
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Who is John Snyder? Have you ever worked for agencies? Catch catch us up Yeah, sure. um I grew up in Boston and went to school in Colorado College and lived in Telluride for a few years. And when I decided to move back to the East Coast and get a real job, I was hell bent at working for Bose Corporation for some reason. Someone planted in my head. And I threw, it was a bit of a journey, but I eventually got there. I got some sales experience and then I got, I got a job on the sales team and i was actually selling wave radios over the phone, which was, you know, sales experience is kind of the best for everything. And the reason that I started here is because I was able to get my MBA at night, I was paid for it. And then I got recruited by one of the first and largest interactive agencies in Boston called Digitas. And this was the very early 2000s. And I had the opportunity to lead accounts for General Motors and Microsoft and AT&T. And so it was there that I first started to get a feel for the corporate environment and see what was involved in making making marketing assets for companies of that size.
00:04:53
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I eventually moved client side. i went to another agency, but then I went client side Fidelity Investments in Boston. And there I was in charge of the brand presentation of the website. So the front end of the website, and i was kind of redesigning fidelity.com, you know, one business vertical at a time. So up until that point, I was all digital.
00:05:21
Speaker
was 100% digital marketing. you know I was working on like the first banner ads and sorry for that. you know Email marketing and websites and mini sites and where you know the thing was flash sites then. But from Fidelity, I got recruited to be head of advertising for L.L. Bean.
00:05:40
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when i was interviewing for the job, I was talking to my boss and I was like, yeah, you know, I've never done television before, but I figure it's just like running any other, any other project. And he was like, yeah, you'll be fine. You know, I'll i'll give you any details that you're missing, but if you can run a project, you can certainly run, you know, a TV commercial shoot. i was like, great. So when I first started to go through that experience, I like, I ran a nationwide search for a new agency of record. We hired the agency. They had a great concept for an ad. We started working, working with them. There was like,
00:06:13
Speaker
25 different people on the agency team. And then when we finally had the concept nailed, they were like, okay, well, now we need to choose a production company, a director. And I was like, what? you know Now now this anybody that's in the industry would not be surprised. Right. But I went in my boss's office and I was like, wait, the agency doesn't make the ads. He he goes, no.
00:06:35
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And so was like, who does? and he goes, the production company. And I was like, so we just spent three months with the agency working with 25 people called the ad agency and they don't make the ad.
00:06:46
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And he was like, that's right. He was like, they'll still be there on set. You know, they'll advise. But once it gets in and the production company's hands and the director's hands, they kind of take it over. And I was like, oh, OK.
00:06:57
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I didn't know that because obviously everything in digital production is was done in house. Right. And so whatever we had had a great time. The production company was super collaborative. Director was great. You know, we made a really nice family Christmas ad for L.L. Bean.
00:07:14
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So anyway, i ah I ended up talking to my old boss from Fidelity, who I loved, who had since moved out to Microsoft.
Innovations in Advertising at Microsoft
00:07:22
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And she said, why don't you move out to Seattle work for me again? And i was like, potentially sounds great. ah Fast forward six months later, my family and I moved from Maine to Seattle. And that job became the biggest opportunity of my career.
00:07:37
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So I started out in charge of marketing. in the windows seven days and then there was an opening for the person to drive broadcast advertising so i asked my boss if i could take that on as well and she was like you really have limited experience doing this but ah i'll you know i'll gamble on you and that experience was amazing that was we were running campaigns with hundreds of millions of dollars in media.
00:08:05
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We were working with literally the most coveted agency in the country, which Crispin Porter and Bogusky at the time. They had just been named agency of the decade. They'd been doing huge work for Burger King and Best Buy and all these other massive brands who were really groundbreaking. And we were ended up working with the most coveted digital agency, also RGA, at the time. And um it was a fantastic experience. And I learned so much. And that set up like the rest of my career. I did that for five years. But one of the things that drove me crazy was how freaking expensive the agency was how slow they were. And then anytime that we needed to make a change, I was like, we need to change the font on this or something simple. And they'd be like, we'll run it up the chain. And I was like, what do you mean you'll run it up the chain?
00:08:56
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What it meant was I was talking to the account executive. And so he'd like ask his account supervisor who had asked, their account director who would ask the you know VP director. And if that was all approved, then it would shift over to the creative department.
00:09:11
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Then it would go from you know the VP creative director down to the creative director and eventually filter it down to the copywriter or the designer that needed to make whatever the requested change was.
