Former Visa Marketing Leader Terry Seitz Reframes How Agencies Turn Attention Into Demand

The transcript below has been edited lightly for clarity, speaker identification, and proper names. The audio remains the authoritative version of the conversation.

Stephen Woessner [00:00:08 – 00:00:54]
Over the past decade, we’ve hosted more than 1,200 conversations with CEOs,
bestselling authors, respected researchers, and agency leaders. And that body of work
has generated nearly 1 million podcast downloads and YouTube views from listeners and
viewers in more than 100 countries. 100 countries. And here’s the red thread running
through the insights we’ve collected. Agencies that have built an authority position no
longer struggle to be seen. Instead, they struggle to activate latent demand. Agency
leaders have said to us, is exactly where we’re sitting right now, authority without
demand. So welcome to the In Demand Agency Podcast presented by Predictive ROI.
Stephen Woessner [00:00:55 – 00:02:11]
Sparked by research from the Harvard Business Review, Edelman, Gallup, Agencycore,
all showing that trust has moved upstream. In today’s marketplace, authority earns
attention. Yes, but demand, demand is what turns attention into action. Each episode
deconstructs the science of demand from behavioral psychology, decision-making
research, and the cross-industry strategies behind why in how B2B buyers make their
decisions. We interviewed the world’s leading behavioral scientists, agency network
leaders, and strategists from industries far beyond ours— experts who are reshaping
how demand works. I’m your host, Stephen Wessner, and in each episode, we’ll
translate their insights directly into the agency world. And these conversations are now
being heard by a community of over 30,000 agency owners and their teams. With me
for today’s episode is Terry Seitz, partner and chief operating officer of the Nuance
Collective.
Stephen Woessner [00:02:12 – 00:03:02]
Terry has spent more than 20 years, friends, working on both sides of the agency-client
table. His career includes senior leadership roles at Gray, PHD, and Shark
Communications, and 12+ years at Visa, where his work extended across brand,
creative, media, sponsorships, research, and marketing performance. Today, Terry and
his team help brands connect creative work to enterprise value. So think growth,
margin, pricing power, and risk. And here’s why I was so excited when Terry reached out
and suggested this conversation. Terry believes marketers should move from being
what he calls commercial artists to mad scientists. Your work for clients still requires
creativity and judgment. It absolutely does.
Stephen Woessner [00:03:03 – 00:03:57]
But today’s work also requires agencies to form hypotheses, to test them, To challenge
assumptions and separate what earned attention from what created an effect, an
outcome for your client. Because a prospect can notice your agency, friends, and they
can admire you for your work, and they can also never take another step toward
becoming your next new client. That’s the gap between being admired And being
chosen. So Terry and I are going to deconstruct why attention is not the outcome, what
attention must make to be possible, and how an agency can become more disciplined
about turning visibility into trust, preference, and action so you can move from
authority to demand.
Terry Seitz [00:04:01 – 00:04:23]
I do believe that attention Attention’s sake or only to generate attention is a false god.
What do I mean by that? Attention is fleeting, and I believe that for an agency or a
brand selling their wares, that you need to be grounded, going back to this notion of a
scientist, in truth. And attention doesn’t always lead to the truth. Attention is vacuous.
Stephen Woessner [00:04:27 – 00:04:35]
Terry, I am over the moon excited. Thank you. joining me here on the In Demand
Agency Podcast. Welcome.
Terry Seitz [00:04:36 – 00:04:47]
Thank you, Stephen, so much for having me. And I just quipped that your intro was
better than anything I could have ever come up with. So this is going to be the shortest
pod in the history of pods because you just summed everything up perfectly.
Stephen Woessner [00:04:47 – 00:05:34]
You’re, you’re very, very kind. Uh, so friends, this is, this is going to be such an, uh,
amazing conversation. And when, when Terry first reached out or reached out, excuse
me. when we first connected on LinkedIn and then later we were going back and forth
in email, you know, he used several words that just really candidly hooked me. And he
started talking about this juxtaposition. I don’t know if that’s really the right way to
describe it, but we’ll see as Terry and I kind of dig into this. But he talked about like
commercial artists, as you heard me just say in the introduction, and then the mad
scientists and friends, if you know Hannah Roth, one of my business partners here at
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Predictive, you know that that is actually part of her title, mad scientist. So when I saw
that in Terry’s email, I’m like, oh, holy bananas, we totally have to have this
conversation.
Stephen Woessner [00:05:35 – 00:05:51]
So, so let’s, let’s, let’s start with your point of view around commercial artists, mad
scientists. Let’s start there. And maybe you can even give some, some definitions, some
foundation, uh, what, why you think that, and then we’ll start peeling the layers, Terry.
Terry Seitz [00:05:52 – 00:06:57]
Sure. Again, thank you so much for having me. And, you know, my point of view on this
pivot from a commercial artist to a mad scientist is sort of reflective of my career that
spans 20 years. Hmm. I first got into the agency business in New York, and at the time,
the agency world, and it still is, but was largely populated with Artists, writers and
painters and political commentators and satirists and photographers, animators,
everybody under the sun who sort of needed to pay their mortgage, their rent, their
student loans, but were essentially artists first, and then sort of business folk second,
joined an agency. And it was thrilling and it was exciting. And the guidelines and the
rules and the KPIs were sort of amorphous. It’s the John Wanamaker, 50% of my
advertising budget is wasted.
Terry Seitz [00:06:57 – 00:07:09]
I just don’t know what 50% is. We all reflected that reality. And by the way, our clients
didn’t really hold us accountable for bottom-line business outcome, generally speaking.
Stephen Woessner [00:07:09 – 00:07:11]
And it was tough to do back then.
