Robert Craven interviews Patrick Gilbert, AdVenture Media Group
VIDEO: 50:58 mins
AUTHOR: Robert Craven and Patrick Gilbert
In this GYDA Talks, Robert talks to Patrick Gilbert. Patrick grew up in Long Island, NY. He studied marketing and economics at the Pennsylvania State University and currently serves as the Executive Director at AdVenture Media Group. He is internationally recognised by Google for his expertise with automation, having been asked to deliver presentations at Google conferences held in NYC, London, and Dublin.
Goodfirms.co recognised Patrick as a Top 10 Thought Leader for PPC Machine Learning, and PPC Hero listed Patrick among the Top 50 Most Influential PPC Experts of 2020. If the Buffalo Bills ever win the Super Bowl, Patrick hopes you think of him and say, “Good for him. He never gave up on that miserable franchise.”
In his latest book ‘Join or Die’, Patrick shares how he transformed AdVenture Media into a modern, automation-driven advertising powerhouse. From the failures and mistakes that nearly lost the agency multiple clients and millions in revenue, to the exaltation of successful breakthroughs, Join Or Die is brutally transparent, honest and best of all, practical. Gilbert’s writing is replete with specific strategies you’ll be able to implement in your own campaigns right away.
Robert and Patrick discuss:
"AI is here" (again)
Join or Die - why did you write it?
Google etc want us to succeed, of course...
"They" are large and have their own agenda
Many agencies blame things they can't control, eg the platforms
Often it is not real machine-learning
Everyone claims to be part of the new future
We need to be hybrid - automation + humans
What is the one-liner from the book?
What does automation-driven mean?
What are the big takeaways?
Patrick’s rookie errors…
What would a ‘fit’ agency look like in 12 months?
Patrick’s recommendations, top tips and advice for other agency owners
To read more about Patrick's new book visit: Join or Die.
Transcription:
Robert Craven 00:48
Hello, and welcome to the guider grow digital agency initiative talks. And today, I'm really excited to have with me, Patrick Gilbert. Patrick Gilbert has just or is just in the process of publishing a book called Join or Die, which I think is going to rattle a hell of a lot of cages in the digital agency industry. So hello, Patrick.
Patrick Gilbert 01:09
Hey, Robert, how are you?
Robert Craven 01:11
Absolutely fantastic. So let's just dive straight in Patrick. So you've written this book, but the book before we get on to the book, you run an agency. So talk to us a little bit about the agency?
Patrick Gilbert 01:21
Sure. First thing, thank you for having me on. This is great. I'm really looking forward to this conversation. So our agency is AdVenture Media Group, we're based in New York, we've been around for six or seven years now. And I'm my unofficial title as the executive director. So I work with the CEO, and essentially manage the actual day to day of the agency operations. We started out as a traditional PPC agency, doing a lot of Google ads, Facebook ads, and programmatic buying anything that you know, I think a lot of your audience will be familiar with. And over the years, we've grown, we've been very lucky, we've been very fortunate. But we've kind of been a part of this massive transformation that's taken place in the industry, that I don't think there's any turning back at this point where we're being thrust into this age of automation, and machine learning. And for a long time, we pushed back on this technology, mostly because I think we were afraid of it, and what it would do and what it would mean for our company. But over time, we kind of embraced it with open arms. And we've completely changed every aspect of our agency. And I think we're much better off for it. So that's kind of the premise of the book. And that's really the lifeblood of what we do on a day to day. So we're still a paid media and advertising agency, a digital advertising agency, the work that we do has drastically changed over the years. And the way that we tackle advertising and consulting projects has changed over the years. But the fundamental the blood that is running through here stems back to our attitude toward technology and way that automation has been changing this industry.
Robert Craven 03:01
So what what's the headcount there?
Patrick Gilbert 03:03
I think we're 20 peoples in house, and we have a few contractors that work with us with certain projects.
Robert Craven 03:10
It's fascinating because you and I have all been conferences run by Google and Facebook, and Twitter and HubSpot. And they all stood up. And they all said, this is the year of the mobile phone. And eventually, this is the year of videos that I mean, five, seven years of that one, this is the year of AI, you know, and, and you're saying you're not alone. You're saying this is the year of AI in a way. And I think that's really interesting, because what COVID has done, is it accelerated I hate the phrase digital transformation, and it's actually accelerated digital transformation by three, five years, stuff the agency folk has been dreaming about and wishing for, you know, it's, I guess, you know, it's, it's now here. So let's get to the nub of it. None of it really Join or Die. Why? Why did you write it?