00:09:24
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And I think in historically that bureaucratic process that you just described was probably built to protect clients from themselves because clients are dumb most of the time. Right. I think you and I are suggesting that might be changing and clients are getting more sophisticated for the reasons I kind of laid out. But I think there was a good reason for that bureaucracy at a time.
00:09:47
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That's true. But what happened was like both of my, both my boss and I had significant agency experience. So we're like, this just has to be done. And so whatever, there's crazy, crazy bureaucracy and it was super expensive. And like everyone, we started getting cost pressure for you know how much our cost per spots were. And also my boss and I had some good ideas for tv ads and we just wanted to make them and our agency would just never make them.
00:10:15
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They'd always come back with something else. It was a very and NIH, not invented here thing. And so we ended up trying an experiment where we took in this boutique agency who we were aware of And we said, we just have these three ads and we want to make them. And they were like, we'll make them.
00:10:34
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We're like, awesome. And so this essentially just went straight to production. One of the partners was in Broken Lizard, who's the comedy troupe that does Super Troopers and all those other.
00:10:46
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cult classic movies and so we hired them to make the spots and we went from concept on air in like four weeks it was like an unheard of timeline for the agency and those spots cost less than it cost for one spot with a big agency we made three spots I remember reading about this in your book and and really gravitating toward the idea of of leaning into comedy, um comedians, professional comedy writers. I fully agree with that. I've written about it myself. I think I actually have a process like the improv both and for client on take that you then need to adopt, that their skills are from comedians and that mindset. So I loved reading that in your book. And I bet you're a big fan of yes and.
00:11:36
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Yeah, it works. You just work. You keep that client moving. and They don't even know that they just they just give up and let you lead them. That's how you get that is by doing that process. Yeah, exactly. And so then we took these spots that the that we went straight to production on and we tested them in digital and they ended up performing better than the spots that were on air.
00:11:58
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that were broadcast with our big shop. And so then we lobbied for and we got permission to run those other spots that we made for far less money, ah far quicker, and they performed better. And so we were like, then we're ah kind of looking at each other and we're like, wait a second, do we just like reinvent advertising at at Microsoft? Is this the new model? And I was like, it's such a great idea. It was like, you can just make the ad super fast and then you can test them in market because with the ads that we would make with k Crispin and, you know, no slight on k Crispin. This is how every big agency did it and does it because the broadcast, the production itself costs so much money. You would go through all of this focus group testing with the you know, with concepts of the ads. And I talk about this in the book as well. Like focus groups never made an ad better.
00:12:50
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They they always just take the teeth out of it. It goes the ad ends up looking so much different by the time you even get to production with the agency. A focus group now is essentially your Instagram feed.
00:13:01
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Right? Exactly. as As it should be. let Let the market truly tell you which is better or what isn't. That's absolutely true. Because the market never lies. Right. it Right. It can be manipulated, but it rarely lies. Yeah. No. When people vote for the with their wallet, they never they're always telling the truth. You know, in a focus group, they're like, oh, yeah, i would love this ah this low fat hamburger that you're talking about. But then when it gets down to it, they're like, hey I'm not going to buy that. Right. right I've like almost never seen real market results match focus group results.
00:13:36
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So anyway, if you, so if the production isn't so expensive, then you can afford to just run the ad on digital and test it in market. Then you just elevate the best performers to broadcast. Then you're getting this kind of like content factory mode and, You've always got, and it's even more important today with digital pretty much being the primary platform, then you've always got new content. And if you run television ads, you can just always take the top performers and put them on TV.
00:14:07
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And it took us out of like this campaign mode of we would make one campaign. actually We had three campaign production timelines. We had holiday. We had grads and dads and then back to school.
00:14:20
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And so it would take us like three to four months to gin up a new campaign every time. And it would cost like four to six million dollars with agency fees and then half a million dollars or more per spot to produce with a production company.
00:14:33
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And so we're like, oh, my God, this is the new way. And we're going to get rid of this agency. And we need a central marketing group. And we're like, we don't need them. And we're all excited. And then, of course, what should happen is a new CMO came in.
00:14:47
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And they were like, not only are you not going to do that, we're going to hire an even bigger agency. There were relationships to maintain. He was like, we need a holding company.
00:14:57
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And we ended up with McCann and in that whole holding company. And that was kind of like the writing on the wall for me. And, you know, I'd been there for five years and I always told myself, like, I think I have the best job at Microsoft. But, you know, when it changes and it's not that way anymore, then I'll start looking. Well, one of my questions to you was going to be, did the problem find you or did you find the problem to start Wild Gravity,
Founding of Wild Gravity and Key Projects
00:15:23
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essentially?