Terry Seitz [00:07:11 – 00:08:33]
And it was difficult to measure. None of the measurement frameworks exist. in some
respects, the early days of dot-com. And so we were just coming into things like
attribution and VD metrics, which we can talk about. But by and large, we were there to
put out advertising campaigns and try and establish some loose correlations about what
was successful and what wasn’t. But it was largely subjective and largely subjective on
the client side. Now we’re standing awards. As I progressed through the next 20 years,
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and then to your— thank you for, again, the wonderful intro— sort of moved from
agency side to client side, the plates beneath my feet in terms of the remit that I saw
myself engaging in and the discipline engaging in changed, right? We were increasingly
being asked by finance and by the C-suite and based on the platforms and their ability
to measure all matter of SIN, to justify not only our investment, but measure ROI and
ROAS and some of the, what I would call sort of efficiency metrics, but ultimately be
accountable, which we weren’t before, for the things and the investments and the
resources and capital allocation that we were in charge of.
Terry Seitz [00:08:34 – 00:09:24]
And so this got me thinking like, well, we’re not a bunch of just artists anymore. We’re a
bunch of scientists where those outcomes are about accountability. But there has to be
a process, a method, an approach to get there. It can’t just be spaghetti against the
wall, e.g., from 1982. And so I thought, oh my God, it’s reframing how I got into the
business and why I’m still in the business. And it was a wonderful sort of eureka
moment for me. Which was, you ultimately, I think lots of folks, including myself, want
to be graded for the work that they end up doing. And this was a big pivot to that, but it
was a structured sort of organized pivot to your point, your earlier point about, hey, we
need to create hypotheses, we need to debunk biases, we need to test those things.
Terry Seitz [00:09:26 – 00:10:17]
Sort of the 5-step scientific approach, validate them, communicate them out. And then
retest and optimize accordingly. And so I was like, wow, there really is a lot of parallels
between being a scientist and being a marketer. Now I’m going to just like pause and
caution everybody. That doesn’t mean we’ve starched out the alchemy, the curiosity,
the wonderment and creativity of what it is to create advertising, to create content. be
in the marketing business, which is ultimately in service of changing behaviors and
actions, all of that amazing emotional-based ethos still exists. And by the way, it exists
in science, the alchemy part of it. But what we’ve done over the last 20, 25 years is just
structured those things.
Terry Seitz [00:10:18 – 00:11:27]
And if you think about what science ultimately is about, and I’m going to go a little XFiles on folks, is it’s the search for truth, right? Again, that’s the idea of establishing and
testing out and validating hypotheses. That’s debunking biases, but it’s the search for
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truth. Now, truth can take many forms. I view truth like a brand strategist would view
truth as that wonderful insight that’s going to unlock a change in brand behavior or a
change in action. The answer is like, yes, and I believe the search for truth are the, the
levers and the actions that need to be pulled to drive enterprise value, which again, you
referenced at the beginning, which is driving growth and profit and margin and pricing
power and risk optimization. And so I’m constantly on the lookout for that. And that’s
what my agency does. Like, we— I think we’re interesting and different in that we are
fanatical almost to the point of creating some, some, some, some awkward tension, but
in the best possible way because we’re all about enterprise value.
Terry Seitz [00:11:28 – 00:12:37]
And I think that that North Star didn’t exist 20, 25 years ago to go back to the lack of
measurement and accountability and expectations. But now it’s like, why does an
agency exist? Why does— why do we do what we do? Right? Why does— why do you—
why do your clients exist at Colgate? or a chime, et cetera. And if it isn’t to drive
enterprise value for an organization, you don’t have a reason to exist. We are in
business, folks. And I had to remind myself of that. And that was particularly acute
when I moved from the agency world to Visa, where I spent 12 years. It was the
justification of budget and capital allocation on a, on a, on a quarterly basis. Um, and
that was, that was tough for me coming from the agency world, but ultimately, um, it
was, um, it was wonderful in that it reframed and recrystallized what the hell I was
doing and what I want to do over the next, you know, 10 years before I get, you know,
put on a rocking chair and, you know, set out, set out to pasture.
Stephen Woessner [00:12:37 – 00:13:07]
I think you’re a ways away from that, but okay. Okay. So this is, this is so fascinating.
We’re going to have such a great conversation. So here, here’s where I want to go next.
And I’m going to rewind for just a second. So where, where, where I would really love to
be able to take that into, like, I heard you say something or you shared with me in your
notes, excuse me, as we were prepping for our conversation, you had told me about
how this, this, I’m paraphrasing here. This is not an exact quote.
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Stephen Woessner [00:13:07 – 00:13:54]
But essentially, um, you said something to the effect of, you know, point of view, that
your point of view around how earning attention for the sake of attention, uh, can
become a false god. That, that part is a quote, become a false god. Yeah. So, so I want
to be able to go down that path there. Uh, but, but here’s the quick rewind. As you’re
talking about the scientific process and how you mentioned like a search for truth, and
I, and I mentioned Hannah, um, Roth, my business partner, our chief strategy officer,
and she is indeed a scientist. by trade, more specifically in marine biology. And so I, as
you were talking about this, I literally had a flashback moment of an onsite intensive
that we were doing with a client of ours that we were facilitating with a client of ours in
San Diego.
Stephen Woessner [00:13:54 – 00:14:29]
This was several years ago. And so Eric, our president and CEO, my other business
partner, Hannah and I were in the room with 3 or 4 of their stakeholders. I don’t
remember which. But, or the number exactly, but, but anyway, Eric was at the front of
the room sketching things out on the whiteboard, kind of facilitating conversation, that
kind of stuff. And I see Hannah sort of drawing and sketching and this and that or
whatever. And, and, and I’m like, you know, so I lean over to her and I’m like, what,
what are you drawing? And she’s like, oh, you know, this conversation reminded me of a
decay curve. And I’m like, what? And she’s like, oh yeah. And so anyway, she started
talking about this experiment.
Stephen Woessner [00:14:29 – 00:15:19]
Where like one of the things that she was, one of the experiments for a grant that she
was a part of or leading was essentially measuring the decrease in radiation over time
in a certain species of fish. And so the decay curve was something that she was very,
very familiar with because she used it all the time. But what was interesting was she
was taking something that is grounded in science, the decay curve, and then applying it
to the thought leadership conversation that we were having As we were thinking about
like friction and trust and, you know, like friction goes down, trust goes up with an
audience. And I’m like, holy bananas. And then all of a sudden it started to look like
almost like, you know, the intersection of the supply and demand curves at equilibrium
economics. And I’m like, this is brilliant. This is absolutely brilliant. And I think we need
more of that.
