KELLY GRAVES, CHIEF MARKETING OFFICER, FCB CHICAGO ON THE BRAND LAB SERIES EP 70

• Agency CMO vs. Brand CMO
• Today’s Competitive Agency Landscape
• How Agencies Have Evolved
• Recruiting Top Talent
• Leveraging Technology

FCB is one of the largest global advertising agency networks in the world. FCB Chicago boasts a massive portfolio with clients including Michelob Ultra, GLAD, Milk Bone, Fiat, Maserati, Jack Daniel’s, and more.

After 17 years as an account person, Kelly Graves became the first Chief Marketing Office of FCB Chicago, a role she personally helped design. Kelly is our first agency CMO on the Brand Lab Series. Listen as she discusses the differences between a brand CMO and an agency CMO, as well as the status of the advertising world today.

“Right now, I probably do 47 different things that vary in terms of seniority to lowest guy on the totem pole and I’m not afraid to roll up my sleeves and do all of that.”

KELLY:

Hi, I’m Kelly Graves, Chief Marketing Officer at FCB Chicago, and you are listening to the Brand Lab Series podcast.

BRIAN:

So Kelly, welcome to the Brand Lab Series, I’m thrilled that you could join us, especially as we kick off Season Four.

KELLY:

Thank you for having me, I’m very excited to be here.

BRIAN:

Well, we’ve never had anyone on the agency side on… So to be able to have a CMO at FCB Chicago is thrilling for me. I think it’ll be a great conversation to hear a little bit more of our industry’s perspective from the agency side. So, again, I’m thrilled that you’re with us today.

KELLY:

Thank you for having me, I’m excited to represent the agency side. Try and do us proud. [chuckle]

BRIAN:

Yeah, so why don’t we begin with your rise to the C-Suite? Talk a little bit about your career inside the agency ranks and how you got to the job of CMO.

KELLY:

So I was an account person born and raised, so I started at a tiny agency, in the very entry-level account role at the time, it was account coordinator, discovered that I was really good at it, and worked my way up, spent some time at Leo Burnett and worked on some big teams there, and then made my move over to FCB probably about 10 years ago, and again, worked in that account role, ran a piece of… Large piece of business here. It was the Kmart business at the time, and because I stayed on that piece of business for so long, I was able to really develop a rapport with the client and move up pretty quickly. After that, I ran Fiat Chrysler, and our Fiat relationship, and worked in auto and got to spend a little time in my hometown. And after about 17 years of being an account person I decided it was time to explore something new, and Michael and I sat down and had a conversation about what was the right move. At the time our agency did not have a CMO and we sat down and had a conversation about what that might look like, and here I am, two years later.

BRIAN:

Well, the CMO role inside an agency is a relatively new role over the lifetime of an agency, and it’s obviously a different role from a brand CMO.

KELLY:

Yes.

BRIAN:

So talk a little bit about the nuances and maybe some of the differences between being an agency Chief Marketing Officer and a brand Chief Marketing Officer.

KELLY:

Sure. So I think the reason I get asked this question all the time, because it is such a new role, and I will say the CMO role, depending on what agency you’re in and who you’re talking to, it looks very, very different. Here, when we sat down and defined it, we really said it’s going to be comprised of three things. So first and foremost, new business, that is the lifeblood of our organization and we need to really champion that and make that a focus, because that is obviously our number one campaign. Every time we do a pitch that is like our SuperBowl, [chuckle] in order to bring new clients into the building. I think the second big piece of it is what I would call strategy, and really taking a look at how we’re positioned as an agency versus our competition, and what our offering looks like, what we’re hearing from our clients, that they want, need, how do we evolve that? And then working with internal teams to help change and shape that offering. So, when we are pitching, we’re pitching the right things.

