Agency on Record

Agency on Record

Martin Scorsese vs. Marvel: The Tension Between Creative and Commerce

Nov 14 • 48 min

Movies are a fusion of art, commerce, and technology, which is the tagline of our show, so we decided to break down Martin Scorsese’s comments about what is and what isn’t art in the commerce-fueled craft of movie-making. Mike and Jason just want to turn…

What Makes a Marketing Leader?

Nov 7 • 43 min

What does it take to be a marketing leader? Executing on the CEO’s priorities? Embracing your own vision for the company’s story? Should there be friction between the CMO and the CEO? Is marketing about standing out internally as much as it is standing…

Betcha a Million Dollars You Use “Innovative” in Your Marketing

Oct 30 • 41 min

You can’t market technology without the word “innovation.” And, yet, few organizations actually want it, fewer organizations still care to invest in it, and, quite possibly, it means nothing. So why is the word so important? Mike and Jason just want to…

100-Watt Fixes as 1000-Watt Wins: The Constant Redefining of Failure and Success for Projects

Oct 18 • 55 min

Failure is a slippery word in the industry. Few admit it. Expectations are lowered until it’s irrelevant. Project outcomes are spun. Goal posts are moved. So what is failure? Even more important, what is success, both objectively for a project and…

Making Decisions at the Exhausting Pace of Digital (Lookin’ at You, Slack).

Sep 29 • 47 min

Decision fatigue has always been an issue in business, but now it’s an exponentially worse threat thanks to instant communication channels like Slack. Every one of those red dots is someone asking you a question…that you need answer instantly or break the…

But Who Will Deliver the Creative?: A Response to Forrester’s Idea of Moving Budget from Technology to Creative

Sep 16 • 53 min

Forrester recently showed that brands are achieving no differentiation in the market due to the homogeneity of everyone’s digital experiences, and suggested that to combat the trend, 20% of technology budgets should be sent to creative. This sounds good…

Upending the In-House vs. Outsource Marketing Debate

Aug 30 • 45 min

It’s a classic debate in the marketing world: When do you build the team to tackle all the various elements of marketing and when do you outsource? Today, that debate is much more complicated thanks to how technology is rebuilding marketing’s role in the…

Stranger [Marketing] Things

Aug 21 • 55 min

The marketing around (and inside of) Stranger Things Season 3 was wild and brazen and so far unabated and could be a portent for the future of marketing. But we mostly discussed what we liked/didn’t like about Season 3. Mike and Jason still can’t get the…

CMOs Are Disappearing, and Yours Might Be Next

Aug 2 • 55 min

McDonald’s just dropped its CMO. So did Coke. And Unilver and Uber and Johnson & Johnson and Lyft and Hyatt Hotels. In fact a good 30% of Fortune 500s don’t have CMOs anymore, and that percentage is growing. We discuss the reasons why this could be, and…

Brainstorming is an Act of Desperation

Jul 8 • 40 min

Turns out, brainstorming is the worst thing you can do for ideation, and that includes any form of group ideating (e.g., “brainwriting”). Ideas comes from individual sweat and focus: Doing the hard research and thinking up the idea until the veins in your…

Not Another Design vs. Content Conversation

Jun 28 • 38 min

What do you need to start designing a digital experience? The content? How much of it? An outline? Full text? Can it be placeholder? Or should design dictate content? The amount of it? The flow? Can’t design make general containers to fill with content…

Look Out, Digital World, the Kids Are Low-Fi

Jun 17 • 48 min

With digital, the focus has always been on creating elegant experiences, and the socials often reward the most polished presentations of our lives. But a new generation is growing up that sees that level of sophistication as corporate and inauthentic and…

Building a Tiger Team for Digital Transformation

Jun 4 • 52 min

The science is settled. Small teams do innovative work. Big teams barely reach status quo at best. Even with big projects like digital transformation, it takes a small, focused team of experts to pull off meaningful change. In this episode, we discuss…

Don’t Be A Jerk: How Do You Say ‘no’ Without Losing Your Soul?

Apr 26 • 46 min

Managing growth means saying ‘no’ more often. But how do you turn people down without becoming one of those agencies no one wants to be around? Mike and Jason just want you to know it’s not you, it’s them, and they’d still like to be friends.

Is Writing a Commodity?