00:15:23
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And I think you've kind of answered it. Although what I get a sense from you is that, you know, your background with an MBA and this clear entrepreneurial spirit, you are a natural salesperson, too. I can tell you like sales is instinctual to you. i would get that. So because of that, it's always looking for the problem to be addressed in a market way. And so all the pressure points seem to hit you with the problem. And that inspires, I'm assuming, wild gravity.
00:15:51
Speaker
Absolutely. And the thought of going back into corporate, like, just filled me with dread at that point. Right. So then I was like, I've got this new model. And so i was like, why don't I just write out this new model, what the idea was. And I made this pitch deck. I made a very basic website. I printed business cards. And then I was like, if I could give you world-class creative that was as good as your agency, but it was took a fraction of the time and a fraction of the cost, would you want that?
00:16:21
Speaker
Yeah. So and because of all my time that I had spent in the industry, i could land the meetings and then we've landed a job with Amazon. There's another observation I want to make here, and that is, you know, listen, my point of view is direct to brand is a potential market for a lot of people. It's big. It's growing.
00:16:39
Speaker
That certainly is yours, too. And I don't it's not a surprise that we're from Seattle because in Seattle, It's a big market for corporate work. Amazon, Microsoft, T-Mobile, Starbucks. I mean, it's a sleeper town. There are a lot of production happening, a commercial production, but there isn't a lot of agencies here. They're not like top shelf agencies here. There's some good ones, but there's not like l LA and New York or Chicago. And I think, but the work it needs to get done in this high volume of it, that it it does create a culture of direct-to-brand. And it doesn't surprise me, like you feeling just instantly like you can go after that market. And I...
00:17:14
Speaker
just intuitively understand what you're talking about because that's the world that we have made money in and worked in and operated in in that kind of a fashion. Yeah. I think we're, I think we're a little bit of a product of desire, ambition, and problem solving, and also contextual marketplace.
00:17:31
Speaker
For sure. And I have ADHD and OCD and a manic. So like I get on something and I chase it. Yeah. Okay, so you go after the business, you land Amazon, of course, because yeah yeah you said the right things. Right. I mean, that's kind of a cool story and in and of itself. like i want to give me a little brief Give me a little briefing on that.
00:17:52
Speaker
Yeah, so we went to pitch Amazon, and it was actually the woman that used to work for me running digital video at Microsoft was now in charge of marketing for Fire TV. And she said, we have a problem where we have these videos that run alongside where we have the trailers for movies and shows and things like that. And the idea is we need to teach people how to use the device and how to search and do all of the things that you need to do to ah learn how to use the device and find content.
00:18:26
Speaker
And we need these short little videos and they have to be about 10 grand a pop, but it has to look great. Right. Because they're going to run alongside movie trailers. Right. And so we're like, okay, well, ah we're like, we could possibly make something work if it was multiples.
00:18:44
Speaker
We went in there and it sounded like there was five different scenarios that they wanted to do. was like how to search with your voice, how to use the remote control, how to find new content. You know, it's like five different things that they wanted to show.
00:18:58
Speaker
So we were hoping to land the project and get a $50,000 project. And so we pitched and we had five different platforms that we pitched. One was like, you could do it with a you know news broadcaster style. You could do it. One was cardboard cutout animations. We did one that was like over the shoulder sketch artist. And we had five different platforms and we went there and they loved it. Right. They were so excited. And they basically handed us the project in the boardroom. And so we're so excited. We're leaving there. We're, we're high-fiving. We're coming out of day one, you know, near the spheres and we're getting into, you know, And then on the way back, I got a call and the client was like, we love it. We want to do it. And I was like, great. Which platform did you want? And they're like, we want to try all five of them. And we're like, all right. And then I was like, so which scenarios do you want to test? i figured they'd only want to test one or two. and they're like,
00:19:58
Speaker
We want to do all five scenarios with all five platforms. i was like, that's a quarter million dollars. i was like, okay, all right, now it's a real job. And then we're so we're so excited. And then she calls me back two minutes later and she goes, we also need them localized for Germany, France, UK, and Japan.
00:20:16
Speaker
And I was like, we proposed lot, you know, some of these are live action. We can't just put in new, new texts. Like these would be new videos, net new. And she was like, I know. And i was like, okay, so that time is five again. And she was like, I get it. And we're like, oh my God, we just landed a seven figure deal.
