1412: AgencySource: Winning New Business in Creative Industries with Advertising Production Leader Ross MacRae

Robert Plank 0:00 Ross with over 30 years in the creative and advertising industries, it's Ross McRae here. He's a seasoned entrepreneur, and he's an innovator in business development. And in the 1990s he launched a successful web development consultancy, before he founded bikini list, which became Europe's leading directory for creative talent reps and production companies for over two decades. He's also got agency source launched in 2020 which is a lead generation platform built specifically for agencies, brands and production companies. So we're here to find out about how Ross helps creative teams build relationships and how they can win new business, especially in these uncertain markets. So Mr. Ross, glad to see you. Glad to be speaking with you.

Ross MacRae 0:49 Yeah, nice. Nice to be here. Thank you for having me on.

Robert Plank 0:51 You're very welcome and to help us understand about like, the what why we're here, and the value that we're providing. Who are we talking to? Who out there is really stuck or struggling, and how do you help?

Ross MacRae 1:04 So I think everyone's really stuck and struggling. It doesn't really matter which industry in but specifically we, I suppose we're talking about the creative industry, production, advertising, and the reps that rep talent in that industry, I think they are struggling, because there's not much been green lit, if that makes sense, these days. And there is definitely a downturn, definitely a slowdown in that industry. We notice it, and we are quite often a very early bellwether for what's going on in the industry. Because if we find that there's loads of changes in the industry, which we track, then obviously that means that people are being laid off, perhaps, or businesses are downsizing, and we've seen a lot of that, so we know that there that is happening.

Robert Plank 1:52 Okay? And yeah. So then you wonder, okay, well, what can we do about that? Right? It's easy to give up and say, Okay, I'll change careers. I'll shut down my company. But what's the fun in that? Right? We want to adapt to the times. Yeah, okay, so one of the things I say to my team and anybody else, he'll listen, is the only constant in this industry is change, right? And that's not new. That's been going on for a long time. So the chain. If change is a constant part of what we do, then we need to accept that when things change outside our control, we can use the opportunities that that presents, because change isn't all bad, right? So if so, for example, if things are slower, projects coming in are not coming in as quickly as they could, that would, that may free up time within the organization, within your business, to do some things that you should have done when you were busy, and optimize that time that you've got your your bigger bandwidth, almost to, you know, invest in what will become The next wave of growth for you. You know, in other words, take the opportunity to start building connections with new new people, redevelop relationships with old clients, and even people who may have moved from your business and are now working client side or in another even in competitive companies, utilize all these networking abilities you've got, and all this, this, this, your, your, your, your professional network, to reach out and fill your pipeline for when things change, which they will and we hope for the best. You know,

Robert Plank 3:35 yes, I like it. Turn that change into an opportunity, and consider those people in your orbit, or who should be in your orbit, or who maybe fell out of your orbit, and get them back. Right? You talked about, there's the present and there's the past and the people that maybe fell off, and it's when you when we talk about it in this way, it's so important, but it's also kind of abstract, and there's also that delayed gratification, right? You reconnect with people, you build these relationships that will pay off later, and some and most won't even pay off, right? Because if you're looking for that 100% optimization, then you're really an opportunist. And so it's kind of hard to get one's head wrapped around it right, because you say, Well, it's a big time commitment and a lot of like energy and memory, to remember people and to reach out. So have you ever experienced any pushback if someone says, Oh yeah, I've heard I need to network and I need to make the phone calls, but I'm so busy and now, with things changing, I really can't find the time.

Robert Plank 4:35 So what would you say to that? Because it is quite a mindset to get ourselves into. So how do we think the way you do?

Ross MacRae 4:43 So what most people should be saying in times, in challenging times when there's maybe a downturn, is, I wish I'd done more of that network and outreach when I was busy before this quiet period came along, whether it was. The industry that caused the quiet period, you yourself that's caused the quiet period, or the economic situation that's caused the quiet period, you'll realize that you should have been doing this as you were going along anyway, and you should make time in your diary to do that so that you don't have the peaks and troughs and the feast and famine of these cyclical projects, right? And that once you realize that, then it, then it becomes almost, can you afford not to commit the time to doing that networking? Because it will stand you in good stead. Three months, six months, two years, five years down the line, we don't do it. It's not going to happen. And it's too late in the quiet period. You should have been doing it six months ago. So you've got to make time in your in your it's a bit like when you went to college. Okay, your school, you you were doing more than one subject. You had a timetable to make sure you you applied yourself to the required amount of time for each subject so that you didn't neglect one. You've got to do the same for your business. You've got to give yourself a default diary, a timetable that allows you time in your week every week to do networking and pipeline you must, even if you're frantic, busy, you just have to find time to do it, because they'll come and tell me you're not frantic, busy, and you wish you had, so do it now before you wish you had,