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Stephen Woessner [00:15:19 – 00:15:42]
Right? So like when I, when, again, when you and I were going back and forth, Mark, I
think our industry is amazing. Awesome. That’s why I spent 30 years in it, Terry. I love it.
And us being in a service of agencies, we love working alongside agencies. And then I
think what’s also sort of the antithesis or the Achilles heel of our industry is there’s so
much hyperbole.
Terry Seitz [00:15:42 – 00:15:42]
Yes.
Stephen Woessner [00:15:43 – 00:16:10]
I can think of conversations, one in particular, arguing with a creative director of, I don’t
need data to know what good creative is. If I say it’s good creative, it’s good creative.
And I’m like, oh my word. And so I think we need a little bit more science. And so that’s
why I think your conversation is super helpful. So take us— or your expertise is super
helpful. So take us into this piece about attention for the sake of attention, isn’t it?
Terry Seitz [00:16:12 – 00:17:01]
Yeah. As I put in my note to you trying to get on the pod, I do believe that attention
attention’s sake or only to generate attention is a false god. And what do I, what do I
mean by that? Right. Um, attention is fleeting. And, um, I believe that for an agency or
a brand selling, selling their, their wares, that you need to be grounded, going back to
this notion of, of, of a scientist in, um, in the truth. And attention doesn’t always lead to
the truth. Attention is vacuous. It is just the first part of arguably this notion of I need
somebody to, um, um, respond and be receptive to a message.
Terry Seitz [00:17:01 – 00:17:47]
But what’s that message after? Um, it’s the old, uh, and I’m gonna take a potshot and I
don’t mean to because he is, uh, incredibly successful and incredibly, uh, everywhere
and, uh, and has established a, a wonderful presence in our business. But Gary Vee,
hmm, who often talks about, it’s about being out there with as much content as
humanly possible. And it’s sort of spaghetti against the wall. I’m paraphrasing, he would
kill me. Right. And then you optimize based on that. I don’t believe you should start
there. I believe you should start from hypotheses and some, uh, uh, uh, and some, the
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need to debunk for, uh, bias and then, uh, integrate or triangulate with what you
believe an insight to be, to ultimately get to that truth that drives the viewpoint, um,
demand for an agency services.
Terry Seitz [00:17:47 – 00:19:21]
Like you need to stand for Something. And that something for me is akin to a heuristic,
which is that shorthand memory and association that people have about you and about
your agency and about your brand. And that needs to be compounded time and time.
It’s an old finance model, right? The more you compound, the greater the return. And
attention is one of those things where if you are just chasing it, you generally lack focus
because you’re not reaffirming or filtering that attention and the actions meant to
generate attention through the, the idea of shorthand memories and associations about
your agency, about your brand. And that for me is, is this incredibly big missing link to
How agencies present themselves out in the ether, and then how are they received? I
always talk about this idea of enterprise value creation, and I try and leave every piece
of content that I develop on LinkedIn, that my partners develop across their social
handles, on our website, right, in our capabilities about enterprise value creation. If I
can’t tie it to that, then it is not worth necessarily talking about. And so that’s why this
notion of attention for a false god is, in my mind, sort of the wrong way to think about
it.
Terry Seitz [00:19:21 – 00:20:26]
Now, I’m a huge student of luminaries in our business, and I think about Rory
Sutherland a lot. And Rory talks about this need he’s not talking about it from an
agency demand perspective, but he’s talking about it from a brand perspective. This
notion of creating fame, fame is good. And again, paraphrasing, he is a brilliant, much
smarter than I am individual. Yes, fame is important or attention is important because it,
going back to Aaron Bergbass and Byron Sharp, this notion of mental availability, the
more you are out, there, the more likely you are to generate, um, in finance, economic
surprises or opportunities in Rory’s world, um, where people recognize you, are open to
hearing about you, and that creates opportunities. Mental availability. The more you are
out there, the more you are able to be, um, considered. Um, again, I think that there’s a
lot more sort of like focus.
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Terry Seitz [00:20:26 – 00:21:46]
It’s not just fame for fame’s sake. You need to be out there with a very specific point of
view. So I’m not saying all attention or the chasing of it is bad in Rory’s land, but it’s
about sort of focused attention. And that goes to, I think, what the Ritsons of the world
or the Andrew Tidalls from System 1 would posit, that it’s like mental availability, the
95/5 theory, all correct, but with parameters and focus. So for me, to your earlier good
point, the hyperbole and hysteria around creating attention and the need to create
attention is somewhat of a false god. And what’s interesting is that, again, I’m going to
name-check, so forgive me, Scott Galloway talks a lot about the attention economy. And
that plays, it says, guy who lives in San Francisco, where hyperbole and hysteria around
AI, around, you know, previously crypto, Bitcoin, DeFi, etc., you know, NFTs like got way
overblown. And it was about creating attention to drive up valuations of companies
such that they could then sell them, right? Or sell, you know, drive interest before IPOs.
Terry Seitz [00:21:47 – 00:22:29]
And I think it’s really important that we have the critical thinking and reality checks
embedded into our processes, again, going back to being a scientist and who we are as
individuals, to try and separate that. And that’s hard when so much of what we are
consuming is about trying to generate this fleeting thing called attention. My last name
check, but I love the work that they’ve done. Karen Nelson Field from Amplify out of the
UK, has been working with Adam Morgan from Eat Big Fish, and they had these series of
seminal studies about the cost of dull media and the cost of dull creative.
Stephen Woessner [00:22:30 – 00:22:30]
Yep.