Patrick Gilbert 04:04
If I'm being completely honest, this entire book started as an email that I was writing to a client that I was pissed off at. So this is if you actually set the clock back. And it's interesting that you just mentioned HubSpot conferences. This kind of goes back to the 2016 HubSpot inbound conference, which timing is kind of ironic here was the night of the 2016 election. And terrible timing on hotspots part. Having this election having this event start on election night because nobody seemed to pay attention to any of the content from that entire week. And it's clear because the key message if you really read through the lines was that AI and automation was going to completely change the marketing industry. And I don't know maybe this just sounds nice to me. But I think that maybe the election, distracted everyone from from your next key message. Gary Vaynerchuk gave the keynote speech on that night. And one of the things that set that kind of stuck with me from that was that he said, if you're not trying to put yourself out of business, somebody else will. So he kind of described, you know, airbnb put out a lot of hotel chains. And Uber put out a lot of, you know, taxi drivers, and the companies that really need to recognise that they need to reinvent themselves and me in 2016, working for at the time, you know, the standard type of small business PVC agency. I didn't think like, I thought we were the ones that would be to be doing to disrupt it. I was like, yeah, all these guys gotta look out for me. And then kind of as the week went on, and I saw all this technology and all these things that I didn't really no, the first thing about was kind of an eye opening experience for me to say, hey, actually, I don't know the first thing about AI, I don't know the first thing about automation, I need to really learn this stuff, if I want to stay in business. And if I look back now, that job that I had, in that moment does not exist anymore. The PPC account manager that I was working in in 2016, no longer exist, it's been replaced. Thankfully, it's been replaced by me and my colleagues that have taken on different roles. So that's kind of the backstory on that. But I think we started this transformation. And so at some point in 2017, or 2018, we were embracing automation more of an AR as an agency. And there was one client in particular that kept pushing back and saying: We don't want you running smart campaigns, because we don't like we just think that it's Google trying to spend more of our money. We don't trust it, despite the fact that there was conclusive data in their account that proved that the smart campaigns were more profitable and add more scale. And it was so frustrating. And we knew that we were going to lose this account because of performance if we didn't do something drastic. So I sat down to write an email to their executive team. And it was just an absolutely furious, I was just very, very frustrated at this entire situation. And I realised I can't send this email. It's not it's not going to get anywhere. If anything, they're just going to like they're going to terminate the contract, they're going to be totally turned off by this. So I archive the email. About a week later, I dropped into Google Doc, and I published it as a blog post, probably later that month, titled joiner die, it's time to embrace automation, Google automation. Folks at Google picked up on it somehow, it's someone found it and it spread through Google internally, it's sort of like went viral on some internal systems and teams at Google. And somebody from their product team, their automation team reached out to me and said: Hey, look, I really liked the way that you're talking about this. Let's chat. So that stemmed into a few different conversations. That led to some speaking engagements that led to further articles that I had written, and then eventually got to a point where this was last October, I gave a keynote speech at the Google premier partner awards in Dublin, the invite it was for the the EMBA market. And it was on the topic of embracing automation. And it was great. And it was a wonderful experience. And I was really, really blessed and humbled to be a part of it. But I still felt that I was I was not moving the needle, or this industry was not moving the needle and taking this conversation to the next level. We were two years into this process of me shouting from the rooftops that we need to embrace this technology. And yet here, I am still telling people like the top 5% of the EMBA market was there. And I'm still trying to get this message across. So I was like, okay, I need to do this the right way. And the only answer is a full fledged book that describes this from start to finish about what it is how to use it, and how it's going to change this industry. And a year in some odd months later, here we are. So it was a one line from the book. Yeah, if if we had to kind of 80-20 the the book and then at 20 again, and at 20. Again, and we ended up with with one golden sentence. I would say that it's the key theme is that automation will certainly change your job, but it will not necessarily replace you. And in fact, the opportunity to provide value to your clients and I'm speaking directly to marketing agencies, the opportunity provide value to your clients is now greater than it has ever been. Thanks to this technology.
