189. Mic Drop: The Final Broadcast of Marketing Madmen

Description: After nearly three years and 190 episodes, host Nick Constantino signs off Marketing Madmen with a bold, honest look at lessons learned, battles won, and the future of marketing. From agency letdowns to Vegas trade show wins, this finale is part retrospective, part real-talk masterclass on what modern marketing really demands.

🧠 Key Takeaways:

• Why Nick stepped away: prioritizing quality over quantity in content
• The downfall of modern agencies—and what brands need instead
• Radio's underestimated impact in a short-form video world
• Lessons from JCK: networking, brand power, and over-the-top luxury marketing
• Sales vs. marketing alignment, and what actually builds brand equity
• The tension between performance and brand marketing in 2025’s ROI culture
• Why not chasing trends was the strategy all along

#MarketingMadmen #NickConstantino #DigitalMarketing #AgencyLife #CMOChronicles #LuxuryMarketing #JCK2025 #SEO #BrandStrategy #MarketingPodcast

patreon.com/TheMarketingMadMen: https://www.nick-constantino.com/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

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They say marketing is a madman'sgame and boy has it been.
But unfortunately our time on the radio is up and this is our
last show for now on radio. So sit back, listen, enjoy a
motion roller coaster, watches me and Trip bid a fair do to

(00:45):
radio. All that and more on today's
episode of the Marketing Mad Men.
They say marketing is a madman'sgame.
So now we turned it over to the marketing madman, Whitney
Constantino and Trip Joe. Happy Saturday.
Welcome to the marketing amendment trip.
Job and Nick Constantino live from the battery back together.
Oh my. Goodness, it's been an eternity,

(01:06):
man. I feel like we've gone through
more change somehow. Two of us together in the past
six months and I don't think anyone ever started when we
started doing this thing. No, I mean, shoot, this thing
started, what was it, 4, a little over 4 years ago.
Is that the station? Yeah, Yeah, it was April.
It was April. So now it's, Yeah, things have
evolved quite a bit. And with the well, first with

(01:28):
the show and with us and everything else it's been, it's
been quite a ride for four years, so.
Yeah, that it has. And we're speaking like this is
the end, because unfortunately for now, this is the end.
This will be the last radio showfor at least the foreseeable
future. I'd like to keep the podcast
going. Chip and I will work on that.
But to be honest with you just and we'll talk about kind of the

(01:50):
job changes and and the pressures we have on us, but the
time just doesn't allow it. And the time would allow it, but
it wouldn't be done to the quality that I think that we
want to do it towards. Yeah, well, and I think it's
something we can talk about too about the challenges.
I mean, you're seeing it now andyour new role as CMO, and I saw
it as well, is, you know, when do you need not just campaigns,
but even, you know, long term commitments.

(02:13):
At some point you, you have to figure out when you have to
break away, when you need to move, switch things around,
break them up. You know, there's times for
everything. Yeah, and it's so much harder
nowadays because the process of restarting it is so hard.
Like you remember even when I came in and took over what we
were starting to to now and likethere's got to be a YouTube
show, there's got to be shorts. There's just so many XYZ pieces,

(02:36):
but without those pieces, you'renot fully penetrating.
It's that same mixed funnel marketing.
You got to get be a little bit of everywhere and a little bit
to everyone. And then that's the part I don't
have recording the show. Super easy doing a radio show.
But to be honest with you, the amount of people who have
stopped me and said they've heard it, it's all different
places. It's YouTube, it's Instagram,
it's LinkedIn, it's the radio show.

(02:56):
So that's what we don't have time for.
And as opposed to sitting here and half assing it and winging
it, I think it's time and it's it's a sad day trip.
Honestly, it's been a blast. Yeah, no, absolutely.
And I think, I mean, I think when we're engaged, when we're
able to do it to the ability, I mean, it's been fun.
That's why we got to 100 and 9089 episodes.
And I think you know it, it showed.
I think it showed in the people who wanted to be involved and

(03:18):
the the people comments we wouldget.
But when you can't do it and be engaged like that, I think
that's where you do have to question things.
We are going out as Jordan on the Bulls, not Jordan with the
Wizard. I will leave it.
I will leave it at that with my only sports metaphor for the
day. We will leave as Jordan from the
Bulls. You know, so, so look, it's been
years now. We've had a lot of guests on,

(03:40):
right? And, and honestly, as I go
through old ones and part of this is going to probably be
recycling old episodes, shootingthem down to 25 minutes best of
because we got so many gems of wisdom.
But I will tell you that, like, if I look at this as a learning
experience, I probably learned more from these 100 or so
episodes than I have from anything else I've ever done.
I mean, because you're taking people in the fire, getting

(04:03):
their perspective. But again, we didn't talk to CM
OS because CMOS would give you the pre canned response and the
same 6 bullet points that you have to have.
They're not going to give you the oh crap moments.
They're not going to give you that real peek behind the
curtain. And I think what turned out in
my head to be our biggest weakness turned out to be our
biggest strength. And the weakness is like, you
know, we, I want, we need the CMO of Coca-Cola.

(04:25):
That is one of the worst people to talk to in the world.
There's nothing of value. They're going to say.
They're going to say in the. Same 17 pre.
Canned responses because they have a brand to uphold.
So I'd rather talk to the sales guy that's been there for 30
years. Let me tell you how it really
goes. That's who I want to talk to.
So I think that's probably my proudest thing of all.
This was not guarding people because of their name or because

(04:48):
of their social media followers.It was because we let genuine
stories that are not told come out and I couldn't be more proud
of that. Well, and I think the other
thing at times we, we also brought people on that had made
a change, right? They might have been doing
something new. They might have, you know, move
to the area, but I think a lot of times where we had people
that were not doing the same thing for the last 10 years back

(05:10):
to your point. And people came in with a fresh
perspective of what their learnings were in the past and
how they were taking it into their their new business.
I mean, I mean, I think of restaurants, I think of, you
know, some agencies, I think of entrepreneurs, people that got
into, you know, like charitable give back type ideas.