And then the third piece, and this is interestingly where I think it starts to get different from the brand CMO is the marketing side, so the day-to-day marketing, what our website looks like, what we’re doing on social media, the PR and comms efforts that we have out in the world, where we’re putting people up on panels to speak and giving them quotes and I think this is where it does get different for us as agency CMOs versus brand side. Brand side, I’m not sure if you’re familiar with the expression, “The shoemaker’s son has no shoes.” [chuckle] As we’re marketing ourselves, we’re not hiring outside vendors, we are our own vendor and I think oftentimes our focus on marketing ourselves whether that’s building a new site or putting stuff out on social media, we use the same teams that work on our client’s business every day, so we’re gonna always put a client before ourselves. So it does make it a little challenging to focus and get the attention sometimes that you need to market yourself in the way you really want to.

I think the second big difference is that we don’t fully own our product, right? So our product is creative and we develop creative in partnership with our clients. So while we have amazing campaigns sometimes that we would love to shop from the roof tops, you’ve got clients that either wanna focus that narrative on their product and their brand over yours, we have clients that don’t wanna talk about it at all. So sometimes you may have the most amazing piece of communication to put out in the world, but you’re limited by a client that doesn’t necessarily want that narrative out there.

BRIAN:

Well as an agency CEO, I can appreciate the shoemaker analogy. Because, for many years I said, “How are we in the brand business, but we’re not building our own brand?” And that’s obviously why years ago, besides the fact I couldn’t blog, we decided to start the Brand Lab Series podcast, and now the video cast. But I love something you said earlier, which is new business. I always say, “Revenue is the fuel for your car, if you don’t have it, you’re not gonna go anywhere,” and irregardless of what business you’re in, revenue is critical to growth. But what’s interesting is the industry’s changed a lot in terms of the competition and even the new business process. So as someone who gets her hands dirty in new business, talk about how you’re seeing that kind of part of the industry evolve.

KELLY:

Yes, so I would say you used to see pitches coming in. Big pitches for millions of dollars, big big brands. And I think what we’re saying now is a shift majorly, when we look at the monetary space. So whereas before, we would see $5, $10, $15 million pitches happening relatively regularly in the industry, those are few and far between, I call them unicorns now. And what we’ll see is a lot more of the smaller pitches coming in, and it doesn’t mean the brands are any smaller, it’s just the amount of money that they’re willing to invest in agencies. The expectations for what you can do with that money has changed and we see a lot more clients that are pitching not even necessarily for AOR engagements, but almost projects that are limited time, so we wanna launch a new product, and we’re gonna engage an agency for that duration. It’s not necessarily a lifetime relationship, so I think that’s changed a lot. Where the pitches come in, for a while the consulting world owned all of that, so the big consultants, SRI and Pile and Beals, they ran a lot of the big pitches.

And we’re seeing a big shift to clients actually running the pitches themselves, having it be procurement-lead and having someone on the inside handling that versus a consultant. So that does change the environment, ’cause a lot of times these folks maybe haven’t worked with an agency before, haven’t done an agency selection or search process. So, in ways it can make it easier for us and also it can make it more challenging, it just depends. I would say those are the two biggest things. The third thing I would add to that is the expectation of what goes into a pitch has changed, I think as agencies, we’re all pretty competitive. And we’re all looking to up the bar, and every time we up the bar, someone else is right there behind us to up it again, and so now what we’re bringing into the room, is amazing, incredible, oftentimes, fully produced pieces, full design exploration music, graphic treatments, and I think it’s a big investment as an agency as you’re looking to do that, but oftentimes it’s what it takes to win.

BRIAN:

How much of that do you think is driven by the competitiveness of the industry and out-performing other agencies, or how much of it would you say is actually a new expectation bar from a client? 

KELLY:

I think both, look, agencies are competitive. We are companies that pitch every day, all day long, and it’s all about having the best idea in the best limelight in the press and that sort of thing. But I do think as clients have worked with more agencies and for a while, we saw clients working with five, six, sometimes up to 12 agencies at a time. They saw different things from different companies, and I think their expectations rose. And there was a time when you could spitball an idea and maybe read a script and someone would get it. And now we have clients that are literally saying, “I can’t envision what it’s gonna look like. Can you make me a rip?” And so you’re essentially producing your ad before you’re producing your ad just to get it sold.

