Jeremy Weisz 4:17
What did you do with the Riverdogs?
Chris Clark 4:19
So okay, yeah, the Riverdogs are a single a baseball team here in Charleston. They are owned by going back to the Chicago Cubs in the Chicago area. Mike Beck, so if you are
Jeremy Weisz 4:33
Sure I remember he’s a pitcher. Mike. He’s a pitcher for the Cubs, right?
Chris Clark 4:36
No, no, so his dad, his dad. Um, I can’t remember his if it was Mike Veckcino here but his dad did actually I think was instrumental in putting lights at.
Jeremy Weisz 4:46
Oh, really? Okay. I’m thinking of a different backwards.
Chris Clark 4:50
Yeah. So and then. Mike veck was instrumental in the I think it was the demolition disco night back in like the 70s late 70s Whatever I believe it was in Detroit or Chicago or whatnot. Again, I’m 32. So forgive me, but I nerd out on that stuff. But he owns the River Dogs with Bill Murray. Believe it or not,
Jeremy Weisz 5:12
oh, love it. Really?
Chris Clark 5:13
Yeah. So Chicago,
Jeremy Weisz 5:15
a huge Chicago Cubs fan.
Chris Clark 5:17
Absolutely. So Chicago ties down here in Charleston. You know, they own a couple other baseball teams across the country. I believe the St. Paul team minor league team up in Minnesota, but yeah, so the riverdogs have been one of our clients for almost six years now. And we have had really helped them you know, go from a and for us. They’re amazing because they really sell themselves. If you’re not familiar with them or minor league sports. You’d spoke about wanting to work for the Cubs or playing sports. That’s that’s kind of my that was my dream. I wanted to play baseball, Ken Griffey Jr, Derek Jeter were like my idols growing up. And I once I realized
Jeremy Weisz 5:59
What position were you?
Chris Clark 6:01
So I was, so I’m left handed. And when you’re left handed, and literally, you only get to do two things. One, they forced you to be a pitcher, because there’s not a lot of lefties and then two, they put you in the outfield and I’m not tall enough to play first base. So I was
Jeremy Weisz 6:15
gonna say first base is a common one too.
Chris Clark 6:17
Yeah. So I got to be in centerfield, which when I was a little kid, I didn’t really get it. Because I was like, You know what, EFF this. I can. I’m a shortstop, I want to be Derek Jeter, but you know, I like I quickly learned, okay, I’m fast. I can I can cover the gaps. So you know, I’ll play. I’ll play centerfield. And then I learned how to throw a curveball. And so in literally, you know, you can definitely strike some kids out with a curveball, but when you get up higher, doesn’t work out that well, when you don’t have speed. So can’t hang too many curveballs You know, when you’re when you’re in middle school and high school. So back to the outfield I went but other than that, you know, wasn’t that great at baseball to get to the next level love it to death though, but it drove it drove me to want to be a journalist or be in sports somehow. So I grew up in Roanoke, Virginia, and my mom and dad my mom is in advertising. So that is why I feel like I’m in this I was either gonna be in advertising or the military. That’s where my dad is. The whole majority of my family’s military and a lot of the military respected but for me, a very creative driven person, but my dad when he was in the Marines, as a side gig was my uncle ran the grounds crew for a team called the Salem buccaneers. And if we’re going to nerd out on baseball, they’re in Boulder and they were a Carolina league team that played the Durham bulls back in the day there now the Salem Red Sox to hate the Red Sox. It stinks that the hometown team is the Red Sox. But But yeah, he was he just helped out grounds crew so I literally hung out in in this shed as a little kid, while they were like taking care of the lawn, but like, you know, pitchers like Tim Wakefield were their voices to lose playing there. So that’s really neat. You know, a lot of random baseball players that went on to the major leagues and it just really got you know, stuck into my blood but from there you know, I went into work in minor league teams and all of that, but you know, I got to achieve my dream of working in minor league sports, learn the long hours and the low pay. So got that out of the way and that’s why I’m an agency world but coming full circle to working with the River Dogs, you know, minor league sports you’re there for the entertainment value. You’re not there necessarily for the on field. performance per se you could be there I mean, if you’re a really big sports nerd, why not but unless there’s some players that are growing going up to the next level or coming down to rehab you’re not really there to watch those players you’re there for thirsty Thursdays? Which the River Dogs do really well dollar beer night. Yeah, you’re there for dropping 1000s of bouncy balls out of helicopter to see which one lands versus to home plate to win like a car or a certain amount of money. You know, I love that but yeah, you’re there.
