Ryan Brown, EVP and Co-Head of 160over90, joins the show to talk about fostering more effective relationships between institutions and the agency partners they hire.
Ryan and Jarrett discuss:
- How an institution’s culture can help or hinder agency partnerships
- Tips for finding great partners through RFPs
- What it takes to bring breakthrough creative work to life, and
- How to foster a strong, collaborative partnership with the agencies you work with.
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Transcript
Jarrett Smith:
You are listening to the Higher Ed Marketing Lab. I’m your host, Jarrett Smith.
Welcome to the Higher Ed Marketing Lab. I’m Jarrett Smith. Each episode, it’s my job to engage with some of the brightest minds in higher education and the broader world of marketing to bring you actionable insights you can use to level up your marketing and enrollment performance. Today we’ll be talking about partnership, more specifically how colleges and universities can have more successful and productive partnerships with the marketing firms and creative agencies that they hire.
Today’s guest says that the best client agency relationships aren’t always the easiest and that challenging each other and coming together to achieve something new and important is often when both parties feel the most fulfilled. His name is Ryan Brown and he’s the executive vice president and co-head of 160over90. Ryan and I discuss how an institution’s culture can help or hinder agency partnerships, tips for finding great partners through RFPs, what it takes to bring breakthrough creative work to life, and how to foster a strong collaborative partnership with the agencies you work with. This was a fun and practical conversation that’s sure to be relevant to anyone who regularly works with agency partners. So without further ado, here’s my conversation with Ryan Brown.
Ryan, welcome to the show.
Ryan Brown:
Thanks, Jarrett. Great to be here.
Jarrett Smith:
Yeah, I feel like this conversation’s been a long time coming, but I’m super excited to have it. Real briefly, could you just tell folks who you are and what you do?
Ryan Brown:
Sure. I’m Ryan Brown. I’m our SVP of branding at 160over90. I’m the co-head of our Philadelphia office and also the branding and institutional practice within the agency. And my background is in brand strategy, and I started with 160over90 way back in 2006 when it was about 20 people. And then have been just a part of a remarkable journey of growth today and excited to be on the senior leadership team and still being able to do a ton of work in this space that I really enjoy.
Jarrett Smith:
We are here today to talk about how the institutions we work for can have more effective and helpful partnerships with the agencies that they hire. And I love this topic. I know you were on a panel at AMA higher ed talking about this. It was a great discussion and so I’m excited to have this talk with you today.
Ryan Brown:
And let me just say too, as we get started, I’m excited as well, a big fan of pod now for a couple of years now. I remember discovering it on a long drive to Long Island for work at one point. And I should also just say as a host, you got the personality and the voice for this thing. You know how your voice always sounds kind of funny when you hear it, record it? I can say as somebody who is not you, that you just have a great voice for this platform.
Jarrett Smith:
Oh, thank you, man. That means a lot. Yeah, I think we’re all self-conscious about it. I remember the first time I recorded my intro, my wife was like, “You sound like Casey Kasem.”
Ryan Brown:
Thanks for that.
Jarrett Smith:
Thanks. I think. Maybe. I don’t know. Is that encouragement or what? Awesome. Well, we’ve got a greatest hits of topic areas that we’re going to talk through today. And the first one is actually one that you suggested, and it’s all about this idea of fostering an intentional culture within client organizations. I’d love if you share some of your reflections of things you’ve seen and learned over the years about how an institution culture really can impact the nature of their relationship with agencies.
Ryan Brown:
Yeah, absolutely. And I enjoyed speaking about this out of the panel that you’re referred to in AMA. In addition to brand strategy work and positioning and then leading all different sorts of creative engagements with institutions over the years, I’ve done a great deal of work consulting with leaders from various colleges and universities of all different shapes and sizes over the better part of two decades. And I will say that 20 years of college will teach you a thing or two. And I think that the organizational culture of these institutions is becoming more and more important. Even that of specific sectors, if we think about enrollment or advancement and athletics and marketing communications and so forth, the culture can be one that is actively defined. It’s one that’s instilled, it’s reinforced, and even celebrated.