00:20:33
Speaker
And so that's kind of what started it all for us. Incredible project from Amazon. And then we worked on that account actually for years. And it performed? Oh, yeah, performed great. We went through um a few different iterations of the platform. And then what was interesting is we ended up making a digital set for that because really we had kept setting it up in kind of a living room environment to get people to to ground it and to establish, you know, where you would use the device, of course. Right. And then we figured out that the living room itself wasn't important at all. And so we made this white on white living room. And then also we made it so like there was actual digital objects so we could adjust the lighting after the fact. We could do all of these different things. And then that proved super effective. And we used it for like three years.
00:21:23
Speaker
So let me ask you this, that experience, was that a case study both for Wild Gravity to build and the book that you wrote? Catch us up on Wild Like, what is Wild Gravity? Do you consider yourself more producer, more business leader, more creative, a combination of those things? Why the book? What are you trying to do with it? What's your point?
00:21:45
Speaker
I mean, the thing that makes Wild Graffiti different than an agency is we have creative, we have production, post-production and visual effects all right here in our location in Seattle. And we're all here. It's not virtual. We all come to work. And so because of that, we can create work so much faster and it's so much better than working with an agency because there's not all of those handoffs.
00:22:12
Speaker
And the other thing that's integral to our model, which this Amazon job shows off is our setup is that we have eight to 10 of us here in the office. And between us, we can make anything from feature length film to, you know, to a six second TikTok.
00:22:30
Speaker
But when jobs get big, we hire through freelancers and contractors. And so we went from six people to 60 people in about two or three days. And then at the end of the job, you know, it's not pink slips and tears. It's high fives and see you on the next job.
00:22:48
Speaker
If you're going to scale up from six to 60 in two days, that requires knowing who is good and who's not and keeping really good tabs on the talent that is available to you. That's Maintaining that that is not small work. That is important work. You can't just jump on LinkedIn and start like hiring people. You'll you definitely will make a mistake and you will make work that won't be good if you do it that way.
00:23:15
Speaker
Do you, is that your job is to keep the sphere of influence around you really talented, like full and keeping that maintained and keeping people close and knowing who's doing what, when, where, how?
00:23:26
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, and to your point, I'm fond of saying like, I will give my model away. Like, If you're an MBA at Stanford and you wanted to try this model, have at it.
00:23:37
Speaker
The thing is, you can't do it without all of the experience and the connections. And that's what made it possible that very first time to be able to scale so fast is because I already knew all of the people.
00:23:47
Speaker
I had been doing it for you know years, for like six years in Seattle and then you know bunch of years before that. So I knew exactly who to call. And then we do very basic things like we pay people on time, we treat them well, we buy them lunch, we give them a place to park and we're fun. And so people love working, working with us. So now we have, you know, Rolodex of hundreds of people that we work with and we can always scale up, you know, in a matter of days because people always say people always say yes to our jobs.
The Importance of a Strong Point of View
00:24:19
Speaker
One of my points of view on people doing growing, sustaining at minimum and growing, hopefully their company is to attract, you know, don't chase, stop chasing, attract, bring leads to you, grow current clients and all that kind of stuff. And to attract, you have to have a point of view. You have to have, be able to stand behind that point of view, explain that point of view, show the results of that point of view, be visible so that when people realize they need something and then you're saying things that resonate with them, they call you. And you have done that so well. I'm your, you have, you have such a strong point of view. You have a great presence in socials. You've written a book. It's very clear what you do and what you don't do.
00:25:03
Speaker
Tell me more about the role of the book in that. Many company owners probably think they have a book in them. So tell me about the book, what you're trying to do with it. Is it working to attract clients? All of that. The book started out as like, I think we're doing something really unique here and really more people should know about it.
00:25:19
Speaker
I've talked to a lot of authors now and that's how things start. And a lot of first time authors make the mistake. And I did it too of thinking that you're writing the book for you and really you're You really need to be thinking even from the beginning, the what's in it for me, for the readers.
00:25:40
Speaker
And so that should be your fundamentals for your website, for your social. Sure. It's not about you, my friends. Yeah, no, I've, I've talked to so many. you know, agency or marketing people that have like been in the industry for 20, 30 years. And they're like, I'm writing my book now. And I was like, just a heads up.
00:25:57
Speaker
Nobody cares about you. Yeah, nobody. Right. Like I know you have like thousands and thousands of followers, but nobody really cares about you. They only care about what you can do for them.