Robert Craven 09:41
So slightly pregnant pause because I'm just I'm just kind of thinking thinking through what that means because people who listen: No, I'm on the board of several agencies and and some of them, you know, say absolutely, you know, Google have come to us and told us to become a software company Google have explicitly said: Go write software, create software that can be lifted up and drop down in different places, create create scripts, create patterns, use and use and use the Google machine learning AI stuff to actually do that. Others have said: We've, as you've alluded to, we've tried using the automation that Google's offered us. And and it's made the agency look foolish, because it's failed. But it's failed on several occasions. And as an agency, we're really nervous and we feel as an agency that we're being fed, you must use this new ology, like Patty diff, wild grass. And, and so the industry is kind of in this kind of state of confusion that it's a bit like, you know, I went to an Indian restaurant, I had a really bad tummy afterwards. Therefore, all Indian restaurants give me a bad tummy, you know? And, and maybe we haven't given given enough chances to something quite I mean, I mean, where do you stand stand on? Where do you stand on the agencies that are, so they're almost like non believers. And then you've got people on the other side? Who if like, like, have a religious zeal, which I guess is where you are?
Patrick Gilbert 11:25
I love the Indian food analogy. First of all, I'm gonna, I'm definitely gonna borrow that. To your first point. I have also heard through the grapevine of people claiming that Google has said that they should create software or that Google's prerogative is to get rid of agencies. I don't believe in that. Personally, I have a lot of colleagues that have a lot of clout in Google. And they have all said, Google has no interest in getting rid of agencies, I think now no part part of it. They want to get rid of the bad agencies or maybe not get rid of them. But they don't want to keep working with them. Because these bad agencies or agencies that are against automation are conflicting with Google's narrative. And I think if you look at that, there, Google has an incentive to earn more revenue and to increase their stock price. Do they have a responsibility to the shareholders? Now there, and this is kind of off on a tangent, but I think this is an important point that a lot of people miss. Google wants their advertisers and the agencies that run the advertising to do well, because when you do well, you spend more money on Google. They created this wonderful ecosystem fueled by their own automated technology. And it's been around for years. And only a year and a half ago, we breached the 50% mark, where more than 50% of Google spend is run through a Smart Campaign. So they're like dragging people through this. Meanwhile, their growth, year over year growth and ad spend is decreasing. And they're losing it to Amazon, and they're losing it to Facebook. And it's not because those are better platforms necessarily. It's because a lot of agencies and a lot of advertisers have decided that Google doesn't work for them, or that Google is not scalable. Beyond bottom funnel search or branded search or basic remarketing. YouTube doesn't work for me display advertising on the Google Display Network doesn't work for me. So obviously, Google is incentivized to say: Hey, look, we're going to stop wasting our time with these agencies that are just refusing outright to to listen to us and understand this technology, because we're giving them all the tools to be successful. And they're literally saying no, no, not for me. So fine. That's okay. So I think to an extent, Google's probably okay with a lot of some of these agencies going away, so to speak. Now, think about why they want you to cease to exist. I am a salesperson for Google. I sell their products every single day. I've never received a diamond commission. Now think of how many people are like me that are spread out there across the world that are just advocates for Google shareholders at literally no expense to them. So of course, Google should be incentivized to have agencies exist. So that's kind of the first point there and I'll kind of close out that tangent. The second thing there is as far as failures go, I could tell you, we could do an entire episode on my failures using Google automation. I have made so many bonehead mistakes that have cost our clients money that have cost our agency 10s 1000s 10s of 1000s of dollars in revenue because of have failed relationships that I am personally accountable toward. Now, the fact that I'm admitting that though, though, is, is why I think that we're different, because our attitude toward this is when we run an automated campaign, we we run when we leverage this technology in some way, and it fails, the first thing we think about is what is the human error? What did we do wrong? We have to assume first, and again, not in like, not in a negligent way or not in a not in a foolish way. But we have to first assume that this technology works, because a lot of money went into making this type of technology, and a lot of smart people were behind engineering it. So if we run a target CPA campaign, and a Google ads a camel, and it fails, okay, well, maybe there's a reason for that. Maybe we didn't do something right. Maybe we weren't giving the right conversion data to the account, maybe we didn't give it enough time to test maybe the conversion window needs to be adjusted. There's a there's a million different variables, maybe the landing page copy needs to be updated. Like, why are we constantly like so many people in this industry, are so quick to blame Google, or Facebook, or whatever the tech is, before acknowledging their own flaws. And that I think is so dangerous, because then all of a sudden, we just jump to the next best thing that seems shiny, because we weren't giving it time to actually work out. And a lot of agencies complain about clients that do this. There's a lot of you know, we've all worked with clients that just jump from agency to agency, they work with them for three months, they get their good ideas, they get the quick wins, and then they jump ship and they go somewhere else. And the agency is yelling at them saying you're not giving us time, you're you're not giving us enough time to actually show us our real value. And then those are the same agencies that have that same feeling toward technology, and ad platforms. And it is just so hypocritical.