Work can essentially become the default culture when those things aren’t happening. And I love working with mission-driven organizations and nonprofits and the particularly higher ed institutions. It represents a fair bit of the work that I’m across, the clients that I’m across. We refer to those often as tribe brands in that this work, these organizations just mean so much to people. And so when you get it right and you honor that and you really deliver on the potential, it’s very exciting and it’s very meaningful. But at the same time, I think that there is a lot of lessons. There are a lot of lessons that these institutions can draw from.
If you think about consumer and lifestyle brands or pro sports teams leading global corporations and companies, all while still staying true to their values, their DNA without succumbing to crass commercialism, that’s not what we’re talking here, but I think the first thing that comes to mind is this notion of a culture of accountability. And it’s clearly defining objectives. You’re committing to a roadmap and a game plan that’s intended to meet those objectives. We’re stating the various steps and the timeline in the macro sense and then on a micro level and whatever work streams that might entail. And then we’re executing that game plan and we’re reporting progress. We’re actually sticking to the game plan.
It doesn’t mean you can’t course correct along the way and it doesn’t mean anything like that. It just means we have to hold each other accountable to stick to that plan and then report on progress. And I think when I say it that way, it sounds like table stakes, but if we’re being honest, in my experience within this category, I think there’s still work to be done in this regard. It really starts with the institutional leadership and then trickles down across various decision makers that we would all encounter. But there should be a hunger that’s evident and I think that that’s important.
And then I would say also, this reminds me of some of the conversations at AMA, but for any listeners that are not in leadership positions, rather than feeling like this is something that’s out of your control, I think the question is, how can I be a positive influence on those leaders that I report up to or am surrounded by or just generally within my sphere of influence within institution? So culture of accountability is the first big one. And then the second one, a big one for me would be this notion of courage over comfort, which is something that I love to speak about and have maybe for a couple of years now. But to be fair, I think that right now is perhaps a more difficult time than any I’ve seen in this space when it comes to institutions just not really feeling very willing and empowered to be particularly courageous given all of the headwinds that we’re facing from a business or revenue standpoint, even just from a culture and society standpoint.
But with the immense challenges that we’re facing in this space, we have to be purposeful, yes, but we also have to be bold. Not superficial, not bold, just for the sake of bold, but engaging and differentiated and memorable, meaningful, and then consistently. So it doesn’t mean you have to be out there just ruffling feathers and slapping a target on your back, but we can be steadfast and committed in terms of achieving our objectives in the face of these various challenges through smart, bold, consistent, results-oriented marketing. And perhaps that’s what courage over comfort what means right now. I think on some level, we have to embrace this comfort and rise to the occasion.
Jarrett Smith:
Yeah, no, I love these points. And second, absolutely that it starts at the top. When you get on a client’s campus and you meet with their chancellor, their president, and you’ve met with every stakeholder in their house cat, and you can tell when there’s a consistent energy, a focus, a message that is coming from the top and how consistently or not that is making its way through the organization, how widely shared that is, it’s so evident as an outsider looking in.
One thing that I would add to your list here that is also immediately evident when you get on campus and start talking to folks is the extent to which the campus is siloed, territorial, or not. There’s some campuses you walk on and it’s very clear that people have a good collegial working relationship. They’re collaborative. They’re speaking across departments and focused on the larger enterprise that we’re all engaged in. And that kind of culture absolutely can make the work easier in a lot of ways. This is the thing that can have a very practical impact on a project.
I remember a couple of years ago we were doing some brand perception research for just a really fantastic university, but our central marketing team that we were working with had a frosty relationship with admissions. And so when we said, “Hey, we would love to survey prospective students and their families,” it was very hard. They were very reticent to do that. And in fact, we never really got what we were asking for. And I was just thinking, man, what a huge miss, right? To not include that and your brand perception study, which for many schools is like that is the core audience that they want to move the most, I was like, this has a tangible impact on the work. It not just all feelings and esoteric.