00:26:07
Speaker
Yes. yeah and You really, yes. Everything about your company and your marketing and sales needs to represent that point of view. And then also the part of the problem with having a company like ours where we're we're really small, but we work with billion and trillion dollar brands is it's hard to reach those people. And, you know, for a while, for five, six, seven years, we never really worried about who our next client was going to be and things would just happen. And then COVID came and everything blew up and then Soon after that, the Fed started raising interest rates. I won't go into that. But anyway, it it really chilled chilled the whole market. We're like, well, we have to have like a real client acquisition ah program now. But the problem is it's really hard to reach people like CMOs at big, big companies.
00:26:56
Speaker
And so I thought, well, what if I wrote a book that was kind of targeted at them that gave them all the tools to be like, hey, you know, you can skip the agency and save millions of dollars and actually generate millions of dollars for your brand. And so then the book became really kind of a long lead device.
00:27:13
Speaker
I was imagining who you were writing the book for. And I saw it dancing kind of back and forth between other production company owners. I think that you thought you landed on a novel idea that you see work and you want to maybe maybe the book that you wish you had when you were starting out kind of an idea. Right. For other production companies, ah you know, pay it forward, maybe point of view and to kind of show that you've landed on something kind of cool. The other part of it is it's also a playbook for potential clients, right? To say, when you're evaluating what you need to do and who you're going to work with to get that done, think of this criteria that I'm laying out here and find, if not me, somebody like this, right? And you can kind of then explain to them what they get out of it by taking this approach.
00:27:56
Speaker
Yes, there's kind of three audiences that I wrote it for. One is the brand manager, CMO person who is just tired of working with the standard agency route, the high costs, the hassle and the long timelines. Right. And they're just looking for a better way. And then the other audiences are agency owners who are like sick of giving so much money away to production companies. And so this is how you can take an agency and add production capabilities. And then, you know, some people call hybrid agents, I call it creative production companies, creative production agencies. So that's how agencies owners can do it.
00:28:36
Speaker
Which is also a growing trend, by the way. So I, sure you know, I opened this up with like, hey, I'm trying to take a piece of the pie that's currently owned by agencies. And I am. But agencies are doing their part. They're bidding on their own jobs. They're doing in-house capability. For sure. There is a there's a path for them to take other work, too. It's a it's a very competitive market. Yeah, I mean, what I'm talking about really is not new, you know, so agencies are trying to do it. And then also it's written for production company owners who are like, you're sick of, you know, sick of working with agencies and, you know, all of the headache there. Well, you can actually add creative capabilities and do the whole thing and then go direct to brand. My personal point of view is that it's better to start that up from the ground up because bolting on ah agency capabilities to a production company or bolting on production capabilities to an agency can be problematic also because it doesn't necessarily get all rid of all of the bloat in the hierarchy And then if you don't manage it well, it's still kind of two separate orgs and you're still dealing with a lot of handoffs and bureaucracy. It can be done.
00:29:40
Speaker
But if you look at the way the holding companies are doing it, that's not the way. It's like, OK, here's our agency. Now we work with our production company. And it's like it's just basically the same model and same headaches, but you're just writing the check to the same person.
00:29:55
Speaker
I actually had an episode probably as mid 2025. I can't remember what number it is, but it was um with Jillian Gibbs, a fantastic author and leader in our business. And it was all about ah basically a David and Goliath story in conversation where we're talking about how independent boutique shops can compete against the holding companies. It's a fantastic episode.
00:30:17
Speaker
Partnerships is one of the key takeaways and then doing very much what you're doing at Wild Gravity. And basically a lot of the playbook that you have in hacking advertising. Right. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of different ways at it.
00:30:28
Speaker
A lot of people are doing kind of freelance collectives and things like that. But to your point, kind of at the beginning of the show, there's so many brands that are trying new ways that are bringing capabilities in house. And that's something I advocate for very much. And they have a lot of agents. They might have an internal agency or they have at least have, you know, some of the core competencies. They have a creative director and copywriters and things like that. And so it just makes sense for them. Inevitably, when somebody makes an internal agency, that agency gets tapped out very quick and overloaded and they always need to outsource.
