Episode 126: Episode 126: Adweek's Fastest Growing Agency in the US, Ben Adams with Advoc8

Welcome to Skucast, the podcast for entrepreneurs in the promotional products industry. Skucast shines a light on our industry's best work, features maverick personalities, and discusses what's really involved in running a modern promotional products business. Skucast is the official podcast of Common Skew.

2 years ago, we kind of made the switch of like, we're bringing this all together and we're going to be kind of tactic agnostic. We start here with like, why? It's not about like, is this a video or is this a— this is Need Brand Merch. It's like, well, what is the problem and why? And what can we do from a strategy and creative standpoint to bring that to life? Then we look at the tactics we have at our disposal and pick them. Sometimes there are tactics we don't even have in-house, but our belief is not just to, like, sell somebody something because it's what we do. It's to really understand what their problem is and then find the right solution across the board.

That's perfect.

Just a few weeks ago, Adweek declared them the fastest-growing agency in the U.S. and the second-fastest-growing agency in the world. Finalists in Ernst Young's Entrepreneur of the Year. Chief Marketer also recognized them as one of the best engagement and activation agencies. From Telly Awards, Experiential Marketing Awards, Best Places to Work, They now have over 50 employees and all of this growth in just 3 short years. Advocaat, spelled A-D-V-O-C-A-T, is located in the Washington, D.C. Union Market District, one of the hottest, most diverse, and creative districts in Washington. Union Market is an urban village reimagined with roots that go back over 200 years. Its redevelopment now boasts a thriving community of over 40 local and international vendors. Advocaat is an experiential agency specializing in the social impact space. Partnering with brands and associations that care about making the world a better place, planning strategic real-life experiences that change people's actions and beliefs. Situated a few floors above the eclectic food purveyors at Union Market sits the offices of Advocate, in their rightful place as both the community and the business have become synonymous with growth. Our guest today is one of four founders of Advocate, Ben Adams, whose other partners include John Leggettino, Jeremy Rose, and Josh Sharp. Ben leads the brand merchandise team and innovation labs at Advocate. I was in Washington and privileged to visit Ben at the creative hive of Advocate and sit down and discuss multiple topics, including how experiential marketing has evolved, the impact that the cross-disciplines of the company, which include research and strategy, experiential events, design, video creation, and brand merchandise, have had on their success, decision-making lessons from their fast growth, the impact promotional products can have, as a part of a holistic strategic campaign and some of Ben's favorite projects, including a YouTube pop-up studio, one regarding cookies in space, and an experience for CNN regarding that White House Correspondents' Dinner. Hi friends, I'm Bobby LeHew, the Chief Content Officer of Commscue. You want to hear how a $50 million company still achieves amazing growth, right? Or how to resolve challenges with the supply chain when they arise? Or maybe just the inspirational story of how one company broke into a commodified space with a premium product and have had skyrocket success while changing the world sold at the same time. All those stories and more can be heard at SKUCON on January 12th. Look, I know I'm part of the team, I have a vested interest in selling this event, but we're 80% sold out now. We're not desperate. Those remaining tickets will go fast. Here's the deal, and this is what I tell everyone privately: if I were leading a distributorship or supplier company today, without a doubt I would have key people from my sales and production team at SKUCON.

Why?

It's a vast industry. SKUCon is a concentrated gathering of some of the most progressive thinkers in the business today, not just those from the stage, but those in the audience. I highly recommend you kick off your year by imagining along with us what's possible. It's a tribe of young and young at heart outliers, risk-takers, rebels, entrepreneurs with an edge, and dreamers who hate the status quo. If that's you, join us at skucon.com. This episode is brought to you by Commitscube, the platform that powers your connected workflow, enabling you to process more orders and dramatically grow your sales. To begin your free trial now, visit Skucon.com. Now here's my conversation with Ben Adams at the headquarters of Advocate. And about halfway through the episode, we also chat with Michaela Albano, Operations Manager at Advocate, about a very special cause they're passionate about in Haiti. Here's Ben to kick off our conversation, answering my first question about Advocate's events and experiential marketing.

Advocate, we do, you know, how we define experiences is things that have like these human connections, these elements that are both physical and digital. And so there's a lot of varying ways that people Mostly think of events, and that is where like a lot of our core work is done. An example of something as recent as last week was we did an event with Amazon and their partnership with St. Jude's. It's for Amazon's Gold campaign to help fight childhood cancer, and we, in partnership with Amazon, built a Camp Amazon, which was made out of Amazon boxes, and kids went through an obstacle course and did these different activities and whatnot as kind of a way that allowed from a break from a very difficult moment.