Terry Seitz [00:22:31 – 00:23:34]
They did some stuff at Cannes like 2 years ago. I think they may have refreshed it this
year, but Karen talks about the need for active attention, which is different Right? She
talks about, hey, you have about 2.5 seconds to seed an idea that sticks. That goes
back to this idea of heuristics, right? Compounding shorthand memories and
associations about who you are. And that’s very different from a media context and a
creative context with just generating attention. Yeah. And the need to measure that and
focus that is so critically important given the noise and the saturation that we have in
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the marketplace, that it can’t be understated. All the more precarious given the
elephant in the room that is AI and the amount of content being developed at hyperspeed. Right.
Terry Seitz [00:23:34 – 00:23:43]
The more noise, the harder it is to generate compounding active attention and
ultimately heuristics.
Stephen Woessner [00:23:44 – 00:23:46]
Which I would love to— this is so good.
Terry Seitz [00:23:47 – 00:23:48]
Sorry, Steven.
Stephen Woessner [00:23:48 – 00:24:20]
Are you kidding me? This is, this is amazing. So I’m going to highlight a couple of things,
actually 3 things, I think, as I’m looking at my notes here, 3 things, and then we’re
going to take a quick break, friends. First of all, I can’t, can’t wait to invite Karen.
Because it sounds like her work at Amplified around active attention is amazing. And I
think would be really insightful for our audience. But here’s the thing. Here’s why.
Here’s, even though I’m not an expert in her work, this is why I love it on the surface
level.
Stephen Woessner [00:24:21 – 00:25:04]
And then obviously she has a depth of expertise in this, but I think it’s very common
today, friends, to hear attention is currency. Yeah. And I couldn’t disagree more. And it’s
not because of just the smart things that Terry is sharing with you. I think attention for
attention’s sake, and I’m agreeing with Terry’s point of view here, attention is currency. I
do not believe that. In fact, so you mentioned Gary, and I interviewed Gary 12, 13 years
ago, and it was a great conversation. There’s a lot of things that I agree with Gary, And
if you were listening here, I would say there are a lot of things that I disagree regarding
what Gary says.
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Stephen Woessner [00:25:05 – 00:26:01]
But with this attention piece, I think that sometimes he does get lumped into that
because like you said, a bazillion pieces of content a day and all of that. However, I
think he would wholeheartedly agree on your attention equals or must equal, excuse
me, attention must equal enterprise value. So when I was at VaynerMedia, I remember
walking into the office sort of on one of their floors at their headquarters at the time
was on Park Avenue. And it was like seeing this bullpen of 20-somethings on their
laptops creating stuff for back in the day Vine and all the social networks back then.
Anyway, and I remember seeing this big chalkboard from floor to ceiling and basically
down at the bottom was sort of the thesis of it. And it’s like, We love social media. I’m
going to clean this up a little bit, you know, because it was VaynerMedia, so you can
kind of understand where this is going to go. But anyway, it was, we love social media
because it sells, insert 4-letter word.
Stephen Woessner [00:26:01 – 00:27:03]
We love social media because it sells stuff. And I’m like, okay, so it’s attention with
enterprise value as the purpose. And then the last point that I want to sort of
underscore, if this was all about attention and if attention was truly currency, then
every single Instagram, or excuse me, Hollywood actor that has a bazillion followers on
Instagram, every time a new movie is released with them as the featured actor or
actress, then that should be a blockbuster. And it most certainly is not. So just because
you have millions, if not hundreds of millions of fans, followers, whatever, on Instagram,
or pick a social channel, That does not mean enterprise value as far as the box office is
concerned. The production company may cast that person in the hopes of that throngs
of their followers will come buy a ticket, but it doesn’t always happen. Does it
sometimes? Sure. Does it always? Absolutely not.
Stephen Woessner [00:27:04 – 00:27:15]
And so attention for attention’s sake, just because there’s attention, I could not disagree
more that attention is currency. It is not because of the points that you shared, Terry.
Terry Seitz [00:27:16 – 00:27:19]
May I add to it? Do you want to take a break? Because I think—
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Stephen Woessner [00:27:19 – 00:27:19]
No, you go right ahead, sir.
Terry Seitz [00:27:19 – 00:28:43]
Okay. So I love your push here and I love your push on 2 fronts. One is, and I write a lot
about it, but again, I’m a student of a lot of much smarter luminaries in our industry,
And it’s this notion of the CFO, the C-suite versus CMO divide, right? Which everyone
has been reading about. And as I tell my kids, in some respects, you are who you spend
your time with and you are who— what you do. And if we in the marketing discipline
over-index on time spent against attention, that furthers the chasm, the gap, which you
and Hannah and others rightly are trying to bridge between what happens at the Csuite and the CFO and the CMO levels. If we are in the attention business, then we’re
measuring against the attention business, and it becomes really hard to justify that in
budget meetings and in board meetings on a quarterly and annual basis. That’s why I
joke we don’t often get a seat at the adult table at Thanksgiving, because we’re talking
about attention metrics, which are incredibly hard to correlate to bottom-line business
outcomes, e.g., enterprise value, and thus are sort of distrusted. Right.
Terry Seitz [00:28:43 – 00:29:54]
So that worries me that we spend so much time chasing attention. And this goes back
to, again, I’m going to name-check him because, again, I think he’s brilliant. What Rory
says, which is, We need to get out of the deterministic business, which you referenced,
right? If I engaged with a creator to generate awareness and attention for a particular
movie, that should guarantee me a box office of X or Y. That is not the business that we
are in. We are in the probabilistic business. Going back to this notion of being a
scientist, it is about educated probabilistic outcomes and plans and investments. So we
should not be going to C-suite, CFO, CEO, board, and going, we’re going to guarantee a
set of outcomes that we can’t measure and plausibly deliver on in really linear ways.
And I think that going back to this notion of attention as a false god, we’ve set
ourselves up for that other false god of deterministic outcomes that is largely built on
this notion of we are about chasing attention.
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Terry Seitz [00:29:55 – 00:30:26]
And, and that, that scares me. Again, the huge lessons moving from the agency world
to Visa and interestingly enough, back to the agency world where I think the remit of
my, of my company is trying to navigate, navigate that. But it’s, it’s just a really
important— it’s just a really important point about how we have gotten to the place that
we have gotten to relative to our position in companies and what we are on the hook
for.