Ryan Brown:
Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. I think it’s up to the leader to model that behavior and then it goes to that accountability culture, not necessarily in any harsh terms, but we’re modeling that behavior and then we’re demonstrating those are the expectations that we have for each other. We all want to be swimming in the same direction there. It’s better for the organization across all those many different sectors and revenue generating areas and everything if folks are aligned from the top down.
Jarrett Smith:
We’re going to shift gears a little bit. We’re going to talk about procurement for a minute and finding agency partners through RFPs, which is very common practice in our world. I will say this, I think the intent behind the RFP process is admirable. You’re trying to create ideally a very transparent competitive process where the partners, potential partners are bringing their best to the table and you are able to evaluate them in this more objective way. Some are really well run and I want to acknowledge that, but in some cases, it does seem like the RFP might’ve been expressly engineered to make things as difficult as possible for all parties involved. Tell us a little bit about some of the experiences you’ve had and how you’ve seen the RFP process either be a tool that helps the institution or maybe hinders the institution in terms of actually identifying and selecting a great partner.
Ryan Brown:
Oh, yeah. Great question and definitely a favorite among think about agency leaders and the things you can get up to speaking. I would say over the years I’ve seen a number of trends. Some positive observations, of course, a number of things that can also hinder an institution’s ability, like you said, to conduct a successful search and to engage what hopefully is the most effective agency partner. The first tip I would say as it relates to that, don’t wait for the stars to align, for there to be a perfect time to launch an RFP. There’s never a perfect time to embark on a new initiative. There is never a perfect time to arrange the schedules of probably 15 important people from across campus or anything like that to weigh in on an agency selection process for instance. I think we’re often needing to find excuses to press ahead as part of the encouragement or the advice that I would give, excuses to move the ball down the field because it’s too easy to find reasons not to proceed.
So I think we also have to, in this space in particular, find ways to keep moving forward despite the revolving door of leadership at many of these institutions. I mentioned a bit of the work doing different spaces and at 160, but we had to do a lot of work outside of this space and across categories. And consumer brands generally don’t abandon their strategy, their positioning and their marketing campaign every time that a leader transitions in or out. It would seem crazy to do so on some level, but it’s different cultures, different types of organizations. I do think perhaps that said, one exception might be if you’re about to hire a new VP of marketing, if that person’s about to start, generally, not always, but generally they don’t love inheriting a recently hired agency that they didn’t have any say in how it was set up, no matter how fit they might be. So I think that something to keep in mind there.
Then I would just say as it relates to how that search is conducted and the RFP and so forth, just being human and being reasonable, these are important qualities that marketing leadership can help to ensure are a part of the process rather than it being entirely dictated by procurement. I think you can have it both ways, and I’ve seen it done before. It can be fair. All the things you mentioned, it can be fair, it can be a professional process and it can also be strategic and human and reasonable in terms of how you’re engaging those parties.
I always like to joke in an agency setting, keep your friends close and your colleagues in HR and finance even closer. So I suppose if I was a marketer within an institution and I’m helping to head up an agency search process, I’d really try to connect with the procurement lead. I’d want to try to help them to see the big picture, why is this important and how is it going to help the institution meet its objectives and longer term success? Helping them to see true value looks like and that’s hiring the most effective partner for these important needs. And then I think all the while what you’re doing also is ensuring that the tail isn’t wagging the dog when it comes to finding that partner. And that’s part of, I think, what we can see sometimes in a process like this. And we work a lot of government or quasi-government organizations outside of the space too. And I would say it applies there as well. You can see it and you try to avoid the tail wagging the dog, but who knows. Try to inspire them, that person that is leading that process.
And then you’re going to look for ways to engage prospective agency partners in a human manner, even at times when it might be a procurement-driven process, not altogether different from recruiting students or engaging with a donor in a meaningful way. I think the legwork that you put in early on at this point and the thinking, it’s going to give you more and better options ultimately when you’re selecting a partner.
And then I just think lastly very quickly from a budget standpoint, you’ve got to make a compelling case to whoever controls the purse strings ahead of time before you’re launching this. And then whether that’s conveyed as ranges, however you want to structure it’s going to be an important part of the equation for the agencies that are responding.