Robert Craven 16:59
I recorded a blog this morning about the angry customer wearing different hats. Exactly. The angry customer, you know, you didn't tell me you didn't warn me, you promised me this is exactly the same as same voice as the as good as as agencies and going on to Google saying you promised us thinking about their own responsibility or their own their own position in the whole thing. So yeah, that's t hat's great. So so yeah. I mean, coolness, love, love you. You're You're, you're promoting and celebrating. But I also work with Google. I was online with them just this morning, you know, funnily enough that that Google premier partners, I was at the New York gig the year before. And a whole bunch of my clients would have seen you in Dublin. So I mean, what let's just just try and get get, what does automation driven? Driven mean? I mean, we could, we could do a whole episode on it AI is machine learning. But but in terms of agency speak, you know, nearly every website, which has been updated this year by an agency, you know, referred to along with, we are award winning, and we care about our customers, and we offer great value for money now says that they are, you know, AI, data driven, using the latest technology, blah, blah, blah, blah. I mean, I mean, in for you, what does being automation driven mean?
Patrick Gilbert 18:44
Yeah, it's a great question. I think part of it goes back to my last point about the attitude that you take toward the technology, and accepting your own failures and flaws. That's kind of step one. Because if you don't have that, then none of this other stuff works. The second is also understanding the flaws of the technology. Right? So like, you mentioned, Google certainly likes the good things that I say about their tech. But I am also extremely critical. And I push back. And my book is filled with a lot of things that Google is not happy about. In fact, I mean, I worked a lot of people at Google on the product side, to write the book and to validate all these con, all my concepts and, and the technology to make sure that hey, when I'm talking about the learning phase, it means this and this sort of bid strategy means that but when it came time to get an endorsement, nobody at Google was was willing, no active. People in the product team. Were willing to kind of put their name to it because I talked about a lot of things that are against best practice. I have some thoughts on how to manipulate conversion window and certain elements of kind of strength and best practice that they wouldn't love. So I want to throw that out there as well. So really being self aware, and really examining strengths and weaknesses of yourself, your team. And the technology, I think is part of what automation driven means. The second is really understanding what automation really is. And I think we think about scripts. The traditional AdWords script is not automation. I guess technically it automates tasks. But now like when I talk about automation, I mean, real machine learning. And I think you've kind of alluded to this, that people don't really mean the same thing when I'm talking about machine learning either, which is strange, because to me, it's like a specific type of technology. But the industry just throws it onto anything. Now, a Google Ad script, if we take very popular the bid to position script, are you familiar with so this is a very popular, very popular script that a lot of people use, I'd use that. And every account that I managed from 2014, to 2017, and it, it runs a bit of a runs a set of rules every hour, to make big changes to your keywords based on a desired average position in your account. And that's lovely, right? It's great, it's effective in running a lot of changes. Now, where it stops, though, is that there's no added intelligence, there's no added improvement to that script, unless you as a human managing that script makes changes to it. Meaning, the script will never learn that an average position of one or 1.5 is not profitable. You as the human being, that set that up and is managing the account needs to be the one that sees that and goes in and changes that. And the comparison, which is kind of cliche, but it's sort of it's we always everyone talks about chess, when talking about machine learning. Now, chess is very interesting, because there's a set of rules. There's a there's an actual there's a board with rules and specific moves. Now, if you take Garry Kasparov, who's the Grandmaster chess champion, a very, very well known chess player, you could theoretically programme every single move that he would make in a chess game into a script, as if it's a Google Ads script. But it'll never get smarter. It'll never really learn about different things that have never been seen before. As great as Kasparov is he's not perfect. Now, Kasparov previously was very anti AI. And he lost this very well publicised thing to, I think it was IBM, IBM Watson or Deep Blue was the name of that. And he has since come around. And now he is a huge advocate for these human AI hybrid chess teams. There's a whole section of the chess world now that does this, where they they leverage AI, formulas and models to then layer a human component on top of it to actually make the decision. And every time whether it's the human AI hybrid, compared to just an AI on its own, or just a human on its own, will almost always win. And that to me is being automation driven, they'll take that same concept and apply that to a marketing agency or digital advertising, whatever. Understanding that these traditional scripts are really just rules, and you need influence a real machine learning will learn on its own accord.
Robert Craven 23:37
So what we have done is we have a big push from from Google and the others, to encourage agencies to become more more AI driven. And we've all seen the videos of machines playing go with people and chatting with people and drawing pictures. And everyone's asked which one is the real one and it looks just like Rembrandt, so on so forth, we've all we've all we've all been to those conferences. We've also got a whole bunch of most agencies are claiming to be part of this new future. But kind of reading between the lines. Yours, I think you're you might be saying that not as many agencies are as automation driven as they claim. That'd be fair to say.
