Jeremy Weisz 16:17
I want to talk about how you got into the agency world, but we have to talk about some takeaways from selling toilet paper.
Paul Tedesco 16:28
Oh, my goodness. So it’s funny, and here I’ll give you a recommendation. So my father before he passed away, he lived in Italy during the war, came over and emigrated after the war. And I got him to sit down and write all his stories, 18 single spaced pages of all the stories I’m now leading mine on to video. But I have to tell you that so I was a I started out in sales after I graduated from school, I worked for Scott Paper, as you said, and and what I learned there is that you can become any single product, if you put it into the right perspective can become a passion point for what you do. I loved it and so some of my best memories are selling toilet paper, and I won’t get into too many stories on it, but those were the days because this is not 35 years ago, maybe even more.
And in those days just to be able to knock on doors I sold industrial toilet paper into things. My funniest story is I saw the Skydome as it was called in Canada, but the time was the home of the Blue Jays. I sold the contract for the toilet paper in the Skydome. And literally, I sold those big we call them J R t they were jumble roll tissues like this is one where you could go back and forth on the field 12 times the thinnest single ply you could ever imagine. And I sold this into the Skydome and I’m actually there on opening night. Sitting in some seats watching as people go to the washroom and consume our product. See you can get passionate about anything. I get a call the next morning.
We’ll be in a bullpen style sales place and I get a call the next morning. And literally it’s like Paul Tedesco line one and I pick up the phone. And it’s the general manager of the Blue Jays who asked me if I was at the game and they were literally people ripping off the covers, taking the big jumble rules on the upper level and trying to throw them down to unravel. And of course, they’re just breaking away. We’re really lucky nobody got hurt. But anyways, that’s one of my toilet papers.
Jeremy Weisz 18:39
That’s actually if you had planned that that would have been smart, because then they would have to buy more and more toilet paper like hey, you’re whispering in the fans ear go take this off and start using the streamers to the stadium. So
Paul Tedesco 18:51
I I literally the phone call said you have 24 hours to fix this. And we got a welding shop to make these metal brackets that go over top. And I literally was there as they were being delivered to me and me and seven other people. And we went to every single toilet paper roll toilet paper dispenser in the Skydome. And we literally manually riveted these things on and bolted these things on so it couldn’t be done.
Jeremy Weisz 19:23
I’m always curious about Paul selling. That’s a pretty funny story. And that’s a bigger count on people selling what seems to be a commodity like item. How do you compete and how do you sell a stadium when like, Okay, this toilet paper versus this toilet paper?
Paul Tedesco 19:43
Yeah, I mean, it’s tough because it is in many ways a commodity. commodity product, I think, you know, there’s an element of because at the time and again this a long time ago that those big toilet paper dispensers were in innovation and trademarked right so there was ability to say we can save you a lot of money in your people having to go and actually put new rolls of toilet paper onto the normal dispenser. So we had an innovation, we had a point of difference, that added value to the relationship that is the Skydome, as far as being able to manage that aspect of their operations.
Jeremy Weisz 20:28
No, I appreciate that. Because even in the agency world, you don’t think some people can perceive someone creating websites, right? There’s a lot of people that do certain things. But like you pointed out, what innovation Do you have? And also, what’s the point of difference from other companies?
Paul Tedesco 20:45
Well, it’s a you know, there is no, there is not much there is not much greater a commodity than than a marketing agency. In so many of our of, you know, a CMO, for instance, kind of looks around and says, You know what, in the old days, you know, Bill Bernbach, could point to, or Leo Burnett could point to his, his incredible advertising, he was so much smarter, I think today that has really become much more commoditized. For me, the key, I just talked about retention, the number one word to track is retention. From an internal standpoint, it starts with retention of our employees. Because there’s nothing that sours a relationship with the client faster than turnover of the staff on their account. If you can retain and keep great employees, then they will help you retain and keep great clients. Because it’s hard to show a benefit to change.
And you know, so many RFPs and things that we get today are all focused on price, right? How do we create? How do we create a system or a program where we can get the best price out of you? You know, we’re fortunate because we have, I think it’s the best client list I’ve ever seen at an agency period, bar none. I am biased. However, I will admit, Jeremy. But you know, to me, the key is to keep them if I can keep them and grow them. That’s the output because the track has not had a nice steady growth. We were eight people 13 years ago, we’re about 90 now. And we’ve had a nice slow progressive growth. And even our core clients like McDonald’s and Samsung who have been with us from almost the beginning. I have a 13-year relationship with McDonald’s. They have continued to slowly grow as they trust us more and they allow us to help them more. And retention is the key in my mind.
