Making The Phone Ring, With Ed Cerier

Ed Cerier was Nexstar's first marketing coach. He tells Jack about his journey from a career in advertising in the mid 1980s to his present position as Nexstar's Marketing Manager. Marketing is all about having a plan, Cerier says, and making sure you've got the right people to put that plan into action.

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Speaker 1 0:07

All right, let's check test here and welcome to another episode of Leadership Lounge. It's a beautiful January date here in Saint Paul. It's 39 degrees, which is a treat for us here. And I had the pleasure of sitting across the desk from one of my favorite people at carrier. How are you doing it? I'm doing great. Thanks Jack. Ed, for those who don't know, is our marketing managers at your title now? Yes. All right. And when I first met you, ed was in 2006 I had come back to next door is a business coach and you are already here. You just got here the year before, right in, you are Nexstars first marketing coach, but your title was marketing strategist. Right? Right. So what I want to talk about is your journey as a marketer in this industry. Okay. Because you have been very instrumental in, in, in kind of our marketing sophistication growing here at Nexstar and I think as are your sophistication grew and knowledge of marketing grew. So did ours. And I look at where we are as an organization today and where our members are from a marketing perspective and, and your fingerprints all over it. So thank you as well. Thank you. That's nice thing to say. Yeah. But it wasn't always that way yet. Well let's talk about that. Well, let me, I'm going to share a few things before we get into, cause you know, I had the privilege of, of being here in the early days in Nexstar in one of the things our members always said was, you got to help me get the phone ringing. And I always felt behind the eight ball running what was then called contractors 2000, because we really, you know, we started out of are the genesis of Nexstar was really about converting time material contractors to flat rate and bring in professionalism to the trade. That was kind of the first, um, if you want to call it, uh, area of expertise that Nexstar had in the early days. Certainly wasn't marketing it and members always wanted more and we didn't know what to do. And, and I remember we had, I always felt a sense of axed running this organization today. I don't. Right. You've done a great job at, let's say that again. So, um, I feel great about that. But, um, so tell me, let's talk about your journey before you came to next are very brief so people don't know. Okay. Tell us about your, um, your marketing background prior to coming to next door. Good. Thank you. Um, it really has two parts. I started in advertising in the mid 1980s and I worked for a very large ad agency in New York. It's an international agency, actually. Huge. Um, Campbell soup was my client. Okay. And then I moved to another agency in New York and I worked on Johnson and Johnson, uh, Ibuprofen, pain reliever product. So, um, pharmaceuticals that started your journey there in your pharmaceutical world. Right, right. Yeah, that was a great experience. So, and then, um, and then I did a couple of other things in New York. I worked on Bron, um, which that makes household products, but blenders