Stephen Woessner [00:30:27 – 00:31:15]
Amen to that, Terry. So friends, we’re going to take a break here. And so we’ll take just a
couple minutes. And when we come back, we’re going to dig deeper into, I think, where
Terry was going with that, which is this intersection between sort of attention, customer
need, outcomes, probabilistic, um, and, and, and, and so forth. So, so in that
intersection, um, essentially how, how does an agency find the intersection? Uh, and
then, and then when we first come back, I’m going to share a story about, uh, my, uh,
interview with Jesse Cole, because as you might imagine, or from Savannah Bananas,
because Jesse and I talked quite a bit about, uh, attention. So, okay. Uh, we’re going to
take a quick break. Uh, and then we’ll be right back, friends.
Stephen Woessner [00:31:16 – 00:32:00]
Hey friends, I’d like to share a free resource my Predictive ROI team built for you based
on the insights and wisdom that Terry is sharing with you right now during this episode.
If you go to predictiveROI.com/attention, you can download our free Attention to
Demand scorecard. It’s 5 questions. It’ll take you just 3 minutes to complete. The
scorecard will show you where your agency connects attention to a prospect’s business
issues and challenges. Awesome. Where the reason to choose your agency might still
be unclear and which part of your thinking to test next. Again, that’s
predictiveROI.com/attention to get your free scorecard.
Stephen Woessner [00:32:01 – 00:32:42]
Okay, friends, we are back. And so before we, we dive into kind of this next segment,
we’ll call it segment number 2. Just a quick kind of closeout to the attention piece. Well,
probably not closeout. I’m sure that’s going to come up as we continue our conversation
here. But again, several years ago, I had an opportunity to interview Jesse Cole from
Savannah Bananas. So he reached out to me and asked if he could be a guest of mine
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on the podcast at the time was called Onward Nation. And so, as you might imagine,
Jesse and I certainly talked about attention and authority positioning and that kind of
stuff and how attention really matters.
Stephen Woessner [00:32:43 – 00:33:28]
But this is the piece that I want to peel back here, is that on the surface, you can again
talk about attention, attention, attention, attention, attention, and act like attention is
currency. In fact, I think I’ve maybe even heard Jesse not that long ago say attention is
currency and several other people kind of talking about that. But here’s why, again, I
think that that is false. And because if you peel back the layers of some of the things
that have really made the Savannah Bananas successful, and it’s amazing what they
have done, what Jesse and team have done, and when they talk about Banana Ball and
how they’ve really changed the rules of the game, and it’s just, it’s phenomenal. But he
would be the first to tell you it’s because of their philosophy of fan first.
Terry Seitz [00:33:29 – 00:33:29]
Hmm.
Stephen Woessner [00:33:29 – 00:34:21]
Of putting fans first. He wrote the foreword to, um, a book that a friend of mine
authored. Um, my friend is called— or called— named, uh, Scott McCain, and he was
our guest in episode 7 of the podcast. And, and Jesse wrote the foreword to that, and it
was about creating this amazing experience. So when, when the fans come to see the
Savannah Bananas play at Benway, is it about attention or is it more about the fan-first
experience that they have? And then they tell somebody, tell somebody. You could
absolutely argue that that word of mouth is attention, but it’s this fan-first point of view
and experience that they’re creating that has really driven the growth of the business.
So I just wanted to add that piece. So Terry, take us, take us into this intersection.
Stephen Woessner [00:34:22 – 00:34:53]
Um, you know, the intersection between— let’s call that sort of, uh, the intersection
between a customer’s need, like what they want as the outcome, and then the brand’s
ability to deliver against that. Um, and so how, how does a team find that intersection?
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Like, like, where is that balance? Maybe that hooks into some of the things you’ve
learned from Rory. Maybe it’s from your decades of experience, maybe a little bit of
both, but where does that intersection lie?
Terry Seitz [00:34:54 – 00:35:25]
Yeah, great question. Interestingly enough, I’m going to go back to Jesse and Savannah
for a second because I think the answer is somewhat in your story, which is they
created this experience that in many respects was anti-baseball. Anti in the Right. In, in,
in how the game was being presented, um, portrayed, uh, and, and, and experienced.
Right. And that comes from the human truth.
Stephen Woessner [00:35:25 – 00:35:25]
Yep.
Terry Seitz [00:35:26 – 00:36:03]
Right. Human truth, going back to this notion of truth and being a scientist. Right. So
Jesse, as a scientist, audited what was right and wrong about baseball and said, here
are 27 eureka things that I can do to change the experience. Now, baseball is still
somewhat at the core of the experience, but not baseball as Major League Baseball
would define it and, uh, and, and have you as a fan experience, but, but really going
into, um, um, the human truths about why people like baseball, what they don’t like
about baseball, and then created experiences around it. In my world, that’s about
resonance.
Stephen Woessner [00:36:04 – 00:36:05]
Hmm.
Terry Seitz [00:36:06 – 00:37:31]
Right? That is a, That is about aligning oneself and delivering against the resonance of
what a customer or a consumer wants and needs. One of the challenging things,
particularly as an agency or in the agency selling agency services or in the B2B world, is
we often forget to put, as Jesse Rightly did, fans first or consumers first. We are all—
B2B is littered. Most of that marketing, and I say this indicting myself sometimes and
someone, is, well, this is, this is all the wonderment and benefits of my agency or my
client’s products or services. And the consumer or the customer is like second or
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tertiary. in the thought process around, around that. And we need to, we need to invert
it. And we don’t because it is far easier, faster, more efficient to sell our wares versus
go, well, what are the needs? What are the emotional, functional needs of a desired
segment or audience? And then go, does my product or service actually deliver on
those things?
Stephen Woessner [00:37:31 – 00:37:31]
Oh, this is—
Terry Seitz [00:37:31 – 00:37:34]
and if so, and if so, how or how not, right?