Jeremy Weisz 9:11
What are some other creative marketing stuff? I feel like the minor league teams are really creative at that.
Chris Clark 9:17
So yeah, exactly. That’s where that’s where you know, you’ve got to drive people into it you know, the riverdogs have like a DJ up on the you know, grand stand up top you know, they just had a promotion where it was toilet paper night so they they made fun of you know, quote and then they rolled the whole the whole stadium afterwards and the players after the game you know, they’re sitting there just chucking toilet toilet paper everywhere. You know, and so for that we live in a town that is tourist driven. You know we’ve Charleston’s been the number one city in the country. 10 out of pro I’ve been here 11 years. I think it’s been number one or number two in Conde Nast, like every year. It’s a good thing and a bad thing. So we are very Tiny hear we’re on a peninsula, all these people coming in infrastructure is not that well. But on the flip side, you know, we do get a lot of really unique opportunities with businesses coming in, you know, Volvo’s here, Mercedes is here now, Boeing’s here. But you know, with the RiverDogs, being able to hit those individuals that a have been moving in here at a rapid pace, it’s hard.
Jeremy Weisz 10:23
It’s hard. Yeah,
Chris Clark 10:24
yeah, people aren’t aware that there’s a baseball team here. And then also, you’ve got the tourists here. So within 2530 minutes of Charleston, you’ve got plenty of beach opportunity to hit tourists, you got little island cities that are around. So our job is really to help educate these individuals that, hey, there’s a baseball team here, because if you’re a local, you know, the RiverDogs, and if you are a baseball fan, either, so they’ve got that covered, you know, and so for us, we try to use creative and experience driven just nostalgia from the RiverDogs past or, or current season, you know, with our ties to hit these individuals. And so we’ve put together a fully, I mean, a full channel marketing campaign for these guys. And so we’ve worked with them over the last five to six years. And the big thing that we’ve helped them do is now show transparency and ticket sales. So before this digitally, they were just having ads served out there to the masses, maybe just serving on Google, no, no real strategy behind it not being able to kind of see what was what was going on. So we came in, and we installed a dynamic, a dynamic pixel, that helps us track ticket sales. So we’ve worked with their ticket provider over the last five to six years to show every ad out every dollar in and you know, in certain seasons, we’ve gone, you know, eight to one on on their return of investment. So what we’re doing is hitting people in real time, so whether that’s people sitting on the beach with their cell phone, because again, it’s you know, this what you do now, serving an audio and the riverdogs have very, very amazing creative, we work in tandem with them on that. But if you’ve got Mike Beck, and the individuals, they’re working for that team, they’re very creative. And if you put Bill Murray on any type of ad, I mean, game over, people are going to engage with it. So we had the unique opportunity to really, really cast this brand, wide out into Charleston, but but into these niche individuals devices. So we’ve done pre roll, we’ve done connected television with them, streaming audio display ads, social again, is is massive. And all of this is driving right back into their ticket sales and being able to show that return of investment.
Jeremy Weisz 12:46
I want to hear about how you use data, because I know it’s different from a lot of different companies in general. But I was thinking of Rod Beck not Mike Beck, that was the the close polls or the of the cover that I was wrong on the mic back. But But I’m the talk about how you use data, you know, because you’re talking about, you’re able to track on a very granular level. But you do this across many different types of campaigns and companies.