Yeah, they're at St. Jude's, they had this thing to go through, that's awesome.

That's cool. So it was really great, and I think that's just like a very recent example of something that we've done that I think really envisions where we want to go as a company. You know, we are now calling ourselves a full-service experiential agency. In the past, we were just brand experience, but what we saw is that there's this avenue in social impact, and our cross between understanding complex policy issues and having a background in Washington, D.C., where we're based, and also seeing the benefit of Gen Z and millennials and just the country as a whole valuing the purpose behind things, the social impact, the social good of companies changing, that we really wanted to focus on that. We felt that our backgrounds actually aligned with that. So recently a lot more of our work is becoming more social impact focused.

Okay, very mission-minded in that sense. What was your role in the Amazon project? Did they come to you from concept through to completion?

Yeah, in many cases our clients— so we're full service in the sense that everything from the creative concepts starts with the strategy, then go to the creative concepts. All the way down to the execution. We get sometimes brought in for just one element of those, but the majority of our things are from start to finish, understanding that, and that's what we prefer so we can kind of really take a different look at that. And we also think that, you know, a lot of people have a lot of creative and strategic ideas, and sometimes the execution fails. So the reason that I think we really kind of specialize in why brand merchandise, promotional products, have become such a part of a tactic we use as a business is because I think understanding that is an important medium for our clients to know, and if we don't have the kind of capability to understand how to use that tactic fully in-house, Yeah. Sometimes it can, you know, suffer in execution. So things like that, video production, event production, we kind of all keep those in-house as an execution stage to make sure that we can kind of make sure that the ideas and strategy that we had in the beginning come to life.

That's cool. You may have kind of answered this already, but how is this integration of all of these things, events, experiences, design, video, branding, merchandise, and all of this work together to build this unique value for Advocate? Obviously this is a very unique concept. How these disciplines come together under one roof. Were you one direction and one way focused and then you pivoted once you discovered clients that led you that way, or did you discover this is our mission and we're gonna broaden our scope?

Yeah, so when we started 3 years ago, we did start as essentially a brand merchandised promotional products, a distributorship, a video production, and an event production company, like 3 different ones. Right. As we've evolved, we learned that our real benefit was in the integration of our services and where we could do at an event that had every, that had both a video content portion before and after or during and merchandise and all throughout, that those were the more powerful messages and those were the more powerful experiences that actually like affect people. So about 2 years ago, we kind of made the switch of like, we're bringing this all together and we're going to be kind of tactic agnostic. We start here with like why. It's not about like, is this a video or is this a, this is new brand merch. It's like, well, what is the problem and why and what can we do to from a strategy and creative standpoint to bring that to life, then we look at the tactics we have at our disposal and pick them. Sometimes there are tactics we don't even have in-house, but our belief is not just to like sell somebody something because it's what we do, it's to really understand what their problem is and then find the right solution across board.

That's perfect.

Yeah.

Your cross-disciplines naturally give you this holistic dynamic approach. What types of clients do you do your best work for?

Definitely clients that have strong missions and purpose. We really, I think, found a focus here working a lot. We work a lot with a lot of companies on their outreach in public policy, public affairs. Here in DC, we have a lot of clients in the tech space that want to encourage economic growth in different ways and talk about that. And more and more like associations and nonprofits.

How did you get here?

Yeah, so I had a background in politics and met some of our other co-founders. Actually, we started our promotional products distributorship after being in politics and realizing that it was not the easiest thing to procure and manage those items at scale. And so in one of the kind of, we were like, this is an opportunity and kind of started up distributorship and learning the industry. We also still had an events background, so it all kind of just came together. But our understanding, the team here has a deep background from everywhere from political background to a brand background to a policy background kind of coming together.

Yeah. So fascinating to me how you started out as a promotional products distributor, but not in a very traditional sense.

Oh yeah, I did. Some of the other ones did. Yeah. So not in the traditional sense. No, we, we did it in the mindset of we're evaluating like, what are these kind of, I think, I don't know, can I say this? Unsexy to sexy things. You can. We enjoy turning like the unsexy items, making them sexy. And I think that a lot of our team here has gravitated towards that. Yeah. And trying to kind of like really think through that. And so promotional products is one where it's like nobody, you know, I think people do view them as the like tchotchkes, the thing that's extra. And there is value to them and there's opportunity there. And so I think we really enjoy that, bringing those things and kind of changing somebody's perception on them. So we do with all of our experiences, I think we do it in practice and some of the things we chose to get into. Yeah.