(05:30):
And I think a lot of those stories, and there's there's
tons of them about why they madethat shift and what they learned
and how they were attacking their new endeavor.
Yeah. And, and again, I think that
that disruption and that change is if I'm talking about what I
look for in employees, I don't look for, Hey, I went to school
and I did this and I had a really high grade and I've been

(05:52):
doing this all my life. I look for, I handled adversity
and this is how I came through it, right?
So one of the things that I've really there are no right
answers, OK, There are times when there are right answers
when money is free and the economy is booming, There are
right answers when social media is brand new and when you're one
of the first couple 100 companies in there are answers.
But right now, the way virality works, anything that works

(06:15):
spreads so quickly that it doesn't work anymore.
It the the pace of change. So anytime like let's say you
know, you, I see it now like there's this guy like, oh, I
have the best algorithm. Then he puts it on Instagram.
Well, then everybody has it and it's worthless now.
So the pace of change is so quickly that I think the people.
All right, I'll do one more sports metaphor.
Well, go ahead. And then one more sports

(06:36):
metaphor, right? It's a Tyson, right?
It's not how hard you punch, it's how hard you can get
punched. And what I found is half of the
job is taking hard punches. Well, it's what you do after you
get hit in the face. I mean that that's the old, the,
the Tyson thing too, is how do you respond?
And I think right now, which is actually ties into what I was
going to say is, you know, the last four months I've seen it

(06:57):
and I've been, I have not been here very much.
I've been on the road quite a bit, but dealing with customers
who are basically frozen by the uncertainty that we saw, whether
it was tariffs, whether it was political policies, but people
did not want to make any decisions in Q2.
I actually had a few that just said Nope, we implemented a

(07:18):
freeze on everything. You know we will talk to you
again in July. Yeah, yeah.
And and look, I'm not going to criticize individual business
practices, but it's the wrong move.
And I, and I'll tell you why though, it's the wrong move
because one, the pace of change is so rapid that three months
off can feel like 3 years. And #2 like you're not.
By by doing that, your job is tore reevaluate, but all you're

(07:40):
doing is analysis paralysis. By analysis, all you're doing is
over analyzing. You have moved the instinct out
because if you think from March to June, the instincts that you
applied in March are going to apply in June, you're a fool.
That's not the way this works anymore.
The pace of change is so rapid right now.
And I, and I'll give you a couple of great examples, right?
So TikTok is a great example. OK, TikTok ban, it's unbanned,

(08:03):
it's banned, it's unbanned. Should people be on it?
Like, OK, well, let me give you the easy answer.
One, are you targeting young people?
2, do you have compelling content?
Three, do you care if they buy or not?
Because if you think they're going to buy because I saw a
TikTok video, you're out of yourmind, the amount of touch points
you need. So if you're trying to influence
a younger generation, then you should be on TikTok, whether
it's illegal or not, because that's where these kids are.

(08:24):
But if you think you're going tomagically find the secret hidden
sauce to turn TikTok into a conversion mechanism, you're out
of your freaking mind. It doesn't work.
Yeah, that's going back to the basics of and that's not
following trends or what someoneelse is doing or someone what
they heard. I agree, but at the same time,
Facebook is so over saturated that the opportunity actually is
on TikTok because there's less people, because people are

(08:44):
uncertain. So if you are trying to
accomplish that, you should be on TikTok.
And what happens in March may not even happen in June.
So, and I know B to B, the salesprocesses are much slower, but
you know, I, I think that's one of the biggest things is you
just, we, I've come to learn that one, you got to find really
good partners. You got to meet with people who
are willing to take the punches with you, not throw you under

(09:06):
the bus when it happens. And that's unfortunately the
nature of business right now is everyone just makes excuses for
everything. Well, I think it's the key.
I mean, when you do those partnerships, so you say or
look, are you willing we're going to ride some waves up and
we're going to ride some waves down, but are we committed to
doing this for X period of time?Yeah, and and you know, money
talks and BS walks like how are we committed to this?
What is the commitment, right? Because if you're going to say

(09:27):
you're going to commit to me, but all of a sudden there's a
mistake made and instead of going to fix it, you're blaming
Facebook, then you're not a partner, right?
I, I pay you to manage this accounts fully own it or get out
of the way. And that seems to be what's
happening. And look, we'll talk probably in
the next segment. A lot of the disruption that's
happened, especially in the marketing industry in the and,
and the agency world. But that was one of the other

(09:47):
things is finally what we reallywanted to do was get a
perspective from the agencies because we were both so anti
agency. So we gave them a chance.
I was thinking that would be themiddle segment.
We could really dive into that alittle bit.
So. How much time you.
Got. Yeah, well, I figured that's why
we got 22 minutes there. We really.
Spend a lot of time. I do want to give a quick shout
out. So one of our lovely guests,

(10:08):
Joanne Harold, she was a lot of help for us throughout all of
this. And we have her lovely daughter
Lily with us in the room. And she is, she is my intern for
the summer and she's doing a wonderful job and she kicks ass
and takes names and you know, wefigure something out about
jewelry. I don't know anything.
So we're learning to fly. We'll probably have her join the
last segment to talk about how Iam to be around and what a what

(10:28):
a douche bag I am. We'll probably have something
like that in the last segment. So all right, trip.
So we got, we got 2 minutes leftin this talk a little bit about
just give people some perspective on where you've been
travelling, what the meetings are like, what the day-to-day
is, because it's got to be so different than when you were
sitting in the paper industry and marketing.
Yeah, no, I think a lot of what we've done and, and I, most of
my time spent the spring was really thought leadership and