Patrick Gilbert 24:31
I think so. I mean, I don't really have enough insight into too many agencies. I can speak to what we do and what our clients have told us about their experience elsewhere, and my understanding of other tech that other agencies use, if you use a bid management's platform. I mean, we all know the popular ones, I'm not going to name them. That's not automation. That's not AI. That's just a different version of a A Google Ads script. Now, of course, those platforms could have an AI component in them. But how good is it? I mean, you know, before we got on, you referenced the PBC, AI, partner or vendor that failed. That was that was kind of a flop in the industry. And I think the reason for that, like, it's hilarious to me that we get excited about these, like random startups that claim to have aI driven tech that can be layered on top of Google or Facebook. But at the same time, we don't trust the AI tech that has already offered within those platforms. Now, wouldn't you trust the larger entity with all of the data that they've been curating over the last several decades, and have access to every single person and every single device that we own? But no, we're going to trust this random startup that has an AI platform and managing bids. That is, for some reason, because a salesperson convinced me is more valuable. And I'll tell you why agencies get suckered into leveraging this tech, it is because they feel that it is a value add to their clients. When they go to a client, they go to a pitch meeting, and they say, Well, you know, we're best in class. And we're Google premier partner. And we also, like we're so big and legitimate, that we use bid management platform number one, bid management platform number two, which is really just like it looks sexy, but it doesn't actually do anything. And we've we've dealt with this when we get when we get RFPs. From larger brands, one of the questions is always What software do you use. And it's always a weird thing to act like, we really don't use any software, like we use reporting software. And we use some things to manage our workflows and do all these other things. But like, we don't tap into some random, large tech company to help us manage our campaigns, because these platforms are built with all of those capabilities, and they're better. So it's like, we look small and insignificant when we put that on an RFP. But that's God's honest truth.
Robert Craven 27:12
But what you're saying is that agencies are getting suckered by the, by the silver silver bullet, this, this. This is shiny, shiny object, which says, you know, you know, wri in 10 days or your money back, which is exactly the rubbish that we all laugh at on Facebook, except that it's been done with someone who's in a suit or with a deeper voice, or they, they got AI, sort of the end of that at the end of their domain.
Patrick Gilbert 27:48
I think so. And so that stems back to what's happening in the industry overall. And the writing on the wall is that our jobs are being threatened by this technology. Now, a lot of people don't admit this, but they are terrified of being replaced. So the question then comes, okay, well, if Google or all these things, something is going to now, I spent a lot of time changing bids and an account, he spent a lot of time writing ad copy and testing new testing new variations of ad copy and an account now. I'm sorry, but an AI system does that better than I could. And more efficiently not only is it just more efficient, like a script would be but it's actually just better.
Robert Craven 28:36
Do you think there's a situation where Google create Google have a choice don't know they're managing. They're managing all these agencies. They could just create a business to consumer app. I don't know $25 a month. And you can, it will run it'll run your PPC campaign for up to $5,000 a month. And you go in and you say, we fix shoes were a cobbler. And they go right? There are 100,000 copies right the way across the world. We're looking at Cabela's in New York, London, Dublin, this is what works for them. Give us your money. Thank you very much. We'll take the words off your website out it pops and, for $25 a month. It does that for you and you're happy. You don't need to change it very much. I mean, we're doing that with with we have apps for the stock exchange. I've got you know, I've got a whole bunch of money and in an app that that does exactly that really understands my risk profile understands what I do understand what people like me one, it goes out to market. It also has human beings it delivers above above the average in the market. It pays its share hold, it pays me everyone's happy.
Patrick Gilbert 30:03
I think that some variation of what you described is certainly eminent. And the first thing I'll say with that is like agencies. Like, let's say for a second that that is where we're going. Agencies are scared, and they're trying to figure out how do I continue to provide value for clients. And that's really the fundamental message of the book is here is how you can still available in the world.