Jarrett Smith:
To piggyback on that last comment, I think budget for us is a big one. You need to define that budget as best you can, whether that’s expressed as a range, whether that’s expressed as a cost not to exceed. I’m surprised that how many RFPs leave this out. If you leave it out, it’s always going to come up in Q&A. I’ve never really asked a client directly about what was the around providing budget, but I wonder if there is something to… Well, I don’t want to give them a range because then it’s skew what they have or they’re, they’re just going to end up at the top of, they’re going to default to the top of that range. I don’t know. What’s your sense on that?
Ryan Brown:
Yeah, I think one is you hope for, maybe if we don’t give a number it’ll be below the number that we have in our mind, and so we’ll get a deal. Understandably. But you can think about in practical terms how that applies to a house or a contractor in your personal life or something like that. And it more often than not, doesn’t really work out that way in terms of it’s just helpful to know and to communicate those things and do your research and so forth around some of that.
And then I think apart from that, what I think would make the most sense would be if you’re selling out a number that you have in mind for the job, but then you’re open to maybe there are different ways to go about this or other solutions that we haven’t predetermined, haven’t even envisioned yet. And so that’s why I think there is some flexibility in there, but conveying some type of budget or range for the specifics of it that you believe to be the mandatories if you will. And then I think be open to the rest of it from some of those seasons firms or leaders out there that might inspire another version of a solution.
Jarrett Smith:
Yeah, and I think it doesn’t always have to be just a flat number. Saw one time on an RFP, and I really appreciated this, they said, “Hey, all in media spend is going to be X and it’s going to cover this, this, and this. And then we have another pool of money that’s going to be for incidental one-off things that we haven’t planned for but that we know are coming and it’s going to be about this much. And so in your response, please plan with those basic budgets in mind.” And it was a starting point. I think when you don’t provide a budget, number one, you might get responses that are below your budget, but it might be wildly so.
I know we had a client one time that put out a website RFP. Typically, I would say that project would probably come in around 200, 250K wouldn’t be unusual. They received responses that were as low as $20,000. And it’s the local mom and pop that is like, we can build your website for you or somebody’s nephew that does websites. And it’s like when you convey price, I think it conveys, one, what is the order of magnitude that we’re talking? Two, it conveys do you as the client have an idea of what this actually entails? And that’s a giant red flag. If it seems wildly out of whack. Doesn’t mean your budget has to be lavish. We understand that institutions are enterprises that oftentimes run on a shoestring. So we get that. It doesn’t have to be like a lavish budget, but it needs to be appropriate to the level of the ask. And when it seems out of whack one way or another, that’s a red flag to a good agency partner.
Ryan Brown:
I think it’s a great point. There are all different types of partners out there and their positioning will differ. And so if you think about different budget levels, there are going to be different partner options that you have. And then, within those different partners, you would expect too that then there are ranges of how much you do or how big you go on any given job. And I think all of that relates to what is the state of your budget, how important of an initiative is this, how much risk are you willing to adopt to the point that someone’s nephew that has a full service integrated agency that is me by myself working with some other country [inaudible 00:20:17]?
Jarrett Smith:
I’m very well integrated within myself.
Ryan Brown:
Yes, utilizing AI tools only, but that really depends on… So yes, you could hit a different price point, but I think it depends on how much risk are you willing to take on as well for those different options. And I think you really have to think about what can you afford from budget standpoint and what can you afford from a risk standpoint and then try to make a decision there and know that for this one job in the shorter term, it might be a little bit different versus the thing that you’re launching next year that you hope to hold up for a couple of years going forward. And that’s why I think also having a roster or a range of different partners that you might engage might make sense as well.
Jarrett Smith:
You know what, Ryan? You just sparked something in my mind that wasn’t something I included in our discussion, but it’s just the notion that it really pays to get to know different agency partners because I think we all at a superficial level sometimes present ourselves in a very similar way. We talk about how creative we are. We talk about how strategic we are. We talk about our work in the category. We’re strategically creative and creatively strategic and there’s a lot of the same sorts of stuff. When you get down to it, a 160 is different than an Echo Delta and I think it just pays to, like you said, have a roster of agencies and know them well enough to have a sense of who might be a really exceptional fit for this given the nature of this project?