Chris Clark 13:13
Yeah, and you know, and data is that big buzzword in ANOVA. And talking about baseball. So I’ll throw there’s an asterisk next to data right now. And so with that data, you know, we want to help educate people, because in this space, it’s very, very valuable. We believe data is the new oil. But it also is very scary to people because they think that you know, their data is getting stolen, their data is getting, you know, misused. For us, we do it in a very ethical way. We use multiple kinds of data. So we use first party data, meaning for the riverdogs, if it’s sales data, individuals visiting the website at any any physical address, that zip code right there is is really our goldmine, any emails, any of those snippets, we don’t really use any name data, especially with the way that the world’s going, you know, cookies are becoming irrelevant. And so the other side of it is we use third party data. And so that’s that little fingerprint that you you leave behind anywhere you go on the internet. And so companies like Oracle, or Google, there’s hundreds of them, they silo that data and resell it. So that’s third party data data. And for us, we go to our exchanges through our demand side platforms are our partners, and we can go and select. So for example, if the RiverDogs want to target soccer moms, I can go and find a soccer mom data set, throw a really creative add layer on the Charleston DMA boom hit those individuals to say, hey, the RiverDogs are playing this weekend. So again, data is super valuable for us. But we’re using encrypted servers to store data. We’re GDPR very focused on GDPR. very focused on you know, again, cookies becoming irrelevant. Google just pushed it back another year. But there’s consistently changing happening. And so it’s kind of still the wild wild west, you know, in this this advertising space right now. But you know, for us, we’re not necessarily the sheriff’s, but we’re trying to, you know, make sure that we’re doing it in an ethical way and educating our clients with data. But how we’re using it is, is, again, like I mentioned that little fingerprint. But if I have the RiverDogs past purchasers, I can go and create a whole other audience of them called a look alike audience. So if you’re in the marketing space, you’re familiar with it, but if you’re not, and you’re a business owner in a brand, that data is, is is like I said, it’s a goldmine. So, what you’re able to do with that is you’re able to go and find a whole new audience that basically would be interested in your brand or product because you’re utilizing past purchasers of it. So that data right there, we’re going out there, and we’re again, using our technology to serve a display at a video add an audio app, to these individuals that are lookalike audiences in real time. And then again, on the flip side, since we have that person’s data already, we can go and re engage with them again. And so that’s another strong tactic with the RiverDogs is taking past purchasers and being able to upsell them on ticket packages try to make them season ticket holders showing the new promotions that are coming up. So if in the offseason, we want to help sell merchandise and with COVID. With a minor league team, gosh, a lot of them got rushed or or no longer year, the RiverDogs stepped up and really pushed merchandise and pushed food. This was awesome. So what they did was they have a really, really creative kitchen, I guess, department over there. And so they’ve got a hot dog called like the homewrecker, which the man versus food dude has come over.
Jeremy Weisz 16:47
What does that look like? Have you tried it before?
Chris Clark 16:49
Oh, it’s amazing. And if you get to a game I tell anybody if you go to a RiverDogs game you got a train out but it’s a footlong hot dog. You basically get to customize it you know throw some pimento cheese and cole slaw I mean, again, you can go crazy with it. But that’s that’s personally would be my favorites and coleslaw some tomato cheese on top of it, but they push their their menu out during COVID. So they were offering you know, Come get your lunch. They amazing schools and in Charleston to cater lunches for underprivileged youth and such. So again, just really, really phenomenal. What what they’ve been able to do, but being able to help them just push out any type of this advertising, any type of their initiatives, whether it’s in season, offseason, why they’re on the road, being able to use that data is really helped us to really branch their brand out. And again, they don’t need help these people know the RiverDogs. But it is really exciting that to help pay the 55 people a day that move into Charleston and say, hey, there’s a baseball team downtown, this is going to be one of the most phenomenal experiences you’ve ever had at a sporting event. Come check it out. Because if you do one time you’re coming back.