Apr 8 • 55 min

We posted our first writing job recently and were overwhelmed with >1,000 responses (compared to only a fraction of that number for our frequent designer and engineer posts). Does that mean writing is a commodity? Is this why freelancers are starving,…

The Cost Never Goes Down: On Content Subscriptions and Software Licensing

Mar 28 • 48 min

This week we had an Apple event launching the company into the services biz and Adobe Summit, the company known for its super-expensive enterprise software. One still doesn’t quite totally make sense as a biz model, the other makes so much sense it’s…

Is the Internet an “Out-of-Control Monster”?

Mar 16 • 63 min

A “completely out-of-control monster.” That’s what Francois Fluckiger—successor at CERN to the inventor of the internet, Tim Berners-Lee—called the internet on its recent 30-year anniversary. He called it that due to privacy threats, fake news, and online…

Maark is Now a Wolf: The Story of a Rebrand

Mar 11 • 55 min

After years of helping other companies rebrand, Maark has gone through the difficult process of rebranding ourselves. We discuss why we did it, what we learned from it, what was different between rebranding a client and rebranding ourselves, and…

Observations from Digital Design Days in Geneva

Mar 1 • 60 min

Your intrepid podcast hosts, along with Maark Creative Director Alex Carr, return from the Land of Switzers after attending Digital Design Days. They discuss their impressions and conclusions on the conference, the presenters, and the work they saw. Mike…

An Interview with Anders Brownworth, Part II: How to Be Among the First Civilians in Space

Feb 20 • 28 min

In the second episode of a two-part interview with Anders Brownworth, we learn that his personal life is as intriguing as his professional life in cryptocurrency. Brownworth is actively training for the goal of being one of the first civilians in space.…

An Interview with Anders Brownworth, Part I: A Practical Guide to Blockchain and Cryptocurrency

Feb 13 • 48 min

In the first episode of a two-parter, we interview Anders Brownworth, an expert on the mysterious, controversial, and transformational technologies of blockchain and cryptocurrency. Brownworth has taught the technologies at MIT and has built foundational…

Ramblings about Resourcing: Deploying the SWAT Team and Getting Everyone out Alive

Feb 4 • 47 min

A frank discussion on how Maark balances a large, complex workload, generous PTO, and company growth, all while being a small, nimble agency that gets things done. Mike and Jason just want those four-day work weeks that are all the rage.

When Mob Mentality Becomes Mentality in Media

Jan 28 • 58 min

The Covington Catholic High School story reveals how bad Twitter is for journalism. And when journalism is harmed, everybody suffers. Mike and Jason just want to stop doing episodes about Twitter’s negative effects on society.

Cordcutters and Streamers: What the Rising Trend of Ditching Cable Means for Media and Marketers

Jan 8 • 53 min

Cable TV still is the dominant way most people get their media, but statistics show a large trend of both people leaving cable for streaming services and entire generations not even knowing what cable is in the first place. What does this mean for media…

See You Later, 2018: Reflecting on a Year of Growth for an Agency and a Podcast

Dec 21, 2018 • 63 min

We look back at the past year at Maark and the past year of Agency on Record and what’s on the horizon for both in 2019. Mike and Jason just want to eggnog their way through the next two weeks.

Pursuing Passion Projects After-Hours: A Conversation with Mark Van Der Hyde

Nov 27, 2018 • 46 min

We talk to senior producer and longest-running Maark employee Mark Van Der Hyde about balancing work projects and personal projects. Mike and Jason just want to surround themselves with people who do interesting things.

Writers Should be Strategic to the Business: A Conversation with Christopher Link

Nov 13, 2018 • 67 min

We welcome Christopher Link, the head of content at John Hancock Investments, to discuss how he built a team of writers into a formidably strategic asset for the company, one that does everything from protecting the brand story to making digital…

Firing a Client without Burning a Bridge

Nov 6, 2018 • 41 min

Sometimes it happens. Agencies have to fire clients. It hurts financially. It makes us sad. It goes against everything that makes us a service company. But it can protect the agency—its goals, its employees, its quality of work, and its culture. Mike and…

Deep in the Nuance of Digital Delivery: How Do You Manage Digital Projects?

Oct 31, 2018 • 43 min

How do you manage a tech project? Mike invites senior producer, Simone Ovsey, to the AoR podcast to talk about managing projects at Maark, and how to be successful when you are tasked with all the complexities of digital delivery. We talk about the…

Your Story Is as Important as Your Logo…But Who Owns It?