BRIAN:

So you mentioned something else that was pretty interesting, and that is the whole, multiple agencies going after business. Obviously, we’re all competitive in our industry. So when you do have to be in a sand box and you’re going into a pitch, knowing that maybe it’s an integration, or there could be multiple agencies, even if it’s within your family, how do you approach that and what are some lessons that you’ve learned there?

KELLY:

I think when you’re pitching with other partners, and I’ll speak both when we’re pitching internally with other IPG companies or even when we’re pitching with other partners that we may or may not have worked with in the past. You gotta get in a room and be face-to-face. I think oftentimes a lot of stuff gets lost in translation, when you’re trying to coordinate, call the meetings, getting in the room and really coming at it from a place of, “We are all creative people, we all want what’s best for the brand and the business, we all wanna win.” And when you set those expectations from the jump and then you respect people’s discipline and expertise that they bring in, it tends to be pretty fluid. We’re working on a big integrated agency holding company pitch right now and it’s fun to get in the room with the sister agencies and look at new ideas and they have skills and expertise that we don’t necessarily have here and vice versa, and it is fun to see all that come together. And you meet new people. The creative industry is generally filled with really fun people, so it can be a very positive thing if you approach it the right way.

BRIAN:

So let’s continue to build on the new business pipeline conversation, I know that that’s one of your core responsibilities. You’ve had a good year, you’ve had a couple of high profile wins, and we were talking before we recorded, about Jimmy John’s, GE Appliances. When you then start to evolve from the pitch phase to the client phase, what makes a good client partner for your agency? 

KELLY:

It’s a really good question and I think it actually starts with what they bring to you in the pitch phase. So when you have a client that comes to you and they’re very open about who they are and they have sort of a vision for what they wanna be but they don’t have a prescriptive answer for how they wanna get there, those are the best clients. And so, whether it was GE or Jimmy John’s that came to us, they came with, “Here’s what we wanna be, this is our vision for ourselves. You guys help us understand the best way to get there.” And I think that then translates into the running of the day-to-day business. We often have been having conversations about how we approach working with clients day-to-day.

And I think the brief, which is the center of our universe, comes up a lot, and the brief, there’s the client brief, and then there’s the agency brief and then the brief that the creatives get to see [chuckle] and that sort of thing. When we started to look at client briefs, it had gotten to the point where it was so prescriptive and the clients are filling out who the target audience is, what they believe the opportunity to be, what they believe the business challenge, and that’s too much. And what we finally started to say to ourselves is, “Just give us the problem. Your problem is our brief.” And any time you’ve talked to a CMO, they don’t wanna sit down and fill out a template with 87 formats, they wanna say, “This is what’s broken. Help me figure out the right way to fix it.” So we’re really working to bring that into our business day-to-day more, and I think clients are responding really well to it because when they can sit down and go, “This is what I need, show me how to get there,” it opens it up from a creative standpoint and alleviates a lot of pressure on them in filling out this crazy template, and I think it ultimately will lead to better work down the road because you may have thought of something that never was on that original brief that was so boxed in.

BRIAN:

Well, and it sounds like you’re also talking a lot about getting at the root of what the client’s business pains and business challenges are. And I think that’s also why you’re starting to see a little bit more of consultant jobs kind of moving into the marketing space a little bit, because that’s kind of historically been their turf. So how has that, if at all, changed the dynamic? And do you still see your competition is like-size agencies like a Leo Burnett, or what’s the competitive landscape look like today? 