Stephen Woessner [00:37:34 – 00:37:35]
Yeah.
Terry Seitz [00:37:35 – 00:37:50]
How do my competitors deliver or not deliver, uh, against those things? Um, you know,
it’s interesting, John Miller— again, I’m just like name-checking everybody. I, I don’t
know any of these people, um, but I follow them religiously.
Stephen Woessner [00:37:51 – 00:37:58]
You know, I’m sending this podcast to every single one of them and I’m like, your dear
friend Terry spoke so highly of you.
Terry Seitz [00:37:59 – 00:38:49]
Yeah, no, this is— these are not— I’m not Paid endorser of any of these guys. But John
Miller, who is a seminal B2B marketing thought leader, ex-Demandbase, ex-Marketo, he
is trying heroically to change the mindset of B2B marketers and move from that very
paradigm of stop talking about yourselves, And start and start understanding the
unique needs of your, your, your, your customer set and then re-engineering
accordingly. And I, and I, and I fervently, you know, and I fervently believe that. And so
it’s interesting because so there’s a study, I don’t know if you know the Sixth Sense
guys.
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Stephen Woessner [00:38:51 – 00:38:53]
I don’t know them personally, but they’re
Terry Seitz [00:38:53 – 00:38:53]
too
Stephen Woessner [00:38:53 – 00:39:01]
popular. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We have not had Thanksgiving dinner together, Terry. as you
have with all of the luminaries that you have talked about.
Terry Seitz [00:39:02 – 00:40:22]
But they put out this incredibly illuminating, sobering study about a B2B buyer’s
journey, which is what we do, which is what you and I are talking about, which is, hey, if
we’re in the business of selling agency demand, that’s a B2B thing. And he talks about
the number of people, the length of time it takes The percentage of preset brands or
folks when people are searching for B2B services. And then once you get past the
shortlist, the fact that, you know, 80% of people already have a lead candidate makes
you think, what the hell are we all doing, John Miller, about this? Like, well, you can’t
start with, and here’s the widget product benefit and service. Or in our agency world,
here’s our 5 proprietary core offerings. It’s got to be about what is the need that we are
uncovering and meeting, and then only then can you sell in your quote unquote wares.
And for me, again, there’s this notion of, all right, it’s an 11-month buying journey, like
10, 12, 13 people impact. A buyer’s decision. Um, 80% of people already have a
shortlist before they’re even thinking about an agency.
Terry Seitz [00:40:23 – 00:41:54]
And then once you, once you cull that down to that shortlist of 3 or 4, 80% of the time
you already know who you’re going to work with, right? And so how do you as an
agency penetrate what is essentially a defined consideration set from the beginning? It
isn’t about the widget. Or it can’t be just about the widget. And I think that we as
agencies often, often forget that, which is why I go back to if I can create or bridge the
gap of, hey, listen, dear CMO of X or head of marketing of Y, we are about delivering
against your remit, your need, which is enterprise value creation. Then maybe we have
a shot of penetrating that consideration list, right? If we’re talking your language, if
we’re all in service of delivering against those things, A, you get to keep your job, B, you
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look great, you’ll get invited to the adult table at Thanksgiving, and we move away from
the fallacy and the false god of attention, then maybe we all have a shot at making this
thing called marketing successful. And, and that’s, that’s for me why I love getting up
every day and trying to, and trying to do that. But, but it’s, but it’s, but it’s, it’s
incredibly hard. I don’t know, Steven, did that answer where you were going or what?
Stephen Woessner [00:41:55 – 00:42:05]
It does. And it does. And it sparked something else, which I’ll get to in just a second,
because I want to go back to the deterministic and probabilistic.
Terry Seitz [00:42:05 – 00:42:05]
Yeah.
Stephen Woessner [00:42:06 – 00:42:26]
And how that either enhances credibility or maybe even diminishes credibility. But I just
want to kind of do a quick recap here of your Thanksgiving dinner invitation list. So it’s
going to include John, Karen, Jesse, Rory, and Gary, of course. So that’s 5 people now
that you’re going to invite to—
Terry Seitz [00:42:26 – 00:43:07]
Mark Ritson. You forgot the Evidenza guys who I haven’t quoted yet. Adam Morgan from
Eat Big Fish. And then the last 2— sorry, the last 2. And it ties back to your point about
probabilistic versus deterministic outcomes. Jonathan Knowles and Chris Brugave, who
was the old CMO of Anheuser-Busch, have put out a series of reports about bridging the
divide between the C-suite and the CMO and what marketing’s true remit is. And they
anchor their theory on sustainable pricing power. So look them up as well.
Terry Seitz [00:43:09 – 00:43:50]
Brilliant guys. Again, we’re going fairly academic and a little finance-y, but again, this
pivot from being a commercial artist to a mad scientist is exactly where the function
has gone. And you either get on, as my father would say, you either get on board or
you’re going to be left at the train station. But It’s fascinating if you’ll allow me to go a
little bit more into the finance stuff. So if, and I’m going to age myself, the million-dollar
or the $64,000 question game show is how do you, and this is the eternal question,
justify optimized marketing investment in any organization?
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Stephen Woessner [00:43:51 – 00:43:51]
Hmm.
Terry Seitz [00:43:52 – 00:45:24]
And again, we went from not being held accountable for any of it to somehow deciding
that we should not only be held accountable for all of it, but, but be deterministic in our
outcomes. And that was a right, that was a manifestation of the fact that we started to
be able to measure things through the platforms and now we can’t get out of it because
we are measuring everything. And it’s the just because we can doesn’t mean we should.
But I think we’ve over-rotated into guaranteeing outcomes that, that again, not only
move us away from being trusted, but being granted and generating investment
opportunities accordingly. Like we’re the— we’re CapEx. We’re the first things that get
cut from a budget when, when, when revenue or earnings are tight. I go to things like,
how do we get better? And we’re moving, which is great, but how do we get better at
moving away from engagement metrics like clicks and followers and view rates to
quantifiable business outcomes? And it led me to the guys, Chris and Jonathan and
some others to go, well, are there better models that we should be deploying? And
Hatta probably, by the way, has a wonderful point of view on this and again is much
smarter than I am about cracking it. But in finance, in corporate finance, they have
things like NPV, right? Net present value.
