Scott Markman 10:14
I’m gonna give the chairman two-part answer. Our agency is extremely committed to and immersed in research and insights. Now, that’s not unique. I mean, I will tell you that everything that we do, anybody in branding, there’s no proprietary anything. So that’s the backdrop here. Having said that, people have skill sets and focuses and priorities that differ. We are deeply grounded in research and insights. There’s a reason I had a longtime partner Jackie Short, who was extremely sophisticated research professional e-comm. At a corporate America, she ran research at Ameritech, the 90s. I mean, she was do this, right. And she is really one of two people who taught me the discipline, the priority and the process of research, but quant and qual, a vast majority of the work that we do involves qualitative research, executive interviews, I sort of do this kind of stuff when you’re dealing with me, but with internal constituents and external constituents, for our clients. Now, events for the divides into two parts. In private equity, I’ve done probably 500 of these in the last seven years. So with every interview, I have no notes, I just know what I’m trying to elicit and I start a conversation and I have a certain process, my talking points, like you’re doing with me, this kind of stuff, and I approach those in a certain way. But for, let’s say, a portfolio company, or a big public company, the work that we do, you’re probing into stuff that you’re loosely familiar with, and you have a sense of what you’re trying to gain out of it. But the questions you ask is got to be a lot more, you have to get them approved by the client, here’s the 12 things I’m going to ask, we’re going to do it over dozens of interviews, not 15. And it takes longer. And it’s more of an investment. But I will say that, we always say that the heavy lifting the hard work is done there at the front end of these engagements, figuring out who the hell are you? What are you going to do for anybody? Why should they care? And how do you tell that ended up two minutes or less succinct story that hundreds, if not, 1000s of people across the enterprise are going to articulate through the written word, and verbally and visually and all of that stuff, that’s freaking hard. By the time that is approved, iterated, and approved, and we get into the creative, it’s downhill skiing, it’s fun, it’s easier, it’s a little bit more enjoyable, because I love the creative process. Because I’m a designer by training, I’m a creative, I’m a creative who became a researcher, and a strategist. And so I love the creative process. I love to logo design, I love writing, I love video development, I love podcasts, I love the creative expression is really cool. But I also love the front end, because I learned to be kind of good at it and to be the you know, the dude in my agency to kind of own that piece of it. And we’re doing work now for to check in at global brands. Once public company, they make products, industrial products, and one is a private equity firm, its infrastructure, and they’re in seven continents, and they imagined a ton of money. It’s so cool, to do the work, and to then sit back and think well, okay, how do you piece all that together? And how do you present it, and how you express strategy is so much fun. And it’s hard, it’s really hard, but it’s like intellectually rewarding. And so I happen to really like it. I’m not a creative, really in the agency anymore. Other people, you know, the rest of my partner, the rest of the team, that brilliant what they do, and I come along for the ride, and I make sure that things are staying on brand and matching the strategy, but I’m not doing anymore, and that’s fine, too.
Jeremy Weisz 14:10
Scott, you’ve done in your company has done Who knows tens of thousands of these type of interviews with executives, have you heard from the company. Do you remember an answer that an example of an answer that stuck out that helped you get to kind of the core essence of a brand? Yes. Talk about that.
Scott Markman 14:33
I literally was talking about with my partner but an hour ago. So we have a client private equity client in Little Rock, Arkansas, they’re called Stephens Group. It’s a family office. Wildly successful, wildly interesting, but the history and the issues that we were asked to kind of weigh in on and and kind of solve for them are more deeper about Just a nuanced and complex than typical private equity firm. It’s a family. It’s the multi-generational family. And so we’ve had to do a much deeper three-dimensional dive into that than most B clients. And there was a one interview I did this about two months ago, a gentleman that has known his family for decades and was close friends and business associates with my clients father, who started the whole enterprise. And the answer to a question, that sort of softer culture, that kind of stuff, I’m directionally correct. He said, I would play poker with these folks over the telephone. He said more in seven words, than the next 60 interviews put together, because you think about the implication of what he said, let alone the uniqueness of it. And he didn’t think twice about it. I’m sure he’s given that answer 100 times to describe the relationship with his family. I trust them so much that I would play poker with him over the telephone. I mean, if I’m inserted great metaphors, visuals, and great symbolism, I couldn’t think of a better answer, like I almost could have been done with the process. I know where to go with this. It was brilliant. He was not trying to be clever, cute. It was it was just a natural answer. And again, I think he’s probably said 100 times. It was awesome.