You know what's fascinating is it didn't take a leap for you to get from this tactile aspect of promotional products and swag and merch, whatever you want to call it, that tactile aspect has always actually been around experiential marketing. And so it wasn't that big of a leap in your mind to make, you obviously were already there, as opposed to coming in as a commodity salesperson just trying to show a lot of product.

Yeah, and I think there's definitely been changes in how the promotional products industry has looked at their value over time, but definitely we see a really close tie in experiential, especially when we build, you know, Physical spaces are hard to scale.

Yeah.

And digital experiences have to be really, really good to be effective in the way they are. So we really think that promotional products, merchandise, sort of these, it's an in-person physical interaction and experience that can scale in some ways. And it's just about thinking through how that works and tying it in to as much as possible.

Yeah. A few projects I noticed and was intrigued by.

Yeah.

What was Advocate's role in these, like cookies in space?

Yeah, so the Cookies in Space was a project we did with Hilton. So Hilton's DoubleTree brand, one is obviously if you go to a DoubleTree, you receive a warm cookie when you check in. They partnered with, I believe it was NASA, and I'm forgetting the other nonprofit at the time, to take a cookie into space, to have the first cookie made in space in the International Space Station. So they came to us saying, "Hey, we have this concept. We just really want to amplify it." So we worked on the creative and strategic end to kind of do some of this video and digital content around it.

Yeah, that's cool.

Yeah.

CNN projects. What do you do for CNN?

Yeah, so CNN has been a client we've worked with for many years. Some of our background originally, we did a project in 2016 with Google around the presidential debates, and that's when we got really involved with CNN. Every year we do their White House Correspondents' event. So White House Correspondents' is a big weekend here in DC. They always take a very unique, immersive look at that. So it's a brunch the day after., and we pick a theme every year with them that kind of bring— they pick a theme every year and we kind of bring that to life. So last year, it was kind of New Orleans themed, the year before it was Alice in Wonderland, so it's a really interesting project.

And so that comes obviously from your event marketing side, and that's where you get that start with that. What about, uh, South by Southwest? Similar?

Uh, similar. So South by, we've taken several clients and done activations there, um, over the past few years.

Okay. I don't know why I have a note of creative pop-up in DC.

The team at YouTube wanted to kind of— they have YouTube Studios around the world. I think there's 8 or 9 in major markets, and they want to take that concept on the kind of road. And so we built a YouTube space here in DC that kind of had educational training sessions on how to better use YouTube to connect and highlighted some creators, talked about the power of the platform. And we built that for about a week here in DC and kind of opened it up to the creator community and What's been one or two of your favorite projects that you've worked on?

Is that hard to pick?

It's hard to pick. We did a project with the USO. They have a major gala every year, and they didn't want to do the same thing they've done years past. It was a chicken dinner. We say it's a rubber chicken dinner, one of these at a major DC landmark. And they were like, you know, we really want to do something completely different and show the stewardship of the USO to our donors and the community and the stakeholders that we work with. So they came to say, how can we reinvent this? And so the concept was the world's biggest USO tour. We took it to a concert venue this time. It was a Florida Georgia Line concert that was then livestreamed to military bases across the world. That's cool. 4 from each branch of the military. In addition to, we built a lot of activations showing how the USO connects military service members and their families. You could send letters, this whole like mailbox activation, see what it's like USO has this, it's like USO in a box type thing that they drop into active operation zones. Kind of brought that to life and allowed people to kind of really see what it's like. So it was a really cool event, I think, because of both the giving back military veterans angle there and the work the USO does every day, kind of bringing that to life and allowing people to see it, but also creating, I think, a cool experience for everybody.

Yeah, this is really rewarding work. You were talking about your team, and I know it's hard work, I know it's deadlines like crazy, but you're doing In fact, you're adding the two of the most, I think, complicated merch deadlines and event deadlines, and that's got to be the hardest part of any of the marketing under any of the marketing PR umbrella, but it's got to be very rewarding for you and your team.

Yeah, the best part about Advocate is our team, and I think like over time we've built a really like incredible group of people talented in many different ways and many different skills, and that's I think enabled us to kind of grow where we are today. There's also this benefit of like, you know, experiential has grown as a tactic. It's not just about events anymore, it's about how do we really create these immersive experiences. And I think with the changing in how society and culture is reacting to information, traditional advertising isn't working in the same way. And so I think we're also lucky that that sort of shift is, I think, growing in relevance and looking for new ways to find action.