KELLY:

So the competitor landscape has exploded, which I think is funny for us because it’s also a slide, I think I’ve had a seven of my last pitches [chuckle] in terms of what our clients are facing. Their competitive sets are changing. So we compete with consultants, we compete with big agencies, small agencies, the platforms, Google, Facebook, we’re competing with a very diverse group of folks, and it’s challenging for me as a CMO and for our teams as they operate in that world, but it’s also challenging for our clients. So as they’re looking to manage and navigate that, we see a lot of CMOs coming in now and saying, “I’ve got six agencies and I’ve got a partnership with Adobe, and I’ve got Google, and I’ve got Facebook, and I don’t know how to make heads or tails of any of it. It’s too much, like it is just too much. How can you as a partner, help me streamline and simplify?”

And so when you are an agency like FCB Chicago, we can come in and look at all of that and help sort of structure, and add discipline around that, and rigor, and make the trade-offs and help analyze each thing for what it’s worth in the plan and what it does for the overall idea. And I think there are CMOs that are starting to swing back in terms of, “Hey, I can’t manage all of those things on my own, I need somebody to be my partner in this and help figure out where all the pieces fit together.”

BRIAN:

So you’ve mentioned earlier on your rise to the CMO job that you’ve been in the industry almost 17 years, which is about the same for me. Over the course of that period of time, how have you seen just the agency world, in general, evolve? 

KELLY:

I think agencies have changed a lot. I think, at our core, we’re still creative shops, but where those ideas come to life and how they’re shaped and formed and how many of them that you have to actually craft at the end of the day, that is what has changed, and I think the agencies that have been able to evolve beyond, at one time, it was a TV spot and a couple of print ads, maybe a digital banner in the mix, and now we’re looking at literally thousands of pieces of content, some crafted by a person, some crafted by a machine [chuckle] in a way, when you have to get into the automation and some of the really targeted audiences that you’re working towards. So I think the agencies that have been able to maintain the beauty of the idea at the core, but then recognize that how that idea comes to life looks very, very different now, have been successful.

I think the second big way that agencies have changed is how they approach talent. We had talked about this a little bit prior to this, there was a time when you couldn’t get into an agency without agency experience, and it was “Agency, agency, which agency was she at before? What campaigns has she worked on and which brands?” And that sort of thing. And now we’ve really started to recruit from outside of our own industry ’cause if you look at some of the skill sets that are changing in terms of what our offering is, what we can bring to clients, that doesn’t exist in agencies. And so we’ve recruited people from tech companies and financial companies and insurance companies and food companies. You have to bring people from the outside in. And I think when you start to see how that diversity tends to change the ideas that you’re bringing to bear, it’s actually a lot more beneficial for both us and for the clients, because you get a whole host of new things that you never would have had if we just stayed agency, agency, all day long.

The third area, which may or may not surprise you a little bit, I actually think agencies have become a lot more humble in the last probably 5-10 years. And when you look at small agencies beating out big shops, when you look at the rise of Google and Facebook and their in-house creative departments, you look at clients that have multiple agency partners all working on the same things and bringing their ideas to bear in different ways, it has been very humbling, especially, I think for the big agencies, and having to take a step back and really look at what we’re bringing to the table, it’s not just an amazing, creative product, it is a business partnership, it is being able to extend that. I think having to have that humility and take a step back and really look at ourselves was very good for us. I think it’s no longer enough just to be the agency person at the table, that doesn’t buy you anything anymore. You have to be the person that is the best business partner, that’s bringing the best creative idea, that’s bringing the most innovation, the most technology to your work, and that’s what’s gonna keep you at the table. Again, the agency cool kid thing is kind of a thing of the past and I actually think that’s really positive for us as an industry.

BRIAN:

I would totally agree with that, and that doesn’t surprise me actually, because you see it almost every day these days, in terms of news and wins and successes coming out of the industry. One thing though that I’m really happy to hear, because I was once that person who came from a technology background and could not get an agency job. I was just told, “No, no, no,” so I had to start my own. But nonetheless, in addition to the evolution of technology, the evolution of people, the evolution of culture and humility, talent is always gonna be at the core, no matter what your business is. And you personally, Kelly, have a reputation for really cultivating some great talent. So what do you look for in an individual, from a talent perspective? 