Jeremy Weisz 15:08
So now this, like you said, it’s downhill skiing once you do all this research? I mean, you’ve done this, this is your expertise. To me, it doesn’t seem like downhill skiing, it seems like there’s a lot of work to be done. How does that research translate into now what you do for people visually, right with their logo and their brand.
Scott Markman 17:07
So we live in a world of ideas. And creative meaning visual expression comes from foundational ideas, and foundational ideas come from positioning and strategy and insights. So there’s aliens to be able to see through all of this. And the challenge the hard part of this is the nuance. When you think about all the factors that you control logos, colors, fonts, style of language, is it business and CRISPR is a conversational warm. All these nuances not only have to tie from the expression back to the strategy and insights, but they have to tie to each other. Meaning the colors need to relate to the fonts need to relate to the language, they need to relate to the photography and the video like, and when you go to a website, you design, the user experience, it all has to tie together, it all has to go back to that flag we talked about planted in the hill and defend. And there’s clearly an art to that, I mean, in quotes, or I mean literal, I mean figurative art to that there’s a nuance to like there’s a deafness to that, that only comes from experience. Now, the great thing about our shop is that we only have senior creatives, everybody who touches the work has at least 20 years up to 40 years of experience in what they do. And so no disrespect to young brilliant creatives. There’s no shortcuts. And to have people who’ve been around 100 blocks 1000 times working together and have worked together for a long time, it’s more gratifying. It’s more, it’s more nuanced, meaning the work that you can achieve is just more complex and nuanced. And you’re just operating on a different plane, it’s like, you know, Tom Brady could do a Tom Brady did because he had done it 10,000 times and distributing brilliant. But Tom Brady 10 years and his career approached it differently than it was one year in his career with the same talent set. So there’s a some of that going on in our shop, we’re just, it’s a cohesive team. We’re all singing from the same hymn book, and we know what the hell we’re doing. And so we also know how to present and how to persuade clients to buy the work we want them to buy. Is an expression in our shop. And again, we didn’t make this up. The best work never sees the light of day with a client who will buy it. And so there’s an art to the presenting and to the persuading, we don’t ever walk in with one answer that ain’t fancy. Here’s your answer ever. With logos we’re gonna show six and you know, we rank order them and we don’t have to tip our hand. But once we present a claim, we get the reaction then looks okay, here’s what we would do. And sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. So sometimes it’s a compromise, with 30 years of frankensteining, right, a little bit of this little back racket together. Okay, that’s to be expected. And you even have to manage the Frankenstein to arrive at something that they feel good about a you feel good about. And it was a compromise us, the art of compromise is a big part of the journey.
Jeremy Weisz 20:29
I want to since this is a very visual conversation, I want to share a couple of things from your website, quick. So I’m gonna pull up. If you are listening to the audio, you’ll be able to watch this, the video piece as well. And what we’re looking at here is we’re on monogramgroup.com, I already pulled up if you go to their work page, and since I know you specialize in equity, I pulled up the private equity piece. I mean, there’s other categories here mid-market and national, global and others. There’s a number of things here, but I have the private equity just for this conversation we’re looking at, and I pulled up PSP partners. So I’d love to talk through a few examples so people can visualize. So right here, we’re on the page, PSP partners, and we’re looking at this top like, obviously, some of the oh, yeah, you just put PSP partners here, and a couple of like, there’s a lot of work that went into this. What did it look like before versus after? And what was the feeling before versus after?
Scott Markman 21:39
It’s a great question. And I’ll try and give in a concentrated way, sort of multi-part answer. First of all, for those who don’t know, PSP partners, is a family opposite of Penny Pritzker, who is famous and respected and plays a leadership role in politics and business, both in Chicago. In our country, she’s world-renowned and respected and all that comes with that. And so the complexity of what we have been asked to do, again, which is to build a brand of her office, and obviously, by extension, her. First of all, it’s been an incredible honor, we’ve worked with them for about four or five years, and this went live, I don’t know, maybe six months ago. But Penny has built such a spectacular lease complex and successful team and works hard to strike a balance between and look at them, they this is this is her office, but making sure that she puts her team and the leadership team in the appropriate call level of kind of public expression, and influence and all of these things in the culture is so important to them that again, this is almost like a mission-driven exercise much more so than 90% of our private equity clients. It’s a bigger picture more robust, almost more personal dimensions to the exercise. Now, there are certain things that we didn’t touch, I mean, the logo with those rectangles is not our work, we inherited that there’s a good reason for it. Penny’s original investment platform was real estate. And coming out her family, found that high hotels. And so, she just wanted to stay with that. And so we built around it. Now, which you look at here, which is shown on the screen, Jeremy is our work which is brand architecture, which is managing level pieces that have to act on their own, but come together to some cohesive whole is brand architecture. And so the nomenclature, PSP partners, meaning they used to be called some it was a little bit different. That’s our work. And then the way in which the divisions capital growth through Pritzker Realty Group asset management are kind of staged, and solidified visually to have a version of collection logos that are used in certain situations by dozens and dozens and dozens of people was our influence and our actual work. And so it’s again, it’s very bespoke, it’s a mixture of what we inherited what was off limits and what we were asked to make better and to organize and solidify for easy expression and usage across their footprint.