Speaker 2 2:59

and things like that. Men's styling, county city. Yeah. All in New York City. And then I moved to Minneapolis and I worked for another, have a degree in marketing at, yeah, I do. I got my degree in marketing from New York University. That's my MBA as he got an MBA in marketing. Yeah. So you are a classically trained marketer working for classic marketing companies, brand products. I'm doing big advertising campaigns, you know, tens of millions of dollars. Okay. That's what you did. Yeah. Yeah. And then when I moved to Minneapolis, um, in the early nineties, I worked for what was then the largest ad agency here. So I liked working for large ad agencies. Obviously that was a good fit. I worked on some, again, big national brands, hostess wonder bread, land O'Lakes, general mills, things of that nature that you did here locally in the twin cities. A lot of, a lot of what's referred to as consumer package goods. Okay. Yeah. Which is, you know, anyway, so now, so how did you get to next door? The, so that's, so that's the first part of my marketing journey. And then the second part is, uh, when I felt kind of a need for a change from advertising, felt a little burned out. Um, I started my own consulting firm. And that's a big, that's a, that's a consuming job isn't it? It's a lot of hours and advertising. Yeah. Yeah. You know, the thing about being, so I was what's known as an account executive. I was the person that was closest to the client and needed to know their business the best and their challenges and so forth. But I also interacted with all the internal folks at the agency, creative people, media, so forth and so on. And so because I was the closest person to the client on many most days, a daily basis, um, what I came to realize is that the account department are the dogs that get kicked the dog, the dog. I was the dog in this scenario because what would happen is that the clients are under extraordinary pressure, you know, profit pressure and you know, deliver Roi and so forth and so on. And when the pressure would become too much. They looked for an outlet and we were the ones that were there most days. I remember that. Yeah. And we're spending, we're helping them invest a lot of their money in something that's hard for them to get their arms around to understand, really appreciate and figure out what, whether it's working on, which is things like television commercials. Yeah. What's truly, so it's even in a big business, Campbell soup or wonder bread or whatever. These people, you know when, when sales are off in our industry, we fit in in those got of, we've got to market more, right? The first thing we do is we've got a market more and then it's kind of a fire drill and it's comforting to know that even the biggest, baddest among the marketers in the world had a fire drill. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And typically in a typically probably didn't work either did it. So instead of marketing, whether they might market more, but their knee jerk reaction is to find a new agency. Oh, sales are off. It's your fault. Right. The dog that you got to get where this is going to do. And then of course, I suppose you're getting kicked from the people in your own agency about what the client was asking them to do. Right? Yeah. You know, the creatives can be difficult at times. Yeah. Yeah. The guy in the ponytail and the Pajama bottoms. Yeah. That guy. Yeah. Okay. So you know, you're working with all these different personalities and a lot of strong personalities. Um, but, but so anyway, the second part of my journey was I, I opened my own consulting firm. Uh, I worked with companies of all sizes and shapes, lots of different kinds of projects, but that's where I started getting introduced. Was that a midlife crisis? What'd you go into your own business then, ed? Yeah, you could call it that. Um, I was maybe slightly young for a midlife crisis. I had early mid life crisis. I've seen several sets. I know it keeps you right. Yeah. So, um, like I just, it was a need for change, I think. A little bit of a need for control. I got it. But what, what does it up happening? So what happened was I was working at this Ad Agency here in Minneapolis and I learned a lot about the business because that was the nature of that agency, agency business, no, the client's businesses. So instead, so I grew up learning how an ad agency works and developing creative and all that. What I learned when I, my 10 years here at an ad agency in Minneapolis was the broader world of business. Okay. Got It. That's what allowed me to open my own guy from, got it. And that's when I started, I was working with some big clients and very large clients but also smaller clients. And that's when I started learning a different side to marketing and working with small businesses. I also was teaching, um, at two universities here, the University of Saint Thomas and metro state. And I was teaching both graduate and undergraduate level. So again, I'm interacting with the students and they're working at all different kinds of companies and, and broadening my experiences, my knowledge, my under trainer standing of, of marketing. And that's what really prepared me, I think to and felt, gave me the confidence to come into Nexstar. Right. So you were, you would, you'd run your own agency for a while and doing some, you're an adjunct professor. Yes. That right? Yes, exactly. Two universities teaching marketing. Yes. Right. Yup. Yup. And of course now nexstar wants to hire somebody that's teaching our members how to market and think about marketing. Right. So you saw an ad in a paper or something? Yeah, I saw an ad for a marketing coach and it was actually, it was a friend of mine sent it to me, lady who I used to work with and she said, this sounds like you really? Yeah. And I wasn't even really looking for to go back onto the staff of the company and I read the job description. I thought, wow, this is, you know, coaching and training and teaching. And boy, this really does sound like me and it sounds like a fun company. Right. And, and interesting work. What year was this? This? So I was hired in 2005, 2005 prior to me returning to an extra four. Yeah. That's awesome. Okay, well very cool. So you came to next door and you brought this depth of marketing experience and I imagine it was just so easy for you to apply this immediately to home services, right? Absolutely. Because, um, probably 80, maybe 90 of the conversations I had in my early years were yellow pages. Okay. And I had zero experience. In fact, if you think about it, who would ever know how to do yellow pages advertising, you know, I mean there's some people that are self proclaimed experts out there, but it's, it's hard to kind of study this stuff. Um, I did, uh, I did ultimately find a conference that I went to and I found a book and some things that helped me. But, so again, I had to kind of, not lunch cause and then truck graphics, you know, this is a whole new area that I'd never had ever given any thought to, had no training and no experience. And, um, so, you know, it was like another big learning curve and then of course learning the industry.

Speaker 1 9:36

So the, what's interesting to me yet is to have this conversation. I think that that, you know, you're, you had as much marketing background is probably anybody did, you know, coming into an organization, you know, Mba in marketing, smart guy, worked for a lot of big agencies, you know, been a marketer your whole career. I never did anything else. It wasn't like you were a, somebody that fell into it. You, you chose this path early in life, right? And you came in here, um, what were you, what if you look back to your first year and, but the reason I'm asking this question is that as a, as I want new marketers to reflect on this, what did you think you knew but didn't, and what was harder than you thought at that time? Looking back, what would you do different? And maybe that's another way to say it.