(10:52):
content. So I mean, I ended up speaking I
think 5 or 6 different times at conferences and events, got to
give a keynote speak speech and also sit on an executive panel
at the one of the paper industrybig events during the year.
But you know, now we're, we're getting into other areas, we're
getting into new technology, carbon capture with the

(11:15):
greenhouse gas and dealing with things that have some influence
in politics as well as industry.But that's probably the biggest
thing. It's just been, you know,
because of the uncertainty, people are looking for experts
and insights and things to do. So I ended up being out on the
road a lot more at various conferences and trade events and

(11:37):
even customer sales meetings andthings like that, giving a
perspective of the industry. So I, I, I say basically I spent
the second quarter of the year on Delta is probably the the
best way to look at it. Yeah, well, look, I'm, I'm, I'm
happy that you were doing it in person and not doing it in Teams
and Zoom, because you're not a thought leader.
If you're on a Zoom call. I don't care what anybody says.
There's no thought leadership, Thought leader said.

(11:58):
Get me in front of people. If you don't have that personal
connection, it's over. And that was the key.
I mean, in most of the places I went, I will say is these
conferences people were back andthey were packing the rooms.
And I mean, one case we about 600 people and you know with the
keynote address and you know, some others we had companies
that were bringing all of their,you know, sales teams back in,
you know, a hundred 120 people global sales team.

(12:20):
So that part people are are spending again and realizing
there is value and having that insight.
So that's good to see. So yeah.
Yeah. And we'll come back from the
break. I'll talk a little bit about the
the trade show. I went to the JCK, the it's
about 50,000 people in Vegas forthe largest jewelry Expo in the
world. So that was my first time ever
attending a trade show as a business person, not as a person

(12:40):
who gets to go to CES and maybe the AVNS, I don't know.
I'll talk about that one. Of the things, when we come
back, we'll dive into that, but I also want to get we'll get a
little bit of Nicks update. And So what you've been doing
over the last few months. So when we come back, we'll hit
those topics and you've been listening to the marketing Mad
Men on Extra 106.3. We'll be right back.
Big news pepperoni fans, Marco'sPizza is celebrating America's

(13:04):
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(13:25):
California California prices higher Limited time Limited time
only price of participation Mayberry Pizza restrictions may
apply. See participating source for
details. Now back to the marketing Mad
Men on Extra 106.3 FM. Welcome back to the marketing
Mad Men trip job and Nick Constantino here live from the
battery and you know I gave a little bit of my update for the

(13:45):
last three or four months. I will say one one thing and
then it will get your update is I do see in the more and more we
talked about it. There is a difference between
what I would call conferences, seminars and trade shows.
And maybe we'll we'll come back to that because I think you got
some funny stories about trade shows and, and all I'll say is I
think there is a big difference.I mean, trade show is the

(14:07):
prototypical walk around in exhibit hall and that's all
there is there versus, you know,maybe conferences, seminars,
training sessions. Well, you forgot hanging you.
Forgot hanging out with Snoop Dogg?
Because that. Was a part of it also.
That's true. But anyhow, so Nick, get us up
to speed. What's what's life been like now
that you've switched switched roles?

(14:28):
Yeah, you know, First off, just a shout out to David Dickey and
and 680 the fan and extra 106 three throwing out allowing us
to do this. When trip, when I started guest
hosting with trip, it was reallyjust, you know, we didn't really
know what this was. I mean, the station was brand
new. Who the Hell's doing a marketing
show on radio? Almost nobody.
So, you know, they they they hadfaith in me And honestly, I gave

(14:50):
up a really good gig here in thepublic spotlight in media.
What I loved. I was in habits.
I was doing things. It was easy because I had the
repetitiveness of doing it to take a new job in a new industry
that I know nothing about. So I left sales to go into
marketing. God knows the influence this
show had on it, but to go into marketing and and from that
point I took over as the chief marketing officer of one of the

(15:13):
bigger jewelry stores ironicallyin the country that I found out
so a lot similar with six a the fan family owned business
antiquated practices because it's been doing the same way for
so long. It has not had the disruption.
Private equity has not come in and change things.
There's no automation. It is literally families handing

(15:33):
the business down to their youngto their kids.
So it's just been, it's been fascinating one to take over
Acmo role to having no formal marketing training experience to
being Acmo. So what do I do?
Have a question, Was there anyone in that role or was this
finally a newly created? Role.
No, no, there was. There were 22 year old marketing

(15:54):
directors that they expected to come in and really do some
social media, organize the radio, but there was no strategy
or implementation. All of the data was fragmented.
The passwords were off for who'slogging in where.
The pictures were scattered all over the place.
So it's not in my nature to justsit back and organize.
So like, I didn't organize untilthe interns came in and they

(16:16):
were helping me organize. We hit the ground running and
look out. This is what I'll tell you.
Any industry that has not had private equity come into it is
better in a better spot because you're not being squeezed at
margins. You're able to make decisions
based on long term, midterm and short term business plans.
And what I found the hardest butalso the most rewarding is, is

(16:37):
that everybody's got great ideasfor three months, right?
No one knows how those three months are going to help you
three years down the road. And a lot of the insights we've
had with who we've met with and a lot of my marketing that I've
been trained on in, in long termbrand are long, long term plays.
And once you can convince somebody the value of their

(16:57):
brand and how that drives the value of their revenue, it is an
easy thing to market, but it's ahard thing to get yourself in
that point. So that's probably been the
hardest thing is just the, the, the difference between brand
marketing and performance marketing.
It's, it's, it's misunderstood everywhere.
It's not something you can teachbecause performance marketing
didn't exist. The kids that are in college now