Jeremy Weisz 24:51
So what was it like before they just had, was it just PSP partners, or what it looks like before.
Scott Markman 25:03
Now, the umbrella name was I think was PSP Capital Partners. But you see capital was a division. And so there was confusion. And so again, these are not gigantic moves, but they’re important moves, if that makes sense. And a lot of it was around clarity, and consistency. I will tell any client of any stripe and any business circumstance that the mission of brand work is focus and clarity and consistency. And if you can master we together can master that, any brand, I don’t care if they’re a $4 billion company on down to a startup is 90% ahead of the game. It’s like build the ball short and throw it reversed. And we talked about messaging, we talked about design rule, and nomenclature rules, just agree to it, have everybody execute along the same lines and just rinse and repeat all the time, you’re still part of the game because most businesses don’t do this.
Jeremy Weisz 26:08
So PSP partners, and then I pulled up Prospect Partners. Talk about this one.
Scott Markman 26:12
Sure, they’re a different situation. So also they’re based in downtown Chicago, these two firms are two blocks from each other four blocks. So Prospect Partners, they’re two gentlemen that started this firm, very successful investors. And they brought in a second generation of leaders. And when we were brought on there, they were transitioning, the two gentlemen who started were a little bit kind of phasing out, they were kind of retiring. And the three guys who were in their early 40s, who had been brought in to take over the firm, were kind of in the process of stupidity right there, Eric and Brent. But they had never, ever, ever, ever, ever invested in brand and marketing because the two founders just A didn’t believe in it and B were successful in spite of it. And so who was to tell them otherwise? Well, they had some stumbles about five years not major, but enough that when this transition of generations was happening, these three partners years are longtime clients, sort of separate entities differently, we believe in different things. And we need to kind of call take back our reputation and our message out there. And so the mandate here was to blow stuff up. And to really take a baseball bat to things. So literally every shred of what you’re showing on the screen right now, this has gone through, like two cycles is us. Every word, every idea that design that logo, was if I showed you the before, and after, you would almost like you would laugh. They went from like the Philistines to the Olympics with nothing in between. And frankly, it’s one of the cases I’m most proud of, because the impact was so dramatic and so immediate. And they’re doing great things now. That it’s a wonderful relationship. And they’ve been a longtime client.
Jeremy Weisz 28:18
Scott, why do people end up coming to you? In this case, because obviously, most people aren’t coming to you and be like, listen, I don’t believe in it. We’ve done fine without it, those people aren’t coming to you. Right. But something that happens in their trajectory of their company that makes them change their course, or the thoughts? In this case, it was a generation coming in. What are usually the reasons or I’m sure there’s a multitude of reasons of why people come to you and go this is and think now this is important now.
Scott Markman 28:55
Sure. So one thing to know for you and your listeners is that we do not convince any prospect to address the brand ever. Because if we did, I would get thrown out of the boardroom. Every prospect this has made…
Jeremy Weisz 29:13
It’s like someone who’s telling someone their baby’s ugly sort of thing.