That's a really good point that demand is higher now than it's ever been too. Your other 3 business partners?

John Leggettino, Jeremy Rose, and Josh Sharp.

Okay.

What are your respective roles in the business? Do you each have different strengths that you bring to the business?

Yeah, we each have different strengths and we kind of came in with different areas of expertise. John is our CEO and kind of day-to-day vision, growth, and management of the company. I oversee the brand merchandise team, some of our innovation labs. We really want to find ways to build internal tools to make our team more efficient. So I oversee that as well as some of our major projects here. Cool. And then Jeremy does our operations and Josh oversees our growth business development end.

Okay, so this is crazy. 3-year-old company to have these kinds of accolades. Adweek's second fastest growing agency in the world, first in the US. You were also recognized as one of the top event agencies in the US, the finalist in Ernst Young's Entrepreneur of the Year. Tele Awards, Best Places to Work, more awards that were out there on your shelf that I even didn't find online, all in 3 short years. This is such a big question. I know it's going to be difficult to unpack. What do you attribute such fast, incredible growth to?

The awards only, I think, tell half the real story here. We appreciate them and I think they're really amazing, but it's the work that is being done, I think, every day that is like really rewarding. And when we see how that benefits, I think The reason behind the growth really has been this, the push and the desire to do things with purpose and really go the extra mile for the why. We have a value set here and one of the ones is like level up. We don't do a lot of templatizing around here and doing the same thing over and over again. And I think that is really where the growth has come from is this like these values and how we influence that work. I think also goes to the changes in the power of experiential and where it has gone into the unique mix. We do ask this why question and don't just force tactics. We find the right tactics that work. And I think between all of that, it's kind of positioned us well. And then finally, I think it's the kind of background in Washington, D.C. This is a place where people come to change the world and different ideas. A lot of different groups in our industry, in our sector, look at a very consumer-minded mindset. It's been very traditional. How do we sell more? To customers. And what I think we're seeing is this shift to it's not just about what you're selling or the price or the quality or anything else. It's about the relationship that people are having there. And then even more so now, what is the purpose behind that brand? And more and more so, I think that is contributing also to our growth.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. In other words, with the awards, it's great. It is wonderful to have all the accolades, but you're doing a lot of work where the work is the reward itself. Yeah, the work is the end goal. Obviously, this cross-discipline aspect of your agency might have a lot to do with that dramatic growth. You're obviously in the right market for it. Experiential marketing has never been in more demand than it is now. And then you brought these cross-disciplines to bear in a great market that's very purpose-driven. So it's almost as if this alchemy of random things—

Yeah, it's all— it's kind of working out. It's the plan all along. Business takes you in different places. Yeah. We've gone in a different direction. I think it is really nice to see it all coming together, and I think that is where the growth has come. Yeah. But I would be lying if I said we had planned it all this way. Right. And I think that that's part of fun. We're always on the edge of that and kind of staying a step ahead, a couple steps ahead of where we are.

I like to ask entrepreneurs, did you, did you plot and plan and graph your business out the way it is, or did your clients lead you there? And I'm assuming that you have a lot of clients because you've done so fascinating, interesting work outside of the narrow scope of some discipline, they come to you and say, "Hey, we've kind of got this idea," or "We're thinking of this." And of course you all turn to each other and go, "Okay, how are we going to pull this off?" Yeah, it's definitely a mix.

You know, we always like a really good challenge. First and foremost, our team is problem solvers. Right. So yeah, any big problem you can give us, we really enjoy tackling. And then I think some of it is pushing our clients as well to think You know, this is a, let's just not do the traditional event that you did every year. Let's think about how you could do something and enhance this in different ways. And then other times they push us and they say, hey, can you build a hologram for like no money? And we're like, sure, yeah, we'll make that happen. I don't know why, but there's always those impossible challenges. Or one of the best promotional product stories we've ever had is they called us and it was actually not even a project we were working on. They're like, hey, we're getting ready to rain, I think, at CES one year and they needed a bunch of umbrellas, like, and she was like, in 6 hours. And I was like, all right, 4,000 umbrellas, 6 hours.

Let me see.

Sure, we'll give it a try. And luckily, I think there was a supplier in the area that we were able to kind of work out this thing where I was like, can you just start taking them off the shelves, put them on the loading dock? We'll go ahead and organize sort of a courier to come grab this. And it was like 4 to 6 hours, they managed to get it all and kind of like save this moment for them. That was one of the more interesting challenges that we've overcome.