(17:18):
may know about it, but they're not CM OS, they're not
executives. Yeah, And you're getting, you
know what? What have you done for me
lately? And you're in a consumer
environment where people hear and see things and they're like,
wait a second, why didn't this work?
Because we did this a week ago. Yeah, And look, we're in an
advantage, right? And this is this is to give
credit to the Solomon family, but 90% of our traffic comes in

(17:40):
people Google us by name, they search for us by name, right?
So all the disruption you hear with with answer engine
optimization and AI, if they're looking for you by name, none of
that matters. So the hard heavy lifting was
already done and it was done because they were on radio for
40 years and I will stick to it to this day.
The biggest problem, and I guesswe could start our rant on

(18:00):
agencies now, is that because ofthey're so singular focused,
they don't understand the goldmine that they were just
handed, right? Imagine you working it as an
agency to a company who 90% of their traffic was people
searching them by name. How easy is your freaking job,
right? Pay per click works better
because people recognize you. Social media ads work better
because people recognize you. The site is already SEO

(18:21):
optimized. You walked into a goldmine and
instead of sitting there realizing that their natural
instinct is that you should comeback from radio.
So I don't know the answer to this.
But I'm going to pretend that you.
The 190 or so episodes we had, how many agencies do you think
we had on? A dozen, I would say.
I would say a dozen. Yeah, somewhere in the.

(18:42):
Team. I'd say a dozen.
I'd say a dozen. So and sometimes they.
Exist anymore. Some of them don't even exist
anymore. Well, I was going to say, not
that, look, there's always differences, but how much did we
hear different, do you say, during those dozen or so
episodes? I heard the same 14 words
restructured probably by AI 14 different ways.
But and look, I'm very understanding because at the

(19:05):
same time in the role, I walked into pretty much an ownership
role, right? My payment structures are on
profit. Like I don't care how many
people came to the website. My I'm more concerned with do
the salespeople have the tools to accomplish their goals, which
is why I think it's been successful so far.
But running a business is hard. It's hard to interview people.
It's hard to find staff. People's motivations are

(19:26):
different. They don't stay for the same
reasons. Manpower is expensive.
And most importantly, nobody wants to do work.
Nobody wants to do the grunt work.
When I say grunt work, SEO sucks.
If you ever looked at SEM rush, it's 4000 options of which one
change may not make any impact for seven months.

(19:46):
It is. It is thankless work, is
thoughtless work, is awful work.And the biggest problem is what
everybody wants to do now is they want to strategize.
They want to, but nobody wants to actually do the work.
So we have a cultural, structural problem with
marketing, not an agency problem, but the agencies I
believe are actually least equipped.
To handle the change of what's coming.

(20:09):
That's the. That's my big.
Beef. Well, I think there's two
things. One, yeah, it's the shiny new
ball syndrome that I've seen over and over over again for two
to three decades, right. So I think that's somewhat of
what some agencies chase and oh,this is what's going on out
here. Here's why we're going to be
different. We're going to be able to show
you that. That's what I mean, that's
always been out there, whether it was, you know, moving into,

(20:32):
you know, TV or other ad spaces or digital, whatever.
Being said to be to be fair, being a first in can be
immensely changing, like ever changing for a business if you
do it right. That's the key.
And if someone truly understandsI mean or gets lucky, we can go.
Into the OR gets. Or gets lucky, we can go into
the whole programmatic. That's another rant.
I know we can get on, Yeah. And there's a lot of.

(20:54):
People, we can talk about that because that that's another one
like that's an programmatic is actually much easier to
understand than people give credit for if you know how to
place. And I came from a place where I
was on the other side selling the programmatic.
So I saw the dashboards. So and like, what are the so
look, I don't want to say make this sound malicious, right?
But one of the things that drives me crazy is I would

(21:16):
rather you lie to my face because you're a piece of crap,
then lie to my face because you're stupid and naive.
And when I'm seeing more and more, these people don't mean
harm by what they do. They just don't know what
they're talking about. Well, I guess that's part of
where I was going to is I think the agencies to do it well.
And the ones that make sense arethe ones who truly know what
they are and unabashedly about this is what we do and this is

(21:40):
what we do well. And this is what we don't do.
Yeah. And don't don't go off chasing
other things because you see this all we lost this account
because we didn't offer, you know, social media focus or
whatever. You know, it's think about what
you do well and sometimes you know what, guess what?
You don't need to do it all for somebody.

(22:01):
Yeah, and but from the other side, and there's now someone
who's in that CMO role, CMO's also do things that are not in
their core competencies that they shouldn't be doing.
I'll tell you right now, Facebook marketing has been the
bane of my existence now. So, so, and I'll tell you why
one, like everybody's got a different idea of what success
looks like, which keeps the industry on its toes with work

(22:22):
with, which works in Meta's advantage, right?
Everything is an excuse. Use.
So OK, the ads didn't perform well.
Well, the landing page sucked. OK, well, why don't you make me
a landing page? We don't do that.
OK, we made a landing page. The landing page is performing
better. The copy was terrible.
So why didn't you do that? We don't do that.
So instead of saying let me growthis for you, it is this is what
you did wrong. This is what you did.

(22:43):
This is what you did wrong. If I'm being a business hat, why
in God's name am I paying you totell me what I'm doing wrong?
Fix it. Take money out of the Facebook
budget to fix these things. And it is that you.
So you're talking about your core competency, right?
So if your core company is placing media every day that
passes, you are being less and less valuable because AI can
place the media. Anything that's transactional AI

(23:04):
can figure out in 6 seconds. The hard part is connecting to
an audience. The hard part is designing web
pages that convert. The hard part is.
So why am I paying somebody to do the easy stuff when and I'm
stuck doing all the hard stuff? That's what that's what doesn't
make sense. And that's the way I talk about
they don't want to do the hard work.
And if they do, I've done it so I know how long it takes.

