It was a Friday afternoon and the team and I just wrapped up the finishing touches on a sprint for a new client. The client came to us with problem that Foundation is quite familiar with:
Our team and agency has been publishing blog posts for the last 3 years but none of the content is generating traffic. No referral traffic. No organic traffic. No engagement. The only time this content works is when it gets paid media behind it and our social team won’t even share the content on our own branded accounts.
This wasn’t a first time problem for us.
We’ve seen this before with companies that have split their organic marketing teams into silos so deep that they never talk to one another. But like the ending of the TV show Dinosaurs from the 90s… It still makes my jaw drop when I see it. Especially from a company with a market cap bigger than the GDP of some countries.
So what did we do?
We sprinted towards valuable deliverables as fast as possible. We worked with them to understand the skillsets of their content marketing team. We worked with them to understand the types of content their audience resonated with. We worked with them to understand the queries that were converting and how SEO could play a role in meeting their target customers where they were… And we worked with them to understand what type of content in their niche generated shares, backlinks & media coverage.
We took this information and built a content calendar. We trained their team on how to do research to identify stories worth producing. We showed their PR team how they could influence LLM citations through media targeting. We showed their social team how important it was to repurpose and reshare assets. We empowered their teams to use AI to go faster and we watched their team do in 3 weeks what their CMO tried to get them to do for the last 2 quarters…
It was a thing of beauty.
That Friday…
Our client said words to us that would stick with me for a long time:
We’ve gotten more value out of this one marketing month sprint with your team than we’ve gotten from a conglomerate that we’ve paid 5X as much for similar types of work…
I already knew it.
But hearing it from the head of marketing for a company of this size solidified it for me.
It’s time to eat the conglomerates.
I was at an event last year and 3 executives from big agencies took the stage. I’m sure they’re great people. I’m sure they’re nice people. But I’m starting to think that conglomerates are where good marketers go if they want to disappear. Or at the very least… It’s where they go if they no longer want to do their best work. I know that’s harsh. But when these individuals were asked questions like:
What do you think the future is for search?
What role do you think social media plays in AEO?
How do you think about LLMs and their impact on buyers?
The answers were as vague as a politician up for re-election with nothing to show for their entire term in office… This was an expert panel and one exec dropped the most unforgiving line for being on a marketing panel in history:
I’m going to have to pass on this one.
WTF…
If you’re a “Head of Search” or “VP of Growth” and can’t answer confidently what role social plays in AEO/GEO/LLM SEO/E-I-E-I-O… Then my only conclusion is that you’re not actually an expert — you’re great at playing the game of sales or internal politics.
And that’s who is serving many of these clients that the conglomerates work with. It’s such a shame.
I want to save marketing teams from the conglomerates and holdcos that are selling nothing more than regurgitated blog posts from experts… I want to save them from the unnecessary billable hours that could have been allocated to profits, team bonuses, hiring & high value tasks.
But if you work for one of these enterprises stuck collaborating with a conglomerate. It’s not your fault. I get it. I get why enterprise brands go with the Holdcos and Conglomerates.
They feel safe.
They feel secure.
And they feel like they know what they’re doing…
But more times than not… I think a small – mid size boutique firm filled with ambitious, smart, AI-augmented people who are focused on results will beat that slow, process heavy, billable hour obsessed, buzzword driven conglomerate every single time.
Our team works for some of the biggest brands in the world.
We get referrals from these clients to other marketing teams every single week.
And in the next 12 months… My goal is to save more marketing teams from the conglomerates.
But not just the marketing teams.
I want to save great marketing talent.
Thus… we’re hiring.
If you’re stuck in the conglomerates & holdcos as a marketer…
Feeling a bit stuck. Feeling like you’re no longer doing your best work. Feeling like the industry is moving fast and your firm is still stuck in 2020. Then consider shaking that up…
But so are tons of other small and mid size firms that are actually doing real work.
It’s the agencies that augment their teams with AI that will win in the next decade.
That’s why we’ve built Distribution.ai. It’s a tool that helps our teams and clients go faster. But that’s just the beginning of what we have in store for the market. Our entire delivery practice is augmented with AI so we can move fast and give ridiculous value to our clients.
This is the future.
Scratch that…
This is the present.
And I’m more excited than ever to eat the conglomerates for breakfast.