Ryan Brown:
I think it’s a great point and I think that homework or getting to know that and it’s just in terms of your own professional development and having a sense of those options and educating the others around you, it’s a good backdrop for some of the other topics that we might cover, but I think even around things like coaching your partners to be successful based on your institutional setup and team and capabilities in-house or culture and decision makers and so forth. And I think understanding the agencies out there and how you can purposefully align with the right one and then also understanding your own setup internally and the organization and its objectives and how you can then coach them to also be the best partner that they can be.
Jarrett Smith:
I want to shift gears from searching for the right partner to, okay, now I’m engaging with somebody. And whether it’s right out of an RFP or maybe you have an ongoing relationship with a partner, you’re going to bring to your agency different asks that you have, different requests of them. And I think the way that you frame up an ask to an agency partner can make a big difference in terms of how they respond to it. What would you say about that?
Ryan Brown:
Right. There’s the brass sacks or the basics around providing all of the information and what are the success metrics and other things like that. I think I’ll concentrate a little bit more bigger picture on this one. I would say first really aim to be inspiring in your ask, and I think this could go even from the RFP phase down to briefing a team. It’s a kickoff for a client engagement or a major project or something. I also recognize that some of this feedback could sound biased or self-serving coming from an agency leader. Casting that concern aside, I would say work together internally and push yourselves to be inspiring in how you brief in the agency. Like I said, whether it’s a new relationship or new job. I also think that that exercise helps to differentiate between an ask that is very based around specific tactical needs, perhaps governed by a lot of different mandatories versus one that is a bigger picture opportunity that lives behind those types of needs. In either scenario, you can try to inspire what is the ideal solution.
One quick word on market research, I think too, while we’re on a similar topic or phase there, I’ve encountered a lot of very similar market research, pretty predictable findings sometimes out there. You’re referring to some of the related work.
Jarrett Smith:
People like affordability.
Ryan Brown:
Yes, exactly. It’s like 250 pages of findings like that that are perhaps not too actionable. And then it’s a challenge and it really puts a lot of the pressure in the strategy phase or in on the creative phase to do the heavy lifting. Whereas if you could do some of the work to get to that inspirational, elevate to that inspirational place, even in terms of the research lead and how you conduct that and the types of insights that you’re mining for to get to a more actionable takeaways, I think that that could do a world of good to in helping to set anyone up for success along the way and ultimately even a production and so forth.
And then I would say consider the internal challenges that you’re facing at the institution, the approval parties, other challenging stakeholders, were there previous attempts that didn’t work out and so forth. And then map those out, communicate those to the agency or your partner, and then align on a process that’s going to address those concerns proactively rather than hoping for the best along the way. And I think that, again, goes to the both parties co-managing the process for success.
Jarrett Smith:
I love it when a client, and many are, it’s been my experience that a great client partner is almost always very on top of this about the internal lay of the land and they brief you in, “Here’s what we’re going to encounter. Here are the internal sticking points. Here’s where we may get some resistance. Here’s the stakeholder that formally maybe shouldn’t have as much say as they do, but really does,” and their priorities and what you need to know about them. And you begin to collaborate and anticipate where you might get hangups or where you’re going to have champions within the organization that are outside your team that are hungry for the work that’s being done. I love that.
I also love the notion of being clear about the nature of the ask because it’s something where it’s like, “Hey, we would do this capably in-house. We just don’t have the capacity, and so we need you to come in and execute at a high level and just stay in that lane,” versus, “Here’s something that has a little more of a blue sky potential to it. We think there’s possibility here that we haven’t yet recognized. Can you help us figure out what that might be? Can you figure out is there something about the nature of this problem that we haven’t yet thought of?” You’re going to get two very different approaches from your agency if they think that you’re in blue sky mode, but you’re in tactical, let’s move and execute mode. Your agency is likely to annoy the heck out of you.