Jeremy Weisz 22:47
Talk about that for a second staff. Retention. What are some of the things you do in the teams you’ve worked with? That’s helped from a staff retention standpoint?
Paul Tedesco 22:58
Yeah, I think you know, there’s two. So I think our secret, and I would say we’re not the highest paying agency. In the business, we’re competitive. I wouldn’t say to you that people come to us just because they want to work a track and they’ll take half the money. That’s not true. Our turnover, though, we’ve been very fortunate that our turnover over the last. The last five or six years are in the single digits, low single digits. We very seldom lose anybody, one or two people a year out of 90, which is pretty good, which is a pretty good number. I think we do two things that separate us from the crowd. And I will tell you, I’m an evangelist of a book called the service profit chain and a method called the service profit chain.
And if you haven’t read it, or I teach it, as a matter of fact, as well and lens Schlesinger, who’s a professor at Harvard, Babson College, maybe but but Babson actually taught it to me, and it just talks about how employees if you create value for employees, they create value for your clients. So I live by that. So two things that I’d say, separate us one is trust. So we trust our people to make decisions to do things, and we stand behind them no matter what they do. My team will tell you that no matter what mistake or whatever happens, as long as we learn from it, I’ll be standing behind them taking the blame. I had a comment once from one of my account directors that Paul gives us enough rope to hang ourselves, but he’s always there with the chair to make sure we don’t do that.
And then another one is respect. I have to tell you that the only instantaneous terminations that I have done in the last 15 years of my career have been when someone yells and screams and is disrespectful. We don’t tolerate reading it at all. So the idea of pre Madonna people who think they know more than others and yell because something happened, doesn’t happen on track ever. Because we wouldn’t tolerate it. So you put trust and respect together, and you’ve got an awful nice place to work. It helps, Jeremy, that we have the best client list in the entire industry. Who wants to leave an agency that’s working with Samsung, McDonald’s? JetBlue? And Mercedes? Nobody does. Because they’re the best brands in the world you could possibly work on.
Jeremy Weisz 25:31
Yeah, you’re doing cool work too, from a trust perspective. What are some of the things you do? I don’t know if there’s a certain meeting cadence or things you do to build the trust of the team and to foster that?
Paul Tedesco 25:46
Yeah, I think I mean, it’s really been interesting since COVID, obviously, we have a hybrid work scenario, we share the space with one of our sister companies called critical mass, and I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of them, but we share our space with critical mass where two days a week, I think, you know, we do a number of different things. But what is so part of the secret to our success, is that my leadership team, the people that are leading track, because I can’t say it’s me, it’s a team of, of eight people, they have been with me on average, eight years. So that is incredible. You know, loyalty inspires loyalty. Trust inspires trust. So we demonstrate and live our, you know, our mantras.
So I would say, I respect everyone, my team respects everyone, therefore, everyone respects each other. We exhibit the right behaviors and the right things. And we do from time to time take action, that demonstrates the fact that we actually do believe and live our core. Trust is as an organization, we give trust, probably before we earn it. Which is, I think, a big deal, right? Because I think people come in, they’re brand new, they don’t necessarily trust us. Yeah, Paul, it’s really nice that you said, if I make a mistake, just step up, be honest, we’ll all jump behind you and make it happen. So what we do is we give the trust from the beginning. And then we live our values.
Jeremy Weisz 27:29
Yeah, I love that. I think the same way I was talking to someone about with referrals. And like, the best way to get referrals is to actually give referrals, and don’t necessarily expect to get referrals. So it’s the same way with trust and a lot of things.
Paul Tedesco 27:47
You know, I have, and this one always blows people’s minds, sometimes even even the people that I work for. I’ve been in situations where someone’s been in my office and said, You know, I don’t know if this is the right job for me. And I have said to them, Listen, if it’s not the right job for you, let me help you find the right job, I’m not going to fire you, I’m not going to make you quit, I’m not going to put those let me help you find the right thing for you and have moved people out of our company to other jobs at other companies, sometimes our competitors, because it was the right fit or a better fit. For them. That’s a pretty bold thing to do to have a you know, to have an environment where an employee comes to you and says, I don’t know if I want to be here anymore. And you help them instead of discouraging them.