Speaker 2 10:26

Yeah. Well. So one thing that that comes to mind is having grown up in ad agencies and with national companies with big budgets, I was accustomed to creating customized advertising. So you know, uh, my clients and advertising would come to me and they'd say, we need a new add a new ad campaign or something that we have this whole team that would develop it and then this whole team that were produced it and then this whole team that would figure out, you know, get placement in, in, uh, on television and the radio, magazines, whatever it is, lots of resources, lots of money. And so members would come to me and we would be talking and I'd say, well, we need to do an ad and say, how do I do that? I said, we'd have to hire an ad agency. You have to spend all this money to film in Vancouver. And then, you know, crickets, right? Because remember his weren't used to that kind of idea. But this is what I grew up, ed probably at that time, they didn't have that money. They didn't have that money. They didn't have that kind of time. They didn't know how to get it done. I'm a coach so I can't spend, I can't be there doing it for them. Right. So you know, that's when, you know, when Marla, my first manager who the lady who hired me came to me and we were talking in, I guess it was my later, my second year and we started thinking about how to deal this and that's when the campaign library was kind of born out of that, where we were able to develop plugin, what we refer to now as plug and play advertisements, ads that we create for members. Everything from stickers and magnets at one end of the spectrum, all the way up to television and radio commercials and billboards at the other end that members can just, that we create, um, use their dues money invested in ad agencies, do the work for them, do the thinking for them and they can give them finish, give them finish templates. This is an idea that was wildly just, I'd never heard of this before and it was hard for me at first. I got it. It was really to invent or just do your own thing cause that's what you always did. It didn't feel right. And now looking back on it, that campaign library is one of the proudest achievements in my whole career. Just for people who don't know. If you go to our site, you can just, there's so many different plug plugin play ad campaigns and templates and ideas and and marketing guides, which maybe we'll talk about that it right there. Well over 700 individual pieces. Yeah. Yeah. It started in development in 2007 I think it was. Yes. We launched them in the spring of 2007 so we would have started at the very end of 2006 yeah. Yeah. Well, you know it's interesting yet is I was, now I'm now I'm along you along with you for this journey and I'm observing what's going on and I remember the marketing system, the first marketing system you kind of debut as a marketer for next star was a great effort, was a great effort, right? Emphasis on the word. As I reflect on it, it had some misses, right? What as you think back to, because I think it's illustrative for, for, for us to hear what a marketer thinks is the first thing they need to do before they truly get this business. And now add, I will say this, you are this industry, you know it, right? But I'm, I'm interested in your perspective then I thought, well thank you for the compliment. And you're right. I'm the last one. I'm going to, you know, we, we, we use an expression a lot at next door. You know, he didn't know. He doesn't know what he does know. And I didn't know what I didn't know. Right? So I cared. I come out of a world of product advertising, marketing, things that are in packages. Thank you. That's exactly the word. I was going to go. Tangible products. And so I come to next star and we're going to build out this mark what we, at the time we referred to as the marketing system and now we've shifted on this snow, the campaign library, right? And my brain really just went to product advertising. So our first year we started building ad campaigns for tankless water heaters and some pumps and garbage disposals and programmable thermostats and all these products. Because I didn't know the industry, I didn't have the fundamentals down and, and um, and so that was, you know, looking back on it the way I just, I can't help but think it over and over. It's, I didn't know what I didn't know. That's right. Yeah. I had to learn it. Right. And there was a lot to learn in this industry and some of it I learned kind of on own and some, a lot of what I learned working with you.

Speaker 1 14:53

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So you've, so you started kind of with a product mindset. Yes. Even though we're selling service and maintenance and replacement and we can't begin to know what the consumers are going to need in their home when that mail piece lands necessarily. Right. Yeah.

Speaker 2 15:08

You know what was really foreign to me, Jack, what's that? Is that the idea of making the phone ring? When I first started to hearing members talk about that, that was such a foreign idea to me that their customers, their clients, their clients are coming to them one person at a time and they can identify them, they're going to look at them face to face, or they're going to go into their homes. When you were working on Campbell soup or Citibank or general mills, they're selling to hundreds of thousands, maybe a million or more people every single day are buying super cereal, right. And Campbell soup never really looks, these are not sold by person. Right? So it's, it's all volume. It's not individual transactions. And so that again, was a huge learning curve for me. Transition for me, the idea of one customer at a time, the idea of everyday making the phone ray. Yeah.

Speaker 1 16:02

That's interesting. Yeah. Yeah. So, so, so, so now, you know, a marketer comes into, uh, uh, a member shop, a member decides to hire a marketer, right? And, and they just don't promote someone from within who, who kind of raises their hand. They said, I'm going to go hire a classically trained marketer at a younger ed carrier as an example, or just maybe I'd carrier. Right. Um, what would you tell that member to watch out for before?

