V.O. Guy
Hello and thanks for coming along to …And we have an office dog, the digital agency podcast where we talk to agency owner, directors and learn more about what makes them tick from the things that make them similar to the things they’d rather have known sooner where they’ve had success. And where they’ve learned some hard lessons. All will be revealed. With your host, Chris Simmance, the agency coach, and he’ll be talking to a different awesome agency person in each episode, asking them four questions and seeing where the conversation takes us over the next 25 minutes. OK, so let us begin over to you, Chris.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Thanks voiceover guy and on the podcast again we have Andy from Adido. How are you doing?
Andy Headington (Guest)
I’m very well. Chris, thanks for inviting me back.
Chris Simmance (Host)
On again, well, you were lucky to be back on again because the first time we tried to. Record this you joined from the car.
Andy Headington (Guest)
Apologies, I was I was trying my best but it wasn’t. To be that day.
Chris Simmance (Host)
It wasn’t, but we’re here now. So for those who are naughty and have skipped season one and don’t know who you are, still tell us all about you. What your role is and what a Dido do.
Andy Headington (Guest)
What do we do? Do so we are a still, I would say a full service digital marketing agency and whilst that may sound a bit old or a bit crap these days we genuinely are. We do have, I guess two teams which cover website build 2 very technical. Very large scale and we do have an in House digital marketing team of SEO, PBC and Analytics. So that’s what we do and this July the 1st as well as it being Google Analytics 4 day is also our 20th year of trading as a limited company. So milestone. And one that.
Chris Simmance (Host)
And have a party.
Andy Headington (Guest)
We haven’t even talked about that yet. We’re too busy doing work, but we’d like to try and do something to celebrate. Certainly. So yeah, big milestone and yeah, we we we’re we’re quite happy I think where we are at the moment. So things are reasonably good, awesome.
Chris Simmance (Host)
And full service like say website and SEO? Or is it what what? What else is inside that?
Andy Headington (Guest)
Mix the digital marketing team is predominantly search. We do some display work. We do some social paid ads. Someone asked me the other day. Do you? Can you have me with my social posting? Now that to me, that’s. Not really of that much value, it’s a good brand activity, but it doesn’t drive leads. So it’s about performance marketing, I guess in a in a higher level nutshell.
Chris Simmance (Host)
So since we last spoke, what have been some of the kind of key developments inside the agency in the last year?
Andy Headington (Guest)
But well, we’ve hired a few more people. We’ve lost a few people in the last 12 months, we’ve lost our biggest clients, which has been a bit of a shock. Many agencies I’ve spoken to in the past have had two or three big clients that are 5080% of their revenue. And I’ve over the years, we’ve always avoided that until about three years ago, we had a client that was about. 30% of our revenue tied up in one. 1:00 PM and 1:00 invoice and end of last year they went to a big pitch we won in for the pitch. We didn’t succeed in the pitch and reading between the lines, I. Think there’s some? Internal changes politics going on, which meant we didn’t get in so and this year. Then obviously been a big focus on pushing sales, pushing marketing, pushing our our brand, if you like, in more people. And faces in the nicest possible way and. Be a bit. More proactive with sales and marketing rather than having a bit of a nice comfort blanket of a nice big client giving us lots of work and money repeatedly. So it’s been a bit of a wake up call, but one that I’m enjoying the challenge of trying to figure out how do we become more relevant to people I guess.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Obstacles become opportunities, don’t they? And and. And it seems to be working because. I see either you. Or Adido branded content almost everywhere at the minute. So if I’m seeing it then then it. I’m guessing a lot of other people must be seeing. As well, and let’s get it. Unless you’re only getting like four impressions and that one of them is me.
Andy Headington (Guest)
I’d say that’s nice. Well, I mean that there has been a bit of a wake up there and we have. Made a change to our marketing because as much as we love to promote the Adidas brand, ultimately as the people behind the brand and an agency and certainly we’ve taken a bit more of an approach. I’m a bit more of a face rather than the company as a face because you pay something as a D-Day. You might get, you know, 15 views on LinkedIn. If I post something it might get 150 or 500, and certainly that’s been a a wake up call. Secondly, we’ve had a really, really great PBC lady join us who has our. Own sort of side. Business and she’s shown some of the numbers about how if you promote yourself regularly enough, the algorithms will like you enough and it’ll start to sort of snowball and we’ll fly whatever it is. So I’ve been at other learning and another thing we’re trying to get to place.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Nice. And so season three, we’ll find out how well it’s gone. Yeah.
Andy Headington (Guest)
What’s this space? And they get annoyed of me in the next 12 month.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Yeah, I often worry about that and I think. The Echo Chamber of the Digital Marketing digital agency community makes it feel worrisome, but then you yeah, I don’t know if you know this, but according to just LinkedIn sales Navigator, for example, people who on LinkedIn identify as a leadership person, so someone who? Owns or runs an ad? Agency in the English speaking world or identifies as having English as a fluent language. How many people do you think there may well be? But just leaders of agencies.