KELLY:

I will be the first to admit I look work ethic, first, [chuckle] and we were actually just having this conversation, a colleague of mine. We don’t necessarily look at pedigree, college degree. We go right to work experience and understanding what you’ve done over the last two or three years, whether that’s while you’re in college, or while you’ve been working out in the world, I think really looking for that person that has that work ethic, and that ability to be flexible about what their role is on the team. I think right now I probably do 47 different things that vary in terms of seniority, to lowest guy on the totem pole, and I’m not afraid to roll up my sleeves and do all of that, and I want that in the people that are part of our agency, and the people that are a part of my team. Because I think that’s how you get things done. I also think it’s good for you to do different sorts of things as part of the broader ecosystem. If you’re just a strategist, that’s great, but you should also… We send strategists sometimes to spend time with the clients, and work to cultivate that relationship just as much as the account person, so you want someone that’s a little flexible and who’s willing to roll up their sleeves and do different tasks and try different things.

So, that’s probably my first thing. Work ethic, all day long. My second thing is really, you want someone who’s diverse in their point of view, we’ve spent a lot of time here at our agency, really looking at how we build teams, because you cannot build a team of all the same people. [chuckle] I don’t need a team of 20 Kellys, I need a team of 20 different people that’re gonna come together, ’cause they’re gonna push the rest of the members of the team to think about something differently, or look at something differently. And I think as an agency we’re looking at our make-up overall, and then we are looking at the team level to see there’s proof, diverse teams outperform teams that are all the same, hands down. So we’ve really made a lot of effort to change where we recruit, how we recruit and who we’re bringing in, to ensure that we’re living that every single day in the teams that we’re building.

BRIAN:

Well, I’ve seen first hand that some people really thrive in the ability to do 47 different things and some people don’t, but one thing that has not really changed much in this industry though is that it’s fast-paced, it can sometimes be really long hours, especially if you’re on the new business side, I mean these pitches can get complex, suddenly you don’t know what day it is, you’ve been working for a long time. How do you avoid the burnout issue? 

KELLY:

I think you always have to keep it in perspective. A pitch, there will always be another one. There is always going to be a beginning and an end, I always say that to my team and myself, I’m like, “Look you guys, it’s two weeks, we can do anything for two weeks,” and you get to that point, and often in your business, you get a little break, a couple of days, or at least it’s a down time. So I think that’s a little bit of how you avoid burnout. It’s always keeping it in perspective, in terms of, “Not every day will be like this.” Not every weekend will be in the office, there will always be ebbs and flows. And I think that’s one of the great things about new business, ’cause you can have a down week and, it’s a little chill and that’s wonderful. I also think it’s about the culture that you create as part of that. Like working 24 hours a day can be awful if you’re with awful people, that have awful attitudes about it. If you come in and set a tone of positivity, and I feel like that’s a big part of my responsibility as a CMO, and we’re running a pitch, I set the tone. So if I walk into the room, I’m like, “Guys, this is gonna be great. I know it’s Saturday but we’re gonna knock this out and be done at five.” The team will follow suit.

If I come in, “Oh God, you guys, this is awful, it’s Saturday, I’m so sorry, we’re gonna be here forever.” That sets a totally different tone. So I think when you, as a leader, set that tone for the broader team, that helps manage the burnout more than you can even imagine, and I think you can feel it in the room, and you can feel it from the team as they’re kind of going through that with you.

BRIAN:

So let’s pivot a little bit back to something that you touched on a little bit earlier, and that was technology. Talk about how technology has really changed in the industry perspective. And what are some of the things that FCB Chicago is doing to use technology to really help solve some of your customers’ business challenges? 