Jeremy Weisz 28:40
So how did you then get into the agency space? I know, you know, from selling toilet paper
Paul Tedesco 28:47
So I sold toilet paper first. And then I ended up running restaurants. So I went to a company called RestaurantXx. I ran 19 cafeterias right there, people who’d run cafeterias and companies and schools. And that, that type of place. And I got headhunted by and I will call a company called Xaviars. So this is now 32 years ago, a gentleman named Grant Row. Xaviars doesn’t exist anymore, by the way. So if you’re looking for it to put up I don’t think he can. And Grant row pulled me out of running restaurants. So I call that Scott paper. I called on the food distributors.
So I had this experience and he pulled me out because what he said was, we need someone who is so credible in the actual restaurant space because they were a specialty boutique agency working on behalf of Kraft and Campbell’s and Kellogg’s selling into restaurants. We need someone so credible that you can sit in front of the head chef at the Four Seasons, and have a discussion on food cost. And, he hired me away from that and into the agency world and I have not looked back. So Grant and I didn’t always agree on everything. But I credit him with what has been a A 30 year career where I can count the number of days I didn’t want to go to work on one hand. It is the most exciting, amazing place to be, especially in the data, CRM space, which is the best place to be.
Jeremy Weisz 30:12
What are some of the things you talk about? I know you teach an MBA course. And one of the things you talk about is customer value creation.
Paul Tedesco 30:21
It’s so I mean, the first thing we have to understand about customer value is it’s an exchange. So I think where we get it wrong so often is that companies go on a bent to say, How can I create value, create value, create value? And I think the problem is that we don’t often think enough about the extraction of value. And if you think about what I said, I wasn’t gonna say that word. I think I did say I wasn’t gonna say that word. You know, value is a two way street. And, and the goal then should be how do we take that value that we deliver and build and, and get value back. So we call it value delivered and value received. The second thing is, that value is really easy to define and measure when you’re the brand or the company.
And it’s impossible to define and measure when you’re the consumer. You know, I think about the facts. So I have a MacBook computer. That’s only because Samsung computers haven’t been sold in Canada until the last two years. But I have a MacBook computer. And you know, I love it. And part of the reason I love it is because I love the Genius Bar, I love being able to go to the Genius Bar and get my stuff fixed. Right? There are other people who thrive on the ecosystem. I don’t I’m a Spotify guy, not an Apple music guy, I don’t need the ecosystem, then there are other people that potentially are just in the ease of use, right? It’s a Mac, it’s just easier to use. It’s not as hard, I don’t have to worry about the prompt at the DOS prompt. I’m kidding, by the way, I know there’s no such thing as a DOS prompt anymore. But I don’t have to worry about that. So what we know is that if you’re selling to these three people, they have a whole different idea of what’s value, I have to tell you that ecosystem means nothing to me. So zero value in the pole camp on the ecosystem.
So when you start to think about them, that perception is reality, that a value is a perceptive, it has a perceptive value if everyone’s is different, it’s impossible to measure. So what does that mean, if we can’t measure it, and we can’t necessarily see it as easy, we have to figure out a way to deliver it on a one to one value. And finally, the world is ready for that. Right? Like, like the data environment has become the technology and the tech environment has become so rich in its capabilities, that we can now actually look at individuals and say, how do we deliver the right value for Jeremy exclusively? And what does that mean? We don’t waste any. Right? So we don’t give value to Jeremy that he doesn’t care about. We give Paul the value that he wants when, when it’s necessary.
Jeremy Weisz 33:08
And that goes into the analytics piece and the personalization personalization piece. So talking about, you know, again, another thing you talk about with your company, and also in the MBA courses is the marketing analytics.
Paul Tedesco 33:22
Yeah, and I think again, the ability for us to, to capture data on an individual basis allows us to create personalization. And if you start to think about a McDonald’s, for instance, right? Why would we be spending the time trying to market a Happy Meal? To someone who has no children? And on the simplest level, that is it is a core because adults like the toy to Yeah, that’s a war they want the value of the deal? Yeah, exactly. Adults like toys. So if you start to think about that, what happens if if if a brand starts to send me emails, or direct mail, or text messages, or target me on digital media or social media for an item that I don’t want, I start to create a filter where I start to take that brand out of my consideration set.
Oh, obviously McDonald’s isn’t for me. They’re trying to sell me something I don’t want, obviously Samsung isn’t for me. They’re trying to give me something that I’m not interested in. I rent a place where I don’t need appliances. So by using the data that we have, and are available, and by targeting on a more one to one level, you know, we can provide the information that’s necessary. We have a rule in our annual planning that we want to try to go to all of our clients and say, how do we do less? So if we’re currently sending 10 million emails a year to our client base, how do we make that seven? By making the seven more relevant and cutting out the waste? How do we, and that makes us more efficient and effective, right?