Robert Plank 6:23 yes, even if you're busy, it's not an excuse. Find the time. Apply that long term strategy. And I love the school example, because when you think about in any kind of school, right, the when you're a young adult and you're a teenager, it's still, there's a lot of those similarities where you're juggling multiple subjects, and you have to always be like studying and like slowly making progress. And if you said, Hey, I've got this chemistry class, and I won't go to any class, I won't read any book, and then the the morning of the test, that's when I'll first open the book, and I'll just read the whole thing. That's a it will never work, right? But if you kind of do it in small chunks, if you have a long term schedule, time management strategy, then many people have completed many kinds of education just by having the right approach. And so help us understand about the kinds of people and companies that you help, Who's your ideal person who have has benefited from knowing you,

Ross MacRae 7:22 from knowing knowing us, knowing me and knowing my businesses. Yeah, knowing your businesses are just like, Who have you helped? So we would help production TV, production companies, ad agencies, production reps, photographers, photographers reps, all the people that work in the media stroke, creative industry.

Ross MacRae 7:43 And also we, because we've applied some of the things that we encourage our members or clients to do to our own business, we've also helped ourselves by applying some of this stuff, you know, so we wouldn't do anything, we wouldn't suggest that people do things that we wouldn't do ourselves. And the kind of people we help typically will be, in some cases, one man bands, but you know, one, one to 10 employee businesses where the principals are wearing lots of hats, and that's the kind of people that we like to help. Equally, we have larger corporations that use, use our services where they're looking for, you know, to speed up the efficiency of their new business out outbound outreach.

Ross MacRae 8:29 And then, very cool, and it's when you talk about company size, it's, it's so bizarre now, right? Because sometimes there's what used to require 20 people, is now four people, and then there's AI and a lot of like, automation use, which is, like, a scary subject, right? It seems like AI has gotten into everything you think about with, like film and television. AI has replaced a lot of writers, where they say, like, oh, we only need like, two writers now. Or with photography, someone makes some, like, beautiful photo, and then first thing someone says is, oh, did AI generate this? And so what have you seen, as far as this AI revolution, and it kind of like messing up people's livelihoods or upending these industries, just like, what have you seen? And what do you think is happening? So obviously that I've I've seen that that has happened. So people have have been upended. People have had their livelihoods mess with Okay, so it's still early days, okay? And particularly in the creative sector, there's a lot of fear. Okay, so in production, there's a lot of fear.

Ross MacRae 9:33 Um, my own take on it is that, just as in, you know, the 80s, there was a fear that all the creatives in the world would be replaced by Apple Max, right in the 80s.

Ross MacRae 9:49 That didn't happen, although computers in production and creativity are obviously very much part of the the industry. What happened was the jobs changed.

Ross MacRae 10:00 So there wasn't necessarily less jobs and opportunities. In fact, you could argue there's probably more jobs and opportunities now because of technology, right? But the role the actual day to day activities have changed. That doesn't mean they're any less creative. It just means that the the industry will have different types of functions and activities to perform. Okay?

Robert Plank 10:29 So, so I would embrace, I would embrace all that you can with a provider that we don't really know where it's going yet. That's what I would say. And it's an interesting paradox, isn't it? You say from an individual level, well, you know, my job is going away, and so I need to feel like you're out these new skills. But in the bigger picture, there are more jobs than ever to be had, but you can't get those jobs if you stay complacent and you don't develop yourself. And so it's always interesting, yeah, and so it's always great to hear just about how, how someone like you has transformed, personally and business wise and in thinking. So like, what has have the the past five or 10 years been like for you? Like, where have you really struggled? What have you had to do to step up through all these changes?

Ross MacRae 11:22 Okay, so the biggest change has been technology, and that,

Ross MacRae 11:29 if you like, has meant the growth of, obviously the web.

Ross MacRae 11:35 I mean, I've been around for 30 years, so I started my business right at the beginning, at the start. You know, in the 90s,

Ross MacRae 11:42 we've constantly changed. We're constantly adding new features. I'm just trying to think of the biggest challenge. The biggest challenge would be to not only stay ahead of technology in terms of the way that we work, but also to reflect what we offer in the way that the industry changes. So it's not just about our own internal work flow changing, but the way that ad agencies do business, the way that production companies do business, the way that reps work, changes year on year. And the biggest change, of course, was, you know, the pandemic that really changed things up and gave a lot of change during that period. So we've always been listening to what our prospective customers and our existing customers say to us to try and find out, how can we help them in this new way of doing business? And I think that would be the most.

Ross MacRae 12:36 That's the thing that we've done the most, to keep try and keep up to date with the way people work and the way companies work these days.