(23:24):
So it takes me 15 minutes to design an ad.
You're going to charge me $3000 for something that take an hour
and a half? Who do you think you are?
So it's almost an unwinning situation.
And I've been told now by three different people, because I've
asked a lot of people and they all said at the same time if
there was a good agency out there, we would all be using it.
And they are not good. Their their models not built to

(23:47):
succeed right now. Yeah.
No, they're, I mean, and again, I think there, there are
agencies who do certain things very well, right, but.
Absolutely. No offense, but then my burden
is wrangling all these people together and all they try to do
is fight with each other like the best agency.
If you talked amongst yourselvesand came to me with a plan,
great. But that's not how it happens.
It does not happen this way. I can't even get my organic
social person and my digital, mysocial media agency to talk to

(24:10):
each other. Right.
And I, and I do think that is 1 slight difference between B to
B&B to C is because of the pace and because of some of that,
there is interaction. But you can bring a little more
specialist together because there's not, there's not
everything that needs to happen in the same week, so to speak.
Yeah. And so I think, you know, I've,

(24:31):
I've seen it, I've seen it done well.
I, I've not been as involved in the B to C space, but you know,
there you do. You probably need fewer.
But to your point, you've got tohave that understanding of the
full, you know, the full marketing cycle.
I think one of the things that Ithink is happening and it's
going to keep happening and I think there's a reason for it is

(24:52):
we're going to get to points where everything is done agency
out of house, everything goes inhouse, everything leaves in
house to go agency. And we're on the upswing
actually of people leaving in house because what happens with
in house is you're so no matter what the world is so financially
driven that you're so beholden to the company that you never
think outside the box and you don't look it with external
eyes. So like that, but that's where a

(25:13):
good age. What are you going to hire
strategy agency? So I'm going to spend 8 grand on
strategy agency that I could spend 8 grand to buy media with,
right? Like you, it's just there's no
answers to the questions. And, and you know, I love Jaron
Solomon, the guy that hired me that runs the business, but if
he knew the answers, he wouldn'thave hired me.
So there are no answers to philosophically hard questions,
which is what's made the industry so ripe for disruption

(25:35):
right now. And it's going to be, it's going
to be weird to see what happens over the next three to four
years. It really is.
Well, and and there's, I think part of that is there's so many
options out there too. Yeah, right.
And people are trying to deal with, again, should I be doing
this? Should I be doing that?
And how do you make those, how do you make those decisions?
Yeah, so. Well, and again, like the part
of this is, is that because they, every time you add more

(25:57):
jargon, you add more sales people and the sales people sell
on jargon. And then when you ask serious
questions, they don't know how to answer the serious questions.
So, you know, my, my advice simply is, is that you have to
have an inbound lead mechanism. But I, for most industries, I
say you have to be proactive agencies, not the need to start
being more reactive. Listen to what the needs are and

(26:19):
stop shoving stuff down people'sthroats.
So Lily and I are working on RFPright now and the RFP is going
to be very different than anyone's ever seen.
What did I say, Lily? Like I need 66 bullet points.
They, they started and their objective was like 14 pages
long. And I was like, guys, this is
the objective. The objective is make us money.
That's it. That's the only objective.
Make us more money. We need to be successful.
And then when it goes into what here are the places I think you

(26:40):
should categories, here is whereyou should look, make them do
the work. We have a brand already.
So I think that I wish that the RFP system was a little better.
You know, remember we had DanielWeiner on who runs.
You should talk to who is the conduit, who actually is the guy
who matches agencies up, right? I hate that his job exists
because it means that CMOS don'tknow how to talk to agencies.

(27:01):
Which means what should be invented is a is a platform
where CMOS can log in and see these agencies that are pre
vetted based on their core competencies.
And someone would make a billiondollars on that if that person
knew to market it and knew how to market it.
Which will never. Happen and knew how to quantify
it, right? I mean, I think that's probably
a key part of it, but quantifying?

(27:21):
Is easy, take 2% of every bit that goes.
The agency will pay 2% to have you make these matches up just
by having it on my point. I meant, I meant the core
competencies truly understand, going back to your point earlier
about someone who didn't just talk about what they do, but
they actually understood it. Yeah, and do it well.
So you I do want to go on the one topic that you kind of
opened up and you've heard me price talk about this 40 or 50

(27:46):
times, but is sales and marketing within the company.
And now that now that you've made the switch over, what are
your perspectives? You know, I saw one of the
classic cartoons the other day about, you know, sales going,
the lead stink and marketing's going.
The sales team doesn't know how to close.

(28:07):
So where where are you with thatnow that you're in your new?
New. So this is what I'm going to
say. If you really are given the keys
to the kitchen, that's BS. OK.
So if you have the consumer lifetime value, the average
sales transaction, the leads coming in, the profit, if you
have the real numbers, then all of that is just anecdotal and
salespeople are always going to sell themselves as a story.

(28:29):
So there's two things I did. One, when I signed my contract,
I signed myself into having fullaccess to everything, but with
an accounting accountability mechanism.
But this is how I was going to be paid, which means you have to
have access, right #2I contracted in my actual
marketing budget and can only bechanged on the profitability or
unprofitability of the company. So I'm not at the whim of
someone deciding it is contracted and that we're going

(28:52):
to spend this much money based on profit and, and all these
things. So those two things made my life
immensely easier because now I know what's really going on.
But the most important thing I did was make sure everybody
knows I was a sales manager for 15 years and a lot of the guys
had already known me because I've been the sales manager of
680 and went over there. So I said I go look guys, all
that matters is that you guys have the tools you need to

(29:12):
succeed. That is the only goal of
marketing, Okay. It worked really well for three
months. And then what happens is, is
that everybody sees that. I'm listening to everybody.
So they come in, the ideas get Dumber and Dumber and Dumber.
And it's not a criticism of people.
It's a criticism of they are singularly focused on their book
of business and closing deals. They're not thinking of the long

(29:33):
term. They're not thinking of, hey,
maybe it's worth taking margin on somebody, taking less profit
because they're going to come back for the next 10 years.
That is not how they are trainedto think.
They are trained to think of closing business in the right
now and again, unfortunately formost marketers, they are falling
to that same trap where it's always about 3 months, six
months, the business will not grow again.