That is about one of the tightest turnarounds. I've heard a lot of really tight turnarounds.

Well, they weren't print impressions.

I'll give you that.

But still, that's impressive. Yeah, that was a fun one. And I think back to the problem solving first, I mean, that is the attitude that I think everybody here brings to these projects. And it's like multiple ways to solve a problem is breaking it apart.

Right, right.

Yeah.

Many in the promo space think of themselves as consultants, but we're often not close enough to the client to really discern problems, to solutions. What are some of the lessons you've learned in becoming a successful consultant to your clients?

I think you've mentioned this earlier, but it is really starting with the why. Like, what is your real reason for doing this, or why do you think you need to go down that? I mean, every, every project we do here, we start with that. We look at the strategy behind it, what they're trying to achieve, and then work backwards from that. And then be honest when, you know, something that isn't up your alley, isn't right for you, isn't there. But we've always found, I think, in being really— build trust in that consultative process and ask the right questions and then push people a little bit beyond what they think is possible so that, you know, you kind of come out with an outcome that's stronger. Yeah.

So we're all big advocates of purposeful promotions. Can you share a story from one of your most successful campaigns?

Yeah, so this is actually one that we recently did last week with the Philadelphia Flyers in partnership with another agency we work with, RP3. We took Gritty, the mascot of the Flyers, and created his lair. It was like Gritty's mission control command center. So inside the stadium, we took this room and it is a full experience where fans can go in and be Grittified. And this is a really cool kind of, you know, across the tactics of what we've done, there's everything from video to, and it's an event installation, to also merchandise. We made these like custom shirts. So Gritty has like armpit hair. So we made like these shirts with like custom armpit hair under them and like There's all these really cool, you can go in and it's like a color and I'm not describing it correctly and I can probably send photos and whatnot, but I think that was a really cool, more recent one where it was really tied in and really thoughtful about how do we kind of bring this alive in a way. The initial reactions are pretty amazing, like kind of seeing people talk about it, the buzz that's come around it. It's been really, really interesting. I think there's been some other things. We do a lot of work with YouTube Gaming and kind of how they connect their with that audience, which is definitely a newer and growing audience in esports. We've done this one where, I mean, we did these superhero capes that had the YouTube Gaming logo at a couple of major conferences this year. And it's just amazing to see on like Twitter and all this stuff of the same item over and over and over again. Yeah. Because it was just like the right thing. Yeah.

That really worked. Yeah, that's awesome. Love that. What was the most challenging in the sense of the objective was pretty difficult and the execution was maybe even more difficult.

One of the most challenging projects, we're working on this currently and it's gonna be taking place next year, but it's announced. We're working with the National Association of Manufacturers to change the perception of manufacturing in America.

Yeah, I saw some of the videos that you've done on that.

Yeah, yeah, we really work a lot with manufacturers and the groups that represent them here, and this campaign called Creators Wanted is a nationwide campaign to change the perception of manufacturing in America, and that's pretty challenging. 26% of parents have a negative view of manufacturing in some way. And so what we're really trying to do is change that because the industry is going to have a gap of jobs by 2028 of 4.6 million. And so this campaign, we, in partnership with them, have designed is to basically, it's an 18-week tour across the country. We're building an immersive mobile experience that includes a gamified escape room-like experience for kids to see what modern manufacturing is. To see that the innovations that are occurring, that what is going on now. And I think it's a challenge because this is about shifting perceptions of an entire industry that's very different, but also doing something that's extremely impactful because the fact is that manufacturing is the backbone of America and it's where the majority, the people that are making those things, having created a ton and kind of made us move us forward in the way that we never have before. So that's, I think, a really challenging one. A fun one, very fun one, but it's a challenging one because of the objective is so large. Perception change at that scale is difficult.

Yeah, very much so. Well, and you're speaking to a ready audience with that message because there's so many manufacturers that are still on the supplier side that listen to this podcast, you know, who are obviously— it's a $24 billion industry and that's just a fraction of the manufacturing world out there. I think you already covered this, but what about the most personally rewarding project for you?

The manufacturing one I personally enjoy a lot. Yeah. So I guess that's that.

Why do you enjoy that a lot yourself?

I think that it is, it's again one of these things where we're really trying to change an issue. There's real purpose behind that. Yeah. And a lot of the projects and a lot of the things, whenever there is more, I mean, I know for a lot of things, you know, that happens. Oh, I have a good one. It's actually not a project. Okay.

Are we talking about challenging or favorite?