Robert Craven 30:32
Well, the if you if you if the issue is that often, agencies don't feel like partners of the platform, they feel like they're out of control. And my counter to that is that the majority of agencies that I work with, many of whom are premiere partners, and so on, and so forth, they weren't there cotton socks off, to make sure that the platform of choice is there is their best friend. And in return, they get rewarded for it. Now, the problem is, we can't all be the best friend, if you're an account manager, whichever platform we want to talk about, whether it's YouTube, or Bing, or whatever, there's only you've only got so much budget, you can only show so much love, you can only look after so many people and give them you know, really quality service, which leaves that others outside that that topic, feeling unloved, and feeling vulnerable and feeling threatened and feeling. I mean, for instance, you know, the the digital tax, which just appeared out of nowhere, as an example. And the agencies or, or the, or COVID, when COVID happened, and we were we were doing webinars every night. And people were saying, Where is everyone? You know, well, Where's, where's the help. And, you know, if you're running a large organisation, the first thing they one would tend to do, I guess, is go to legal and find out how to protect yourself. Whereas small businesses like myself, just turn, turn zoom on and have people coming in. So I think I think the smaller people feel vulnerable, I think they do run a kind of a conspiracy theory around they, you know, because because there's, you can have a internal locus of control is up to me, I'm in control, I take ownership of the success and failure, or external locus of control, which is they loads of agencies have that external locus of control, very the customers, though the staff, they the platform, they, the accountants, they, they the government, they the tax people, they blame everyone else, except themselves. So I'm wondering if a lot of the the nervousness is a kind of a mindset thing of the of the vulnerable rather than a mindset of the successful? Is it? Can we see that the more successful agencies have, have grabbed AI and being automation driven the two hands more than the others? Is that something you've seen?
Patrick Gilbert 33:11
Yes, and no. And I think, I think we're very fortunate. Just the timing of everything, the fact that it's taken so long for this transition to take place. And we've seen the writing on the wall, and we've accepted it, that it's given us a lot of time for us to get our ducks in order. And, and figure out how this is going to look and the reality of it is based on that kind of what almost seems dystopian now. That example, where you know, someone who pays a small business pays $25 a month, and they just everything is automated. What's your website? What's your goal? Okay, great. I'll take it from here. I think that's very possible. Now, those types of clients that are going to opt into that are a lot of the clients that we used to work with. So it naturally said, Okay, well, we need to go out. And we need to change ourselves and the way that our agency operates so that we can now attract and retain and, and provide value to larger clients that are not just going to automate everything and are more complicated. And there's more challenges, and there's more attribution problems to solve. And there's more channels to advertise on. And that's kind of the way that we've been going, because we see that happening. So yeah, I think it is it is very much derived by fear, when people are talking about, hey, this doesn't work. They're really pushing back to try and convince that small business owner that no, you still can't trust Google, you have to happen to do it. And I think that's dangerous. And I think that kind of causes this thing. So if I were a smaller agency, oh, and to the point that larger agencies, I think they're just so comfortable, and they have their annual contracts with these large clients, that the people working on the client side don't give a damn about whether or not they actually meet their goals or not, you know, Anyone working with the largest brands in the world, like they're too comfortable, they're too old fashioned to really care about this stuff at scale, they're not putting in the work to really learn it. So you have two opposite ends of the spectrum. They're really big guys that are just like too lazy, too comfortable. And then the other guys that are smaller, like really small, that are really just terrified, they understand that this is not going to look, well, this is not going to look good for them in a year and a half, two years from now. So they're fighting back. I think we're lucky enough to be sitting in the middle right now.
Robert Craven 35:28
If so if you're, if you're saying, Okay, we need to jump on the jump on the train one of the phrases we need to get, we need to get up to speed on this. We buy in, they read the book they buy in what what do you I mean, I guess, what, what were your rookie errors? And two or three examples of your rookie errors as you tried to buy in and get up to speed?
Patrick Gilbert 35:56
Yeah, that's a great question. My rookie errors really come down to not having a complete understanding of the technology and, and statistics and data science. There's a concept I talked about in the book called survivorship bias, that I think is really important for really anyone doing anything, whether it's marketing or otherwise, to understand it. And it's the concept that you'll you'll look at, like these small individual data points of things that went well. And you'll put place too much emphasis on this is big in investing. People say, Well, you know, this person picked Amazon in 1995. So they really know their stuff. And he's a genius, but he picked 3000 losers along the way. And it's like, okay, we need to evaluate a larger data set. So understanding some of these fundamental ideas, experimental probability, and, you know, percent change as it relates to different types of auction environments, these things really have to be understood at a base level. And I really should have dug into that three years ago, as opposed to like two years ago, or whatever it was, that would have really helped me out. The other aspect of it is really understanding the other elements that you get add on top of that, so I think we spend a lot of our time now thinking more creatively about conversion data than we do thinking about keywords. We, in the same way that we used to sit down and build a keyword list, we now work with clients to say, what are the conversion data points that we're going to be feeding into a machine learning algorithm, so that it can figure out our goals properly and not think the wrong thing about us? I had a conversation yesterday with a client that they sell a device that helps with data privacy, as ironic as a topic is that is, and it's something we do a lot of spend on Facebook, it's something that you need to learn a lot about, before you really make a purchase decision. Now the client actually came to us and said: Hey, look, maybe we should increase our view through conversion window on Facebook that we're optimising for. As opposed to the one day, let's make it seven days. And I thought that was brilliant, because it's the first time a client has ever said, Hey, let's, let's take more credit, let's have you take more credit for more conversions. But they're smart enough to realise that the real shopping experience for their product fits with this model. So we can take what's happening in real life in real time, and feed that into a machine learning algorithm. That's essentially Facebook, then it'll be better served to go after our real customers. And those are the sorts of conversations that I think is what sets agencies Big, Small, Medium, will set them aside as this transition takes place is you're really taking a step back, you're pulling yourself away from single keyword ad group structure, and what sort of colour button are we testing on a landing page? And you realise none of that matters? And you say: Okay, well, let's look from a marketing perspective. What's really happening here? And how can we train algorithms to go understanding where customers aren't how to profitably buy them? Essentially?