00:31:08
Speaker
Tell me where I might have this wrong, but I'm not saying that the, like I said in the beginning, the responsibilities that the agencies have have held doesn't go away. Just the agency goes away. The responsibilities still need to be managed. But I guess my point of view, and this is where you can tell me from your experience, as a production company, you don't have to be as good as the agency was at handling that responsibility. You need to be 50% as good. Because the other 50% of that hundred is actually in-house at the clients. That's right. and they're They're getting really much more sophisticated. I said, clients are dumb. And I think I've been a client. I've been a dumb client. I've hired agencies that have taken what I thought was a good idea, shown me it was a bad idea, really shown me the good idea and had success with it. And yes thank God i have the agency to do that. But that is changing so rapidly. And I think that's why we're seeing this kind of trend spotting up what we're taught claiming here. But so you only have to be 50% as good as the agencies were. the The client's going to bring the other 50% and then you have to be a collaborator. Would you agree with that or would you change that? I 100% agree with that. and To your point, there's so many, um and I'm not shitting on agencies at all. Like agencies add a tremendous amount of value and they're great at what they do.
00:32:23
Speaker
They wouldn't exist still if they weren't. So there's a lot of ton of talent there, but there's also a lot of overlapping capabilities, even if you don't have your own internal agency. Like the big one I always point to is strategy.
00:32:35
Speaker
We used to spend so much time on strategy with the agencies. And I was like, we have a huge strategy team here and they're very good. And whenever the agency brought in a strategy, it was always missing something. would always be like, yeah, that would make a lot of sense if you had all of this data, which you don't have, which and which you're never going to have because we'd never give it to you.
00:32:59
Speaker
So one of the problems with agency strategy is they never have all the data and nor should they. And the data they did have is now accessible to the in-house teams. Yes. And so usually there's if clients are in a typical agency relationship, they're way over paying for strategy for one thing. And so that's, I recommend taking a lot of the agency functions in-house for brands. And one of the very first ones is strategy. Not that the agency shouldn't make creative strategies. Of course they could, but I feel strongly that the client should own the marketing
Effective Marketing Strategy and Metrics
00:33:33
Speaker
strategy. So let me let's get into this a little bit, because that is where probably the hardest part for any production company owner to want to go this route is historically they've hired producers. They've hired director and director types, and they usually don't hire a strategist or a creative director or anything like that. And that's real money, real expense. But you have to do that to some degree in order to go direct a brand and be successful, I would say.
00:34:00
Speaker
Yeah, very early on, I was like, we're not doing strategy. We're just not doing it. I was like, the client should be be responsible for that. And that doesn't mean we're not strategic. We're still strategic in our work, but we just we just expect that the the client should own their own strategy. And certainly there's different engagements where a client might really need it and we will engage somebody like that. My partner is an executive creative director, so we have a creative director And, you know, we'll go outside if we need, you know, additional creative firepower. But are you do you play the role of a strategist? I do.
00:34:37
Speaker
I could tell. That's what I would have guessed that maybe because i've already read and i and I see your commitment to performance, which if you ah have a commitment to performance, whether you hit it or not, it requires a strategic approach. You have to think. Yes.
00:34:52
Speaker
here's there's the target. Here's why I'm aiming at that target. Here's what I'm going to do to try to hit that target. And we'll find out if it worked or not. That is that is all strategy. Yeah. And I have a very pragmatic approach and I'm always about like, I really care about the client's goals. And that's might sound, I don't know, hokey or canned or whatever, but you know, a lot of agencies, they're,
00:35:13
Speaker
Their main goal is to sell the agency and build their portfolio. They want to win awards. And so the awards is just, you know, promoting your own agency. And I even heard creative directors say this, like, that's not going to win an award when we're talking about. And I was like, yeah, I'm trying to sell computers. Right. Like, like. We have to say the name right or like you have to show this feature correctly. And we actually have we have a special niche with technology companies because my partner and I both were from Microsoft and and we get it. We understand like how important that stuff is to clients. And we're always like, you want to show this part of the product? Does it need to have this? And We're very in tune with particularly needs of technology companies and how important product accuracy is.
00:36:01
Speaker
And, you know, we'll we'll also be like, hey, did you check in with the engineering department to see if we can do this? Did you check with your own internal brand team if this is OK? And they're like some clients are like, oh, my God, that's a really good idea. That's because I've had work killed at the last minute from the engineering team. Right. and i know if we don't show the mouse movement correctly then it's going to be problem exactly exactly what's going to be real what's going to be need to be put in later the right perspective of how you're looking at the screen all of that stuff yeah so we're really thinking about that we're really thinking about is this going to sell products is it going to move not is the ad good for you know as a piece of entertainment
00:36:39
Speaker
Well, that's a good bridge to what I think is the hardest part of production working directly with brands. And that is, first of all, being confident enough to ask the hard questions about goals and really unpacking what the client truly needs to have success and then trying to line up budget and all that kind of stuff to meet that and actually create a campaign and push back to to meet it based on your experience and knowing what works and what not.