KELLY:

Yes, so technology has been a buzz word around here and it’s actually been more than a buzzword, because our president believes strongly that the intersection of creativity and technology is what’s gonna define who actually exists in this industry, [chuckle] five years from now. And I think as we’ve looked at it, technology can be really scary in terms of what it allows us to do and the number of versions it allows us to create and how targeted and nuanced we can get. But when you actually embrace that for what it’s worth and then put technology to work for you on the creative side, then that’s when it gets really interesting. So a couple of the things that we’ve been exploring.

First and foremost, we’ve been taking a look at content management overall, and what machine learning and AI can do to help us, as we’re bringing in hundreds and thousands of assets for brands, how are we tagging that? How are we cataloging it, how are we making it accessible? Not only for ourselves and our art directors and copywriters, but our partners, our clients, some of their other agency partners. So you’d have a really streamlined, efficient Content Management System. We’ve actually taken that one step further and now we’re using scripting to actually build ads off of a content management system. So our directors and writers, where they used to draw a storyboard and write out the script next to it, now they can easily pop into a sort of a script, for lack of a better word, but find an image of a cat playing with a ball of yarn, and then find a woman and cat playing together on the couch and that sort of thing, to eventually have the machine pull together a full working television spot that could be for a client of ours, like Meow Mix. So there are different things that we’re doing on that front to really automate, because when you think about creating 47 versions of a piece of online video, or 27 digital banner ads, it’s a lot more efficient when you start to bring technology into the mix.

The second big thing that we’ve been doing is taking a look at the big platform players so Adobe, IBM, Salesforce, etcetera. All of our clients have deals with these guys, everyone’s on something, they’re spending a lot of money there. And we’ve started to hear from some of our CMOs, “I spent a ton of money, I have no idea how to leverage this platform the right way, my teams have no idea how to leverage this platform and we’re not necessarily bringing to bear the right creative product in these platforms. Can you help me figure that out?” So we’ve actually brought in some Mar-tech experts, we have two gentlemen that are leading the initiative here, and then we’ve hired out experts on each platform to really start to understand the nuances and how that impacts the creative that we put into the system, and now sitting down with clients and helping them understand how you can take all of the suite of tools that you have with Adobe that you’re not using today and actually put your creative product into that. So when it comes into a consumer’s email inbox or flashes up on their screen, they’re seeing the actual idea as you saw in the original creative pitch from the agency six months prior.

BRIAN:

Well, it’s absolutely interesting, that you would talk about that because that’s clearly a value add that your agency would provide. We’ve had a lot of CMOs on and we talked a lot to CMOs about the struggle with the Martech staff. Suddenly, it used to be that the technology resided in the CIO’S office. Now, so much technology’s in the CMO’s office, the problem is he or she doesn’t always know how to harness that technology as effectively as they could, or they’re not using a lot of it in a way that could really propel their brand forward. And I also saw this year that you guys named Mark CTO as well. So that’s obviously a big statement at the executive level also.

KELLY:

I think it’s really important that as we are pushing our clients to explore new technologies and new things that we are at the forefront. That’s one of Mark’s big charges this year and that’s been a part of this, Martech exploration and build out of the team, and he’s been instrumental in providing support in terms of resources and investing in new people and new technology, so we can stay at the forefront of that. I think that, coupled with our internal team’s willingness to embrace. So yes, we can bring in the experts, but if we don’t deploy at least some working level of that knowledge to every single account lead in the building and help them understand and we’ve started to do that hard work in terms of scheduling meetings, sitting everybody down, explaining to them, because our challenge internally as an agency with the account and creative folks is the same as our CMO’s challenge with their brand managers and product leaders, and that sort of thing. So we gotta get everybody more informed on at least the base level of how you can leverage this and that’s when you’ll start to see people discovering more creative uses of it and starting to exploit the technology for good and to bring ideas to bear in new and more interesting ways.

BRIAN:

So technology is clearly a competitive advantage in today’s marketing world. So is speed. It used to be that the big used to eat the little, now it’s usually the fast eats the slow. I know we talked a little bit about burnout and that, but how do you maintain a big speed? Because I think, like you said with the pitch scenario, it’s almost an expectation that you’re going to move fast because you kinda have to. So how do you balance speed is a competitive advantage here as well? 