Speaker 2 16:34

Oh boy. You know, you know what's challenging? Well, the connect because they're bad people, right? Yeah. Well, so there's a couple of things. One thing I have told a number of members is be conscious of getting somebody to young in an effort to save money. If it's time and you have the, the, the, the capacity and the business is ready to have a full time marketing person and get somebody that's really going to help you. Somebody that's right out of school, everything. They know they've read in a book but they haven't actually done anything yet and it takes time and they haven't worked in an office and they don't understand all the dynamics of working in office, interacting with other people. They don't understand this industry so that the learning curve for anybody is going to be steep. You know, learning the industry alone, but you want somebody, I think that's that season that has the capability of learning the confidence that has a base to build on. The other thing I would tell members is think carefully about what you want this person to do because marketing is so vast and it's very difficult to find somebody that can, that is great at everything. So as two examples, so in marketing you need to have a plan, right? We want every member to have a marketing plan. We run marketing planning workshops, we've got the marketing pull words there, all these tools because this, we want to facilitate this. And some people are really great at writing the plan, thinking about the plan at figuring out all the pieces of the puzzle. And then other people really aren't great at that, but they're really great at implementing, keeping all the plates spinning. So it's important to figure out if, if you, if you had to choose one, if you had to choose one, which would be the most important one for your business is not to say that somebody over time couldn't grow into, be great at both, but at least initially. And then the other, the other. That's good advice. Thank you. I get that. I've seen that here, but I've seen that in my life. And you and I've had these conversations about this over the years. And then the other two, the other spectrum is creative. So there's some people that are very, very creative. They're good at design, they're good at picking images and colors. They're they, they're good at writing or judging writing. And then there are other people at the other end of the spectrum that are just good at implementing. They're good at, you know, managing the work of printers and managing budgets and timelines that they're more production oriented. So again, initially at the very least, not to say that somebody couldn't grow and be good at both. What's most important to you? Because if we try and get somebody that's great at everything, they may not be great at anything. We may be stretching too far. Got It. Got It. That's good advice. Yeah, I have thought about that. You know, when you talk about planning it around that, one of the first things you told me, you said it with an air of superiority yet because there's no such thing as a marketing emergency room. You saying that well cause there isn't, what do you mean by that? Um, you did that. You did that as a way of saying I'm not giving you my cell phone. You don't have to call me on the weekend cause there's no such thing as a marketing emergency Jack. I said okay, that's cool. Well I, and I pushed your nose in it a bunch of times since then. And honestly I don't remember exactly what I was thinking when I said that to you. It's the first time. But, but, but here's what I would say today. Okay. If, if you have a plan, write a marketing plan, right? So let's look at members with a plan, without a plan. So if you have a plan, and we talked about this in 2007 when we got on stage and we unveiled the mark, what we referred to as the marketing system. This was a key part of what we talked about in that event, which is that if you have a plan, you're proactive, you're organized, you know what you're going to do every day of the year. And granted, things may change, things may evolve, but, but you've got a roadmap. If not, you're making it up every day. And if you're in, if you're only being reactive, you are never going to be able to react fast enough every day. And if you're reactive, you're only going to make things good enough. It's never going to be, it can be really hard to be great. And I believe, and I, and I think nick and I know next our believes that just good enough isn't good enough. You know, you really have to be great. And so in theory then, if you have a plan, if you're organized, if you've thought everything through, there really shouldn't be any emergencies. I mean, yeah, they might be. You

Speaker 1 20:48

know, there might be one, there might be an opportunity that's got a short timeframe that pops up, right, but not a daily crisis. Right. And you saw that a lot and I think that's great council. I, because you know, members always run into slow times in their business and then it's a crisis, right? And I, and I said, well, is this the first February you've ever experienced? You know, do you have anything ready from a marketing perspective? Well ahead of the time. So it's not like, oh my gosh, you have no cost today. You know, I better start marketing, I'll call ed up then you know, by the time you execute something, it's four weeks downstream. Right. So, um, that, that, that did resonate. I always joked about that, but, but I think it's great advice, right? For Marketing, you should really endeavor not to have an emergency, which means that you're planning ahead, right? You're ready for the next season, you're ready for the next day. You're ready for, you've got a contingency. You've, you, you knowing your deadlines are because so often, you know, it might yell up. I'm sure you've got this call, my yellow page deadline is five o'clock can you look at this? Yes. Right. Can you edit it now? That was back when the yellow pages was, was really important. Right. But I imagine you've got a few of those calls all the time. Yeah. Right. And that's the idea. Thank you for bringing that up because I'd forgotten about that. And well as long as we're talking blissful them, I forgot had to go back to your therapist. I'm still thrilled. The old pages is almost dead. I'm just going to tell you right now, there's a special place in hell for the old page marketers that I'm just going to say that, you know, there's two, there's two parts of the yellow pages. There's, you know, working with the reps and you know, all the negotiations and you know how they manage things, which was horrible. They treated members, companies horribly. And then there was the creative part, the care actually developing this. I actually like developing the ads. Yeah. And, and I thought that there was so much opportunity because so much yellow page advertising was so bad. Right. So that part was, was, um, was pleasing and satisfying for me. But you know, the, the parts of the crises because of the way that reps would handle their business and they still are actually doing that. They've never, they've never figured out how to not be who they are, what's great not to need them anymore. I can say that we did, I maybe maybe have two yellow pages conversations a year possible. I mean like it's almost nonexistent. Yeah. It used to be, you know, that I've, I got primary placement and now they'd went to double trucks and I'm going to double my advertising and should I be in this section and much side and they're just terrible people, so I'm glad they're out of business. You know, it sounds terrible, but if I look back at, you know, to the health of our industry and I look back on some of the big changes in 26 years here at Nexstar and then on top of what the industry now the, the rise of daily execution of marketing, you know, whether it's Seo and paperclick and we all complain about it has been a boon because he used be strictly in the plumbing industry that you'd say 95% of your budget would be all pages and you'd set it and you were stuck. You couldn't move that spend, you know, if you lost half your taxers or you may have had a bad placement or you were in big trouble, right? There's no getting around it. You couldn't, you couldn't cut. Like right now, if, if, if we're overwhelmed with calls, you can stop your paper, click and put it on pause. He couldn't do that with yellow pages and kept paying and kept paying. He kept paying even it wasn't working. He paid and I saw so many in the early days of next, so many people go out of business because of, um, yellow page advertising that I look back today at the, the better changes in an industry, and that's certainly one of them, is this idea that brand matters now really matters. It used to be primary placement mattered and now it's, it's so different, right? You can really be a marketer now in our industry where the consumers aren't going to to one channel of distribution to find a phone number. They're going to the international and they're doing different things. It's a, it's marketing matters now in a big way. And I just really evolved. It really has. It's really, it's a, it's a fascinating, and it happens slowly. It's a gradual change. Then all of a sudden it's like, wow, it's changed. You know? Now, I, I, and I tell you as a, as a longtime ministry person with a lot of battle scars from this, when the yellow pages do come to my house, that says a little bitty book now compared to the big thick utility book that we used to get, I gleefully thrown in the trashcan. Yup. Just gleefully and it's, I, and I don't know if any of the consumer in the world has this much mirth in their life as I do in that moment. It's kind of a quasi Norwegian slam dunk. It feels great when I do it right. They've just given you so much joy as I've heard it though. Right? Cover magnet. That was expensive. Gone Spine advertising. Who Cares? Yeah. Double truck. Nah, laughing. I said the same thing. I don't even take the yellow pages out of the plastic bag. It's just gone. I mean, they're great to have a look at it anymore. There was a time, not all that many years ago. Well, probably 10, 12 years ago where I would travel and I'd be in a city and you know, I opened the drawer and I, and I'd look at it, oh, what's everybody else doing? Are there any nexstar members in this book? You know, how does everything look? How does it all stack? It's so true. My first, when I got in my hotel room as I'd look for the old page, right? It was like a nature and now it wouldn't even occur. I don't even think about it now that you mentioned it had. Yeah, that is so cool. I forgot about that. Terrible habit. Right? Slam dunk. Gone. This guy. That's good. So you're given us some good advice here. I don't want to get back. We had a little scab there and that was fun. And I hope people that had been in this industry for awhile, uh, joined us in that joy. Right. That was fun. But I'm going to move away from dancing on that grave and want to talk about something more constructive, I think. Okay. So, um, you, you talked about what