00:37:05
Speaker
But the other part of it is in the bigger part is how do you know what performed? How do you know what you did in the outcome of a campaign that you can take some credit for, that you could talk about, that you could analyze just for yourself? So as you're kind of doing your work for future clients, you can make better work for them. You you tap into this. You have these five magic metrics. You have you have this instinct about you. i Help production company owners that are listening to this understand what they can do to really speak to meeting the client's goals, being able to measure their participation in whether it worked or not, and then to talk about it.
00:37:42
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, by far the biggest black hole is getting results from the client. And being frank, we hardly ever get them. It's usually all anecdotal. so But there is a formula that allows you to self-evaluate whether the ad or communication or article or whatever you're writing is going to be effective. And it's something I stumbled across in Microsoft, because if you're in marketing and you're running campaigns, you're going to be... deluged with all of these different metrics and things to look at. And depending on people's political agenda, they'll have you look at, you know, the ad was successful because of this, or it wasn't successful because of this. And right. And so then eventually i learned that all ads and communications come down to five things. And those are breakthrough brand product, recall message, recall,
00:38:33
Speaker
likability and purchase intent. And I'll go through them quickly. you know If it was an ad survey, you know you're a Nielsen family, you have box on your TV, you see a bunch of ads and then the next morning you get a survey.
00:38:46
Speaker
Breakthrough is, do you remember the ad? And let's say it was Geico. Do you remember an ad with a camel in it talking about hump day or a lizard and Will Arnett or you know whatever? it was like, yes, I remember that. Like if the ad doesn't break through, then all other metrics are off the table. it doesn't matter how you score in the rest of them.
00:39:06
Speaker
And these are cascading kind of for all of them. What we have today is just a quick aside is everybody's over indexing and breakthrough. Everybody's like, got to have you took and did it, you know, like, which is true you do, but you need to also care for the, for the next ones too. So the next one is brand product recall. And it's, do you remember what the ad was for?
00:39:26
Speaker
And you know, an ad has failed in this regard when a friend comes up to you and was like, I saw the best ad last night. Cool. What was it for? I don't know. Right. It like just lost its first job. Okay. Well, that wasn't a great ad. It was great piece of entertainment. So then those ah progressive don't become your parents ads.
00:39:45
Speaker
Right. I think are great, but I don't think they tie to the brand very strongly. I bet a lot of people don't even know it's a progressive ad. If you had said that a different way and asked and challenged me to say the brand for that campaign, I don't think I would have said progressive.
00:39:59
Speaker
Right. And whereas if in terms of those flow ads, we know those are progressive. Right. So then it's like, okay, did it break through? Do I remember seeing the ad? And do I remember what it's for? Yes. Yes.
00:40:11
Speaker
Next one is message recall. Do you remember what the message was? What is the message of those progressive don't become your parents ads? Are you being rhetorical? are You ask. I'm like, I'm kind of being rhetorical, but like, you don't know, right? I love talking about the insurance company because they just run so many freaking ads and they run multiple campaigns at the same time. And it's, it's a commoditized product. And so, you know, I talk about Doug and Lemu Emu, right? It's like, okay, do you remember those ads? Yeah, i remember them.
00:40:37
Speaker
Do you remember who is for the connections? Not quite as strong Liberty Mutual, I guess, Limu. Right. And then it's like, do you remember what the message was? Not really. But if you compare that to Geico, yes, I remember it's Geico. I remember the caveman.
00:40:52
Speaker
I know it's Geico because they say it a hundred times in every ad and they even make fun of themselves for how much they say it And then do I remember what the message was? Of course, I remember what the message is save 15% or more on your insurance because they say it in every freaking communication. So they're like probably the best insurance advertiser and maybe best television advertiser, period, I think. And then the next one is, do you like it? Likeability. Do you like it? Because you're really not going engage with a brand or buy something if you don't like it there are those super annoying ads that so break through and you might be like, I guess I need the service. But for the most part, you're not going to buy something if you don't like it or like the presentation. And then it all comes down to purchase intent is do you plan to buy it after all that? Would you go out and buy it?