KELLY:

I think it has to be, not just speed for speed’s sake, but speed so that you’re taking advantage of something that you couldn’t have otherwise. So I think we have clients that sometimes will say, “There is something happening in culture that I wanna be a part of, there’s something that I want to be on in terms of a live data or narrator,” that sort of thing, and we will jump at that, and we can work the system harder at times, when we need you to deliver on that.

Speed, “Because I feel like having it earlier,” that’s when it can be detrimental, I think, to the organization and to the culture when you start to set unrealistic expectations and it’s always, “You have five days.” No, when you give somebody 10 days normally and then there’s the exception for five, I think that’s fine. I think the other thing that we’ve had to do as an organization and partner with our clients to do is reset expectations because speed and perfection don’t exist hand-in-hand and I think as we’ve pushed ourselves, “Hey, let’s get it 80% of the way there.” ‘Cause I’d rather have 80% in market and be learning from it, then spend another six months to get to 100, and then we’ve completely missed an opportunity. So I think that’s been a good shift for us as a team in a good shift for our clients in terms of, “Hey, let’s be realistic about what we’re putting out there. Let’s know that 80 is better than 100, if that means we can take advantage of this and learn from it and then we go and sometimes there are hit sometimes there are misses, but as long as you’re ready to course correct depending on what happens, I think you can use speed to your advantage.”

BRIAN:

I would totally agree with that. And you also said something that I think was really important in there and that is expectations, and I always tell our junior account people that almost your number one job is properly managing expectations, both on the client side, and then obviously internally. And I think if you do that, that puts you in a really good place. And I know you said that you grew up on the account side, but at the end of the day, as much technology and speed and everything, we’re still on a really creative industry. So everyone, I think, I would say, there’s no monopoly on creative ideas. So what are some things that you, Kelly, personally do to stay creative, when you’re not in the middle of your new business pitches, and everything else you’re doing as CMO? 

KELLY:

I think we talk a lot here about the side-hustle, and we actually encourage everybody to have one. Mine is not a hustle ’cause I haven’t monetized it yet, but I think you have to have a creative outlet that’s not necessarily just your work. So for me, I love home renovation and home decor and interior design, so I will paint and demo and fix and teach myself skills off of YouTube videos at home as a creative outlet. And that for me is a way to step away from everything that’s crazy and mad about new business, move into something that even has a little more physicality to it, [chuckle] as you roll up your sleeves and put some sweat equity into it, but it’s still a creative pursuit at the end of the day.

But we do something here to kinda celebrate and champion this, ’cause we do want everybody to have those outside creative pursuits. And so each year we have a Makers Market, we actually do it a couple of times a year. Everybody here, you’d be amazed. We have jewelry makers and cupcake bakers, people that do ties and we have artists that do paintings and we set up a huge marketplace in the agency, we all go, we shop at it, they do usually do it around Mother’s Day and Christmas, so there’s a big audience there at that time buying gifts. But it really is a chance to celebrate all of these folks that you work with day-in and day-out, and you may have no idea that they’re exploring a skin-care line and that sort of thing, which is really, I think, important in terms of recognizing people’s creativity outside of the workplace.

BRIAN:

Well, Kelly, time has flown. I knew this would be a great conversation. As I said at the very beginning, I was thrilled to have somebody from the agency perspective on. As we joked before we started filming, I typically know the person that I’m sitting down with in some capacity. This is my first chance to meet you, you certainly lived up to all the hype. And I was thrilled that you could be on today to learn more about the role of an agency CMO, how the industry is evolving from an agency perspective, some of the unique things even that FCB Chicago is doing. So I appreciate your time and being on the Brand Lab Series today.

KELLY:

Thank you so much, I hope I did our industry and our agency world justice. It was a really, really fun half hour.

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