Because if we’re, if we’re not sending those 3 million emails out, we’re saving money. We’re providing a better experience for our clients and we’re more engaging, and they engage with us better, and it’s good on, but we’re also saving money, which is the same philosophy now. I mean, obviously, first party data, especially with the future of cookies has become something huge in our world, because every client we have is, how do we become more media efficient using first party data? The same thing applies. It’s really almost more about suppression than it is about anything else. It’s how do we take the people we don’t need to talk to and not talk to them? And that way, we’re not wasting that money over there in a space that we don’t have to.
Jeremy Weisz 35:53
Yeah, Paul, I love that about how to do less cutting out the waist. And sometimes it’s even counterintuitive, right? Somebody’s like, well, how can we send more emails? How can we do this, but for you, it’s more very targeted. And so you know, trimming off the fat. Talk about McDonald’s, and I know that you’ve, you’ve worked in the company and have worked with McDonald’s for a long time. And we were talking before you hit record about personalization, and more personalization.
Paul Tedesco 36:28
Yeah, I mean, the real turning point for McDonald’s was the the introduction of the rewards program, where now of course, what we’re doing is we’re able to understand a person’s specific habits and a person’s specific purchase patterns and, and the basket, etc, that they want to so again, you know, to make it to make it really simple. When we have that kind of knowledge, McDonald’s is retail, as a whole. So whether it’s a supermarket, or a sari, whether it’s a grocery store, an airline, someone who collects first party data, this isn’t as easy for CPG companies because they don’t do the transactions. But if you get a company that does transactions, what they can do, for instance, is take a look and say, Hey, Paul, seems to like to go out for lunch on Fridays, he likes to grab a coffee every morning. And every once in a while on a Saturday afternoon.
He’s taking his family. In my case, it’s actually my elderly mother who went to McDonald’s for a burger, because I have to admit that I love McDonald’s, not only as a client, but as something I do. So why in the world would we ever suggest to Paul that he should be coming in on Sundays? Right? So personalization means we understand what Paul does, we will take some opportunities to see if we can’t refine Paul’s habits, right? Maybe we can get him to come for coffee two days a week, maybe we can get him to come for coffee three days a week. But what it allows us to do is not intrude on Paul, and the times he wants the other thing that the loyalty program does, which is the biggest issue we have, I believe in personalized marketing today is our ability to actually customize offers and the negative aspect of customizing offers. Because theoretically, and I’m not going to use McDonald’s, McDonald’s has never I will state this upfront, McDonald’s has never even considered this.
Okay, and they would never do it. But one of the problems that we had was that we were giving, for instance, everyone who bought Big Macs, we give them $1 off a Big Mac, don’t you think the person who potentially buys one every six months, and gets $1 off is not as valuable a customer as someone who buys it does it twice a week. So how do we equate and give that person who comes twice a week the right amount of value, and you weren’t getting it because you just couldn’t? Right? You just couldn’t manage to get that done. The loyalty program allows that because everyone gets points. Everyone gets to kind of spend that. So that kind of personalization, you know, allows us to give and provide things that are more relevant, more interesting and more valuable to consumers at the right spot. I have seen it used nefariously. And again, McDonald’s would never do that. And that is we know Paul’s going to come in for a Big Mac once a week. Or a hamburger once a week. We know Jeremy is not going to unless we give him $1 So we’ll give Jeremy the dollar and not Paul and that’s the fairness of McDonald’s would never do that. Please don’t cut that out of my interview.
Jeremy Weisz 39:49
I don’t know if it’s interesting because it’s more valuable. Right? People feel special and you are giving them all that more valuable thing. How to, you know, because you have that data, right? And, you know, instead of trying to attract someone who doesn’t use it, they’re rewarding people who do for certain activities, which makes sense. From a sense, so thanks for sharing that, because I think this applies to anything. I mean, anything in business, that concept of, even if someone’s trying to attract a new client, as opposed to rewarding an existing loyal client, and giving those people more valuable exclusive, whatever it is, offers or some other things that you can help them with.
Paul Tedesco 40:40
Well, how often and this is I know, is one of the most frustrating things in my world anyways, is, you know, how often do you see an incredible offer, come up for potentially your cell phone service, or your cable service or your internet service at home, and you see something come up that says six months free, and you sit customers, new customers only, I’ve been a loyal customer for 30 years of your company, and I get nothing. And someone brand new gets six months free. That’s not right. And that’s why a program like McDonald’s makes so much sense because it allows you to ensure that loyalty, do I hate that word, that actually continuity or someone who actually engages with you, and is a great customer gets rewarded?