Ryan Brown:
I think there’s a degree too of in the search process when we’re talking about that phase of it, sometimes you might have someone who’s running point on it or a visionary that is a director or VP of marketing or something like that and they might have a picture in their mind of the type of partner that they want to hire or that way that they want to do the work. But it’s also a question of, but what about the other leaders at the institution or whoever is ultimately calling the final shots or something like that? And I think we have to be honest around where are we at right now, and then versus if we’re warming up folks or we’re helping to demonstrate success and we’re painting a picture of what it could be, maybe they’ll get there over the course of in year one we’re going to do it this way and then in year two we’re going to stretch the comfort zone even a bit more. And by year three, there will be hardly any parameters or this thing containing it. And I think that, again, that’s all around communication, that’s human communication and professionals working together.
Jarrett Smith:
Yeah, absolutely. Okay, I’m excited to talk about this next one, which is how do we get to great outstanding creative work and I’m excited to hear your take on this because, I mean, you’re right at 160. 160over90 is well known for its just really outstanding creative work. So what do you see as the necessary ingredients to getting to that next level of output that really has a chance of breaking through that sea of sameness?
Ryan Brown:
Well, thank you for the kind words first of all. And yeah, definitely a passion topic. I would say, and this has been from the time that we were doing more work in this space, I think back to 2006, 7, 8, first couple of colleges and universities, the financial crisis at the time. It helped to drive more of our attention and learning within this category, but still today, close to two decades later, and I mentioned various headwinds that we’re facing, the category is just too crowded and competitive and the offerings are too similar to rely on all too familiar marketing and advertising for instance, as you mentioned.
Just even from an advertising standpoint specifically, if you run a bland campaign, you’re going to have to pay for every one of those impressions to beat it into the mindset of your audiences. Nobody’s going to be choosing to view your ad, let alone share it with somebody else. But if you launch a breakthrough campaign, and yes, it’s going to take planning or budget or what have you, and we’ll talk about what it takes to get there, but if you launch a breakthrough campaign, think about how much more value you’re going to see from that paid media spend to keep using the advertising example or let alone all the other places that that work can drive value or have a halo effect on different metrics. So when it comes to getting to great work, for the most part, there is no silver bullet solution in terms of a word or a quality or a program.
Jarrett Smith:
I thought this was going to be the podcast where we finally delivered the silver bullet.
Ryan Brown:
I know. We’re going to find out. It’s the word. It’s the quality or a specific tactic or anything like that, right?
Jarrett Smith:
Disruption, okay.
Ryan Brown:
Well, we hadn’t thought of that one, but I’ll take that one back to the top. The most important first step I think is helping leaders at the institution to acknowledge this reality that there is no just silver bullet solution in that sense. And also helping them to see what success really looks like. So what do we need to do? We need to define a narrative that is based in truth, the fundamental truth of who we are. We need to intentionally express that in a way that is differentiated from the messages of our competitors and our peers. And then we need to strive to convey it in a manner that resonates deeply with such a wide variety of audiences. It’s a tall order, but then once you have that defined, it’s all about, I think, committing to it and striving to bring it to life in new and meaningful ways over the long haul.
So when I lovingly challenge clients or when we’re in planning meetings and so forth, I would say, and especially when you’re trying to choose a creative concept or a platform, it’s say it first, say it better, say it louder, say it more consistently. Those are really the keys to success. I think about over the years, I worked on the original Spartans will platform at Michigan State back in 2009 that has endured through today, a couple of years thereafter, the Gator Good Campaign with University of Florida, more recent standout campaigns that come to mind. The Wonder Makes Us campaign for University of Arizona, Only the Audacious campaign with Tulane University, Behold the Remarkable We with University of South Carolina just in recent years, and currently all good examples, but it’s generally not those specific words that made all of the difference, right? It’s about the commitment to creative ambition. It’s about standing out in order to generate results. You’re doing it purposefully. And then, more than anything, I think it’s about the importance of seeing it through over the course of years and you’re backing it up. And as I mentioned, bringing it to life in new ways over time.