(29:54):
If you want to grow, but what you're doing and what I you
know, I believe in this is look,sales and marketing leadership
first start having that dialogue, right?
And and you've got to have. We're in the right size company
for that. Vegas was a great example of me
and the sales director. And it was not to talk business.
It was to understand psychologically what motivates
each person. Is it money?

(30:14):
Is it success? Because once you psychologically
understand the person that you're working with both ways,
then you could have an honest, real to God conversation.
And you know, and what I found is that look, people, it's the
same as sales, right? People don't like you when
you're brash and ask the questions until they answer them
and they're like, wow, that was a lot easier than beating around

(30:35):
the Bush, thank God. And that is how business should
be conducted. It's just easier to have those
conversations. Yeah, I mean, cut, cut to the
chase at times and, and at leasthave that communication where
it's open and not the walls are siloed and you get back to the
finger pointing or, you know, this is what's important to me

(30:55):
today and not over the longer period of time.
But again, I've seen so many organizations that don't even
have that right. And the leadership doesn't
communicate. You don't understand where
you're working and and you end up going across purposes and
guess what? Then it goes all the way up and
then someone has to make a decision of this, this
organization's not working or this organization's.

(31:16):
Not working. And look, there's there's also
caveats to that. And one of the caveats is
marketing. People are better trained to
handle the problems that come along with business, right?
We need a new we need a new sales book.
OK, well, my title doesn't say sales, but this guy doesn't know
how to design in Photoshop. So I got to make a sales book.
So the problem is is that because people cannot card

(31:37):
compartmentalize like Nick, we hate the sales books ago.
You think I designed it? I was told what to put on it.
I just made it like so. And the other thing is, is that
even if you are sales adept, youcannot be giving advice or get
in in, in involved in what the sales department does because
that is the easiest way to puncha ticket to nowhere land, right?

(31:58):
If someone asks your opinion, Give your opinion.
But as a smart marketer, give itin a way that does not blame or
pick sides, but says here is theobservation to which I have
made. Because if you start saying that
you think you could run a sales department better, The burden of
sales is immensely harder than the burden of.
Market and they're full time jobs.
Both of them are full time jobs.Both of them are or full time

(32:19):
job in half. And so, but I mean again, you
can make yourself more aware anda suit of what's going on at
least by having the communication.
In any business. So tell me about Vegas.
You said you had. Some funny stories.
So we went to JCKJCK is the largest jewelry trade show in
the world. For some context, in the

(32:41):
Venetian and the Wind, there were a couple of 1000 vendors,
5060 thousand people, and probably 70% of the new jewelry
in the world was in that building at those times.
After some quick rudimentary fake math, there was enough
money in there in the insurance policies to be like the 5th or
6th largest GDP in the world. Like crazy stuff about the

(33:02):
amount of money they were jewelry.
There was a ring that I was holding that was a $2,000,000
ring wholesale. OK, so, so we met every one of
our partners, all these brands you buy, we're there on site
buying, We're meeting. I would go meet with marketing,
they would sell us their newest line.
Very heated conversations because like I've come to terms
with, I have the, the way the world of the transparency, like

(33:25):
SEM Rush is a great example. I know how many people are
searching any website in the world by just having a $200
subscription, OK. And I can know by our search
console how many people came in through our site by searching
for XYZ. So these brands job is to go in
and say we're the number one brand in the world.
And I go by what metrics and they go, well, it's very
complicated. I go, no, it's not.
Let me show you my metrics. And in that starts at first a

(33:48):
very heated conversation becauseI don't care what is happening
nationally or the magazine that claimed you, because I get
awards from freaking Ethiopia twice a week that says you have
won an award by a plaque. Like that's not what I care
about. So you meet with these people,
we have fun, we see jewelry. I know what it can be marketed.
I don't know what's going to sell in the store.

(34:08):
So then I break off with my marketing people.
But then we go out at night. We're wined and dined.
I mean, I went to Delmonico's byEmeril Lagasse 3 nights in a
row, which sounds like a dream until you realize that you've
gained 13 lbs. Right at my freaking gout is
acting up because I'm eating French onion bone marrow soup.
When the waiter, you know, just brings you your drink right when
you sit down, that's a little bit of a problem, right?

(34:30):
Well, and we did one at the Chef's Table.
Shout out to my boys at Amden because we sat at the Chef's
Table and we were cracking retail price $1000 bottles of
wine, the Monaco's price five $6000 bottles of wine.
So like, it was wonderful. It was a great experience.
I learned more than I ever have.I know about the industry.
I know how the pricing works. Like I was absorbing like a
sponge and we would interview all the CE OS of these companies

(34:52):
and I was up waking up at 5:00 in the morning to put the
content out live because the hashtags were active then.
So I wanted to be the first out and we really made a big stink
at the show and I was personallyseen next to every CEO of every
jewelry company. Two different people tried to
poach me away and hire me with Jaron there like it.
We did. We went about it as well as we
could have. That being said, it was the

(35:15):
first year. Wait till you see next year.
The only thing I'm going to say is there will be costumes and I
will be wearing costumes. I will be in the most
ridiculous. I will just be.
The Hamburglar. It was a spectacle.
Lily slapping a little bit. There's an inside joke there,
but yeah, so. Well, that's neat, no?
And so, yeah, it sounds like a little different than the
traditional trade show out there.