Andy Headington (Guest)
Oh, goodness me. Hundreds of thousands. Millions. I don’t.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Know. Yeah, about 890,000. And that wow, not including. Any of the. Stuff they may hire or any of those kinds of things obviously take it with a semi pinch of salt because some of those people might actually be freelance or whatever, whatever else. But I remind my I remind myself of that every single time I post something which I worry, that that will annoy someone that they see it. And for those that do see me a lot and do see. A lot. You’ve got the mute button, mate. So in the last year, I know that there’s been a huge amount of changes in the last year from in the sector from people related things to tech related things. What was one of the kind of big industry things that you’ve seen evolve in the last year and? What are your plans around either tackling or making it out of a not making? Opportunity out of it.
Andy Headington (Guest)
I mean, going back 12 months quite. Hard I can’t. Remember what we were thinking or doing this time 12 months ago? To be Frank, and I struggle even to happen. Remember last week? But the thing that’s been on everybody’s lips in the last three months is the whole sort of the GPT, the AI thing, and I’m taking a bit more of an interest in it. There’s been a lot of talk in the last month about how Google’s now dead and everyone’s going to be using Bing and the world changed forever and this is groundbreaking stuff and that’s total nonsense. Absolute BS and the people are not going to not stop using Google tomorrow. But it definitely opens up a conversation of. Well, what does? The future look like how do I present myself online now? Parking. That’s what we just said about me being more of a face or more of a voice. If we are asking more questions to the algorithms than historically or to date, they look backwards. They don’t look forward and say. I don’t know how you get an AI that’s authoritative on the future necessary. So for me, like, that’s part of this maybe longer term trade off of and there’s a convenience with the AI, but it doesn’t necessarily give you all the answers and you want a human voice or human authority. So I’m pushing into that as a sort of hedging our bets, but it’s definitely changed how I do some of my work in terms of. Putting presentations together like I now no longer search on Google images for half an hour to find that one picture. I just type it in a box and it you know you wait 60 seconds, it gives you six options and that’s fantastic. So do we use that for? Pushing content out, do we use it for idea generation? I spoke to one of our team yesterday about they’re a content writer and it’s a new topic, right? So how do you approach that? Well, I might ask the tool first to give me some suggestions and some ideas, and it stops the blank piece of paper there being a bit more of a like where do I start? So I think it’s there’s gonna be a big adaption this year adoption this year and adaptation. So how to think about how would we use these things and are they actually beneficial, are they actually worthwhile and where do they fit in and I don’t. Think again. There’s so much polarisation everywhere, all across the world. But it’s either dead or it’s completely alive. But it’s going to be somewhere in the middle and we’re going to have to try and figure out. Yeah. The one person or you as a. Designer or developer like can you just? Use this to save. You half an hour. Can you use this to save you 3 days you know test and learn and play, and hopefully we’ll. Figure out we’re not gonna lose thousands of jobs overnight. But the jobs will change.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Yeah. And I think the one thing which I I’m seeing and hearing from a lot of agency leaders is there’s a a head in the sand kind of it will be fine. Everything’s OK kind of minds that when you’re right, things aren’t going to suddenly change. And and I I think I agree with you. You’re absolutely right. Search and SEO and things like that. Dead. I think that the the way that we adapt. To them is certainly going to need to change, and that will mean that roles will change that. Will mean that. Clients will need different communication. Reporting will certainly. Range and quite a lot of the repetitive doing tasks will will soon essentially disappear because they can be done at scale and relatively automated. So tool the tools will will will certainly help with a lot of the the heavier lifting and I think what’s. What? What worries me somewhat is the the the current nature of agencies being relatively bottom heavy in terms of the, the, the, the role. And quite a lot of those roles are focused around doing essentially. And I’m sorry if you are an exec and you are listening to this because if you love SEO and you love digital marketing, there is a good future ahead. But if you’re doing repetitive tasks that are essentially advanced admin, then you need to upskill. And you need your team to upskill because those roles won’t exist. Yeah. The the the the availability of of of, of all of this scale is is going to be open to everyone. I saw a really incredible app the other day where you give it a brief and it will design your UI in figma for an app or something like that. Now that means that the. Barrier to entry for a mum and pop the bakery down the road to having their own app to order things is is way lower than it ever used to be, which is fantastic. Yeah, kind of democratises that tech that everyone kind of thought would happen in the in the. In the in the short. But that in of itself is going to change how clients want things and how clients react, and you’re going to the agency is going to have to to adapt and I think. You’re you. You sound like you’re, you know, you are thinking about it quite deeply and and and. And I think that’s great. And there’s quite a lot of agency leaders that are just it’s nothing will change and will. Be fine, but I did.
Andy Headington (Guest)
Yeah. And with every evolution comes loss. And if you lose agencies in a recession or if you lose people or to technology then. Those people didn’t adapt effect to the way I’m trying to nicely say it. And rather than going, you should bloody listen, mate. But I think I think I think there’s a lot of a lot that we all have to learn through this change in the same way that people went from print to, you know, websites, it’s not a thing that happens overnight. You have to figure out what works for you, where the limitations of these tools are. Just because I can. Create an app from an idea that I have in my head doesn’t mean it’s gonna be good. Doesn’t mean it’s actually gonna work, you know. So there’s a whole load of things that seem good on the surface, but until we’ve actually played around with it and got a form of expert opinion, it’s going to be hard to necessarily know. If it’s good or bad.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Agrees and so ohh. With that in mind and with your the major changes in the agency in the last year, what do you think’s been like? A key thing that you’ve sort of personally or so professionally developed in the. Last that that. That you’ve taken into that leadership position.
