The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast

Steve Denker, most recently Vice President of Marketing and Digital for Turner Classic Movies, chats with Rob at the virtual 2021 South by Southwest. In this interview, he gives his perspective on what he looks for when "working with agencies."  In the mid-90s, Steve worked for Aramark at Fulton County Stadium/Turner Field, managing relationships with the brands and products that were part of that...

Amy Balliett is Founder and CEO at Killer Visual Strategies, an agency that specializes in visual communications design – creating such "products" as info and motion graphics, data visualizations, virtual reality, and interactive content. An Inc. 5000 company for four years in a row, Killer, now part of Material, has won over 30 excellence in visual communication awards. Clients include such Fortu...

Lewis Williams is Chief Creative Officer at Burrell Communications, an African-American-focused, female-owned agency that started 50 years ago to address the interests of Black consumers. Historically, African-Americans often have not been portrayed favorably in the media. Burrell focuses on depicting African-Americans in a positive, realistic way. The very first national-scale client? McDonalds....

Esther Raphael is Marketing Officer at Intersection, an out-of-home media and technology company that uses proprietary technology to electronically paint its client's stories on busses and city, transit system, airport, and interior and exterior "destination" walls around the country . . . anywhere outside the home where brands can deliver content, information, and wayfinding to consumers as "they...

John Vuong started his Toronto-based agency, Local SEO Search, in 2013 with the goal of helping small- to medium-sized businesses in North America, UK, and Australia improve digital presence in their local communities.   John had ten years in advertising and sales for print media directories with their online performance-based networks and then worked for 5 years at Yellow Pages. Through this expe...

John Limotte, Founder and CEO of Mustache Agency, started his career as a film producer making indie and arthouse films. When that business became more difficult (impacted by, among other things, the rise of the internet), John looked for a way to use his skills doing something that looked more like a real business. He saw potential in the field of marketing for "more cinematic . . . epic . . . mo...

Ashley Logan is the Founder and CEO at Yakkety Yak, a full-service purpose-driven content marketing agency that provides blog writing, social media marketing, video production, and website design and development for brands and organizations that want to make the world a better place.  Ashley says that the agency's "sweet spot" is content creation and storytelling. She believes alignment with the g...

Carl Fremont is CEO at Quigley-Simpson, a direct marketing/direct to consumer marketing agency with its roots in longform television infomercials. The agency has pivoted numerous times from informercials to shorter form direct response TV to full-service media with a focus on digital marketing. With an almost 40-year career in direct marketing, Carl joined Quigley-Simpson. Six months later, Covid...

Chad Crowe is CEO at Techwood Digital, an employee-owned agency that provides B2B, e-comm, and lead generation services for around 100 clients in a variety of U.S. industries. Founded on SEO, Techwood has over the years added paid search, branding, and some design elements and development – in a gradual transition to becoming a full-service agency. Chad had been doing SEO and paid search in a job...

Melanie Querry owns Beyond Spots and Dots, a full-service advertising agency that frames its work around analysis, keeps client budgets on target, and utilizes proven marketing success in one industry to help businesses in other industries grow. Spots and Dots has been on the Inc. 5000 list five times.   In this interview Melanie discusses how her agency helps clients understand the customer journ...

Brian Phillips is Co-founder and CEO of The Basement, an integrated (technology + creativity + measurement) B2C and B2B marketing agency with its roots in production. Brian dabbled in art and worked in architecture before he took the artistic principles of rendering positive and negative space to marketing. He explains, "The positive space, the consumer journey, is one we can see and everything wo...

Phil Case, now Chief Client Officer, joined Max Connect Marketing after running an agency for nine years – one that consistently lost clients to this highly performance-based digital agency. One key to Max Connect's success is that 90 percent of its 47 employees are compensated based on the performance of the campaigns it runs. At Phil's previous agency, the sales team would work 6 months to close...

Omi Diaz-Cooper is CEO at Diaz & Cooper Advertising, a digital "growth agency" that focuses on developing tight strategic plans and transforming client websites into top-performing salespeople. Omi says that websites are no longer "set it and forget it"—they are "living things that need to be producing" for clients. Since Covid, even companies that used to have "catalog" websites have found the ne...