(35:36):
So sounds like a little higher end, a little more.
It it it was immensely it was immensely higher end to think
about. If you think about it, I just
said the win in the Palazzo. So you're at the two most
prominent, probably side by sidecasinos down there.
So it was it was wild, but it was fun.
And if you use those opportunities to learn.
And the only thing I'm going to say is I want to really give

(35:57):
credit to Jaron because two things.
One, I told him that I need to be trained on sales and he's
like, shut up. You'll figure out in Vegas.
And two, he brought me along as his number two guy and he's one
of the biggest names in the industry.
So I was immediately trusted andimmediately valued and had
credibility, which is not something that most people walk
into, and I was very thankful for that.
That's really helpful. Well, hey, when we come back
from the break, we'll do a few more learning so and.

(36:18):
Then the final sign off, baby. All right, well, you've been
listening to the marketing Mad Men on Extra One O 6.3.
We'll be right back. Big news pepperoni fans, Marco's
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(36:39):
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details. Now back to the Marketing Mad

(37:00):
Men on Extra 106.3 FM Welcome back to the Marketing Mad Men,
Nick Constantino and trip job here.
And I think this is the final sign off bud.
So I think we do some tips, someadvice, and then we do our fair,
our farewells to the wonderful radio world.
So what do you got? You go, you go.
First, give me a couple of thankyous and a couple of ending
notes and we'll rattle back and forth and we'll rock'n'roll that

(37:22):
way. Well, thank you.
I mean, you said it before, but David Dickey for taking the
chance and having a vision to put some local content together
and that, you know, marketing might be of interest to anyone
and that we might, you know, make it more than a month for
sure, which that's that's one. And then I actually bumped into

(37:42):
him on the street the other night, but he's still here.
But you know, Tug Howard took usunder his wing when we got
started. And I mean, shoot, I outside of
doing some marketing interviews and things of that nature, I'd
never, you know, been in front of a microphone very often.
And so do a lot of thanks to Tug.
And then Nick, you've been great.
I mean, shoot, when I was probably losing a little bit of

(38:05):
momentum when you kind of jump from guest host into full time.
And as I was shifting into beingon the road quite a bit, able
to, you know, really pick up theback end of your your comments
before, how do we make this better?
How do we do all the things thatcan promote the show?
So thank you. Yeah, I think all three of you
and it's just been a fun experience for the last four
years. Yeah, I would be remiss to not

(38:28):
to give like a general thank youto the radio industry.
I've been in it in a lot of years in my life and it's still
amazing to me. It's one or two things happen.
One, the sales people that I'm dealing with are the best sales
people in the world or they really have people that listen
to this show. And you know, just so I can be
clear, podcasts are stupid. OK, unless you're Joe Rogan,
unless you're say say my name, whatever those big ones are,

(38:51):
nobody cares about your podcast.Nobody is listening, right?
They will listen for 4 minutes specs to say they heard it
because a friend did Nobody's listening.
That being said, the amount of people that tune into to this
radio show, and I'm not saying it's a million, but if 23000
people turn in a week, man, you're reaching 2 or 3000 people
that who knows what impact. You have a couple thousand more

(39:12):
than I ever expected. So what my what I'm generally
saying is is 1 Don't fall victimto the hype.
If you're going to be in podcasting, find someone that
knows what they're talking about.
The industry is so easy to manipulate.
The same thing with these influencers.
If you have the ability to advertise in radio and you can
spend your time building your brand, do it.
There are plenty of people who want to help you and honestly,
all I know about radio people isthey care and they want to help

(39:34):
you succeed. Now they may not be empowered to
let let you succeed or have the tools to do it, but they
genuinely care, which is more than I have gone from almost
every single digital agency I'veever interacted with.
They take you for granted because they are the new hot
thing, even though they're not anymore.
So I would just generally want to say thank you to radio and
just for, for what radio has provided me, because this really
is me not only signing off of this show, but it's signing off

(39:56):
of the radio industry, which is a little depressing.
And there's a tear coming down my eye.
Not really. But it's, it's been a, it's been
a hell of a ride. Yeah.
And thanks to our guest. I mean, shoot, we, we could take
the rest of the time. Don't worry, Lily.
Lily's going to go through my list and tag all of them to make
sure we get the maximum LinkedInreach.
Don't worry about. That no, it's appreciate all the
people who've been on and sharing their insights and their

(40:17):
thoughts and you know, just hopefully having a fun
conversation for, you know, 45 minutes each time we had someone
on. Yeah, yeah.
I think the one thing I think I what I learned the most from
this is how important interviewing somebody is.
But what I got out of it selfishly was the ability to ask

(40:37):
questions to get people the, theanswers that I want them to
give, right? Like a good journalist doesn't
ask questions that they want to know the answers to.
They want they, they ask questions they want you to give
the answers to. So you bait people into
questions. And it really what you're trying
to do is disarm, build rapport, all the things we've learned in
sales. But this really helped me me me
more when I meet with somebody, understand how to process, think

(41:00):
in real time, answer questions, and then listening to it at 1
1/2 speed absolutely helped me because I'm already fast and
having to listen to myself at 1 1/2 speed I've just speed me up
immensely. Good for good or bad, I've yet
to find out. Yeah.
Well, and I think doing some prep work, but not overly prep,
I think that was my biggest learning prey in the first six
months to when things started toprogress.
Sometimes, you know, going back to over analyzing, over prep,

(41:23):
you you need to understand what you're going to talk about, have
some themes, but be able to to go where the conversation takes
you. Yeah, and that's one of the
hardest things about being structured for radio, right?
Like 1312 minutes, 13 and 9 is really hard, 12 minutes, 23
minutes and 9 is really hard because realistically you would
want the first segment to be thelongest because if it sucks then