Jeremy Weisz 18:04
Yeah, but even if you know they exist, you know, it’s always what’s top of mind. And it’s always you know, I could know there’s lots of restaurants near me. But if once it’s when it’s front and center, and it’s front of me and I’m aware of it, if someone’s serving me an ad or whatever it is, that’s what’s piquing my interest right then and there. So it sounds like they do a great job and you help them really get in front of the right people and they’ve adapted they adapted in an amazing way and COVID I want to talk about the timeshare stuff because it’s a very competitive space for the different companies trying to get you know, their you know, probably inventory filled. But before we get to there, I want to just, I love what you said and if there’s any other creative ways that you know, the combination of getting in front of people and creative ways of, of marketing. You mentioned the bouncy balls you mentioned thirsty Thursdays. I feel like minor league teams are really good at these creative promotions. What are some other creative promotions that you remember helping run with the RiverDogs maybe it’s ongoing maybe it was a one time thing?
Chris Clark 19:15
Yeah, I’m trying to think I know they’ve they’ve done like, Oh gosh, where it’s like this so like you know your phone parties and stuff like that. There’s been like stand phone parties. There’s been concerts after the fact the fireworks are a really big thing because we’re the river dogs are the stadiums right on that the Ashley river so basically from like, right field to centerfield if you’re sitting behind home plate or to basically to the third base line, you can see the river and so fireworks coming up. So that’s always been awesome. That shooting somebody out of a cannon is always is always a really cool a really cool thing. They’ve had people parachute into the stadium Bill Murray’s thrown out the first pitch. I mean, that’s always, you know, amazing. It’s actually every every first opening day game, the mayor of the town will throw out the first pitch. And so Joe Riley was the mayor in Charleston for like, gosh, don’t hold me to this probably 40 3040 years he was he was the longest longest running mayor in the United States. He’s no longer the mayor. But Bill Murray would come out and pick him up and spin them around and like no, throw out the first page. So, um, and I guess, you know, with that, you know, you can see like, John Goodman has been there. Danny McBride lives in Charleston. So you’re seeing that you’re some celebrities. Yeah. Anthony Bourdain was down here. You know, when he was still alive. He came and filmed and filmed an episode in Charleston, have no reservations. And he was with Bill Murray and Sean Brock, who was a, who is a famous chef, he’s in Nashville now. But they were at the Waffle House, like Anthony Bourdain, and never going to a waffle house. So you know, but so you never know. And he will see but promotion wise, you know, again, they run across the gamut. I, you know, I actually worked for a minor league hockey team. And, you know, we kind of had our hands slapped by the league on what we can do. On the flip side with the river dogs can do, it’s, it’s awesome. You know, I love that, you know, at the end of the game, a little kids can run the bases, you know, that always means so much to me as a little kid, you know, being able to go out with the players before the game and all of that. So they really do make it a family fun, friendly atmosphere. I
Jeremy Weisz 21:31
love it. So talk to me about what you did for this timeshare company.
Chris Clark 21:35
Yeah, so it’s actually a coalition. So we work with the American resort Development Association. And so that’s Arda, and they basically work in in tandem with all of the major players out there, whether it’s Marriott Hilton Holiday Inn Disney Margaritaville. And so what we’ve done with them over the past couple years is there’s a couple of initiatives. So the first one is responsible exit. And so we’ve worked with them in tandem with these these different members to help educate individuals that have had negative experiences with timeshare exit companies. And so basically,
Jeremy Weisz 22:12
There’s a stigma there.