Terry Seitz [00:45:24 – 00:45:42]
They have things like CAPM. They have things like internal rate of return. I think, yeah.
Right. And it’s this notion that capital allocation should generate a return, but it’s an
educated return. Risk is built into every single one of those models.
Stephen Woessner [00:45:42 – 00:45:44]
Yes. With a coefficient. Yes.
Terry Seitz [00:45:44 – 00:45:57]
Yes. Right? So why does the CFO get to go to the board and the C-suite and go, this is
how I’m thinking about allocating resources in the short term to generate some return.
But in marketing, we don’t get that path.
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Stephen Woessner [00:45:57 – 00:45:59]
We’ve got jazz hands.
Terry Seitz [00:46:00 – 00:46:46]
Or we got totally deterministic. You give me a dollar, I’ll give you 5 back. And you’re like,
that’s that’s a treacherous place to play. Why can’t we adopt— and again, in some
companies they do to some extent— more of that CapEx NPV model where it’s like, hey,
probabilistically we think we could generate X, but there’s risk. There’s risk inherent in
everything that we do, but we are getting better. And here’s a systematic approach to
either mitigate that risk Right? Or to generate the cash flows that ultimately drive the
value and valuation of a business. We think we can do that. And here’s a systematic set
of thinking and an ecosystem by which we can do it.
Terry Seitz [00:46:46 – 00:46:47]
But we’ve got to—
Stephen Woessner [00:46:47 – 00:46:51]
Hang on just one second. I’m interrupting you here for a purpose, I promise.
Terry Seitz [00:46:52 – 00:46:52]
Yeah.
Stephen Woessner [00:46:52 – 00:47:36]
Because friends, what you just heard Terry articulate for this 2 minutes Literally what
you just taught in those 2 minutes is exactly what agencies should be teaching against
and following John Miller, moving that conversation way upstream. So you’re part of the
80%, because when you teach to that, when you confidently talk about that, when you
transparently say, yeah, there’s risk and this is what it looks like, when you do that, you
separate yourself from the Jazz Hands Agency, and you show up as business people
that your prospective client upstream will be like, huh, maybe they should be part of
our consideration set, Terry. So that was super smart what you just shared there.
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Terry Seitz [00:47:37 – 00:47:49]
Yeah, thank you. Yeah. And, and by the way, folks, like, this is learned, this is learned,
learned for me. Like, when I started off in the business, I wasn’t thinking about it. It
only, it only took 20 years or 15 years.
Stephen Woessner [00:47:51 – 00:47:52]
Overnight success.
Terry Seitz [00:47:52 – 00:48:17]
We’re still trying. We’re still trying. No, but having— but Stephen, how many clients do
you sit in front of and you go, they’re in the front, you empathize and acknowledge that
they are in the frying pan sitting in front of the C-suite or sitting in front of the board
going, I need to justify my marketing investment and my actions for some more
common goal. And that’s what Jonathan and Chris often talk about, which is you got to
align expectations Or you’re not going to get a seat.
Stephen Woessner [00:48:20 – 00:49:11]
100%. And I know that we need to come in for a landing. I want to be respectful of your
schedule here, but you’re right. And so what you just said there is the start of a
conversation that, in my opinion, and maybe our audience is going to radically disagree
with me, and if so, okay. And that is that we have to be courageous enough To have the
conversation that you just teed up there, alignment around expectations versus could
we say the least possible to walk out of this conference room with a signed agreement?
We have to be confident enough and courageous enough to sit at that table and say,
hmm, that actually doesn’t make any sense. Because if we don’t have that conversation
upstream, you are darn sure you’re going to have that conversation downstream.
Terry Seitz [00:49:13 – 00:49:32]
Yeah, 100%. And think about the, the, the second-order effects on agency comp models
that, that come out of that, right? You’re moving away from, from a bunch of widgetmaking Henry Ford FTE hour-based models to outcome, and which again is a huge thing
that we see on LinkedIn and the debate around those things. But that’s where we’re
going.
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Stephen Woessner [00:49:33 – 00:50:09]
100% where we’re going. 100% where we’re going. This has been an amazing
conversation, and regrettably, we need to come in for a landing. But this has been so
much fun. I look forward to you and I reconnecting and continuing this conversation, but
this has been absolutely amazing. So, so as we come in for a landing, as I mentioned to
you in the green room, you and I are going to say goodbye here. And then, friends,
please stay on with me here as we then work through kind of of the biggest takeaways.
We can compare notes, our audience and me.
Stephen Woessner [00:50:09 – 00:51:03]
But Terry, I just want to say thank you very, very much for generously sharing your
insights, your wisdom, your expertise, peeling all these layers. That was absolutely
awesome. Thank you. Okay, friends, I hope that you enjoyed the conversation with Terry
as much as I did. As you heard us talk through, your right fit prospect can, can read
your content. They can admire your expertise, but in their mind may still lack a clear
reason to choose your agency over another. So candidly, they, they, they may know
you’re smart, but what they need to understand is how your thinking can help them
solve their business issues and challenges. And that’s what Terry and I explored.
Stephen Woessner [00:51:04 – 00:51:52]
So how to connect the attention that your agency earns and be able to connect that to
the business outcome your prospects want and need. So I’ve prepared 4 takeaways.
There are certainly many, many more than 4, but I’ve prepared a list here of 4
takeaways. And my hope is, is that your team are going to be, or you and your team are
going to be able to take these, take them and apply them, take them and apply them
into your business development plan, your business development strategy, your action
steps going forward. All right. So takeaway number 1, give attention a job to do. So you
may recall hearing Terry say attention is fleeting and someone notices your agency.
Awesome.