For 15 years, Leah Norton, Managing Partner at Fishhook, has been leading this communications team which focuses on "getting out the message" for churches and faith-based ministries. Leah had left her previous agency to stay home and raise her young daughters. She started working part-time at Fishhook, coming on board to build out the founder's ideas and work on long-term client relationships. Las...

Waylon Tate is Principal at J. Waylon & Associates, a full spectrum PR and marketing agency that provides traditional public relations, digital outreach, and advertising services, mostly for startups. He and two of his friends with their own companies have created what Waylon refers to as a "communications trifecta," with the ability to collectively and collaboratively meet every need an entrepren...

Joel Matthew, Founder and CEO at Fortress Consulting, started his company after his experience selling advertising at CBS radio and television. When he "could not make the sale" because the companies he approached did not want to drive prospects to  their poorly-designed websites, he took action. Joel figured he could solve their problem (and his) by finding creative agencies to build content and...

In 2006, Carlos's fiancée (now his wife) was approached by a client to do SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and PPC (Pay Per Click). Carlos got into the agency in 2008 when the economy "tanked" and the funding for the startup where he worked dried up. From 2008 forward, the agency has been "tapped" on a regular basis by traditional (radio, print, TV) agencies needing digital services for their clie...

In 2009, Yoel Israel, founder at WadiDigital, Israel's leading full service digital agency, was pursuing his MBA at Bar-Ilan University in Tel Aviv, Israel. A friend sat down with him for a cup of coffee and said, "Dude, you've got to get on Twitter." Yoel fell in love with it, set his university up on Twitter (which brought in some international students), and got a scholarship for the effort He...

Todd Marks is Founder and CEO at Mindgrub, an agency, consultancy, and support company that designs technology for people to transform businesses, creates enterprise mobile apps and web applications, provides digital marketing, and "unlocks human potential." Winning Inc. 5000's Design/Development Firm of the year five years in a row might suggest that this is a notable tech firm. Yes, but this sam...

John Kriney, is Founder and President at OptFirst Internet Marketing, a Google Certified Partner (2010) that specializes in full-service online marketing campaigns and website, app, and landing page development. Campaign expertise includes customized search engine optimization; Google Ads search, video, display and shopping campaigns; cross-platform remarketing; E-commerce marketing; Facebook and...

Lucas DiPietrantonio is CEO and co-founder of Darkroom, a 3-year-old creative e-commerce growth agency that launches new brands to market and grows existing brands to maturity through four robust and specialized verticals: branding, technology, video production, and growth marketing Darkroom often serves as an incubator and marketing partner for companies so new they don't have a brand, a visual i...

Rahul Raj is founder and CMO of 5&Vine, a fractional CMO and marketing agency that identifies industry incumbents' vulnerabilities, market changes, and technological opportunities to enable startup brands to challenge and overtake established brands.  The agency focuses on challenger brands that have both economic and social goals, e.g., increasing financial literacy, addressing discrimination, or...

John Lawson, Chief Executive Officer at Colder Ice Media, started in e-commerce in 2000 on eBay. He claims that people talked about business in Ebay chat rooms, making it  "the first social commerce platform" before there was such a term. At the time, John sold bandanas, and was pestered by constant customer questions for information on "how to fold a bandana." So, he made a video and tracked ten...

James Kwon is Founder and CEO of Figmints Digital Creative Marketing, a 20-person, full-service, multi-seven-figure digital marketing agency that specializes in accelerating leads to sales. The company utilizes SalesAmp, which James describes as "business development representative as a service." SalesAmp came under the Figmint's "umbrella" when James and April Williams, now Fitmints President, me...

David Sonn is the Founder and President of Arc Intermedia, a HubSpot certified, digital only agency that focuses on "customer acquisition using digital strategies and digital tactics." David ran a web development company for 13 years but found that he and his partner had become "production monkeys," delivering a commodity and competing with offshore developers. "You never want to sell or have to b...