Favorite. Okay. So one of, I think, the favorite things is not actually the products we do, but I think bring it back to the team. And Mikayla, who is in here, I am going to brag on you a little bit.

Awesome.

But no, this is, I think, a testament to what is— the projects change, they come and go, the clients do come and go in some ways too. We're always, I think, going to be doing really interesting things, but to us, a big point has been on focusing on that. And I think you have started a nonprofit in Haiti, a sustainable economic development program in Haiti. And Mikayla, when she joined your team, talked about this a little bit, but really didn't bring it, I think, to life and tell us all about it and tell more detail. This year, you went for 2 or 3 weeks down there to start this project. One of the coolest things I've seen is our whole team come together. We kind of like last, well, if anyone wants to contribute to this, she's going down there and building a school, let us know. The team across the board pulled money together and pulled this thing together and gave it off to Mikayla when she went down. That I think is a cool moment because it's about everybody here coming together in a way that made us all better. And also, yeah, it was a very cool moment.

Okay, let's talk about it. Ben just handed the mic to Mikayla, and she very reluctantly— she'd been fighting us this whole podcast about being on the SkewCast, but now we're getting to this project, personal project, this Haiti project.

Tell us about that. Okay. It's kind of a long story, but I started going to Haiti when I was 14 years old, and then when I went to college, I realized I wanted to start my own nonprofit. I had been going down with other nonprofits. Nonprofits, and I just didn't really agree with the way they did things. So I kind of started it during my grad school year of building my own organization. And so the organization is called L'Espoir, which is the Creole word for hope. Right now we're just a small school, and we do some local sustainable economic development work in the 9 village communities that we work in. We're in the rural mountains of Haiti, about an hour outside of the nation's capital, Port-au-Prince. And we are starting a very large fundraising effort to build a state-of-the-art school for all 9 villages instead of on a 5-village basis. Currently there's no public education in Haiti, so everything's private, and so students have to actually pay to go to school, and they— the average income for Haiti is $2.40 a month, so parents can't afford to send their 6 kids to school. So our goal is to actually have completely free education for all 9 villages, and it'll be completely Haitian staffed. My COO is Haitian, born and raised in the villages that we work in, and so he'll be our on-the-ground person and the go-to day-to-day, but really we just want to educate, employ, and empower the people of Haiti.

What did you do on this last trip that you were there?

What were some of the things you did? The last trip I was there, I actually built a house for a friend of mine that had passed away, his family. So his mom and his 5 remaining brothers, we built a house for her.

What kind of supplies do you need for this project now?

The long list?

Everything.

Where can we find— obviously you're an agency, we can find a website for this.

Yes.

Yeah.

So it's lespwaacademy.org. How do you spell that?

L-E-S-P-W-A.

And then academy.org.

Okay.

All right.

But yeah, so basically like any type of school supplies, building supplies, literally anything and everything we take, you know, clothes. They don't have money to buy really anything. So we accept any and all donations.

How do we get those donations to you?

Right now, we don't have a warehouse or anything. So I actually store everything in my parents' basement that are up in Massachusetts because I don't have one here. But then I usually just stuff over with me on a smaller scale, but eventually we'll actually have like shipping addresses and stuff that we can send on the larger scale.

How many students overall are we talking about?

Right now we have 55 students enrolled in our small school, but it can get up to about 450 students are in the villages.

Wow, okay, so that's, that's the goal, 450. What did the Advocate team do here as you were rallying around this cause?

It was amazing actually. I had no idea what was going on. They didn't tell you?

No.

It was a big surprise and it was really, really amazing. So I came from a job before this where I didn't really get a lot of time off. And so one of the biggest things is I wanted to focus on Haiti, but also be able to stay a professional career in business development marketing world. And so I came here to advocate. And so when I was a little nervous to actually ask for like 3 weeks off to go and do this, and they were like, absolutely, go ahead. Like, this is great. And that itself was rewarding enough that like I got to come to this amazing work environment where they let me take 3 weeks to go. Go pursue my dreams. And then we actually had a retreat and the day of the retreat was the day before I was leaving for Haiti and that's where they kind of like called me up and were like, well, the entire team donated and as Advocate, the 4 founders ended up matching the donation and it was just like the most amazing thing ever and helped put 100 kids through school for the next year.

So that was incredible. That is amazing. That is a cool project. Thank you for sharing that, Michelle.

You're welcome.

All right. We'll send links and then they can figure out how— Yeah, perfect. No, because there's so many suppliers who like have excess. Yeah, absolutely. And some of them can even find ways to ship because they're a little bit more like, yeah, depending how big they are.