Jeremy Weisz 41:32
For that, I want to talk also, I know Samsung, you have a deep relationship with Samsung. And you, I’d love to talk about SmartThings.
Paul Tedesco 41:44
I think this is amazing. So we’ve just done so and if you look and there are we’ve won a number of awards. So there are some published cases on this. But you know, Samsung was looking to improve its kind of social responsibility scoring index, and they were looking for ways for us to do it. And I’m a big advocate. So besides the one thing I already mentioned, which is this laptop, I’m on everything, I own a Samsung, I got seven TVs, all appliances. And I’ve been very engaged with an app called SmartThings, which is their kind of app that allows you to control stuff. So you know, when accidentally you get locked out of your, you know, your Netflix. And most people have to go find their password, not me, my SmartThings app has it all in it, I pointed the QR code, everything comes back onto original settings, I control my garage door, I think you saw me I controlled the blinds behind me, everything is on SmartThings.
And I’m a bigger advocate. And we were talking to someone in our office and I take no credit for this idea. By the way, all I did was advocate SmartThings. And they were talking about ADHD and and we have an employee who has ADHD and they’re actually in a video that you can find online, if not now, it’ll be on our website soon. And we started to talk about some of the challenges associated with ADHD. So what we did was we did a bunch of research and partnered with 1.8 million Canadians, out of 40,000,001 point 8 million Canadians have been diagnosed with ADHD. And that’s probably not even the tip of the iceberg. So we partnered with something called Possibilities, which is a leading advocate, and researcher on ADHD. And we partnered with them. And we started to look and understand how we could enable and facilitate a better experience for people utilizing the SmartThings app. So we created smart things, Samsung SmartThings, and ADHD.
We did a program on it, we did some websites. And basically, we did the first ADHD enabled email that we’ve ever seen. And it’s simple things like where things will be above and below them on a page at one time. There’s toggles for icons versus text. There’s, you know, different it’s been enabled for, for being able to be read by a speech reader. So we basically took all of these things and enabled the app to be able to be more friendly for someone with ADHD. And it’s a fantastic project. And that is what I call a brave client, because it’s pretty hard to monetize or understand the monetization of that. But it’s got to be the thing that we are the most proud of as, as a team, our clients at Samsung. We are so proud of it, that we did it.
Jeremy Weisz 44:45
No thanks for sharing that it kind of goes into the research and personalization and listening to the audience in all that. I have one last question, Paul. Before I ask, I want to just point people to check out more. They can check out Trackomc.com to learn more. And my last question is just some of your favorite resources. It can be books. I know you mentioned The Service Profit Chain. I know as a, you know, teacher in an MBA program, I love to hear some of your favorite books of colleagues or in general. Yeah, I
Paul Tedesco 45:22
i mean, I think there are a lot of books, so there’s a lot of them, obviously, that are out today. I’ll tell you that when my kids first went off to you, I had four kids. And when they are grown ass kids whose youngest is 19, one of the things that I’ve done to all of them is give them a copy of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, which I happen to think is probably the most influential single book in my life. I stand and I don’t even know how old that is, Jeremy, but that book is not new. It’s old, maybe 30 years old, maybe maybe more.
Jeremy Weisz 46:07
I’ve listened to it.
Paul Tedesco 46:08
It’s one of the I think it’s one of the most incredible books ever, because it actually teaches you some usability. You know, I mean, some of these individual things like time boxing and stuff are fantastic. But The Seven Habits just gives you a real understanding of how to focus and how to do it. So if you think about me as a guy who, who is on the faculty at a university, runs a company that does it have, oh, it’s the Anniversary Edition, but Covey. I don’t know, it gives you really usable skills that help you prioritize and focus. And I use it. I don’t look at it anymore because it’s ingrained. But I use it to plan my week. I use it to understand how to focus. I use it to understand and prioritize. It has allowed me to come up with some great ways to say no. And be able to do that. So it’s my favorite of all books.
Jeremy Weisz 47:13
I love it. Paul, thanks again. Thanks for sharing your lessons and stories everyone check out Trackomc.com And more episodes of the podcast and we’ll see you next time. Paul, thanks so much.
Paul Tedesco 47:26
Thank you so much Jeremy. It’s been a real pleasure and appreciate your time.