Oct 23, 2018 • 52 min

We’ve talked a lot about narrative in the past, but never about who owns the story in a marketing organization. In this episode we explore the true role of both your story and your storyteller, and what you can do to build a content marketing machine.…

We Just Need a Website: The Crazy, Complex, and Highly Variable World of the Corporate Dot Com

Oct 9, 2018 • 45 min

For a while there, it looked like corporate websites were becoming less relevant, but today they’re the hub of all digital activities, complete with a complex, multi-system back-end, highly competitive customer experiences, and a need for a clear strategy…

The Ultimate Digital Experience: Video Games Could Change Every Industry…Even Yours.

Oct 2, 2018 • 52 min

We welcome Mike Dowd to the conversation to talk video games, their massive market share, and how it has the potential to be as life-altering as the internet is…for both people and industries.. Mike and Jason just want Gears of War games to come out more…

Beware Collaboration: When Working Together Works Against Your Project

Sep 25, 2018 • 47 min

Collaboration has become a feel-good word and a general goal in corporate culture, but the truth is, collaboration (as corporately defined) is the worst way to get anything good done. Plus, you’re probably not really collaborating anyway. Mike and Jason…

Strategy is a Prototype, not a PowerPoint

Sep 18, 2018 • 63 min

If your management consultant can’t build a world-class digital experience, you shouldn’t be listening to them. No matter how much data they have. Jason and Mike just want to sell a six-month PowerPoint project for $300,000.

Strange Receptions: The Kaepernick-Nike Marketing Partnership

Sep 11, 2018 • 57 min

From burning socks on one side of the political spectrum to celebrating the morality of a multinational corporation on the other, the reception to Nike’s Colin Kaepernick campaign has been weird, with both sides seemingly missing the real implications of…

String and Tin Cans or a Swiss Army Knife: What Apps Really Changed Our View of Smartphones?

Aug 28, 2018 • 64 min

In this episode we dig through our phones mining for meaning in a sea of meaningless apps. Has the mobile app revolution really changed the way we live, or just the way we chat? Mike and Jason just want to figure out if Google’s really stealing Jason’s…

Did Alex Jones Just Become a Martyr? Society Needs to Determine the Purpose of the Socials…Fast

Aug 21, 2018 • 66 min

The recent de-platforming of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones by just about every social media from YouTube to Facebook to Pinterest (???) puts us all at an awkward crossroads. Is social media merely the private domain of private companies or has it evolved…

Music as the Ultimate Collision of Creativity and Technology

Aug 13, 2018 • 56 min

Your quasi-intrepid hosts have lived through MTV, cassettes, Walkmans, CDs, Napster, iPods, Zunes (Google them), streaming, and the resurrection of vinyl. How are we supposed to listen to music these days and has that relationship changed as the…

What’s Agile about Agile? Prying Pragmatic Concepts From the Dogma of a Software World Gone Mad.

Aug 7, 2018 • 51 min

In this episode Mike takes a turn in the captain’s chair, forgets to introduce himself, and all but reaches for the parachute. Fortunately, Rich Wagner joined the show to share some insights on how Agile works (and sometimes doesn’t work) in a services…

A Story in 5 Acts: The New Ancient Approach to Business Stories

Jul 31, 2018 • 58 min

Freytag built a pyramid so that you can tell better stories. In this episode we break down Maark’s storytelling methodology and what it means to put your customers on a hero’s journey. Mike and Jason just want to watch a dragon battle in the boardroom.

What Ruined Content on the Internet? Not What You Think. But, Also, Exactly What You Think.

Jul 24, 2018 • 51 min

We’ve had thousands of years of practice at making good content. Why did we chuck it all out the window for the Internet? Mike and Jason just want an RSS feed full of blog posts on their Google Reader page.

All the Skills Between the Skills: What would an IT Renaissance look like?

Jul 17, 2018 • 43 min

The demand for more sophisticated digital experience is coming at IT like a comet. Dodging it means embracing a new managerial role over enterprise technology, while standing in its path requires a leveling up of IT skills in order to take an…

MBA and Marketing Degrees are Overrated: Our Enlightenment via the St. John’s Great Books Program

Jul 10, 2018 • 56 min

We come (mostly) clean about our past to discuss our education in the classics from the Great Books program of St. John’s College of Annapolis and how we think that equips us to be better agency executives than if we’d gone conventional business education…

Skill Silos as Vision Killers: What Does it Take to Achieve Design Vision?