I think this also goes to an earlier point, but you can do the best work ever, but it’s never going to see the light of day if you don’t socialize appropriately, if you don’t just sell it through essentially. And that begins much earlier in the process when you figure out who you’re soliciting input from and then how you’re going to align on strategy and demonstrate how these other leaders are contributors had a hand in that process there, and the same thing for concept.
And then you have to be purposeful too about merchandising the success and results in a compelling manner when you do have work in hand and maintain that level of discipline. You have to say one step ahead right at every step of the process if you want to do outstanding creative work. So doing great work is challenging, but managing a process that actually ensures that you not only get to it but that it makes it to market is perhaps the real challenge.
Early in my career, I think I could point out that I was a wannabe creative in many ways, and then fortunately I had the realization that, oh, my actual real standout quality is that I can help to contribute to getting to great work, but more than anything, I can help that it ensures that it remains intact and that it’s actually going to make it to market because that’s the only thing that matters, right? Work in market is the thing that generates the results. It’s the thing that brings the intended return on the investment of all of that time and money. And so this goes back to the culture of accountability piece, but anything else than getting to the market is what I like to refer to as the illusion of progress where you’re pushing peas around on a plate on some level. And so I think that’s a big piece that we can hold each other accountable once we do have good work.
Jarrett Smith:
One thing I wrote down as you were talking was just over the long haul, and harkening back to a comment you made earlier where you said, “I can’t think of many clients that we work with outside of higher ed that are just swapping strategies, tearing down and rebuilding the fundamental strategy every time we change out a new leader.” And there’s definitely a time and a place to do that, but once you land on something that satisfies what you were talking about, it’s like now it’s about pursuing that again and again and again and maybe refreshing it in bringing that to life in new and interesting ways, but still under the hood, it’s that same underlying core strategy that’s driving all of that.
Ryan Brown:
Yeah, I think really there’s an opportunity to breathe fresh life into an existing platform or something like that. But to your point, the core aspects of the identity and the story and then certainly the strategy should really largely remain intact. And I do think there’s an opportunity. I think part of what I was trying to refer to when I was mentioning some of those other campaigns and platforms and so forth was that while there’s no one word or phrase or look or color, whatever that is going to do all the heavy lifting and set you apart, once you do have your thing, and once you are saying it louder and more consistently and owning it, I think then it’s okay to own something and to stick with it while simultaneously breathing new life into it or bringing new themes in. You’re always going to have new audiences and new things to communicate, and that platform, it should be a living brand or a living campaign in many senses for these organizations, especially those that plan around to be for the long haul.
Jarrett Smith:
Last one, we’re going to wrap up on fostering strong relationships with your agency partners. At the end of the day, it’s a group of humans working with another group of humans, and those relationships matter and that they can be a source of energy and inspiration or they can be a hindrance. What would you want folks to know about really building a great relationship with the humans inside an agency?
Ryan Brown:
I mean, it’s almost crazy how much comes down to the relationship between a few folks at the agency and a few at the institution side. And that relationship, it can mean so much in terms of the full value that the organization will see from an investment in agency partner. So I think it is important to be thoughtful, to be intentional about how to maximize those relationships. So good question.
I feel like a lot of the advice I gave earlier was around a little bit more business oriented or some of the intense challenges, and I think this might be a good one to focus on the softer side of this work, which is just as important in many ways. So firstly I would say, and maybe counterintuitive, but I would say be generous and to think about as a client contact or representative of the organization and working with external partners. Again, not to sound self-serving, but be generous with your partners and in any way that you can or you can afford to. Generous clients are the ones with agency partners that are willing to bend over backwards for them. And having a capable partner that is ready and willing to bend over backwards for you, that’s very valuable in a crunch or in a pinch, but also just over the course of an engagement and any future engagements. Once you have that reputation too, for being the client that is investing in the partner and co-managing it and so forth, that also sticks. And again, it can be really valuable.
Then I would say try to strike that elusive tricky balance of having fun while challenging your partner. I get it that the stakes are very high. I was harping on that, but if you’re not having any fun, it’s probably your audiences or your consumers that are the ones that will ultimately pay the price for that. It’s going to be felt on some level, and I think that’s important too, consider and to remind ourselves. At the same time, the best client, I am using air quotes here, the best client does not equate to the easiest client. So challenging each other and coming together to achieve something that is new and important, that’s when all of us, we as humans will feel the most fulfilled. And I think those are what the model engagements look like and it starts with those humans that you refer to.