Scott Markman 29:16
Thank you. Yes, that would be a wonderful metaphor. Prospect self-selected, at the leadership level, they have identified that there’s a trigger, something’s broken, something has changed a merger, something has been started up and they just flat out need something right. Leadership has self-identified that they have a need for the expertise that we represent. Now, this is interesting. A lot of our brother in skimboards sort of the creative side. Hey, look at our stuff. We just do great creative and you talk to us. We showed us up but we don’t really flashing around if somebody feels that way, terrific. But the reason people self-select into us is because of this front-end research the strategy to positioning the message. Who the hell are we, which is almost the elemental need, that most business people from this big to this big understand. And if they can’t get there what together about that they’re going to struggle. And so a lot of times triggers a website, it’s at a date, it’s sucked. People have left, I mean, there’s some almost tangible trigger. But oftentimes, it’s just, we haven’t touched it for like six years, and it’s time to blah, blah, blah, we have a huge client, I mentioned this is global infrastructure, client. 40 billion under assets, the opposite isn’t like seven continents, I mean, seven countries and like bicon. And they’re 10 years old. And they’re like a, you know, six foot nine in a teenager that’s playing basketball. And they looked around, and, you know, management sort of said, look, it’s time there lots of infrastructure improvements and changes, we’re doing big picture, and it’s firm for the next 10 years. And this needs to be a partner, because right now, the website is one page, no information. And it’s almost like a landing page. So we were hired to build all this out, and again, to take them from zero to 60, in two seconds. Because all of a sudden, became a really important thing, and rightfully so. So, again, management founders, one down to second level leaders are gonna find somebody, and they found us because we have all this experience, and we to compete, and we won the business. And so it’s like building a 60-story building.
Jeremy Weisz 31:58
I want to talk about niche for a second, and the evolution of your company, what niches you’ve gone through. I know you’re right. I mean, you’ve been focused on private equity. And I know you’ve been there, you’ve gone away from it and come back to it. So I want to hear about why. Because when I think of what you do, I think for some reason, I don’t know why, in my mind, I think consumer products, consumer packaged goods, like they’re always, what I see there is like, how do I experience this company and brand? So talk about the niches that you’ve served a little bit of the evolution, and then maybe some of the advantages and disadvantages of niching.
Scott Markman 32:43
Sure. So this is a conundrum and a challenge for anybody who owns any agency of any stripe. And we even see this on the private equity side, people want to cast a wide net, I want to bring all the opportunities and well, that works, and then sort of doesn’t, because especially as the business world has evolved, and brand and expertise and b2b versus b2c, the reality is we are well served to create inflows of opportunity to win gigs, and candidly the fees we get. If you are selling a deep expertise, in private equity, we probably win 75% of our proposals, and the only almost only reason we lose the price, meaning if somebody decides where to watch for the blood, they can find somebody who’s like a b-minus, but for half the price and they’re local and okay, great. We understand. So in private equity, and the portfolio company work where I would less but again, we have a built-in advantage, the calculus, the algebra of leads and proposal writing and closing deals and doing the work all that is just a certain way. When we get into the general corporate world, we’re competing against gobs and gobs and gobs and gobs of firms. I mean, I think the number is like there are like 5000 firms in America that claim some branding expertise. And in the mid-tier, meaning big below the global Bad Boys, right? They were that material or the run to that tear, but we’re firmly established. We compete with hundreds and hundreds of excellent firms. And it’s more of a cattle call and our win rates probably 25% or 20%. So we like the balance because of I’ll call it intellectual curiosity and just, we’d love taken on things we haven’t done before and intellectual and incredibly you kind of need that. But what pays the bills and and is the growth engine of the agency as private equity and portfolio companies for the reason you describe Jeremy which is people are seeking deep, proven expertise, that’s a business issue. And so it’s easier game for us to play A and I’m happy to ride that wave to growth for a long period of time because I’m trying to grow the agency and probably four or five years from selling it. And I love what I do, but I’d like to get, candidly, five years and not get paid more to sell the agency than I ever know. That’s what I do.
Jeremy Weisz 34:29
So what made you get away from it and come back to it?
Scott Markman 35:28
I’ll be transparent about this, 2015, early 2016, we’re doing fine, but we hit the perfect storm in a bad way. After a period of about a year have done pretty well, there was a period of six months, where I went like over 20 in proposals, and there was no logic to it, there was nothing to be learned, it was like, we’ll do this differently. And this will change that was just, God decided that we were going to be at the Sahara desert for six months. And it was going to create desperate, and I thought, you know, my partner, what are we going to do? Well, the answer was to lean as heavily as we could and back into private equity, we had about two or three clients at the time. But it was one that sort of ended up through your cycle where we just sort of said, not for us, we just a little bit sick of it. And we said, out of sheer necessity. Necessity is the mother of invention kind of stuff. We said we’re gonna lean back in and put our chips in that the red square of 20 at the roulette table. And it worked. Now we did some things to kind of expand what we could offer them at the same time. And that worked as well. So, it sort of addressed a crisis. And then we just sort of said, I’d rather not sweat, let’s just lean into where we’re strong, what we know, and where there’s a market, and we’ve never stopped since. So it’s been six years now. And again, it’s worked, we’ve, we’ve, we’ve just made the Inc. 5000, we tripled revenue and three fiscal years. And we’re on a run, right. And so, at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what I think, and we have an expertise, and there’s a market and a limitless, but a huge market for expertise. And then you layer on to it, the portfolio companies, it could be 30,000 of them, that all need what we have for certain set of reasons, then you kind of go okay, I can ride this for a long time. And I can enjoy it, be good at it, there’s, there’s no such gratification about being an expert in something and enjoying the work you do and you do with and for that. So reward and call it the boredom factor or the rinse or repeat factor, I’m not gonna worry about it.