Yeah, yeah. So, so a lot of our supplier friends will be listening to this, and I think this is an incredible cause. I'm sure we'll hear from some of them. Reach out to me, bobby@commonsque.com, and we can get you in touch with Mikayla. Ben, I loved something Mikayla said about your values here and that time to take off and things like— you're obviously a mission-driven organization, and that's baked also into the values of your employees and your team?

Yeah, you know, we have a set of values here and we talk about them and they come to life, I think, pretty much every day. It's one thing that I think we really focus for us, especially as we're growing, to keep those and make sure they stay true. I mean, there's the one that most contributes to that is kind of the better together philosophy. There's always like going at these things together, going out as a team, helping out in areas that aren't necessarily your area of responsibility. Are really important and the balance of that is. I think I mentioned one of the other ones before of like leveling up. We always believe in like taking things to the next level as well as outcome over income. If you focus on the outcome of something, the income will always follow.

Yeah.

If you focus on the income, it very rarely happens. Love that. And I think that's one that kind of rings true a lot. Outcome over income is I think one of the ones that we really strive to focus on in terms of delivery of, you know, what we're doing every day and it keeps that focus. So, I think there's a lot of focus there. Also, just own it is one of them, but owning the responsibilities and what goes along. These are complex projects in some cases, and throughout the day here, there's complex decisions being made. We kind of, as a team, have to own those decisions together and kind of move forward.

Yeah. That leads right to my next question. You kind of answered this in that you're passionate about real ROI for clients. What have you learned about measurement or impact with SWAG that might have surprised you before you began this journey? And I think you just summed it up, outcome over income, but in other words, now that you've had obvious success with creating amazing campaigns. How do you feel about the medium now as opposed to when you first started out?

Promotional products I think have a lot of strength, especially when an experience is used well. And I think it's the recall ability that, you know, actually as recently as today I was on the phone with somebody who had called me, one of our clients, was saying, "Well, I always think of you because your coaster's on our desk." So they actually do have an amazing recall ability. He remembers it because of an event that he came to to that was ours that he got it at. Right. Those sort of things that, that power that you hear the stories and anecdotes to when it's actually thoughtful and connected and something people use and keep is I think something that I always knew was about personal products, but I think we've really seen that measurement, that impact and how we can integrate it into things is really a focus for us. The more thoughtful and purposeful the products, the more they trigger the memories of that experience that they went. And that's really what we're trying to do is strengthen that relationship through that experience that they remember and was meaningful.

How many of you are, like most of your clients, on retainer?

It's a mix. We have a variety of model. We are project-based for the most part. We definitely have a split and some of our clients are just merchandise. So we have a pretty robust operation that is just clients that come to us for brand merchandise, promotional products. Most people come for the full service. Experience. So it is split. It's not very— most of our clients are on a— we do project-based, but there's mixes in how the pricing model works out. Okay. Okay.

How do you account for the strength of your revenue? Is it by discipline? Medium video produces this much revenue, promotional products—

do you look at it that way on the P&L, or is this based by experience, experiential marketing versus We look at our revenue based on client, so the growth of clients, we found that we, is most beneficial to us as a company and to our clients when we've established relationships and grown together. So our focus is on how do we do more for our clients across our services rather than, you know, having more clients. That's, I think, a focus area for us. There is, you know, the different tactical areas in which we operate We track that, monitor it, whatnot, but it's really, I think, the benefit of where we can establish a trust, a relationship, much like we do, you know, we're building better relationships through meaningful experiences, our mission. That's very much true when it comes to like how we're looking at revenue and the business health and growth is let's really focus on the relationship there and what we can, you know, do together.

Yeah. You guys are powered by CommsCue.

Correct.

With your promotional product. What has that experience been like?

Great. I mean, Commonsku, I actually remember when I first started in commercial products, it had just come out. It was kind of just coming into the industry, one of the first tools we used. And what I think is, in an industry that I think was slow to pick up on innovation, it really does feel like a bright spot in that area because it's really trying to connect people, I think, also some of the recent integrations with Promo Standards, kind of pushing the industry forward in that way have been great, and it's been a huge help in kind of the efficiency of our operation of that team.

Sounds like it's helped scale, you to scale that business, where you and I both know, because you first got into this, that it's a very difficult business to scale without the right tools.