Andy Headington (Guest)
I mean. I mean it’s it’s been hard. Again, we’ve had another year working from high working remotely. I think we’ve all I think we’ve now properly adapted to working as an agency pretty much remote first. So that’s been a good learning and. Try and then think about how do we balance, you know, people’s convenience of working from home with actually working collaboratively and working as a. Team. So we’ve we’ve adapted to that and I think we are pretty good on that aspect. I know some agencies are forced everybody back and there’s been issues with that or gone completely remote. Work for us. As I say, going back to the the the idea of how. Do we promote us and? Promote our expertise with 20 years experience, I’ve started to look at automation of tools, say e-mail automations we’re looking at. We’ve invested in a company called Force 24, which is a good e-mail marketing platform. How do we use that more effectively? How do we use LinkedIn more effectively so there’s automation tools which I’ve set up on that which I’m playing around with and as being really good who I guess go back to what we’re saying as the general theme here is to streamline work rather than sitting down and punch out 50 messages, type the message and get it out. There and just be a bit more proactive, I think in the thing that we’ve learned thing we want to do more of is to be more proactive, to try and find the people that we can really add value to. Yeah. And as I say, rather than just have the work. That comes in and I think that’s something I’ve always wanted to do, aspired to do, never have the time to use the tools, now use the tools to. Make that happen and live in the 21st century rather than, you know, doing everything about how it should. Be done properly.
Chris Simmance (Host)
And and and that’s not and that possible and how how? How has that? Realisation slash reflection felt.
Andy Headington (Guest)
In terms of what? Letting go of things are automated.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Yeah. So the automating of things naturally is quite hard when you want things to be done as. Specific in certain ways. You do have to compromise a lot, but the, the, the, the mindset shift around, kind of letting go of some stuff, especially in leadership positions. An agency that you’ve built, and it’s a long it’s it’s long standing it, it’s there, it it it. How how did it feel to to sort of get to the?
Andy Headington (Guest)
It is hard at first, but I guess. I’ve been through this sort of evolution a few times before where I was doing all of the SEO and then we had to hire people and then, well, I’ll do a bit like this. And then you sort of have an epiphany one day and go well. I can try and micromanage or stop them from doing certain tasks per certain way. Yeah. Ultimately it’s the output which is more. And so when we’ve had to, you know, work with teams remotely or do things differently, I’ve sort of got used to that discomfort, I guess of. Yeah, it doesn’t feel necessarily how I would do it, but trust the process and ultimately trust the. People and the people we have, as I say, we hired few really good people last year. Very happy with the team as it currently is and you know if things go slightly, of course we correct it rather than. Trying to control it from day on.
Chris Simmance (Host)
I think being comfortable in uncomfortable situations is, sadly something that we all have to deal with as leaders, as leaders and digital agencies. So yeah, Fast forward an entire 12 months and we’re we’re talking again hopefully and what’s the core focus for adido? For the next 12 months, what’s the if we say, what’s that one thing that I’m going to hold you to account for next year?
Andy Headington (Guest)
Well, I guess a number of things. One is to keep up the the content production, making sure that that’s that’s sustained and consistent because I’ve had bursts like this in the. Past and after two or three months, you know, big project comes in. I need to work on this pitch doesn’t happen, etcetera, etcetera. So yeah, another one, I’d like to just make sure that I. Consistent and stick to the task number two thing, we’re going to be famous for is for Google Analytics 4, which we talked about before we press and record, but we’ve done a huge amount of investment in learning about the platform, looking at the platform understanding. Why it is the way that it is the challenges that come about and trying to educate people about this isn’t what you’re used to. This is something very different and here are the reasons why what you’re going to learn and then the final one is really holding down on our travel niche and I travel sector, which we’ve. Picked up again on, I guess in the last 6 to 12 months we made again reasonable investment in terms of trying to push into the sector pre COVID COVID happened. Far too many people lost their jobs, unfortunately, with the fallout now things come back to normal. We’ve done some good content pieces, we’ve been featured in publications trying to build an authority and and in that particular sector is my one of our big goals. So yeah, we can be a general agency or we can be very specific. And I think the specific specificness of what we’ve done and are doing will pay dividends in in 12 months time.
Chris Simmance (Host)
So fingers crossed it and knowing knowing how, knowing you and your agency, I I don’t doubt that we’ll be having a positive conversation on that next year. Thanks very much for coming for a second time.
Andy Headington (Guest)
There. Right, Chris, thanks for inviting me. And yeah, thanks for everything you done.
Chris Simmance (Host)
In the next episode, we’ll be revisiting another agency leader and see how their last year has been. But in the meantime, thanks very much for listening.