Robert Craven 39:06
Sorry, it's, there's lots of things ticking around and I'm realising that the time's running out. So by using the phrase Join or Die is that as individuals or as as agencies, is that you saying you're going to be a dinosaur as a member of staff if you're not getting into this, or are you just saying, as a as an agency, you're gonna go, you're gonna go bust if you don't join in, or both?
Patrick Gilbert 39:47
It might be both. I think it's more toward the agency side. And I guess for any of your listeners that are outside of the audience that the term joiner guy comes from a political cartoon that Ben Franklin wrote for penned I guess during the Revolutionary era, saying that the US colonies needed to unite as one to fight against British oppression. Which is kind of ironic because one of the first talks I did on this was in London, and they're like, I'm on stage with basically anti British propaganda behind me, and it wasn't really a great wasn't really a great vibe that I was getting. So I tried to alter that a little bit. But that's really what it comes down to is kind of this idea of coming together. And that's what I really want the message if not just joining into this concept, but I think collectively, this entire agency, this entire industry, needs to come together and embrace this idea in the same way that US colonies did, and work together and be and have creative solutions, that a lot of great ideas that are coming from the people that are sitting behind me right now. But we're only a small group of people. And what I really I care much more about somebody else at another agency, like having this book light a fire in them. And I'm starting to think of a different idea, that's now going to challenge me and make me better. And I want this industry to have creative ideas and to share more of these conversations in a way that you know, if you've been working with industry a long time, like in 2014. And I forget the name of the gentleman, and he's based in the UK that that created the query level bidding strategy in Google shopping. And it was just this phenomenal strategy that was completely eye opening. And every one of the PPC guys, like every everyone in the community loved it and applauded this guy, and they built on top of it. That's what I want to hear, like all that, we don't see any of that anymore. Nobody's really coming up with great ideas and sharing them and building upon each other's ideas that needs to happen now in the current environment that we're operating in, and I'm not seeing it enough. So to Join or Die element is a call to arms about what we as an as an industry need to do, or we're going to be replaced entirely by whatever smart system Google produces next.
Robert Craven 42:08
But there there is a there is a sense that there's the good guys and the bad guys, you know, there's a sense that there are people out there who have fed up with the cowboys for a better phrase, who are, you know, taking people's money and not giving results. And they're damaging the reputation of the the industry. And there are people out there who kind of recognise it, anyone can buy. You can buy an award for like, you know, $25, whatever wishes you What do you want, what do you want have written on your award? And that's not doing the industry any good. And it's not doing, it's not doing the clients. And you could say that's got to change. So let's just just just moving forward, if we just didn't move forward, I don't know, 12 months. Five years ago, Google was the only gig in town. There's loads of gigs in town now they're now complimentary. Five years ago, did you know we weren't as digital as we are now that the COVID, as we've said, has made everything kind of go online. It's really, for agency owners, it's really hard to imagine what what a fit agency would look like, in 12 months time, I think 12 months is quite a long time at the moment, the way things are changing, what is your what is your view of what, what an agency needs to be doing to be top of its game in 12 months time.