Chris Clark 22:14
Exactly. I was gonna say there’s that negative connotation when you think of timeshare anything timeshare early, but on the flip side, if you’ve ever been to a timeshare, or or owned one, or in recent years, or actually not recent, but in any time in the last decade, plus, they’re amazing properties, they’re amazing amenities, these brands that have come in have really changed that stigma to to the positive. And so on the flip side, you know, with responsible exit, you’ve got these exit companies out there like timeshare exit team, and there’s hundreds of them, and they’re all in lawsuits right now. They’re out there trying to say and still gunk up that stigma and so on Responsible Exit, we’re really trying to help target individuals and this is so this is how niche it is trying to hit individuals that own a timeshare that may be trying to either get out of it, or you know, for some reason, something happens in their life, that they have to get rid of this. And they’ve got these exit companies out there hassling them or promising them that they can get out of it, taking their money and running. So with responsible exit, they’re actually working with these individuals to take these people that have had those negative experiences and guide them to the right district attorneys and right entities within these different Coalition’s whether these these big players to help them ethically get out of their timeshare. So
Jeremy Weisz 23:36
so people have been scammed. Basically, they were trying to get out. And they got scammed by a company that said they, you know, they could help them exit it and then just take the money and
Chris Clark 23:47
different cases of it basically going across, you know, the country. But yeah, and in nutshell, that’s kind of where I sat. And so we’ve we’ve ran a really in depth campaign before this, they were spending a massive amount of dollars on doing just Google AdWords, nothing wrong with Google AdWords. But Google AdWords gets expensive, and you’re just on one platform within Google. So if you’ve got all of these major timeshare exit companies out there, guess who’s spending all of that money on Google AdWords for just one specific keyword to get that one click. So we came in and audited what they were doing. And so, you know, again, still using a little chunk of that AdWords budget, we flipped the rest of that budget into a multi channel approach. So using third party data, and then data provided by the coalition’s out there, we’ve been able to educate and target these individuals that have been having or being hassled by these exit companies. We’ve been serving creative to these people to drive them to a landing page to fill out this this quick, quick form to where we’ll put them in contact with one of the employees over at Arda to help them navigate them back on that journey. So we’re using Stuff like contextual keyword targeting, which is a tactic where it’s on the flip side a little bit cheaper than Google. So but cheaper is in this case a little bit better. Because with contextual keyword targeting, we’re hitting individuals that are typing those specific keywords that were still effective on Google. But we’re hitting the rest of the internet. So anybody that is typing timeshare exit, how to get out of my timeshare, any of those related keywords, we’re picking them up with our algorithms across the open Internet. And as opposed to just serving that one ad on Google. We’re hitting them with display ads, audio ads, and video ads to ultimately drive them back to that website. So right there, we’re taking it’s it’s a CPM approach as a CPC. So CPM is a cost per 1000. CPC is cost per click. So with that CPM approach in our team, and what makes us a little bit different than a lot of agencies out there is I’ve got a team of operators that are pulling the levers inside, looking at these bids looking at these keywords, and making sure that we’re optimizing on a day to day basis to hit these really niche customers in real time.
Jeremy Weisz 26:05
Love it, core, um, Chris, ideal clients for you.
Chris Clark 26:11
Man, that’s a great question all of them. But really, I think any person because we’ve worked with, from denim to myrlie, baseball to some really, really big fortune 500 companies on the CPG side that you know, know what they’re doing. But then again, they don’t know how to do it, per se. So, um, the ideal client, I guess, would be a brand or a product, or company that has a team that needs help with the space or somebody that is, is really just starting out, they’re looking to they know they got a budget, first and foremost, their post startup, they know that they need to utilize this marketing atmosphere out here in this digital space, how do we do it, that’s where we want to come in and be that strategist for them. So we’ve really seen it work out well, with developing brands from the nuts and bolts up, we’re working with this really, really cool app called GigPro. And so what they are is they are a application in the food and beverage space that if you’re a server or somebody that works in a kitchen, and you need money really quickly, and you need to pick up a shift, it’s kind of like the Uber for that, and that’s what we’re trying to make. And that’s their goal. So they started in Charleston, and now we’ve evolved to Charlotte