And then lastly, I would just say champion the work, share the success so that everyone sees and understands the value and can be all the more effective as partners on the next time around future engagements.
Jarrett Smith:
Yeah, to piggyback on that, and I would phrase it as I always appreciate it when clients just share the wins, even if they’re small ones. It’s so motivating because I think everybody in a good agency partnership, that agency, they want to make you look good. They want to deliver something that actually makes a difference and meets your needs. And sometimes that’s a difference with a capital D like, we moved the needle on this key success metric and we exceeded your stretch goal. That’s awesome, capital D difference. But then I think a day-to-day, a lot of it is like lowercase D difference like, “Hey, the way you handle Q&A with the board was spot on. Good job,” or, “That report that you gave us really helped us align with some internal stakeholders or revealed something new that we hadn’t really seen before” or something like that. Those little pats along the back tell your agency, “Hey, you’re getting what you want out of this relationship. You’re helping us on a day-to-day basis,” and that is encouraging. I think makes a lot of us on the agencies, I’d want to try more. I want to do that again. That’s that little dopamine hit, I guess, of like, oh, we did great. Let’s do that again.
And I said, the flip side of that is also when we miss the mark or something wasn’t as helpful as you hoped, saying that. And I think that comes down to that a phrase that it’s what you’re talking about, the best client relationships aren’t always the easiest. There’s sometimes a little bit of an iron sharpens iron dynamic that in those really good partnerships where everybody’s bringing something valuable to the table and you’re expected for that, but you’re also pushing each other and elevating your game collectively. I think it’s a really cool dynamic.
Ryan Brown:
You mentioned the tough times or when something doesn’t go right, and I think those are some of… It is funny, the successes or when things go well and those pats on the back are really important and help to reinforce where we’re going. And then going through things together though, and the tougher times or the unexpected trial, that’s also where oftentimes you take a big step closer in terms of that relationship longer term and those lasting bonds even. I think that that really comes hand in hand or comes along, comes with the territory when it comes to taking risks or trying to do something different. And when we’re thinking about the charge of what is the assignment or this engagement, is it one of these bigger picture needs or is this a job that we’re just, we really want to do it different this time? And if so, if you’re doing something for the first time, even if you’re doing it for the first time, let alone if somebody else has done it before, or if you’re doing something that no one has ever done before. Right? There’s risk and you have to be willing to encounter some of those stumbles or even failures at some point there if you want to get the prize that is the real breakthrough moments and work here.
And I think that’s where a diversified portfolio mentality makes sense of your marketing that you’re doing. Have some moments where you’re taking some proper swings and then have some other things that are more of a sure thing or based on best practices there. But knowing that as you go through any of those trials, you can deepen those bonds and really look and figure out what you can learn from one another, whether it was something that was in your hands or not. And I think that those are some hallmarks of any kind of good, important relationship. And at the end of the day, it is people and relationships that are central to maximizing the value of these external partnerships for institutions. So it’s worth just thinking about how I can be the best partner in any kind of classic sense.
Jarrett Smith:
I think that is a great point to wrap up. Thank you so much for your time and your insights today. If folks are listening to this, they want to connect with you, what’s a good place to reach you?
Ryan Brown:
Sure. I would say LinkedIn, RyanBrown22 is the handle on LinkedIn. You could email me rbrown@160over90.com. And it has been a pleasure. Yeah, this is fun.
Jarrett Smith:
Awesome. Thank you, man.
Ryan Brown:
Thanks, Jarrett.
Jarrett Smith:
The Higher Ed Marketing Lab is produced by Echo Delta, a full service enrollment marketing agency for colleges and universities of all sizes. To see some of the work we’ve done and how we’ve helped schools just like yours, visit echodelta.co. If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on Apple Podcasts. And as always, if you have a comment, question, suggestion, or episode idea, feel free to drop us a line at podcast@echodelta.co.