Robert Plank 12:45 Is there anything in particular that these customers have been saying? You say that it's important to listen to what they're saying. Is there any, are there any trends you keep hearing like the same thing repeatedly, right? So in terms of the product in the advertising production world, which I can talk about,

Ross MacRae 13:02 there are so many more people working in production who now want to work

Ross MacRae 13:09 without going through an agency straight to a brand, okay? And that's been around for the last 10 years. There's been that requirement. There are also so many more people who used to be in an advertising agency now working brand size,

Ross MacRae 13:25 which is again, in the last 10 years, the biggest change of this industry. So much so that our database, which would always be heavily weighted towards advertising, is now heavily weighted towards the clients, the CMOS and people like that, because that's where the work is being done more and more, which sounds as if I'm saying that advertising is finished. Of course, it isn't. It's just again, things are moving. The point of production is moving from one part of the food chain to the other, and just being aware of all of that, particularly with technology, in terms of smartphones and production being done for not just TV commercials, for example, but also being done for

Ross MacRae 14:10 online content, you find that maybe people who used to go to a traditional advertising agency to get something produced Now don't they go to an individual content creator who can do it all in one room on one phone, and that's a change that we've we've tried to reflect. I don't know if that's too industry specific or that was what you were asking me, but that's, that's the biggest change we've seen.

Robert Plank 14:36 Well, it's good to be interesting specific, right? Because we can say, hey, here's how it's done here, and then we can always abstract it to something else. And I think Wayne Gretzky calls that going to where the hockey puck will be headed, right if you're hanging on to some kind of dying industry and saying, Hey, where are my clients going? Where? Where are the customers, versus someone like you saying, Well, hey, let's have that deeper understanding.

Robert Plank 15:00 And what is their thought process, where are they going now, instead of where they are going? And how do we adapt and adjust to that? And so how does this relate to Bikini lists and agency source? Like, oh, like, you know, what's the solution being provided in these two companies?

Ross MacRae 15:15 So agency source is a database of 100,000 contacts globally that commission, creative production work, okay? And we check that database to make sure it's up to date. And what that gives out subscribers, if you like, is the ability to in terms of new business, in terms of in terms of who are their dream clients? Who do they want to reach out to? Who do they want to work within the next five years? Who do they want to start building relationships with? We have done, if you like, the the the hard yards at the beginning, to identify those people, both in terms of quality, pre qualifying them, so getting good contact information for them, pre qualifying them that they're in the right industry and that they do the right kind of work for our prospective and existing customers, which, of course, is what a lot of new business people will spend hours and hours and hours and hours on LinkedIn and trolling the web doing. We've already done that. So that's, that's what I always think is a USP, you, we can present you up with warm leads that are not cold. They're cold ish to you, but at least they're pre qualified. Does that make sense?

Robert Plank 16:31 Yeah, it does. There's you find the right people and they're pre vetted. You're not just getting someone off of LinkedIn that it's really important. And so as we kind of jumped around and talked about all these interesting things about you and your business, right about how important it is to build these relationships, to talk to people, to take work seriously, to see these industry trends. But I've only just met you, and I've only just discovered about agency, source and bikini list. So in this conversation we're having here, Mr. Ross McRae, is there a missing, hidden question that I should be asking you, I just don't know to ask you,

Ross MacRae 17:14 what is what is the most important thing that business development teams can do in times of crisis? Maybe I don't know how to answer that, but I'll give it a shot. Okay,

Ross MacRae 17:38 so I think the opportunity is there to pipeline so maybe if you haven't done enough pipelining, that's what you should be thinking. So go to networking events for face to face networking, right?

Ross MacRae 17:51 Use

Ross MacRae 17:53 professional networking platforms like LinkedIn to start reaching out to people that you want to connect with, and maybe turn them into clients in the next month or so, right? Cold ish,

Ross MacRae 18:04 email outreach, I say cold ish, in other words, don't just blast out to people trying to get as many people to see your product and your services as possible. In other words, get pre qualified leads and an email address for them and to have very, very targeted, meaningful, relevant email campaign to them right reconnect with previous, previous clients, you know, and then, as I said, before, find out where your ex employees are. You might find that somebody you work with, either in your own business or in a business that you're at before you start your own business is now

Ross MacRae 18:41 client side. So leverage that relationship and see if you can reach out to them, find out if they've got the same challenges and pain points in challenging times as you do. That's probably what I would say,

Robert Plank 18:55 very nice. And so it's so important to pursue this, right? And I like the way that you explained it is. It's like, what's your sequence? How do you warm some someone up? It won't happen overnight, but you have to start somewhere. So find these coal ish leads, talk to them, have these conversations, follow up, reconnect, and then figure out how you can get, you know, get it turned into something. And so as far as someone specifically using agency, source.tv, what are the steps there, if that's a lead gen platform that helps agencies in difficult times. So if some agency out there says, Okay, well, we are. A lot of what Ross said makes sense, and we need to go and find these, these hot or these coldest leads, turn them into hot leads, see what can be done. Like, what are the the steps? How does someone sign up with agency source, and how do you recommend they use your platform? Okay, so go, go to agency source.tv,

Ross MacRae 19:47 register for a demo. We'll talk to you and do a demo. We wouldn't want you to sign up for something that wasn't going to work for you, but let's say you decided to sign up. Great. So then what you have to do is to think that.