and Nashville. Um, so helping them with, you know, developing that that strategy to how do we get to every person that is in the food and beverage space in Charleston, which is massive? How do we hit these these line cooks? How do we hit these bartenders to let them know hey, you know, the bar down the street needs somebody tomorrow night, like ASAP and if you’ve been to any restaurant lately, it is it is rough out there. So this app is taken off at the right time. And so we’ve helped them from the creative and branding aspect of their their brand to the strategy of getting it out there. And again, it’s it’s just targeting those individuals in real time. So that’s a really fun company. And then on the flip side, going into some of these larger companies that, for example, one of these large CPG vacuum cleaner brands that we work with. They were doing long form TV, a year and a half ago. And if you look at long form TV is at three in the morning or six in the morning, when you get up your watch commercials for
Jeremy Weisz 28:32
an exam. I mean, I’ve been I’ve had interviewed Ron Popeil. I don’t know if you know Rambo pills, but he was one of the infomercial kings early on. Yeah, who is? I don’t know if he’s credited. But wait, there’s more. So I totally, yeah, so I,
Chris Clark 28:46
I’m not trying to poopoo long form TV. I just think there’s an effective way now. Oh, yeah, totally. In front of individuals. So I could help him get in front of those people. No, but Oh, so this brand, they were basically using our 30 minute, two hour long spots. And again, running them at times where people probably aren’t watching TV. So we said, hey, let’s run a test. Give us that budget. And let’s take this and go after individuals that are in market vacuums. Let’s go after your competitors. Let’s find individuals that are out searching the masses in Amazon, Walmart, Target all of the big brick and mortar places. And let’s serve these messages and condensed video ads to them in real time. knocked it out of the park that led to a that was just a branding and awareness campaign. So for us, it was fun to be able to come in with a brand that even in COVID, they had a marketing team. They were very talented marketing team, but they just weren’t adapter educated.
Jeremy Weisz 29:43
We’re focused on one of the channels is
Chris Clark 29:45
absolutely and then they had some teams that were running Amazon and Walmart and stuff, but from a broader standpoint of where the masses are streaming, consuming media, that’s where they needed our help. And so those those are some of the best instances of where I think we really shine as a company to be able to come in and really make an impact.
Jeremy Weisz 30:07
I love it. I want to talk Chris about, you know, I know, it’s not public knowledge right now. But by the time this comes out, it will be that you and the company made the Inc 5000. Congratulations on that. And I want to talk about some of the, or some of the inflection points along the way that you see stood out milestones, either milestones that were challenging times that then you were able to turn around and or, you know, just turning points in hiring or in the business itself. What are some of the milestones along this this journey so far?
Chris Clark 30:45
Yeah, no, thank you. And it’s, it’s crazy to think that we are at this level, but it is also I see it because every day I can look out my door and see the machine rolling because of, of our hard work over the last seven years. And I guess I’m real quick to kind of go back full circle, you know, Digital Ignite has been around since 2018. And my business partners, Ed Seeger and Mike Samet have been, you know, with me along the way, Mike and I actually were with Newpoint Digital, which is a digital marketing company owned by a really large radio conglomerate here in Charleston called Apex media. Mike and I came together as I was the tech nerd like was the sales juggernaut. We came together and really formed this amazing company, brand, whatever you want to call it. Off the heels of this radio station, you know, a radio conglomerate. Now, back seven, eight years ago, we were like the redheaded stepchild, they would sit, they would monetize the radio budget before digital, and it was always clashing. They’d say, hey, let’s do this huge radio buy. Oh, no, by the way, on the way out, here’s your digital pamphlet. And then Mike and I would go pick up the scraps, you know, and so but we knew that we were building something great, because we can see how everybody else was selling digital, which was they were selling a package and outsourcing it to New York, DC, LA, some of the major agencies at the time that were doing programmatic, the benefits of us being able to see that were we were doing programmatic, which, if you’re not familiar with what programmatic is, it’s a made up word. Not now, but it was 1015 years ago, but it needs to buy and trade media in real time. And so programmatic is is a massive weapon and the digital space right now. And seven years, six years ago, when we were at Newpoint. We were one of the first companies at least in in our area that we’re doing any of this in house. So like I said, most of us are most of the agencies were outsourcing it, we brought the engine in. And so we partnered with a company out of London called