Speaker 2 26:44

members should watch out for it as her hiring a marketer. Right, right. That's what, give me some advice for an incoming marketer that doesn't know this industry. So you're, you're coming in, you haven't been in home services, you know, you're, you're hired by a contractor. What would you tell that person who's not a young person with no experience, but there, there's somebody like you coming in, what would you tell them? Well, two things right off the bat. One is immerse this person in your business. Have them sit in the call center, have them go on ride alongs, be in every meeting. Just because this is how you learn this industry. This is how you learn the challenge to that. Take a before you'd become, you know, unconsciously competent. Um, you know, it's, it's hard to say when you really get to, to full, you know, yup. Fifth gear, so to speak. Um, but, but the learning curve is going to be really steep. So I would like to think that between that and a, and I have one more thing I want to say to the, to answer your question. Um, I would imagine probably in the range of two months to the point where you, you, you start to get it, what do you not just walk around like a Zombie, right? All these things that I've never done before. A stickers and magnets. This whole idea of going into people's homes because most people are going to come in from different industries like I did and it's going to be very foreign to them and truck graphics and, and you know, the importance of the call center, you know, and, and how the people in the call center when they're on the phone with the customers that are actually functioning as the marketing department. Um, so, you know, all this stuff is so important. There's so much crossover you'll between marketing and call center or even the marketing and the technicians. Yeah. So just understanding, understanding their challenges, understanding you know, how to help salespeople develop self generated leads. You know, so there's just jumping in with both feet and really learn the business. And then the second thing I would honestly say is call your next marketing coach. And, and the reason is, is that we have had this learning curve. I mean, I went through this and I truly believe I can teach somebody in an hour what took me years to learn and what's great is we've written it all down. You know, we took the all last year, the coaches and myself, and we wrote the, the second official guide to marketing. And we put so much in there, you know, on the front end, one of the first chapters. It's how does marketing work? How does tracking work? You know, how do I think about it? How do I do it? Um, you know, the, the, the importance of frequency and creative consistency to help kind of immerse yourself. And then we talk a lot about the industry, right? We talked, there's a whole section about marketing, the traits. Yeah. So that, so if you're an experienced marketer, you know, you might understand frequency and all those other marketing terms, right? But you don't know that part to you. You don't know if frequency as it relates to this industry. Right. But you don't know the industry. And so, you know, applying marketing to like let's say heating and air, which is, you know, driven by the seasons of course, you know, understanding which, which, you know, took me a while and you'll help me with this jack. When we were working on the first marketing guy, this was a lot of my education is understanding you've got to preseasons to peak seasons and to off peak seasons and we know that these are going to come, we know what we need to do to drive calls in each of those seasons and just market appropriately, you know, follow the weather and weather, weather doesn't behave. You have a contingency plan in place, you know? Yeah. You've got maintenance plan customers, you've got up on call and you're following up an unsold jobs. You're calling last year's customers, repair customers, and you're offering them some amount of money, uh, back on the repair that they can apply to her toward new equipment. There's all these things that we can do, this whole bag of tricks that we've learned because we now know how to apply marketing to this particular industry.