Jul 3, 2018 • 51 min

We welcome Maark Creative Director Alex Carr to talk about why digital product designers should have the strongest opinion on the team, the prevalence of dumb UX paradigms, and where strategy and design really meet. Mike and Jason just want designers to…

Big Agency as the new Big Tobacco: Is the Future 100% Freelance?

Jun 26, 2018 • 42 min

The agency world has been in upheaval for a while, so much so that companies are looking for any way around the Big Guys that they can find, no matter how off the wall the replacement. In this episode we look at a Forbes article and an Accenture report…

Adventures in Virtual Office-ing

Jun 19, 2018 • 46 min

Maark went from a posh office on Boston’s State Street to a completely virtual office spread across the world and everywhere in between (including a few months in a rock climbing gym). In this episode, we discuss our firsthand experiences trying to…

Bitchin’ About Pitchin’, aka, You’re Buying People

Jun 12, 2018 • 46 min

We welcome Maark colleague Michael Dowd back to the podcast to discuss our experiences pitching work to potential clients, while turning the tables and scoring clients on how they judge pitches. Clue: It shouldn’t be merely on skill sets and case studies.…

What the Hell’s a Maark?: The Unlikely Path of the Agency Behind AOR

Jun 5, 2018 • 42 min

Our eleventh episode centers on Maark, the agency behind AOR; where it came from, and its role as an unlikely veteran in a field that may not exist. More like Quantum Leap than AOR, Mike and Jason just want this episode to put right the wrongs of practice…

The UX Engineer as Unicorn: Why App Development is Even More Complicated Than You Thought

May 29, 2018 • 50 min

AOR welcomes Alex Carr, creative director at Maark and the one in charge of user experience (UX) engineering at the company, to discuss how UX engineering takes as much art as engineering, the myth of the full-stack developer, and why there’s no such…

I, Robot. You, Hair Salon.

May 22, 2018 • 54 min

We still don’t know if Google faked its Duplex demo, but the idea of it still made us break out our brand new recording equipment so that we could wonder out loud and on mic about the ethics of A.I. in life and marketing. Resident Maark futurist Michael…

B2B vs. B2C Marketing: No One Survives

May 15, 2018 • 43 min

Comparisons between B2B and B2C marketing usually focus on the complexity of B2B solutions and sales. However, the real difference might be (unfortunately) that B2B knows less about its market than B2C. Mike and Jason just want that Star Wars Company to…

The Messy Secret Behind Taglines and Product Names

May 8, 2018 • 53 min

Why naming B2B products is often a fool’s errand, why the path to a great tagline is through five pages of narrative, and why you should consult a French dictionary before doing anything. Mike and Jason named this podcast in 15 minutes.

Ads are Anachronisms: Focus on Your Digital Brand

May 1, 2018 • 40 min

Too often, a company’s brand is tragically bifurcated into digital experience and advertising. And Marketing always focuses on the least effective one. Your digital brand is the one your customers actually use, and if it’s bad, no ad creative will ever…

Is Social Media a Pet Rock or a Dinosaur Killer?

Apr 24, 2018 • 72 min

It was supposed to be a discussion about social media in a marketing context, except that it wended down dark tunnels of existential foreboding as they try to ascertain if social media is a breakthough or a breakdown. Mike and Jason just want their lives…

Mixed Up About the Mixed Bag that is Mixed Reality

Apr 17, 2018 • 50 min

Maark executive Michael Dowd joins the podcast to discuss the strange, disappointing, and exciting realities around the current state of virtual and augmented reality. Mike and Jason just want a holodeck.

Data Privacy: Secrets Never Stay Secret

Apr 10, 2018 • 52 min

Thanks to Facebook and Cambridge Analytica, data privacy is in every other headline. Between that and the looming GDPR, are we at the edge of a new era of user-controlled data or just experiencing one more bump in the gradual numbing of our attitudes…

Marketers vs. Storytellers: Story as Your Fundamental Weapon

Apr 3, 2018 • 59 min

Why is disciplined storytelling in a marketing organization such a unicorn, and how is storytelling evolving in a digital world? Mike and Jason just want ghost tales around a campfire.

Boutiques vs. the Big Guys for Digital Transformation

Mar 28, 2018 • 54 min

Digital transformation is such a massive initiative that there’s no way it can be entrusted to a boutique agency, right? On the other hand, if the agency is so big it’s in need of digital transformation itself, how is it going to be agile enough to make…