Stephen Woessner [00:51:53 – 00:52:58]
And so what do you want that person, what do you want your prospect to understand
and remember as a result of the attention? So Terry talked about shorthand memories
and associations, and he consistently connects his own agency’s thinking to business
value. So when we slice that apart, what does that mean? Could be growth, could be
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margin, could be pricing power, could be risk. So for your agency, That means
connecting your expertise to a business issue or challenge that, you know, your right fit
prospects recognize. And it’s also that if you solve that business issue and challenge,
they’re going to get an outcome that they value. Give them something more useful to
remember than the fact that you published another piece of content. All right. So
takeaway number 2, put your prospect’s need At the center. So think back in our
discussion, the discussion that Terry and I had, because there was a piece in there
where he and I were talking a little bit about Jesse Cole and the Savannah Bananas.
Stephen Woessner [00:52:59 – 00:54:24]
And the spectacle that is the Bananas, that earns attention. No doubt, it absolutely
does. But what runs the team, the heartbeat of the team, Is their fans-first philosophy
that Jesse and his team have brilliantly implemented. And that takes that spectacle and
turns it into an incredible fan experience that lives well beyond the game. So Terry
brought that back to agencies and we can lead with our services and leave then the
prospect, unfortunately, to figure out Where any of that, any of those services matter.
But instead, what if we were to invert that? So what is your prospect trying to
accomplish? What is making that difficult and what is getting in their way of getting the
result outcome that they’re looking for? What concerns do they have about getting all of
that wrong? And then once we know that, then we can demonstrate How the thinking,
the thinking inside your shop addresses those needs. So give your prospect the
experience of being seen, of being heard, and being valued, just like Neen James
recommended in episode 12. And you heard her say that if you listened to episode 12,
you heard her say, seen, heard, and valued.
Stephen Woessner [00:54:24 – 00:55:37]
That’s what people want. They want to feel that they’ve been seen, they’ve been heard,
and they’ve been valued. So before you ask your prospect to consider working
alongside your team or having the opportunity to work alongside their team, how have
you architected that experience so they feel seen, heard, and valued? All right. So
takeaway number 3, test the thinking that you’re asking people to trust, that you’re
asking your prospects to trust. So Terry’s shift from, you know, you heard him talk about
this, this shift from commercial artist to mad scientist, it adds some discipline to the
creative process. So you heard him say, form a hypothesis. So that’s in plain language,
like state what you believe will change and why, and then decide what evidence would
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either support that belief or maybe contradict it, cause you to reconsider it. When Terry
moved to the client side at Visa, he had to then justify, he had to explain, he had to
develop a business case around marketing investments to the leadership there at Visa.
Stephen Woessner [00:55:38 – 00:56:27]
Well, agencies need that same discipline too. And oftentimes we do have that, right?
But let’s not fall into the trap of views and clicks because again, that’s attention, right?
That’s telling us that people notice the work. Yay. But what does that activity make
possible for your client’s business, for their outcomes, for solving those business issues
and challenges? And that’s how your team moves forward from defending like a favorite
idea, uh, some sort of campaign to demonstrating you’ve got some great business
judgment. You’ve got some great skills in place. That’s what helps you move from the
gap of being admired to Being chosen. Okay, so let’s come in for a landing here with
takeaway number 4. Credible expectations.
Stephen Woessner [00:56:29 – 00:57:24]
Expectations build a stronger trust bridge than promises that can’t be supported. So
Terry said, and I always get this, this word’s a little bit of a tongue twister for me. He
said, we are in the probabilistic, probabilistic, there we go. Probabilistic business,
meaning so we can explain the outcome we believe is possible, the evidence behind it
and the risks involved, but we still have to account for what we can’t control, which is
the probabilistic part. So I encourage you during my conversation, like during that
conversation with Terry, to move your teaching upstream. All the data is showing how
trust is moving Upstream. So we need to show prospects how you’re evaluating their
business issues and challenges before they ask for a proposal. That has to be so way
upstream now.
Stephen Woessner [00:57:26 – 00:58:20]
And be courageous enough to align around those expectations and to really lean into
those expectations because a difficult conversation today, you know, before the
engagement, instead of avoiding it, a more difficult conversation today before the
engagement That becomes a lot harder once the engagement begins. It becomes much
harder conversation downstream. So here’s how I’m thinking about Terry’s teaching in
the context of the authority-demand ecosystem. Authority earns attention. Left side of
the ecosystem, authority earns attention. Yep. Awesome. And then the tangible
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evidence and the visibility of your proof Just like, just like Eric and I, Eric Jensen and I
talked about in episode 3 of the podcast, that making your proof visible instead of
invisible, making it visible.
Stephen Woessner [00:58:21 – 00:59:22]
When we do that, that strengthens then the trust bridge. And then your purposeful
invitation gives your right fit prospect a way to act, a way to move from authority, to
take your hand and walk across your trust bridge And to step onto the other side, let’s
call that demand, right? Left side authority, right side demand, trust bridge in between,
in between, and then become your next new client. So here’s my challenge to you.
Before your next biz dev conversation, use the attention to demand scorecard that we
created from Terry’s insights. If you go to predictiveROI.com/attention, you’ll be able to
download that for free. Score some of your recent work, some of your recent thinking,
and then choose a piece of content that is connected to that lowest score. Name your
prospect’s business issue, the intended business outcome, and the evidence behind
that recommendation that you made. Then improve that piece and ask a right-fit
prospect what it helped them understand.
Stephen Woessner [00:59:23 – 01:00:04]
And then use that answer, use that feedback to decide how you’re going to peel that
back a little bit further. And make that even deeper. So again, but just keep it as a
limited experiment, right? One piece of content, one useful test, and then a clear reason
for that prospect to choose your agency over another. So friends, thank you very much
for spending your time with Terry and me. We all have the same 84,600 seconds in a
day. I said that backwards. 86,400 seconds in a day. And I am grateful that you chose to
spend some of your time with me, with Terry, and we’re grateful for all the feedback
that you send our way.
Stephen Woessner [01:00:05 – 01:00:08]
Until next time, onward with gusto.