Speaker 1 30:38

That's interesting. Can I share something? Add something that, that, that I think that, that I've learned, and I think I'm going to say this very respectfully that I've had to fight you on. Okay. Over the years, which is marketing something that the company can do well, not something that you think the consumer would want. Now bear with me for a minute. Okay. Right. Um, you know, we have a business model which, you know, the, the, the need we want to market for as a service, maintenance, replacement driven lead. It's not necessarily an upgrade or an enhancement or something like that. And so often I've, I felt that marketers want to sell kind of fun things or more product again or things that, that kind of take us outside our business model. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah. And I thought, I felt like we've had a lot of conversations around it and you've been very receptive and I've learned a lot too. So it's not like I've been right. But I, I definitely think that as a marketer you have to buy, undergoing in immersing yourself in the business, you've got to understand what the business can do and do well and do profitably, not what a consumer might want to buy. Does that make sense? It is. And how do you reconcile that?

Speaker 2 31:49

Only eight laws was really what was next door is eight loss. Yeah. Yeah. That was huge because I mean that was like a big mosque, monstrous Aha. Um, you know, it's interesting you call them fun products and they are a lot of times, you know, you know, we'll bring two electrical upgrades, let's say, and we want to market some outdoor lighting or something of this nature and landscape, lighting, artwork, lighting and you know, that stuff is fun. It's kind of sexy. And so we bring these ideas, is this desire to do these, these advertisements and you know, this is where we have this, this little bit of a give and take. I don't think though that we bring you these ideas because they're fun. I think we're just looking for as many opportunities as we can. We're looking all around the circle.

Speaker 1 32:32

It comes from a good space spot. I would just, the reason I bring this up, and I'm sorry to interrupt you, is you know, when you're giving advice right now to an incoming marketer, and I'm giving advice to an incoming market or too, as you learn the business, make sure you listen to what the business does well and try to get more of that rather than something else. So yeah. Does that make sense? Rentals, blocking and tackling, right. Cover that stuff. Be Awesome at it. That's right. You know, get all of that in. And then if we're looking for more opportunities, that's where we might be able to have that conversation. Maybe. Maybe. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you know, what do they say in advertising? You get bored with your marketing long before the consumer does. Goodness. Yes. And so often you're sitting there looking at it. If I have to talk about maintenance plans one more time, or if I have to talk about preseason checks or drain cleaning really died. Drain cleaning, train clearing. I'm bored with the whole thing came when I talk about something else. Right. And you might, your board on might lead you into a a bad decision is I think that's that. That is correct. You know, and it's always been true. I learned it early in my career that when you live with an ad campaign behind the scenes, long before consumers ever here, but when you start thinking about doing something and then what's that thing going to be? And you hire an hour to agency ad agency and you start thinking about and designing it and, and you know, so forth and so on. You finish it, you've lived with that thing for probably months. Right? Right, right. And you're tired of it. Time to move on. And do you think that, and so then what you do is they say as idols, idleness is the devil's workshop. So if you're a little bit bored, you know, had got, and you've got a creative person, you got to have a person that likes to have impact. Now could they start to mess with the recipe, you know, change the brand. You know, all of a sudden, you know, really worry about the font color and all this other stuff that I just wonder if sometimes some marketing mistakes are just done out of boredom. Um, well I dunno about changing the brand out of boredom. I'd have to think about that one. I've seen it, but after the video. Yeah. Well, yeah, no. Well, okay, so that's fair. Yes, I have seen it in the wider world. I think where we are careful about that here, you know, I think we, we, in fact, it's interesting because Melanie and I were just, can I just kind of, what I'm saying is if you've inherited a brand, you've come in as a market and outside marketer and you've inherited a brand, look, oh, I see where you're going and all of a sudden it's like you didn't have any stake in that. He didn't do it. Why is it truck? Why is the guy I have a stupid hat on? You know, I just, I, it could be so much better. Let's just tip the table over and starting to see where you're going with this and here's what you're talking about. Okay. Is that no marketer loves any work from the market or that came before, right. Every market of that came before him was bad or wrong. And I have to shred everything and start all over. When I was working at, I don't know if I should mention this, I was working for a large national company will leave their name out of it. Okay. And they would change personnel marketing personnel about every six months. And just when you start getting some traction on an idea, the new team would come in and they'd throw it all away and start all over again. Right. And it was just a painful, yeah. That, and that's what I kind of coach members on this a lot. I'd be careful that you, you're doing it for the right reasons. Right, right, right. And, and I and I, I will say that I'm proud that the strategic partners that we work, and this is not a pitch for strategic partners, but I think one of the things that we've been careful of when we vet these people in that when we work with them closely because we do work with them closely, is not doing that. You know, being careful about throwing something away, throw it away for the right reason or maybe only throw part of it away, you don't get but not because there's no ownership. Right, right. Be careful. I wouldn't say that sentence add. We've joked about this now that this is going to be like I'm interviewing you, but I'm, I'm thinking through some of my own marketing challenges and I've, I worked for a large company prior to coming back to next door and there's a lot of marketers in that business, a lot of brand marketers for the different, different companies that were there and different people that were doing involved. And I joked that the best marketer was the man or a woman with the loudest voice. Right. I've heard you say that once or twice did carry a room with passion, conviction. And I, what I found fascinating about marketing was it's all subjective now, not talking about if you're getting an Roi in a particular campaign that can track, but the way a brand is supposed to look, right? The color treatment, you know, a truck graphic, you know, there's a lot of this is subjective, right? Absolutely. Do I like this dog or that dog or a dog or a kid and people could, could have the conviction of, you know, a traveling evangelist, right? When it comes to a marketing idea. And to me it was, you know, one was 51% better than the other, right? You know, it wasn't dramatically different like a math equation. It's either right or wrong. And so I would caution people that, you know, as you talk to marketers, try to ascertain if it's just being someone just being passionate about an idea and if they're are just extra good at sales, they're are extra good marketers and that doesn't make any sense to me. And, okay, I'm just going to say I get angry