(41:44):
you can pivot at the end. But really it's hard to do that.
So we've had a couple where the 9 minute we're just like, Oh my
God, this is atrocious. Let's completely talk about
something different. Like I recently I had one and we
changed to music and it turned out to be great.
The other thing that I've learned, like when you talk
about SEO and the Google algorithm, man, do not pretend,
you know, because some of the shows I thought would do the

(42:05):
best were the biggest duds. And some of the shows that I
thought were complete turds did so well because of what the
algorithms are searching for what they want.
They they want content that is in demand.
And like I thought like NFL receivers and PGA golfers and
it's like womp, womp. They're already on like that
weird chef that was talking about nightshade fruit #1 down

(42:27):
though Like it's just you just have no idea.
I have no. Idea they've been some ones I
thought are really interesting Dan I'm drawing a blank of his
last name but talking about the adaptive entertainment that's a
good dude I thought that one culture that was one of my
favorite yeah culture city that was one of my favorites we've
done over the last couple years so.
Yeah, yeah. I, I, I really did enjoy the

(42:47):
conversations with the agencies.I really liked.
And I'm drawing on blank on his name, but the, the CMO of
Carter's I think was thought wasreally good because he's, he, he
was a bro and he had real conversation and he wasn't
sheltered off. And he said, you know what, like
I don't know if I'm doing a goodjob.
He goes, how would I know that he goes like they kept, they,
they keep me. So like, and that's part of the
problem with a corporation. If you don't see the numbers,

(43:08):
you don't have access. Like you're giving reports to
which other people are dictatingwhat you see.
So it could be very easy to makeyou look good or bad.
So yeah, I honestly, if I went back and picked, I'll probably
do some top ten lists. You know, I want to keep the
content fresh. We'll probably keep doing some.
There's going to be opportunities for this.
The YouTube page has done incredibly well.

(43:29):
I think we'll keep going. But I just think, for what it's
worth, to do the radio show the right way and that is the bread
and butter of this whole operation.
It requires time that I don't think either of I are willing to
put in. Well, I think we hopefully we've
built a little bit of a brand that you can now we can
reposition it a little bit so that the brand doesn't become
stale. And just to try to do it the
same, the same pace, the same engagement that we've had, it's

(43:53):
going to hurt the brand. So, yeah, yeah.
And I think, you know, look, you're at the age and part of
your career where public speaking is something that is of
value to you, right? I'm just not there yet.
That doesn't benefit our company.
Enough with the ducks are not ina row.
We're not where we are. We're not in a point where we've
reached growth stagnation. We're trying to expand.
It's not thought leadership time.
Realistically, in my ideal world, this show was the conduit

(44:16):
to make me to go do the thought leadership in the speaking
events. But to be honest with you, like,
I mean, other than obviously Trip talking about paper at a
freaking conference, they're terrible.
Nobody has any value whatsoever.No, on on the radio it doesn't
care. I can get 2-3 hundred people to
listen about carbon capture. From high intense people who are
in the industry to which you caninfluence by saying the right

(44:37):
things, right? Marketing is really, really,
really hard, right? So one of the I actually went
went to a really nice event witha Google guy and at Georgia
State and they at the aquarium, they really laid out a good plan
of what the future is and the future is sheer uncertainty.
They weren't saying that the future is XYZ.
They're saying we have no freaking clue what it is.

(44:58):
So like get ready for a. Ride, but yeah, get ready to
adapt, right. And I think hopefully over the
last couple years, so you've heard a lot of that and that
there is no playbook, right And you have to listen, you have to
use your gut, use some numbers and adapt and and be in front of
customers. I guess that's the last thing I
would leave is we talked. I remember Bruce Cal, our first
guest talked about sit in front of customers.

(45:20):
Yeah, it didn't work so well forthem, but we'll save that
conversation right another time.So, yeah, all right, well, we're
we're coming to the end, Nick. It's been a pleasure.
It's been fantastic. And and I know we'll do a few,
as you said, whether it's a podcast or otherwise, but I've
enjoyed it and thank you for allyour time.
Well. Thank you again, David Dickey.
Thank you extra Thank you Jaron Solomon.

(45:42):
Thank you, Trip. Thank you, Darren Rand, one of
the guys who originally started this.
All of our guests, It's been a hell of a ride.
It's been one of the better accomplishments in my life.
I sold radio my whole life. But to be able to do it and to
be able to do it to the way we did it.
For those that don't know, we joke about the podcast.
It's the number one podcast coming out of this building to
this day. It beats all of the other shows
put the which is insane. Thanks thanks to Flounder too,

(46:02):
forgot him as well behind the glass.
Producer extraordinaire. I was going to have him come do
his own shout out, but it looks like he disappeared into the
shade back there. No, but Flounder's done a great
job and he leads us down the right path and I think he's good
at telling us what's going to work and what's not because we
don't always know. So we will leave it at that.
You want to do a final sign off bud?
Let's do. Thanks again.
And you've been listening to themarketing Mad Men on Extra

(46:26):
106.3, Nick. And I'll be back at some point.
At some point. Big news pepperoni fans, Marco's
Pizza is celebrating America's favorite topping the best way we
know how. It's Marco's Pepperoni Fest with
three pepperoni stuffed show stoppers.
Sink your teeth into our new pepperoni bread for just 5

(46:47):
bucks. Grab a cheesy Pepperoni Pizzoli
handheld or go big with our iconic Pepperoni Magnifico
pizza. Get all these bold pepperoni
flavors at price is worth cheering for only during Marco's
Pepperoni Fest. Use code Pepfest California
residents Use Code Pepfest California California prices
higher Limited time Limited timeonly price of participation
Mayberry Fees and restrictions may apply.
See participating source for details.