Jeremy Weisz 37:59
I feel like, Scott, it’s a great lesson for all of us. And I hear it time and time again, even on the podcast, which is when times are tough, we go back to the fundamentals, we go back to the things that always are tried and true work. And sometimes I’ll include myself in this bucket, there’s do shiny things that attract me or people in companies. And it sets us off the course of what maybe we should be doing sometimes. And so I love that lesson, because like, you really just went back to the fundamentals of what made you successful. And you’re like, boom, now we’re back on track. Right? And that’s, I guess, one of the disadvantages of niching. Because you get both feel get bored. Right? So what were you gonna say?
Scott Markman 38:50
Look, it’s a personality, commonality among anybody who’s comes out of the agency world, which is we Bordesley. And we’re always looking for the bright shiny objects or the things, the dragons to slay, to challenge yourself and to prove your worth and all that good stuff. And that doesn’t go away. Again, we are working with some, we work with a lot of, that have our clients right now, that products and services, or called internal politics or whatever, that I just, haven’t really encountered before. And so we have enough of the t’s scratching going on that there’s a wonderful balance, but we know darn well who would sound the bread’s buttered. And I’m not running away from that. I mean, again, it’s pretty cool to be kind of the kind of dude in America on something. And again, these are the wealthiest, smartest, most driven people on the planet. And like, I’m part of the boys club, and Girls Club, but really boys club, and it’s kind of cool. I’m not a Name Dropper by personality, but I can walk in a boardroom, in private equity in America and start dropping names in 30 seconds, I’m part of the boys club. And one piece of that, by the way, which no one talked about was our foundational client in private equity. Is a firm that everybody in private equity, America knows that one second, that’s called Interest Capital. We were there at the very beginning where these guys, these top guys set up shop and we built a brand from scratch. And today, they’re the franchise and the credit side of middle market deals, and they probably have 400 employees there. And by the Canadian government, eight years ago, I think that the division was spun off by G Capital for $12 billion. So I again, forget the name drop, I can walk into any private equity shop in Americans and yeah, I created tears, capital bread, instant credibility, who doesn’t love that? I mean, that’s just, and from a career perspective. And who are you looking into play perspective, it’s the best. And I’m still in touch with a bunch of guys when a terrorist had been, kind of lifelong business friends and, and so who’s gonna walk away from that? Right, it’s great.
Jeremy Weisz 38:51
Scott, I have one last question. And we only have a few more minutes. But I really appreciate you sharing your journey, your expertise, everyone should check out monogramgroup.com to learn more. My last question is kind of along that line of mentors in the business and what you learn from some of these mentors?
Scott Markman 41:34
Great question, I have an immediate answer. I formed in the last nine months, a board of advisors with three folks, one of whom was my first client in Terris, capital, Dave Swanson, who has been, again, a colleague, but a lifelong 25-year friend, another colleague, Dan Power, who was a client for five years, and then became a very close friend and a colleague, he’s not part of our team. And Dan works on, eight of our gigs a year do the research and strategy stuff, divide and conquer that. And then my mentor, Bob Ritter, from Baltimore, where I’m from, who I worked for, from provided years, again, been a dear friend ever since. And I formed this group to provide structured feedback and counsel and telling me some tough news things I maybe don’t want to hear and shouldn’t be doing and so on and so forth. But they’ll bring something different to the table from a personal professional career industry perspective. And going forward until I cash out they’re going to be a hugely valuable critical piece of things to me and again, it’s pulling together some guys that dearly love and whose counsel and their perspectives I trust for, again, a beach, bring some different table.
Jeremy Weisz 43:03
Everyone, check out monogramgroup.com more episodes of the podcast, Scott. Thanks, everyone. Thanks, Scott.
Scott Markman 43:09
Jeremy, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. And it was a great time.