Speaker 2 37:41

and I think I like this. Okay, maybe we should take a break. But you're right though. I remember when I was first started here, I was visiting with an ad agency and they were working with next to her at the time. And somebody asked me afterwards what their core competencies were. And I said, it really is just one his own confidence in himself and you know, really. And that was true for that, that particular ad agency. And so you're right, it's the person with the loudest voice. And you, and I've started to say this for years, and, and, and so much of it is subjective. And so one of the things that we coach, one of the things that we teach is really understanding that every consumer is different. And so just because you might like this color or you know, and feel really strongly that this is the right color and all of the colors are wrong. Well, yeah, that may be true for, that certainly may be true for you and for some group of people, but it's not true for everybody. Right? And so one of the things that, that I have traded myself on in, in this job is keeping an open mind on things because we are so much closer to the end consumer here, right. You know, the, what we, the work we do here than when you're working for these large national companies and the primary thing you're doing is big television campaigns is over. You're kind of removed from the, the end user and here you feel a lot closer. You feel like, you know, and so it's important to remember that, um, that there are a wide range of people out there that are going to respond to all different things. Yeah. Um, that's one of the reasons I was so excited about the generational marketing guide that, that Melanie worked on this past year that you took consumers and she said, yeah, here's a, here's millennials and here's baby boomers and gen x and the silent generation. And they're all very different. You know, they react differently. They use the ways you talk to them and where you, how you find them and where they are, how they interact with these, with our categories, with our industry. Fascinating. Yeah, it is fascinating. Fascinating. It's interesting. Well, I don't want us to kind of start to summarize things. We've covered a lot of the waterfront here, you know, with your background here. But, um, just, just, just gives a couple pieces of key advice. You're a, you're an owner and you're working with your marketer. What are a couple of things you'd make sure the owner always keeps in mind as you're working with a marketer? Oh, that's a great question. Nobody's ever asked me that before. Um, so this marketer is, you're marketing manager or marketing manager. Um, you know, again, what we've covered, one thing is they've got to know the industry. Yeah. So make sure that you've got to follow the industry. You can't force something. Okay. So the, so the marketing that you choose is what the industry will buy. Yeah. And so you're with the cat owners don't skimp on making sure they get the business right. Right, right. Um, you know, be a holistic marketer. Hopefully your marketing person is going to come to you and not just say you should own. If their background is just in the internet or maybe one part of the Internet, maybe social media and that's their passion and you know, and they're going to say, well we've got to do with this. This is the, and they might be right. They may have a lot of great it is and we want to listen to that. But they're also leading you down a little bit of a path that could be a dead end because you want to be a holistic marketer. Every part of marketing, direct response marketing, brand building, guerrilla marketing, Internet marketing, they're all critically important. They play a role. So we need, again, they all build on each other too. They interact with another, a great direct response program is part of a great branding program, was a great rich, if I can reword that, a great directs, a direct response program gets better if you've got a better brand guess yet. True. Right, right. So your direct response works better because you've got a strong brand stuff. I got up direct response piece as a consumer and I recognize your brand and Ryan had favorable feelings toward it. I'm more likely to respond to that advertisement then these guys are, your Google results are going to be better if your brand is stronger. That's right. Because the company that people recognize is always going to have the advantage over, you know, the, the people that I've never heard of the four, right? So this is all this, that's what you mean by being a holistic, you know, being a holistic so that they build on each other. Um, and thank you for bringing that up, but also being holistic because each part of marketing has a different role and we want to make sure we cover all the roles. We want to make sure we reach out to customers and generate demand, um, when that's possible. And, and then also we want to make sure that we're there and catching the demand calls as they commenced and as there's different things we do for each. Right? So if you hire a marketer, would there has one discipline and direct response or something that you run the risk that they'll, they'll overdo it in that area and, and, and under do it in other areas of marketing. And that's going to be true of ad agencies to, when you hire an adage to say, be really careful because they're going to tell you that you need to put all your money in the things that they sell. That's what they know. That's what they believe in. That's what they're passionate about and that's where they're gonna make their money. Yeah. So, you know, you have to be really careful with that kind of thing. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah. And then, you know, I think a third thing is, again, this is an unusual category for brand marketers like myself and come from all different industries, you know, um, and you really need to know things that most industries would never consider marketing. Like, you know, the call center being part of your marketing department as an example. Okay. So understanding that, embracing that, making that part of your plan, making that part of your thinking. Um, and the reason that the way in which the call center is part of your marketing, and I'll think about it this way, when you create an advertising campaign or you know all your marketing materials and in total and it's, it generates a call when that call happens is because you've created a belief, you've created an expectation about a company. And that expectation, that belief is either be kinda income real or it's going to be a lie very, very quickly in the call center. In fact, I was telling you a member once not too long ago that as a consumer, I will judge your call center sometimes before you even pick up the phone. Because if the phone rings three or more times, I'm not starting to judge you. Things are swirling in my head. What's going on? Are they ever going to pick up? Are they too busy or they understaffed? Do they not care? All these negative things are swirling. So you're, you're communicating these messages to me and you're actually taking these beliefs, this expectation that generated the call and now you're saying, well, they're not actually true. And so now, now you have to fight a little bit of an uphill battle to get back to even and win me over. Does that make sense? Sure, absolutely does. Yeah. So the call center is part of your marketing. Your technicians are critically important marketing part of your marketing. And the reason the technicians are critically important is because when the co, when every single call is wrapping up, consumers no longer remember or care about whatever it is you do did the generated the call, they don't remember your website and they don't care anymore. They just care about the person that they called to the home that they just gave money to. That solved the the issue of the problem they had. And it's that interaction more than anything else that's going to determine your repeat and your referral rate. Now in the marketing world, repeat and referral is considered the best cause you'll ever get because they're very high, close and very low if not no cost. So we want to really always build up repeat and referral and a lot of that's going to come from the technicians. So again, understanding what marketing is in this category because it is so different from virtually every other category. Got It. He's got to really be inclusive. We've got to, again, to go holistic, but internally to the company, it's just a different, it's a broader definition of what marketing is. Yeah. We'll, we'll, we'll, we'll get into that toward the end here, but yeah. But I gotta believe add in that it's a, uh, an amazing marketing challenge that it's just a lot of fun in this category as a marketer, you know, it, I'm glad you brought that up because I have told more members that this is the greatest marketing challenge I've ever had and that, that they'll ever have. You know, when you think about all of the products and services that, you know, look around you right now, all the things that we could be marketing right now, electronics, cars, you know, food, beverages, clothing, hair, helping booty rolfing. Yeah. All of the accident as an example is one good example. Yeah. All of these things are, are fun. There's, there's an audience for most products and services. There's not an audience that wants to call most days a plumber heating and air and electrical company. So that makes it an extraordinary challenge. Having said that, I've had more fun and been more satisfied having figured this out and figured out how to make marketing work in this category is one of my greatest accomplishments. And, and I'm just so proud of the work that we've been all, you know, like the team that I work with and the members who, the sophistication of the members today is just often change. Isn't it different? It's, it's ridiculous. When I think about how members were 13 years ago, yellow pages and truck graphics and today the marketing managers they have working for them, their needs, what the, how they understand marketing, how they embrace it, what they're willing to invest in it, getting ahead, writing, marketing plans. All of this was foreign. It's all 13 years ago. Yeah. And, and even though I can't necessarily take credit for so much of this, the, the increasing sophistication of members as probably my single proudest thing that I've been associated with it. Yeah. Well, I guess tell you for a marketeer, you know, coming into this industry to, to work for a company like a Nexstar member, you're going to do so many things. You're going to learn so much about business. You can learn so much about different kinds of marketing, right? You're really going to get exposed to almost everything. Right? It's just a great opportunity. And you're right, ed. I mean this stuff I look back on on how our industry as trans,

Speaker 1 47:30

you know, really just been transformed over the last 26 years and and marketing is clearly one of those areas that really it'd be stepped back and looked at it and go, wow, that's awesome. And thank you for all you've done it. You've done an amazing job here at Nexstar with a lot of members. Thank you all the time for the expertise that you've shared and how you've grown through it that you didn't come into next door. And I think this is another lesson for marketers as we kind of wrap up here. You weren't inflexible, you didn't know it all. You brought your experience, but you put your ears wide open. And you'll listen to smart people. And a lot of our owners are great marketers, amazing marketers, worldclass really? And we listened to them. And I'm purposeful about doing that every day. Yeah. I listen and always keep open the possibility that there's something I don't know yet. Well, that's a great advice and I think if we, if we end on any note from a marketing perspective, that's it. Right. The numbers have taught me a lot. Yeah. Well, congratulations and thank you. Thanks Jack. And thank you all for listening to this awesome addition of Leadership Lounge. I'm jack tests or with the amazing, talented ed carrier. We'll catch you next time and thanks so much.

Speaker 3 48:38

Yes.