Correct, and there's obviously challenges. I mean, coming a little bit of understanding of technology in that background, you know, I think that's one of the things that when I first entered the promotional products industry was most surprising to me was that, you know, there is this kind of lack of technology in some of the area, and it's grown, I think, over the last 5 years in a pretty big way, but it's still a long way to go. I think Comiskey's a bright spot in that.

You kind of covered culture. Do you want to touch on that more? I think we covered it, your team, your culture.

Yeah, the culture and the team. And the team is the most important thing to kind of how we're growing as a business. I think also the culture of where we are, you know, we're in Washington, DC, which is I think unique in some ways for marketing agencies, and we really do benefit the community. We've positioned ourselves not on K Street in Washington, but we're in Union Market, which is probably the most, one of kind of up-and-coming artistic, creative, strategic area in DC, and I think that's, we really want to like embody that and working with a variety of folks here.

Yeah, it's a very cool space. Folks that may not be familiar with this area, as I was cruising around a little bit, it's raining quite a bit, but this building, your office, everything, it's a very cool space. Great lab for creative work.

Yep. And it's actually our temporary. We're on our way, we're building another office across the street to be done in 2020. Okay.

You're a fast-growing business. We're talking fast-growing business. And with that comes the pressure of making many decisions quickly. What have you learned about making decisions quickly in a high-pressure business?

We've definitely learned a lot over 3 years, and I think still there's always more to be learned, but I think the speed of decision-making obviously can help contribute to the speed of growth, and the lack thereof, the consequences. And so I think we've definitely had some lessons in waiting too long or not.

Give me an example of one you can talk about.

So when we started, we were involved in politics still as a company. When we started, that was a background of some of our founders. It was something that we had, but it was as the country became more polarized as well and the type of work it was, it wasn't something that we wanted to do or our team wanted to do. And so while it was a difficult decision and took some time, we made the decision 2 years ago to move out of it entirely. And I think that was one where it's a hard one. You're giving up a lot of revenue, you're giving up potential, but at the end of the day, we're like, we really want to go in this direction of social impact and brand work, and that was holding it back. It's difficult, but it was helpful.

I don't mean to sound grandiose, but it almost sounds like you felt maybe this has been intrinsically personally as well as your leadership team felt that you can make a bigger impact on the world through that direction.

I agree, yeah. I think that if you kind of follow the space and a client of ours actually, Business Roundtable, recently came out with the new statement on the purpose of a corporation. Which was signed by 300 to 500 of the top CEOs in the country saying that the purpose of a corporation is no longer just to generate shareholder value. It's to benefit the community, it's to benefit employees, it's to benefit the world. And that sort of directional shift by the leaders of the top companies in the world, I think, says a lot about the direction that things are heading. Companies are governments in themselves and have the ability to affect change there. So it's not just about politics anymore and what happens here. It's about how we move things forward.

Yeah. Very John Mackey, conscious capitalism approach.

All right.

You're going to tell me not to go this direction probably, but tell us more about Ben if you have time. What are you doing when you're not working? Who is Ben? Like, you got started in politics.

Yes, but I don't do politics anymore. I'm not a super political person. Yeah. I don't know. Do I do much outside of work?

Does he not work?

I don't know. No. I mean, I enjoy Washington. DC is great. Like I love DC. I, like I said, grew up in West Virginia, went to school in Boston, but I always knew growing up in West Virginia, you know, it's kind of a small, it's a small state. I grew up in a smallish town. Yeah. Always wanted to kind of like go to a big city and whatnot. So in college had that opportunity and I went to school in Boston. Boston's great, but I think when I— I lived in New York for some time as well, but DC is, I think, kind of, it's a city that I really love. It's somewhere I've been here for a while. I really enjoy how unique it is. I mean, it has— everybody here is here for a reason and there is a lot of driven and purpose behind it. But at the same time, it's a place that can have fun at the same time and be different and culturally relevant. Yeah. Interesting.

That's cool. Final thoughts on promotional products?

Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think promotional products is— I mean, it's a $24 billion industry with a lot of value. I always constantly, when I'm talking about it, like I do, I think it's good to reframe it. As this is not just about the number of things we can put in people's hands, it's about what is the purpose and meaning behind that, which we've already talked about here several times. I think the more and more that the industry focuses on that, focuses on how these are in-person experiences that can be scaled but ignite that, that's a direction of growth and opportunity because that's what's going to be needed to, I think, influence consumers and influence actions and beliefs in the future. But there's definitely a change. There's many great things and, you know, interesting suppliers always doing something different. There's innovations that are occurring. There's changes. And I think distributorships are changing. The industry is moving in directions. There's always challenges too.

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