Patrick Gilbert 43:34
So the agency of the future, which I think 12 months is actually pretty short time horizon. Based on how long it's taken us to get to this point, with automation and everything that's happening digital advertising, I think it comes down to people first, we need more marketers to have a really good understanding of data science. And we need more data scientists that have a really good understanding of marketing. And agency will have a great mix of both of those people. And there's a great book by Jim Stern, called artificial intelligence for marketing. And like every single chapter is like either written for marketers or for data scientists. And it really helps blend the two of those. I think that reading that book a couple years ago, really enlightened me about what needs to happening happened with marketing. So that's, that's the first thing. The second thing is that as we've gone through this transition, where we've kind of, we leverage automation a lot more, it's freed up a lot of our time to think more creatively about all these other things that need to happen. So we're spending a lot of time now investing in creative development in leveraging video production partners in graphic design, you know, a lot of people, a lot of agencies, they have their graphic designer, but usually that person's good at one type of ad. So We've been investing in kind of the resources into a network that we can tap into that, okay, this, this person is really good at like, cartoony animated type of stuff, this person is really good for working with stock imagery and product photography or whatever. So having that having a real understanding of creative because that's something that hasn't been automated and probably won't for the foreseeable future. The third thing is understanding the role that video and audio will have on this industry, and really trying to champion connected television. Bottom PPC for the last 10 years has really just been bottom funnel search, and 1% look alike audiences on Facebook. Now that to me, is not even marketing. And I'm kind of stealing this Lucas senator who runs a UK agency conversion goals can go yeah, great guy. He, he kind of uses this line a lot where he says it's really bottom funnel. So like PPC is just sales, like none of us have been doing real marketing. So as you look at that sales funnel, when can we actually do real marketing and as the $70 billion, behemoth that is linear television advertising completely falls on its head over the next five years. And all of those dollars flow into connected television and into podcast advertising. And into, you know, other mediums that are kind of on the rise right now. How are you, as a Google Ads agency in 2020 going to capture some of those funds that are falling elsewhere. And a lot of these ad platforms are now being built. For us, they're being built for the smaller PPC, digital advertisers. They're not, they're not the old school, like, you know, your insertion order type thing. Now, we can latch onto this. And we can be the ones that champion connected television, which I think is probably the the most, the greatest opportunity that we're going to see for our clients over the next three to five years. And all those things involved to position yourself to be that agency is what I think everyone needs to start doing today.
Robert Craven 47:11
So we're desperately running out of time, but there is something I just like to talk because because I also, I'm also with you on that around around around video, video advertising, and so on and so forth. The analogy that I use is that PPC agencies are like car drivers, they learn how to drive a car. And in fact, they've learned how to drive a car, which is an automatic car, they don't have a shift stick. And along comes the platform and says you need to move into video, you need to move into video advertising, you need to get get into connected TV that's, that's that's where the sexy stuff is. And the agencies say but, you know, that's like a motorbike you know, and I don't, I never signed up to drive a motorbike i i signed up to to drive a car, you know, and, and you're pushing me way out of my comfort zone. I think that I think you're you're spot on that, that you can't label yourself as a PPC agency forever. And you've got to recognise that there is more to the world than just just just PPC and and that clients want clients, what do clients want, they want more customers, they want more better customers, we need to help them do that. And the PPC piece is crucial, but it's part of it. And I think you know, a lot of agencies will become way more full service, and some will become more niche to be really interesting to see. To see how it pans out. Right one last question and then we gotta go. We go out for a beer. Remember those times falling out of the bar at the end? Arm in arm so to speak. I asked you for your pearls of wisdom, your recommend your recommendation your your golden nugget that you give to someone running an agency at the moment. What are you What would your what is your little sweet thing that you'd like to share to agency owners?
Patrick Gilbert 49:10
I'm gonna borrow a lot because there's no original thought anymore. So I'm going to borrow a concept from David Ogilvy that he coined as divine discontent. Never be comfortable with how things are going. There's there should be a level of anxiety in you at all times. The second that you get comfortable is when you get lazy, you get complacent and somebody else is going to do is going to take your place. And with that, I think it practising extreme self awareness and being very, very, not necessarily self critical, but really understanding of strengths, weaknesses, and being transparent about that and encouraging your colleagues to be transparent about that. And having open conversations transparent conversations is the most important thing to running a successful business, um, so those two things divine discontent, not getting comfortable. And then and then self awareness.
Robert Craven 50:09
I love that I'm just writing that down. Absolutely adore that fantastic. It has been. It's been a blast. It's been great talking to you, Patrick. After the video, people can see the can see the links to get hold of the book, all the publishers. We will be reviewing it on the guide on the guide demand other grade is lazy remember that. It has been an absolute pleasure talking to you. Thank you so much for being a real star and for really making this interview. Thank you very much indeed.
Patrick Gilbert 50:44
Thank you, Robert. It's a lot of fun. Appreciate it.