Ross MacRae 20:00 Very strategically about who are your dream clients and how are you going to approach them. So we hopefully will have that information there for you already. In other words, the clients that you want are already there. If not, we can do what we call bespoke research and get the information that we don't have. If you need that, then you what I call silo your prospects. So the people that you really want to work with this 10 or 20 companies that are your dream clients, you use the platform to network with them. Connect with them on LinkedIn. We've got LinkedIn URLs built into the platform so you can reach out to LinkedIn straight away. Build up a network of the people that are your your in your dream clients. Don't send them a mass email that isn't going to work. So start personally marketing to them, either by email or LinkedIn, messaging

Ross MacRae 20:49 and by telephone call. If that's something you want to do, find out who you've got in common. Find out if you can get any introductions to these people, and treat that silo of 10 or 20 real dream clients as

Ross MacRae 21:04 the gold standard. These are the people you're going to put on a pedestal and introduce yourself to them and do it very respectfully, put them on a pedestal and ask them if they wouldn't mind giving you feedback on what you do, right? And the platform is tailor made for that right then there's a second tier that I think of as

Ross MacRae 21:25 people that you can reach out to, maybe in a campaign, to an email marketing campaign, for example, to maybe two or 300 people. This is very targeted, and on agency source, you can say, I want to, I want to get all the CMOS in the US who work at automotive companies, and you can download a list of those, and you can create a very targeted, relevant message on the platform, connect the list to the message and send it out from the platform, or equally, send it out through your own marketing channels, whether that's an email platform or whatever, and they think of that as like getting them to visit a website landing page you've created just for that group. So if you've got work in that in that area, make sure they see that when they land either on the website landing page or on the website itself, or even better, include an example in the template when you send the work to them and say, love to get your feedback on some work we did for a similar company to you. Okay, so your approach is not hard sell. It's all about getting feedback. It's all about putting them on a pedestal. And as you say, you might not work with them ever. You might, you might not

Ross MacRae 22:45 hear back from them for a year, six months, three months, two, two weeks, whatever it is. But not doing it means you'll never hear from them. Doing it means you might right. So very important. And then finally, there's a third tier, which is people who are in the right market for your services,

Ross MacRae 23:05 and they are not in your top tier or second tier, and you can do a more general, general email marketing campaign or LinkedIn campaign to them, and that way you're addressing Each different strata at some point, if that makes sense, and do it regularly, and our platform makes that really easy.

Robert Plank 23:26 Yes, it's important. I love your approach, and it's a great strategy, especially if someone is neglecting their relationship building, not taking it seriously, doing it intermittently, or maybe if they've tried it, but they didn't do it in this intentional, deliberate way that you're describing, and they just kind of just, they winged it, right? They just kind of made it up as they went along, and they got similar results versus what you're suggesting, which I really like. You say, Okay, you start with those 10 or 20 leads, and you really work on them, right? You don't just spam them. You figure out, you say, Hey, can I get feedback on what I've done for some a similar company as yours? And you have these conversations. And then when you get that dialed in, you make that landing page for that specific group of person at that specific group of company, and you work on your 200 or so and and so that way you kind of, you scale and you get results, but you're also putting in the time so you're not just spamming, you're not just blasting. It's a great way to open up some doors, to start some conversations and to talk to these people that you can and should be speaking to. And that website is agency source.tv

Robert Plank 24:36 they are the new business platform for agencies, production and reps, it's for new agency business. You connect with CMOs and brand managers at Dream clients, and you can go to agencies, source.tv and just find all about them. They've been helping advertising agencies, production companies and reps, find new clients internationally for 20.

Robert Plank 24:59 Managers. They have live contact details for over 50,000 chief marketing officers, brand managers, TV producers, art directors, creative directors and marketers at ad agencies and direct brands. So if a lot of what Ross was telling us today made sense, but you say, Okay, well, it's it sounds good in theory and principle wise, like I know I need a network. How do I do it? Well, the next step is to go to agency, source.tv, there's buttons there where you can book a free demo, or you can try it now.