Mita at the time, and they were just trying to come into America to test their test the waters, see if they could sell this platform here. And so we were their guinea pig in a way. And so we went to the clients out here and really introduced them to this programmatic space. And right away the benefits of that were cheaper prices at cpms because everybody was outsourcing and that middleman had to get the cut. So for us, since we were doing it in house, we were able to provide that that cheaper price. And unfortunately, unfortunately, you know, back in the day, there was no strategy. It was really just like, I mean, there was strategy, but it was really a race to the bottom of who could sell the cheapest CPM for the most amount of impressions. Well over time you realize like, okay, there’s so many different layers and how we want to target individuals and impressions. And just serving a massive amount of impressions might not be the main benefit of it. But we really cut our teeth on with Edmodo. And that allowed us to expand into just being able to work with major players in the space, whether that’s Trade Desk to mobile at the time, which is now Adobe, Adobe actually bought them worked with at Nexus that’s Zander, we worked at Data Zoo, that’s Roku now. And so what we wanted to do was build a fully agnostic platform to where we could go to all of these major players, and go to a client and have a CNA with them, and really understand what they needed, and then go back and then pair the strategies based on saying, Hey, here’s a package, this is what you should be doing. So right there was the biggest game changer for us. And so we just started to evolve from there and 2018 we had the opportunity to buy a new point. The gentleman that was that owned the radio stations, sold his radio stations to saga media for a pretty penny. Mike and I were able to partner with Ed Seegar who is our business partner now and we’ve taken Digital Ignite from from we I think we had about a million dollars on the books. At that time to last year we did about 10 million, you know, and so this year, we’re on pace to do 20 million which is insane and so coming off a pandemic You really grew because we saw all of these brands that we actually, we knew this was going to come at some point, we knew majority of these companies needed to hit the digital side of things a little bit harder on their media, their media budgets, but COVID just expedited that, you know, everybody needed to hit these people, because they’re at home and what were they doing, they were on their laptops, their smart TVs, their cell phones. And so we really evolved over the last couple years into, into again, I think, a leader in the space of educating clients and brands, but also showing results because transparency is king nowadays, once you give a client a taste, of showing them a little bit of that reporting, they want more, and then it’s like, oh my gosh, you can show me this CPA, you can show me that that return of investment, like gimme, gimme, gimme, you have a dashboard that I can log into 24 seven, and I can see it three in the morning, what’s going on, gimme, gimme, gimme, which we do. Um, so we’ve really tried to evolve to a, again, a full service agency, but in modern times. Um, and I think, going back to your question of some like key points and hires, we’ve taken our lumps along the way. And I think anybody Well, we’re at year three plus now, I think the first year with any company is first starting out, you’re trying to grab the bull by the horns and you’re getting jerked around and you’re trying to make sure that this train doesn’t fall off the tracks. And we were in that space. You know, we brought our book of business over and really honed in on the spaces that we were really popular and are really successful in which were education CPG and automotive at the time. But we really grew from that and learned and by year two, Mike Samet did an amazing job of revamping our sales side of things. So we’ve we’ve just brought in leaders in in the space and formed department heads. So we’ve got a sales department head, we’ve got an awesome marketing and account management team, we’ve got a great operations team, we have a creative team. That’s a big thing right there creative on top of digital now you can see all of the data in real time so and on top of your media inform strategies, you can inform creative now so we are leaving so much money on the table and the creative side that we’ve brought in a creative department for that too. So that’s really allowed us to get to this level Inc 5000 and allowed us to work from the RiverDogs down to some of these really big fortune 500 brands.
Jeremy Weisz 37:29
First of all, Chris amazing congratulations on this journey. I love hearing your advice you’re so good at it explaining very difficult to understand or industry stuff and boil it down to so people can understand it like me so I appreciate that. I think I just want to thank you I encourage everyone to check out Digital-Ignite.com to check out what they’re doing some amazing stuff and I think you know data transparency is king is what is kind of what you’re saying here and I love what you guys do. So check that out. Check out other episodes of InspiredInsider.com and and Thanks, everyone. Thanks, Chris.
Chris Clark 38:08
Thank you.