00:41:36
Speaker
Although we don't have access to all those measures, we can ask ourselves those questions. We can say, okay, if we look at it ourselves, is this going to hit on all of these five measures? And if it does, we know we're going to have a successful communication and that works for everything. That works for your social media posts, for any articles you write, right pretty much any marketing communication or any communication that's you know not just fiction or meant to entertain.
00:42:04
Speaker
as a sales point, ah you know, I think showing a client that you're committed to their goals and doing the best you possibly can to meet those goals would be to establish a service that's going to measure the results of these campaigns in advance and then agree upon that and then get them to unlock the budget so so that they'll they'll know. Most of the time they're already there anyway because they're There's there people they report to are requiring it. But um I think if it's good asking that asking if you can get that information front, even before you land the job as a part of landing the job, because it demonstrates to them, this is what you're thinking about. And I think most of the time they're willing to give it to you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's always a smart strategy to ask in advance and then tell them that you're actually shooting for these metrics.
00:42:47
Speaker
This has been such fantastic information. And I really encourage people to read your book. I really appreciate how specific you are, how transparent you appear to be, and just kind of the matter of fact way you present this stuff. Beyond what we've already talked about, what's important? What do you feel is important for people to take away from
Investing in Creative Work and Feedback
00:43:07
Speaker
your book? I think the very most important thing is the creative, that people get focused on so many different things and it's easy to and You know, of course, you need to think about, you know, your messaging and your purchase funnel and all of that. But the end of the day, it really comes down to a really strong piece of creative and you need to really care for that. And that is the thing that you should be investing in. If you're saving money on strategy or saving money. you know, in these different elements, over invest in creative, have us really strong creative team, have a good creative team as part of your brand and don't overspend on developing creative, but you also don't want to make
00:43:53
Speaker
decisions that are going to make your brand seem, you know, not polished or not as professional. We all know that when you see unprofessional looking communications, that it makes you think the business is not very professional. Or when you see cheap ads that look cheap, it makes the company look cheap.
00:44:14
Speaker
I want to just, before we wrap, I want to just ask more question about creativity and you bringing that up because I've had multiple client side conversations on this podcast and pretty universally, they all say when they're hiring directly to production that they think they have a good idea. They know their market, they know their customer, they know the environment, and they have some level of experiencing doing creative and they think they have it, but they don't know they have it and they are looking for pushback. They're looking for verification from another, from an objective point of view. But I think oftentimes production companies aren't skilled at that. Agencies are. Right. And, but if you want to develop that direct to brand relationship, you have to develop that muscle of being able to push back in a polite and in a caring and intentful way. Do you do that a lot? Do you push back? Do you, do you find that you change a lot of creative as a result of that? Yeah, we do. There's a lot of times um we get stuff and we'll be like, I know you said you want to do this, but you really want to do this. And here's why.
00:45:15
Speaker
Particularly in the tech field, it's we've we've done it so many times for my partner and I have like 20 years of experience of developing marketing collateral and assets for for tech brands and be like, Now, this is a demo. You really need to be showing this, this, and this. This is an ad. You don't need to be showing exactly how to use the product. There's a lot of things that we know inherently that is the type of things that agencies would help with. And that's what I think makes Wild Gravity special is that we we have like real agency capabilities in-house along with production and i think that can be difficult for a brand if they're going directly to a production company or a production company that's trying to bolt on creative services like somebody has to have that skill
00:46:01
Speaker
Well, I love that you're doing that. And I love that you're influencing it. John Snyder, it has been so fantastic to talk to you. Thanks for everything. And ah everybody check out the book, Hacking Advertising.
00:46:12
Speaker
It's a really good read. It's a basically a business plan for some of you out there. But just know that it's not just the same business if you're going after agencies. It's something different. There's something to be had if you can do that something different. So anyway, John, where can folks find you?
00:46:27
Speaker
You can find me, I'm at John Snyder on most of the socials and that's J-O-N-S-N-E-I-D-E-R. And then if you're interested in the book, check out hackingads.com or you can go direct to Amazon and just type in hacking advertising. It'll be the first thing you come up.
00:46:45
Speaker
And if you want to work with Wild Gravity, we're at wildgravity.net and we're right here in Seattle. And we work with huge brands and smaller ones. And particularly the tech brand, you should seek us out.
00:46:55
Speaker
There you go. All right. Thank you, John. Thanks so much, James. This was really a pleasure.
00:47:02
Speaker
Thank you for listening to Crossing the Axis with James Keblis. If you're interested in joining the conversation or have a topic you'd like covered, please drop a note at keblis.com. That's K-E-B-L-A-S e b l a s dot